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Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.
Porn industry seeks federal bailout « - Blogs from CNN.com

I didn’t even realize that I was entitled to any delegates in this Democratic primary until around 7 p.m. yesterday. If you didn’t win a state’s primary election and your name wasn’t on the ballot, you might be entitled to some delegates, too! Follow along and I’ll explain.

See, yesterday, I watched the meeting of the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which was seeking to resolve the question of what to do about the delegations from Michigan and Florida — two of the states which violated party rules by holding their primaries earlier than allowed. The final decision was to seat all of Florida’s delegation, but give each delegate half of a vote, and to seat the Michigan delegation, giving Senator Clinton most of the delegates she earned and giving the delegates for “Uncommitted” — plus some extras — to Senator Obama, with each delegate only worth half a vote.

At first, I was very angry with the decision — particularly about Michigan — because it seemed like a decision which goes against the basic principles of the modern Democratic Party, where voting rights are supposed to be sacred, and where the results of an election are supposed to be a fair reflection of the expressed will of the voters. There were points raised prior to the meeting which challenged whether the Democratic Party’s Charter would allow any delegates to be stripped of their full vote, but that argument was brushed aside. And then, in the name of “the rules”, the rules themselves were brushed aside.

It was pretty amazing — almost Bush-like — the way the Rules and Bylaws Committee just totally invented a rule out of thin air, giving themselves the power to override the votes actually cast by the public. Using a suggestion from the Michigan State Democratic Party, they divided up the delegates based not just on actual ballots cast, but also on:

• those wonderfully accurate exit polls from Michigan’s primary day
• polling from the day Michigan’s primary was supposed to be held
• a fudge factor which presumed to divine the intentions of the registered Democrats who didn’t vote

So the outcome is, the tea-leaf readers on the RBC have interpreted the will of the voters to mean that:

• not everyone who voted for Senator Clinton really meant to
• everyone who voted for “Uncommitted” really voted for Senator Obama, and
• more of the voters who didn’t vote would have voted for Senator Obama than for Senator Clinton

Instead of Senator Clinton getting the 73 delegates her vote count should have entitled her to, and the other 55 delegates going to the convention uncommitted to either candidate, the RBC took 4 delegates from Senator Clinton, then gave those 4 plus all the others to Senator Obama. Final tally: Clinton – 69 delegates, and Obama – 59 delegates. They didn’t even really have to run the election, since the RBC totally made up the results, anyway.

When Senator Obama’s political ancestors in the Chicago Democratic “Machine” used to fix elections, at least they made the dead people actually cast a ballot! And when the Republicans stole the 2000 Presidential election, at least the dispute was over counting ballots. This way is so much more efficient and flexible for getting the result you really should have gotten if only those pesky voters had done as they were expected to.

Anyway, I got to thinking: Senator Obama got 46% of the delegates in Michigan, even though no one voted for him and his name wasn’t even on the ballot. Well, no one voted for me in Michigan and my name wasn’t on the ballot either! In fact, no one voted for me and my name wasn’t on the ballot in all 50 states! I think I’ve got a pretty good case to make in Denver, and I won’t be greedy: the Vice Presidency is just fine with me!

As soon as the school-day started on Friday morning, April 5, 1968, my first-grade class at elementary school P.S. 183 in Rockaway Beach, New York listened as the principal told us the news that everyone knew. His voice came through the speakers next to the large clock in every classroom. “A great man was killed yesterday, but it wasn’t just by a bullet. It was by the hatred in the man who shot that bullet from his gun.”

Or, that’s what my memory tells me the principal said. Memory is faulty, and it could have been something I heard or read during any of the 40 years since. But it’s one of my only memories of that school where I was one of the white minority. The principal asked us to bow our heads and observe a moment of silence in honor of Dr. King. The picture is as clear in my mind as a snapshot: a couple of dozen kids in required white shirts and blouses, gray slacks and skirts, boys and girls, black faces and white, all with our heads down on the desks, sniffling and crying in the strangely quiet school.

On October 2, 2002, Illinois State Senator Barack Obama gave a speech to a crowd gathered in Chicago for an anti-war rally. It was an excellent speech, like all of Senator Obama’s speeches: well, written, filled with passionate phrasing and the rhetorical rhythms of his idols, Dr. Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.

…I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil. I don’t oppose all wars.

My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton’s army. He saw the dead and dying across the fields of Europe; he heard the stories of fellow troops who first entered Auschwitz and Treblinka. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil, and he did not fight in vain. I don’t oppose all wars.

After September 11th, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration’s pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again. I don’t oppose all wars. And I know that in this crowd today, there is no shortage of patriots, or of patriotism.

What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war…

Even just reading it, without hearing the Senator’s rich baritone embracing his words, there can be no doubt that it is a wonderful speech. But the difference between Senator Obama and Dr. King is that, while both could be described as inspiring orators, Dr. King was also an activist, putting his entire being into the actions necessary to turn his words into reality.

And what has Senator Obama done to act on the sentiments expressed in his speech? When he spoke before that crowd in 2002, he was free from the responsibility of having to make an actual decision on whether to support the war. He was an outsider, and he asks us to believe him when he says that if he were not an outsider he would have voted consistent with his opposition to the war. His actions don’t agree with that.

Since he was elected to the Senate in 2004, in every single vote on funding the war — the only indisputable power the Constitution affords Congress over the actions of the military — Senator Obama has voted alongside Senator Clinton to continue funding the war. He hasn’t continued his oratory in the Senate or in the pages of the Congressional Record. He hasn’t shown any great willingness to stand up to the majority of Democrats or the whole Senate to express his opposition to the war.

Even his own words don’t support his assertion that he would have voted against the Authorization to Use Military Force. On Meet the Press with Tim Russert in 2004, Senator Obama said:

“I’m not privy to Senate intelligence reports.  What would I have done?  I don’t know,”

and

“There’s not much of a difference between my position on Iraq and George Bush’s position at this stage.”

The less said about the second statement, the better, but the first statement is honest and realistic. It takes into account the complexities of governing, when one has to compare and evaluate evidence and opinions from not only one’s own heart and gut, but from supporters, advisers, constituents, party leaders, and the effect of that decision on one’s future plans and ambitions.

There were 23 Senators and 133 Representatives who opposed the resolutions, and sadly none of them are still in this race for the presidency. The differences between the major Democratic candidates on nearly all other issues are very slim, so Senator Obama has declared this one distinguishing position as the bedrock upon which his campaign stands. He asks us to trust that his judgment, as evidenced by this one position — free from the danger of consequences and clear in the perfect vision of hindsight — will make up for his lack of experience, his undemonstrated leadership, and his reliance on passive notions such as “hope.”

Based on the experience of 2000 and 2004, when the electorate placed their trust in an unproven, lightly-experienced, “nice guy” who spoke of passive notions such as “compassion,” Senator Obama’s foundation appears to me not anchored in solid bedrock, but floating in a dangerous quagmire.

In April 2000, one year after the Columbine killings in Littleton, Colorado, and eight years before the killings at Virginia Tech, a group of New York Times reporters and editors created a series of stories on what they called rampage killings*. In developing the story, they compiled a database of 100 of these multiple murder incidents occurring in the United States over the previous 50 years.

The examination included reviews of court cases, news coverage and mental health records, and interviews with families and friends, psychologists and victims, in an effort to glean what the people closest to each tragedy had learned. In some cases, reporters questioned the killers themselves.

What the study revealed were the great number of similarities among the cases, and not the superficial details often seen in television dramas, such as CSI. The greatest single factor binding these tragedies together was missed warning signs.

…most of the killers spiraled down a long slow slide, mentally and emotionally. Most of them left a road map of red flags, spending months plotting their attacks and accumulating weapons, talking openly of their plans for bloodshed. Many showed signs of serious mental health problems.

We’ve all heard the claim that people who are planning suicide aren’t the ones talking about it. It’s a myth.

Few people commit suicide without first letting someone else know how they feel. Those who are considering suicide give clues and warnings as a cry for help. In fact, most seek out someone to rescue them. Over 70% who do threaten to carry out a suicide either make an attempt or complete the act.

The Times study showed that rampage killers are also not taken seriously, often at great cost in lives ended and ruined. In the months and weeks before their incident of violence, the killers studied were found to have left many clues, offered hints, held conversations about their plans with friends and family, made purchases of necessary materials, and occasionally even invited others to come watch their actions. Often, their instability or their anger was noticed by people around them — several killers in the study had been given nicknames of “Crazy Pat,” “Crazy John,” and “Crazy Joe.” For many people who live a life of alienation, there is no single person who could put all these signs and clues together. Our lives are often compartmentalized today, with spouses, family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, schoolmates and others all involved in our lives, but often unaware or unacquainted with people in the other domains.

Often, those who noticed odd or disturbing or violent behavior made the assumption that there was someone else in the person’s life who was aware of the problem and would take responsibility for guiding them towards getting the help they needed. Quite often, though, even when they were referred to someone who could help — a doctor or a therapist or even a mental hospital — either the severity of their problem was not properly recognized, or the patient did not cooperate sufficiently to make any difference before being discharged. Like any other major illness, when left untreated, it doesn’t just get better spontaneously.

Forty-seven of the killers had a history of mental health problems before they killed; 20 had been hospitalized for psychiatric problems; 42 had been seen by mental health professionals…Psychiatric drugs had been prescribed at some point before the rampages to 24 of the killers, and 14 of those people were not taking their prescribed drugs when they killed. Diagnoses of mental illness are often difficult to pin down, so The Times tabulated behavior: 23 killers showed signs of serious depression before the killings, and 49 expressed paranoid ideas.

Part of the problem is that mental illness carries a terrible stigma in the US. With our culture of confession, nearly every physical disease has its society and its spokesperson, even such formerly taboo topics as Erectile Dysfunction or adult incontinence. Yet, who is the poster child for bi-polar disorder or clinical depression or mental retardation? If Britney Spears had shaved all her hair off because she was undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, would she be the subject of endless cruel jibes ? Most likely not. Yet, because her actions were likely caused by some type of mental illness, we dismiss the cause and make light of the behavior.

We shouldn’t expect that every person who suffers from a mental illness is going to wind up as a rampage killer. But we need to begin understanding the signs of mental illness, and reaching out to those you know who are suffering or having trouble coping with the events and circumstances of their lives. We need to realize that when we think we see someone “snap,” we’re actually watching the culminating moments of a long and painful drama.

*Although there were four major articles in the series, most of them are in the Times archive section and downloadable for a fee. However, the article linked to here is available for free.

An animation from Jim Hightower explaining the oil deal behind the Iraq war. What are the odds that Condi, Dick and W wind up “consulting” for Big Oil once they’re out of office?

Via AlterNet Peek and The Hightower Download

In the type of reponse Stephen Colbert’s Colbert Report persona would admiringly refer to as truthy, Insight magazine stood by it’s claim that Senator Barack Obama is hiding his past as a fundamentalist Muslim, with the implication that he might even be a type of Manchurian Candidate.

Last week, in an article titled, Hillary’s team has questions about Obama’s Muslim background, Insight magazine performed its usual role of carrying water for its Moonie masters by running an article claiming that Senator Barack Obama was educated in an Islamic madrassa school while he lived in Indonesia as a child. The article claimed that the source of the information was Hillary Clinton’s newly announced Presidential campaign. The well-designed piece of journalism had the expected effect on its intended audience: those stalwart True Believers who find no problem in accepting the premise that the Clinton camp would proudly announce such transparently sleazy tactics to a magazine which is a charter member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and guaranteed to expose their role in spreading such underhanded lies the truth.

Of course, those godless atheists with their critical thinking reacted by laughing at what they referred to as: the inanity of the attempted double-target sliming. They ordered their radical left-wing house organ, CNN, to do what they call actual journalism, sending a correspondent familiar with the madrassas in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Jakarta, Indonesia in order to investigate Basuki School which Obama attended as a child in the late 1960s. According to Senior International Correspondent John Vause:

I came here to Barack Obama’s elementary school in Jakarta looking for what some are calling an Islamic madrassa … like the ones that teach hate and violence in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Vause said on the Situation Room Monday. I’ve been to those madrassas in Pakistan … this school is nothing like that.

As if we’d trust anyone who’s ever been in a madrassa! In an article in the New York Post — a Murdoch-owned outlet usually willing to take the appropriate joy in smears of prominent Dems, they actually spoke to the Clinton camp and allowed them to deny that they had any responsibility for the claim, while Obama’s campaign forcefully stated that he did not believe that Hillary or her staff were in any way responsible. Of course Obama’s people would say that about Hillary — look what happened to Vince Foster when he was about to cross her!

Demonstrating that they have no use for those fact things which liberals are always blabbering about, Insight‘s unsigned article refers to CNN’s pursuit of the truth behind the story by pointing out that, The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz and now CNN are doing everything possible to assault and undermine Insight’s credibility. Isn’t it obvious: a correction of facts is actually an attack. Next thing you know, they’ll have those traitors at Media Matters piling on, too.

Then they state who was really to blame for the contention that Obama attended a madrassa: it was Hillary’s campaign that said it. They were just being good journalists and reporting what an unnamed anonymous source alleged Ms. Clinton’s staff were trying to prove about a possible angle for a potential smear campaign sometime later in the year. Yessirree! That’s some fine journalism, guaranteed to be 100% fact-free!

After telling us that their mission is to provide our readers with credible, reliable, cutting-edge information on what is really happening behind the scenes in the corridors of power, they then fill us in on some of the amazing scoops and cutting-edge stories this magazine is proud of:

We were one of the first to report tension between President Bush and his father, the tremendous resentment by the GOP leadership against the White House, conservative threats to stay home during the elections, fights over strategy, and the resignations of key White House officials over the Republicans’ loss of Congress.

Gosh, we’d better notify the Pulitzer Prize Committee! After all, it’s not every paper that can produce great reporting about feelings, especially when we’re talking about the feelings of entire segments of the voting public or unspecified groups of politicians. Why getting those kinds of stories and remaining 100% fact-free is no mean feat.

Adding another layer of difficulty to their task is that they are operating with what they describe as a limited budget. Although, as part of a news operation which has been bleeding red ink since its launch in 1982, surviving only by regular infusions of cash totaling more than US$3 billion from Rev. Moon’s pockets, I’m not sure why their budget is so limited.Still, it must be really tight because not only are they not able to send correspondents to places like Jakarta to check out every fact in a story, they seem unable to afford even the price of a phone call to either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama. If that’s too expensive, then the cost of a taxi from their offices to the US Capitol 4.1 miles away is definitely too expensive. But even though they obviously can’t afford to verify the story themselves, they say

CNN’s claim that Obama attended a multi-confessional, secular public school needs verification by other news outlets—such as FOX News—who will look the facts straight on, without a vested ideological interest in downplaying Obama’s Muslim heritage.

That sentence alone guarantees this article a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize and not in the humor category this time. But Insight‘s listing of the tough questions that need to be asked of Senator Obama are going to leave the writers for The Colbert Report and The Onion in despair over ever coming up with anything truthier:

If he was rai
sed in a secular household (as he claims), why does he have—or retain—Muslim names, Barack and Hussein? Were his father and stepfather as secular as he says? What is the exact nature of Obama’s current religious affiliation and what are the beliefs and teachings of his current church in Chicago, the Trinity United Church of Christ? Does he adhere to these teachings or is he a Sunday bench warmer only?

I’m glad someone is asking those tough questions! With their cutting-edge reporting on emotions, I’m sure they could channel Obama’s beliefs without having to strain their budget with a phone call. They’d just need a reporter who can divine someone’s character instantaneously, without words or facts… I’ve got it! President Bush could see into Russia’s President Putin’s soul, so he’d make an ideal reporter. Plus with all that free time he has in-between vacations and Cheney telling him what to decide, I see a future career for the soon-to-be ex-President.

Technorati Tags: barack-obama, madrassa, insight-magazine, garbage

So, we won! That’s big news and a credit to the hard work and dedication of the many people who were told a few months ago that a Democratic turnover in either House of Congress was just a pipe dream. For those of you who struggled to effect this change, please: go celebrate. Enjoy the day. Catch up on some sleep. Re-acquaint yourselves with your families. Come back and read this tomorrow.

For the rest of us: I don’t mean to rain on the parade, but in the crowing about the Democrats’ victories last night, I can’t help but hear echoes of President Bush’s wrongheaded claims of a mandate after the 2004 elections. As the new majority party in the House, there is a great opportunity to redress some of the uninvestigated wrongs of this Administration, to staff committees with sane people who place Nation above Party, and to attempt to undo the nightmarish abandonment of principle and procedure that has plagued the House since the (wrong-headed but) high ideals of the Contract With America disappeared into the swamp of power-madness and greed that Washington has always been.

We Dems took control of the House with nearly twice as many seats as we needed. The first Muslim Representative was elected. The first female Speaker of the House is set to take over. The GOP scum whose criminality were so outrageous that they couldn’t be ignored by even the most ethics-challenged Republicans were sent packing and Democrats filled their seats. Final analyses have yet to be written, but my rough count on CNN’s site shows 26 incumbents in the House were defeated. While that seems pretty high, that’s less than 5% of the House’s 435 members and fewer than the 34 House members of both parties who ran unopposed. It’s enough for the Democrats to set the agenda and for the 110th Congress to shake off the moniker of Do-Nothing Congress… perhaps.

While we might not take the Senate, there’s a strong chance that we will wind up with an even split (Lieberman and Sanders, the two Independents, have stated they will caucus with the Democrats for procedural purposes), meaning that Dick Cheney will have to come out of his undisclosed location more frequently to break tied votes. Morons like Frist and Hastert won’t be able to change the text of reconciled House/Senate bills in back rooms in the middle of the night, and the odds of such massive changes to Senate rules as the end of the filibuster occurring just dropped much lower than the odds of John McCain actually becoming a liberal when the cameras aren’t rolling.

We can’t fool ourselves by thinking that people voted for the Dems as much as they voted against the Republicans. Informally, I asked some of my friends and relatives, most of whom are Democrats, why they voted the way they did, and even these party members didn’t mention any kind of program or platform or reason beyond throw-the-bums-out, or, it’s time for a change. I have to believe that Republicans and Independents voted the way they did for the same reasons. The people are sick of Iraq, but merely rehashing the debates over cut-and-run vs. stay-the-course isn’t going to inspire any confidence. There are liberal groups who have outlined workable, comprehensive plans for our exit from Iraq and they need to be brought into the conversation so some adult voices can be heard above the din of sloganeering. We need to charge out of the gate on January 2 and show the people that we are something more than “Not-Bush.”

Most troubling to me in what it says about the electorate is the reaction in many states to ballot initiatives banning gay marriage and even banning civil unions. In Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin, voters approved changes to their state laws which will deny equal rights to gays. Arizona voted to make English the official language. Michigan voted to restrict Affirmative Action programs. These are indicators that on this issue important to progressives, the socially conservative public will not be on board.

Contradictions are rife however, with South Dakota voters approving an overturn of the draconian ban on all abortions, with Missouri approving state funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and with Oregon voting against requiring parental notification of abortions. And, on the economic front, there is a strong support for more economic fairness with every state which offered a ballot question about increasing the minimum wage finding that raise approved by the voters.

Since 1994, when the public was sick of the corruption and ineffectiveness of Congress and elected to move the country to the right, the Dems have had only to oppose the Republicans. Now, they need to lead. Can they do it?

Crossposted from Newsvine.

On Friday, April 14, the CNN program, “Your World Today” had as a guest Retired US Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, speaking about US options in Iran. Gardiner, a former lecturer in military strategy at the National War College, has specialized in war games focusing on decision-making at the Presidential advisor level.

Speaking about military options towards the Iranian nuclear threat, Gardiner said, “I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way.” When asked to explain why, he pointed to the recent New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh as one reason — indicating that Hersh’s unnamed source is known to the New Yorker‘s editors who will have verified that he made the statement. He continued:

…the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year. I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, “Hey, I hear you’re accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.”

He said, quite frankly, “Yes, we know they are. We’ve captured some of the units, and they’ve confessed to working with the Americans.”

The evidence is mounting that that decision has already been made, and I don’t know that the other part of that has been completed, that there has been any congressional approval to do this.

My view of the plan is, there is this period in which some kinds of ground troops will operate inside Iran, and then what we’re talking about is the second part, which is this air strike.

This is the same pattern used by the military in our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. CIA and Special Operations Forces were first on the ground in Afghanistan, gathering intelligence, making contacts with opposition parties and providing targeting information for airstrikes. In Iraq, there were reports that Special Forces and CIA were operating inside Iraq as early as August of 2002, three months before the Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force, and seven months before the war officially began.

While planning and preparation are vital to the success of a military campaign, the similarity to our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq seem to indicate that we are approaching this potential conflict in a manner that may not be appropriate to this situation. Iran has four times the land area and three times the population of Iraq. It has missile technology capable of delivering a chemical, biological or nuclear warhead as far as southern Europe or Western India. It is also much further along in its nuclear weapons development program than Iraq was in 1981 when Israel destroyed the French-built Osirak reactor outside of Baghdad. All indications are that Iran has learned from the action against Osirak and has both scattered and hardened its nuclear development facilities.

Although it has discussed plans to do so, Israel is unlikely to undertake a mission against Iran similar to the Osirak mission due to the much longer distance to Iran and the necessity of traversing either Saudi Arabian airspace or Jordanian, Syrian and Iraqi airspace. Another big difference is that Osirak was one target, while Iran has 14-20 nuclear development facilities. During the 1981 raid against Osirak, Israeli fighters flew over Saudi Arabia, but the Saudis have much more sophisticated air defenses today, including AWACS planes purchased from the US in late 1981. If Israel were to fly over Iraqi airspace, that would indicate to Iran and the rest of the world US complicity and approval in the attack, therefore the US is most likely putting great pressure on Israel to stand down. In return for Israel’s self-restraint, the US has promised support, as Bush made explicit in Cleveland on March 20, 2006, when he said,

“I made it clear, and I’ll make it clear again, that we will use military might to protect our ally Israel…”

Although, unlike in Iraq, it is clear that the case for Iranian possession of WMDs is beyond dispute, the problem with our current situation is that, as Gardiner showed in a war game he designed and ran for The Atlantic magazine in 2004, that there is no good scenario for an attack on Iran. Any attack on their nuclear facilities would certainly spark reprisal actions which could cause great difficulties for us and our allies. Our forces in Iraq have benefited from Iran’s lack of strong participation in the insurgency; were Iran to act, they could easily incite the Shi’ia in the relatively quiet southern part of the country, with whom they have strong cultural and religious ties. With the current price of oil over US$60 per barrel, any disruptions in the flow of oil could easily send the price up over US$100 per barrel. By blockading the Straits of Hormuz or curtailing their own flow of oil — 4 million barrels per day — Iran could easily wreak havoc on the US and world economies. Then there are the known ties between Iran and Hezbollah, as well as recently reported ties between Iran and al-Qaeda, and other reports which claim that Iranian groups are signing up potential martyrs for attacks against British and American interests worldwide. As Richard Clarke and Steven Simon, former counterterrorism coordinator and senior director for the NSC say in today’s New York Times:

Iran could use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States. Iran has forces at its command that are far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field. The Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah has a global reach, and has served in the past as an instrument of Iran. We might hope that Hezbollah, now a political party, would decide that it has too much to lose by joining a war against the United States. But this would be a dangerous bet.

The discussions and plans for an attack against Iran, Gardiner believes, will, despite the experience in Iraq, call for regime change. The feasibility of such an action is near zero, due to many of the factors ment
ioned so far. But supporters and former members of the government seem not to have learned anything from the difficulties faced in Iraq due to too-optimistic planning. Richard Perle, leading neo-conservative and former chairman of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, said at the 2006 AIPAC Policy Council Middle East security roundtable discussion on March 5:

Those of you who see The Washington Post will have seen in the Washington Post a couple weeks ago a map laying out the critical facilities in Iran that are supporting their nuclear weapons program. I trust we know where we are. If we don’t know where they are, what should we think about a diplomatic solution? So, either we know where they are, or we don’t, and if we know where they are, let me tell you that with six or eight B-2 aircraft… those facilities could be eliminated in a single evening, and I hope we are making it clear to the Iranians and to our European allies and to others that if the choices between standing by and watching Iran become a nuclear weapon state, and the President commanding B-2 aircraft to eliminate those facilities, we will not hesitate to eliminate the facilities. Finally, when I say I hope it doesn’t come to that, I hope that before that becomes necessary, we will see a regime change in Iran, and the best way to do that is to support the millions of Iranians who want to see the regime change. We haven’t been doing it… it took a year from last year to get the announcement the other day that we’re going to invest $75 million in supporting the opposition. It should be a lot more money and it should be spent with enthusiasm—not by a bureaucracy that’s not eager to undertake the task.

The danger to our mission in Iraq, the danger to the safety of our people and institutions around the world, the likelihood of financial crisis if oil prices skyrocket, the danger of increased terrorism and instability in the Middle East and in Islamic enclaves around the world, the uncertainty about the number and position of likely targets — all these factors make military action unwise. The probability that any such attack will increase Iran’s resolve to rebuild its nuclear program quickly, more secretively, and with the intention to use it before it can be pre-empted again, makes military action not only unwise, but ultimately futile and self-defeating. At the end of his war game exercise in 2004, Gardiner distilled the lessons of the exercise into advice for the Administration, which he still subscribes to today:

When I finished the wargame for the Atlantic Monthly, I summarized what I had learned in the process. “After all the effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers. You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work.” I have not changed my mind.

When US policymakers say the military option is on the table. I don’t think it’s rhetoric. I don’t believe US policymakers understand the military option won’t work.

(Crossposted from my column at Newsvine)

Technorati Tags: attack, clarke, enrichment, gardiner, hezbollah, iran, israel, military, news, perle, richard-clarke, richard-perle, sam-gardiner, terrorism, uranium, war, world-news