Something that’s been sticking with me, watching the coverage of the crackdown in Iran and the overwrought reaction to it by the likes of Sullivan.
Indeed, Sullivan posts this today, quoting CSNY’s “Ohio”
“Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How […]

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Daniel Larison has a smart series of posts on the situation in Iran, making the important point that it is their country, not ours, and thus their business, not ours:
The casual assumption is that condemning foreign election fraud, of which there was probably a great deal in Iran, is both some kind of moral imperative […]

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Laughing, that is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qV_egtMs4sU

This is the good old conservative Heritage Foundation, suggesting that North Korea is going to launch a nuke right at us here. Unprovoked - they’ll just do it!
I’ve always loved this conservative meme that these wannabe nations are going to hurl a “weapon of mass destruction” at us even though we have several thousand times […]

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Drudge headline - with siren!
IRAN NUKE ‘THIS YEAR’
What the actual story says:
The think tank’s Mark Fitzpatrick made the announcement at today’s launch of its annual global review of military powers.
“During 2009, Iran will probably reach the point at which it has produced the amount of low-enriched uranium needed to make a nuclear bomb,” he said.
“But […]

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It’s only a matter of time before I hear from my usual winger correspondents about this:

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Sarah Palin seems to think so.

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Glenn Greenwald on the newest neoconservative-esque emissions, in today’s Washington Post:
It’s just objectively true that there is no country in the world — anywhere — that threatens to attack and bomb other countries as routinely and blithely as the U.S. does.  What rational leader wouldn’t want to obtain nuclear weapons in a world where the […]

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Via Matt Y., a video on the “hidden” cost of our wars.
I was curious, in the first presidential debate, to hear John McCain say he’d freeze all federal spending - except military. We never think to take a hard look at military spending, do we? And here I thought Obama missed a golden chance. The […]

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Hm. It might be easy to dismiss this, as we’ve heard countless similar stories over the past few months, and none of them seem to have panned out - at least, not yet.
So it might be easy to dismiss it. Until we get to this:
Two aircraft carrier task forces, the Abraham Lincoln and the Peleliu, […]

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John McCain’s latest, taking Obama’s words out of context (of course), not noting that Obama said - correctly - that Iran was a minor threat compared to the Soviet Union:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhH2q6h7_Ow

I’ve little doubt though, that the ad will be effective. What it also is is the end of the line.
I’ve always marveled at how conservatives are […]

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So Yahoo/The Politico’s Mike Allen sits down with Condoleeza Rice to discuss Iran, and it’s Condi who comes off sounding sane.
Allen baits her - What’s the nightmare scenario if Iran gets Teh Bomb??? - and he’s obviously wanting her to say that Iran will immediately launch salvos at Israel or maybe even the good old […]

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The idea came out of the vice-president’s office. Of course.
Do they make false flag lapel pins?

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Speech today, and it’s a good one.

Sullivan has the text. Obama talks of opportunities missed as a result of the relentless focus on Iraq; and what he would do to bring the war to a close. Anyone who says “surrender” is simply lying:
George Bush and John McCain don’t have a strategy for success in Iraq - […]

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Sullivan, continuing to argue with Max Boot, makes a very good point:
But let me remind Boot that there was no mention before the war that we were there to secure oil supplies as he now argues.
In fact, that very idea was regarded as a left-wing smear. Nor were we told that we would invade and […]

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Phil Gramm’s comment continues to be batted around, and rightly so. McCain has ditstanced himself from the comment - but I get the idea that this is really what the right-wingers think; that the economy is doing just fine, and even if not it’s just a temporary bump, you live in the best country in […]

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It’s getting more and more obvious that our belligerent stance in the Mideast is a direct contributor to the deteriorating economic conditions in this country.
As in, here we have a story today in whcih the head of OPEC is warning that if Iran is attacked, oil prices would see an “ulimited” increase:
“We really cannot replace […]

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McCain seems to think so:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain was asked about an Associated Press report that $158 million in cigarettes have been shipped to Iran during George W. Bush’s presidency despite restrictions on U.S. exports to that country.
”Maybe that’s a way of killing them,” McCain told reporters, smiling as he waited for a cheesesteak […]

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The hubbub today is all about Iran firing off some missles that could hit Israel.
I’m rather confused by all this.
Israel has missles that could reach Iran, doesn’t it?
Indeed - we have missles that could reach Iran, right?
But Iran isn’t allowed to have missles with the same offensive capability?
Iran is obviously staging its war games with the […]

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Via Matt Y., a really handy chart to pull out next time your favorite winger suggests Iran is an existential threat.

UNITED STATES
IRAN

Population
303,824,646 (July 2008 est.)
65,875,223 (July 2008 est.)

Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
$13.8 trillion (2007 est.)
$0.75 trillion (2007 est.)

Defense spending fiscal year 2009
(% of global total)
$711 billion (includes Iraq/Afghanistan)
48.4%
$7.2 billion
0.5%

Total troops
2,580,875
(1,498,157 active + 1,082,718 reserve)
895,000
(545,000 active + […]

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Hm. So Sy Hersh has a piece in the upcoming New Yorker about how we’re closer to war with Iran than anyone thinks; that last year, in fact, Congress ” approved 400 million dollars to ramp up covert operations in Iran to undermine Tehran’s leadership.”
And then we get this:
An Iranian navy commander leading a unit […]

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