McClellan goes on Olbermann last night to talk about his book and says something destined to outrage the 28 pecenters, but which makes perfect, unfortunate sense for everyone else:
I think that you would need to take [the administration’s] comments [on Iran] very seriously and be skeptical.

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Iran has always been in “secret talks” with Eastasia… er, al Qaeda.
Watch for the “proof,” the causus belli to justify the attack we plan to make no matter what, in the coming months.

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This came up in the previous thread, and in fact comes up all the time with my winger correspondents, who seem to think that Israel, at some point, became the 51st state.
Israel is not the United States.
Israel is absolutely an ally, a crucial ally. And you may believe we owe some sort of moral fealty […]

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I’m tempted to say I don’t get this, but in fact I get it perfectly.
So Jimmy Carter “outs” Israel, saying it’s got about 150 nukes. Well, big surprise; Israel has long been thought to have a relatively large stable of warheads, and if you’re Israel, you’ve got to: it’s called deterrent.
But, of course, we’re currently […]

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Clueless, and proud of it:
Yesterday, the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) often incorrectly portrays Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as if Ahmadinejad has a significant role in formulating Iranian foreign policy. He doesn’t. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Iran’s National Security Council set Iran’s foreign policy.
Yesterday, Time’s Joe Klein […]

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But see, we already knew this:
US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran in the upcoming months, before the end of his term, Army Radio quoted a senior official in Jerusalem as saying Tuesday.
The official claimed that a senior member of the president’s entourage, which concluded a trip to Israel last week, said during […]

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As noted in the bit yesterday about the winger radio host who - like so many wingers - shouts “appeasement! appeasement” without having any idea what “appeasement” actually means - let alone the historical context - I’m amused by this piece today, about how Teh Leader dusted off some 69-year-old comments by a long-dead Idaho […]

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Curious to see that Obama’s response to the BushMcCain “appeasement” charge is now getting as much play as the charge itself. But he’s going about it wrong.
Obama responded Friday to Bush’s speech Thursday to the Israeli Knesset. The president referred to the leader of Iran, who has called for the destruction of the U.S. ally, and […]

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In reading Glenn Greenwald’s takedown of Tom Friedman - and Friedman’s declaration that a new “cold war” with Iran awaits - I’m thinking, the whole time, of how this is indicative of the dimunition of the United States; how our punditocracy and the ruling class they reflect actually believe that a country whose military expenditures […]

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I don’t necessarily doubt that Iran is, in some way, equipping funding insurgents in Iraq - much as, if Iran invaded Mexico, we’d be aiding insurgents there and calling them freedom fighters.
But instead of coming up with actual proof, those who would take us to war with Iran thought this would suffice:
Iraqi officials also have […]

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Will Bunch catches a line by longtime Clinton advisor Harold Ickes:
“We don’t know enough about Senator Obama yet. We don’t need an October Surprise. And (the chance of) an October Surprise with Hillary is remote.”
Notes Bunch:
This remark is dismaying on several levels, partly because Ickes is virtually channeling Karl Rove, who implied something similar in […]

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Pat Buchanan reads the tea leaves, and accurately, I’d bet:
The general’s testimony is forcing Bush’s hand, for consider the question it logically raises: If the Quds Force and Hezbollah, both designated as terrorist organizations, are arming, training and directing “special groups” to “murder” Americans, and rocket and mortar the Green Zone to kill our diplomats, […]

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So now, below is a bit linking a ThinkProgress piece in which it appears as if John McCain, giving a speach on the heinousness of war, copped someone else’s words.
Not true. As ThinkProgress later acknowledged, it appears as if someone (Adm. Timothy Ziemer) actually pinched McCain’s speech, initially delivered in 2001, recycled last week.
So ThinkProgress […]

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Don’t you sometimes think you’re living in an echo chamber, where things said five years ago bounce back at you, sounding only slightly different?
But most striking was Bush’s accusation that Iran has openly declared its nuclear weapons intentions, even though a National Intelligence Estimate concluded in December that Iran had stopped its weapons program in […]

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Ah: Now I see. McCain didn’t really mean that business about Iran and al Qaeda.
Except that he did:
But while the McCain campaign is backing away from the specific claims about Iranian training of Al Qaeda, it is asserting that Iran collaborates with Osama bin Laden’s organization.
Mr. McCain’s national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, told The New […]

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Uh, isn’t John McCain supposed to be the guy who knows who’s what in terms of foreign policy, and specifically in the Middle East?
So how it is exactly he thinks that Iran is arming al Qaeda?
During a Middle East tour intended to highlight his foreign policy acumen, the Republican nominee mistakenly claimed that Iran was […]

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I’m Cheney and I’m so glad to see you! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…
Retaining his tough stance against Iran, Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that Tehran may have restarted the nuclear weaponization program that a U.S. intelligence report said was halted in 2003.
No proof offered, of course.
In that today is the […]

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Josh Marshall on why Fallon’s “regisnation” is a big deal, regardless of whether he jumped or was pushed:
By all accounts, the points of contention between Fallon and Bush administration officials centered on three points: 1) his belief that the indefinite occupation of Iraq is a disaster for the US military, 2) that diplomacy has a […]

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Well, that didn’t take long.
Remember the bit last week about the Esquire article suggesting that CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon might be on his way out - perhaps because, among other reasons, he’d privately vowed that an attack on Iran “will not happen on my watch?”
Guess who just “resigned?”
Gates described as “ridiculous” any notion that Fallon’s departure […]

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Thomas P.M. Barnett wrote one of the most incisive, insightful explanations as to why we actually went to war in Iraq that I’ve ever read (”The Pentagon’s New Map,” from Esquire Magazine in March 2003 - just as troops were marching in). He has, now, a new article in this month’s edition of Esquire (on […]

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