The Chalabi Times Hoping Not to Repeat Iraq Disgrace

Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, UN, War, WMD

As I pointed out in 2005, Judith Chalabi Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter, shilled for the Iraq war over the pages of the New York Times, like there was no tomorrow. The Bush White House, together with a wily Iraqi exile named Ahmad Chalabi, friend to the neoconservatives, fed the voracious birdbrain with misinformation and lies about WMD. The NYT and Miller, as much as FoxNews and its hot-for-war hotties, promoted the immoral, illegitimate, baseless war on Iraq.

Whereas the Times was prone to see faces in the clouds during the delirium of destruction in Iraq, it is now attempting to cleave to the facts about Iran.

“American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. …Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies. … Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes. ” [NYT]

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, a nuclear scientist and Iran’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), speaks reasonably to his country’s need to produce radio isotopes for pharmaceuticals, a product of the nuclear industry. However, the US prefers to increase the burden and isolation of the Iranian people with sanctions. Pure evil and plain counterproductive.

Facts did nothing to sway the U.S. from attacking a prostrate, Third World nation, with no navy or air force, whose military prowess was a fifth of what was smashed in the Gulf War. Rationalizing these war crimes with lies post invasion became de rigueur in the major media.

Similarly, facts will not forestall an American assault on Iran. In the early days, Iraq had provided “documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD.” I recall the derision and mockery with which the Bush administration and its hangers-on greeted what turned out to be the only truthful document in the sad saga of Iraq.

Soak The Rich? How About ‘Drench Almost Every American Family’

Barack Obama, Business, Capitalism, Economy, Taxation

Most Americans own shares in major American companies, often through pension funds. “According to the Investment Company Institute,” reports the WSJ, “about 51% of adults own stock directly or through mutual funds, which is more than 100 million shareholders.” However, come 2013, the malevolent freak who inhabits the White House intends to “triple the tax rate on corporate dividends,” hurting these Americans (most of us). The “new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8%—nearly three times today’s 15% rate.”

…retirees and near-retirees who depend on dividend income would be hit especially hard. Almost three of four dividend payments go to those over the age of 55, and more than half go to those older than 65, according to IRS data. But all American shareholders would lose. Higher dividend and capital gains taxes make stocks less valuable.

A Genuine Journalist in MSM: Jack Tapper (Vs. Jay Carney)

Barack Obama, Fascism, Journalism, Media

Jake Tapper of ABC News is an unusual journalist; he has questioned the Obama administration, and, in particular, on the matter of the suppression of journalistic freedoms stateside.

Via Media(somethingoranother):

At Wednesday’s White House press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney praised the journalists (Marie Colvin, Rémi Ochlik and Anthony Shadid) recently killed covering the violent unrest in Syria. ABC News’ Jake Tapper then asked Carney about the discrepancy between how the Obama administration treats journalism internationally versus domestically.
The White House “keeps praising these journalists who’ve been killed,” Tapper said, but that is inconsistent with the administration’s actions within the U.S. He asked, “How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?”
Tapper went on to detail how “this is the sixth time you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States.” Previously, the act had only been used three times in history.
Plainly, Tapper stated, “There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.”

Tapper has a history of “subversion.”

The Terrible Troika’s Advisers

Bush, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Republicans, War

The empire is bankrupt and in the throes of death. Its operatives are writhing with it, hanging onto the last shreds of the gory glory that came with directing American Manifest Destiny abroad. Unstable systems and people are most dangerous before dissolution and collapse.

This is why the advisers behind at least one of the presidential wannabees should be of interest.

But first, if you missed the primitive, atavistic utterances made by the terrible troika in Arizona with respect to Syria and Iran, here they are, excerpted in this Guardian post titled, “prolific proliferators of confusion.”

Except that there is nothing confused about the blood that’ll flow if one of these losers ascends to the executive throne. The Romney-Santorum-Gingrich bellicosity rivals Bush’s. The absence of any learning curve extends, seemingly, to their receptive audience, which applauded their every promise of action abroad.

Any criticism The Terrible Troika levies at Obama is for “showing weakness by not leading the allied air campaign in Libya, where the U.K and France played prominent roles, and not being tough enough on Iran to stop its nuclear-weapons efforts.”

More wars is what we’ll net with the three crappy candidates.

Romney’s Team sports these neoconservative heavy hitters:

Cofer Black, a former head of Central Intelligence Agency’s counterterrorism center and executive of the security firm Blackwater, now Xe Services; Meghan O’Sullivan, a Bloomberg View columnist and former White House official who oversaw Iraq and Afghanistan policy; Eliot Cohen, director of the Strategic Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies and a former counselor at Rice’s State Department; Dov Zakheim, the former Pentagon comptroller; and John Lehman, Ronald Reagan’s Navy secretary.

And “Robert Joseph, a White House National Security Council aide during Bush’s first term and later a State Department official.”