If you’re labouring under the misconception that the Bush Administration is going to leave office without first confronting the Iranians, it’s time to start paying serious attention.

The propaganda machine is in full swing, led by a new report by the State Department that labels Iran the most active sponsor of terrorism. If you can believe it, the Sudanese government actually ranked lower despite the fact that it has been complicit in supporting the Janjiweed who have been responsible for a genocidal campaign in Darfur.

Falling conveniently in line with the State Department’s release, the United States has deployed a second US carrier group to the Gulf with the specific purpose of “developing new options for attacking Iran” - a directive issued directly by The Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is justifying the move as a response to what the United States now believes is official Iranian policy – “killing American servicemen and -women inside Iraq”. Michael Hayden, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, recently asserted at a lecture at Kansas State University…

“It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq.”

It would seem that it is more than Mr. Hayden’s opinion, and a very crucial question has to be asked – why is the director of the CIA making such claims during a lecture? This is the same man whose agency provides the White House with a daily brief, which means that Hayden’s position has not only been presented the President, but also obviously adopted. If it hadn’t been, the White House would have condemned his assertion during that lecture, which it hasn’t, meaning that Hayden’s mentioning of it is being used as a tool with regards to circulating policy in the press without it coming directly from the President’s mouth.

Added to all of this, rather conveniently, is also another Pentagon assertion that the Iranians are directly aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan, a claim that was originally made last year and denounced by both the Iranians and the Afghan government. It should also be noted that it was made around the same time as US allegations that the Iranians were also supporting Sunni extremists in Iraq, which were quickly attacked by various analysts as being utterly preposterous given the massive, and historic, ideological differences between the two. Not surprisingly, the promotion of that information was tracked back to the office of the Vice President.

On the nuclear front, the Israelis are playing their part, with Israeli Transportation Minister, Shaul Mofaz, claiming yesterday that Iran will likely possess the ability to produce a nuclear weapon before the end of 2008. His source? Israeli intelligence, of course. Ironically, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to comment on Mofaz’s claim, which is interesting being that his office is in direct control of the Israeli intelligence apparatus and has far more insight than that of the office of the Transportation Minister.

So what does all of this add up to? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. Fishermen call it baiting a hook; the intelligence community refers to it as Psy-Ops. And if you think it’s the Iranians that are the target with regards to psychological initiatives employing the media as their primary conduit, think again. It is, in fact, the American people being targeted.

The question is, have the people of the United States learned their lesson?

Iraq was invaded because they supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction, or, at the very least, were in the process of obtaining them.

After that justification fell through, the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein took its place, and human rights, liberty, and democracy became the bugle call.

After Hussein’s capture, and the continued occupation of the country to combat the insurgency, al-Qaeda was used as the primary justification despite the fact that their numbers in Iraq, which didn’t exist prior to the occupation, constituted less than 5% of the insurgency itself.

And so here we find ourselves, five years after the fact, with the Iranians having become the new justification. Like Hussein’s regime prior to the invasion, the Iranians are being accused of attempting to secure a nuclear weapon. Their intended target? Israel. The consensus, of course, is that were they to acquire one they would use it, that it would not be seen as the acquisition of a deterrent, but rather an offensive weapon.

In my next entry, although I have covered the subject before, I will delve into the reality of why that line of thought is based on nothing more than the desire to militarily confront Iran, not the Iranian regime’s desire to actually engage in a nuclear exchange.

This morning’s confirmed it – sick. Probably bronchitis, so I put myself on antibiotics. The voice is hoarse and so forth. Don’t worry though if you have tickets to upcoming shows – I’ll figure a way to pull them off.

Anyway, on to more pressing issues…

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has taken the cake. In fact, she’s taken it and the bakery in which it was made.

Her and DOD grand-puba Bob Gates have been admonishing the Russians of late, the proposed Eastern European BMD shield being the impetus for many of the administration’s newfound concerns. One of them, according to Rice, is Russia’s increased military assertiveness – an interesting observation considering that the administration of which she is a part has set one of the most dangerous unilateral global military presidents in modern history.

Rice asserted in a recent interview…

“I think the rapid growth in Russian military spending definitely bears watching. And frankly, some of the efforts – for instance, Bear flights in areas that we haven’t see for a while – are really not helpful to security.”

One would think instituting a missile defense system on Russia’s doorstep wouldn’t be helpful to security either, but who is anyone to question the motives of the United States? Compared to US military spending, the Russians spend pittance – nowhere near the $650 billion plus dollars that the US will spend this year alone. In short, you can’t set a global precedent with regards to military proliferation and not expect others to follow suit. That’s simply ridiculous, though not surprising given the complete diplomatic incompetence of the Bush administration, not to mention the utterly arrogant presumptuousness of the Bush Doctrine itself.

Roy has commented on the recent tensions between Turkey and the United States regarding the recently passed non-binding Congressional resolution condemning the Armenian genocide, so I’ll not. But I think this clip from the Daily Show is worth a look…

I was going to post this last night when it was released overseas but was too tired. Therefore, I’m doing it now. From The Guardian…

“The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.”

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. “The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern,” the source said this week.

Nick Burns, the undersecretary of state responsible for Iran and a career diplomat who is one of the main advocates of negotiation, told the meeting it was likely that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009. That assessment went down badly with Mr Cheney and Mr Bush.

“Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact,” said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.

“The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action,” Mr Cronin said. “The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself.”

Almost half of the US’s 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.

No decision on military action is expected until next year. In the meantime, the state department will continue to pursue the diplomatic route.”

One of the best ways to target your own population with regards to the use of disinformation is to leak stories to the press that any undertaking in that regard is meant to influence anyone but them.

In an entry posted on May 26th, I linked this article from The Guardian in which US officials were quoted as saying that Iran was…

“…secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal…”

The entry itself was written to comment on a White House backed CIA disinformation campaign aimed at destabilizing the Iranian government. Ironically, less than a month later, it seems the cat is out of the bag. As Gareth Porter writes…

“A media campaign portraying Iran as supplying arms to the Taliban guerrillas fighting U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, orchestrated by advocates of a more confrontational stance toward Iran in the George W. Bush administration, appears to have backfired last week when Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. Dan McNeill, issued unusually strong denials.

The allegation that Iran has reversed a decade-long policy and is now supporting the Taliban, conveyed in a series of press articles quoting “senior officials” in recent weeks, is related to a broader effort by officials aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney to portray Iran as supporting Sunni insurgents, including al-Qaeda, to defeat the United States in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

An article in the Guardian published May 22 quoted an anonymous U.S. official as predicting an “Iranian-orchestrated summer offensive in Iraq, linking al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgents to Tehran’s Shia militia allies” and as referring to the alleged “Iran-al-Qaeda linkup” as “very sinister.”

That article and subsequent reports on CNN May 30, in the Washington Post June 3 and on ABC news June 6 all included an assertion by an unnamed U.S. official or a “senior coalition official” that Iran is following a deliberate policy of supplying the Taliban’s campaign against U.S., British, and other NATO forces.

In the most dramatic version of the story, ABC reported “NATO officials” as saying they had “caught Iran red-handed, shipping heavy arms, C4 explosives, and advanced roadside bombs to the Taliban for use against NATO forces.”

Far from showing that Iran had been “caught red-handed,” however, the report quoted from an analysis that cited only the interception in Afghanistan of a total of four vehicles coming from Iran with arms and munitions of Iranian origin. The report failed to refer to any evidence of Iranian government involvement.

Both Gates and McNeill denied flatly last week that there is any evidence linking Iranian authorities to those arms. Gates told a press conference on June 4, “We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it’s smuggling, or exactly what is behind it.” Gates said that “some” of the arms in question might be going to Afghan drug smugglers.

The commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. McNeill, implied that the arms trafficking from Iran is being carried out by private interests. “[W]hen you say weapons being provided by Iran, that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting these weapons here,” he told Jim Loney of Reuters June 5. “That’s not my view at all.”

Gates and McNeill are obviously aware of the link between arms entering Afghanistan from Iran and the flow of heroin from Afghanistan into Iran. It is well known that Afghan drug lords who command huge amounts of money have been able to penetrate the long and porous border with ease. They have undoubtedly been involved in buying arms in Iran with their drug proceeds for both themselves and the Taliban, which protects their drug routes. Smuggling is relatively easy because of the money available for bribery of border guards.

Another factor helping to explain the influx of arms from Iran, as noted by former Pakistani ambassador to Afghanistan Rustam Shah Momand in an interview on Pakistan’s GEO television April 19, is that the Taliban now controls areas on the Iranian border for the first time. Momand said the Taliban, which is awash in money from the heroin exports to Iran, buys small quantities of weapons in Iran and smuggles them back into Afghanistan.

But the Iranian government itself is not involved in the trade in arms, Momand insisted.

The combination of anonymous statements by administration officials and the dismissal of the charge by the commander in the field contrasts sharply with the Bush administration’s claims that Iran was sending armor-piercing IEDs to Shi’ite militias in Iraq last January and February. Those accusations, which were never backed up with specific evidence, were made publicly by Bush himself, the State Department, and the U.S. military command in Baghdad.”

Being that the defense sector and militarism seems to be a popular topic of late, and being that my time is currently quite limited with regards to making entries, I thought I would provide the following quote from a Truth Dig article entitled Bush Budget Delivers The Bacon to spark discussion…

“President Bush’s outrageous military budget has nothing do with fighting terrorism but everything to do with pumping up the profits of the administration’s generous political donors in the defense industry. So, the question is: Will the Democrats have the guts to stop this betrayal of the public trust?

Ever since some lunatics, mostly citizens of our longtime ally Saudi Arabia, used $3 knives to hijack four planes on the same morning, President Bush has exploited our nation’s trauma as an opportunity to throw trillions of dollars at the military-industrial complex to build weaponry for a Cold War that no longer exists.

That is the subtext of the more than $700-billion defense appropriation requested by Bush in his budget, released Monday. Sure, it includes $141.7 billion explicitly dedicated to fighting “the global war on terror�?—but that much-abused phrase falsely encompasses the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks or the perpetrator, al-Qaida. In fact, that amount rises to $235.1 billion when the additional supplemental funds to cover Iraq for the remainder of this budget year are added in.�?

Asides To This Topic

For further discussion…

+ Mercenaries are second largest force in Iraq: UN official…

“Between 30,000 and 50,000 mercenaries are working in Iraq, making them the second largest military force there after the occupying United States.

The case of Iraq “is a new manifestation of the use of mercenaries that has caughts the US by surprise”, Spain’s Jose Luis Gomez del Prado — a member of the UN working group on mercenaries — said Fridayduring a visit to Peru.

The United States has 130,000 soldiers in Iraq, he noted. Britain has 10,000 troops.�?

+ Being that Canada’s Defense Minister used to by an arms lobbyist. How do Canadians feel about things of this nature?

“The government of accountability and transparency is looking decidedly opaque this week.

A day after Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor met with his American counterpart, the federal Conservative government was still refusing to say what the pair talked about.

O’Connor visited Washington on Tuesday for his first meeting with new U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

But O’Connor refused to speak to reporters about the taxpayer-funded trip.�?

+ Lastly, a US air strike has killed an estimated 45 civilians – though that’s being disputed by US officials…

“Police and hospital officials in the area offered a conflicting account, saying the airstrike hit the village of Zaidan south of Abu Ghraib and flattened four houses, killing 45 people, including women, children and old people.�?

For further reading on this last topic, I recommend Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt’s recent piece The Pentagon’s Secret Air War in Iraq.

This is my big day off entry. I spent some time talking with Raymi this afternoon, going over old ground, talking about the realizations of forgetting, about how the wind makes the trees hit the windows and that after a while the sound becomes just as familiar as your own heart beat.

The weeks turn to months, the months to years, the years to decades. In the depths of winter our youth are preoccupied with what children should be preoccupied with – school, outdoor activities, nurturing friendships, and tackling the hurdles of growing up. What they do not have to concern themselves with is being shot by jumpy coalition troops that might mistake them for something other than just children, or find themselves next to an automobile that might explode, killing them and a hundred others besides.

This sort of exampling is, to some, passé – the predilection of liberals more enamored with the pop-culture aspects of the anti-war movement than dealing with the realities of the situation in Iraq. These realities are, of course, what many predicted would occur following the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, voices which have since been drowned out by a chorus of revisionists attempting to backtrack on their once exuberant support for the invasion and the lies on which it was based. Either that or they point to the removal, show trial, and execution of Saddam Hussein as proof positive that it was entirely worthwhile.

The realities of the Iraq war are, in large part, not to be found in Iraq, but rather in Congress and in every American household. The confusion that has engulfed the topic of Iraq itself is so impenetrable that it is, in my opinion, not out of place to compare it to the propaganda successes of the National Socialists in Germany in the 30’s. That rather than address the actual legalities of the invasion and the falsehoods promoted by the current administration, the war itself has been seamlessly transformed into what is now commonly referred to and viewed as the primary front in The War on Terror, a military crusade so ambiguous and ridiculous in scope that it threatens to ultimately do much more than suffocate our freedoms for just the time being.

In fact, any intelligent, free thinking person has to honestly and quite seriously question what the definitive goal of the War On Terror is, or if one even exists. If it was to eliminate the command structure of the group behind the September 11th attacks then The War on Terror has been a complete failure. If its purpose is to combat radical, militant Islamic groups that could plan and carry out future attacks then it has only succeeded in inspiring a new generation of young people willing to join their ranks. If its purpose was to use 9/11 as an excuse to invade a country that had absolutely nothing to do with it, then it has certainly succeeded. In fact, the only two successes of The War on Terror thus far have been the invasion of two country’s which have since had ineffectual and utterly powerless governments put into place by global super powers and have both seen an increase in violence over the years which they have been occupied.

True social accountability requires populations to hold themselves accountable for the actions of their government whether they support the policies of that government or not. It is not enough to say that we are not a part of the mechanism that allows the ambiguities of The War on Terror to not only murder innocents elsewhere, but allow the reduction of our own liberties, because we disagree with the eventualities of policy. For if the majority were truly and passionately against, for example, the war in Iraq, then millions would be marching in the streets demanding that the President be impeached along with key members of his administration. The paramount question is not one of staying the course or withdrawing, it is whether or not the people have the wherewithal to begin the process of global reconciliation and reasonable progression by removing from power those that have been allowed to soil the fabric of their own core principles.

As I type this, the United States currently has in excess of 700 military bases world-wide, more than any other nation on earth. If the President’s recent request is approved, the price tag for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone could top $660 billion dollars, which does not take into account annual defense budgets which have spiraled out of control since September 11th to levels that rival the Cold War spending of the Reagan administration. For the fiscal year 2007, the defense budget of the United States is $468.9 billion dollars. Put into comparative context, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and China’s defense budgets combined constitute roughly 30% of the US defense budget.

There is an ancient maxim regarding the growth of military power. The more enemies one makes, the more one needs to concern themselves with defending against them. This might explain the recent creation of AFRICOM, the new US command center responsible for overseeing US military activities on the African continent. It also might explain why the answers to seemingly simple questions regarding the abuse of US military power are commonly over complicated in an attempt to convolute. Convolution is what keeps our children preoccupied with what children should be preoccupied with – school, outdoor activities, nurturing friendships, and tackling the hurdles of growing up. It is also what ensures that they do not have to concern themselves with is being shot by jumpy coalition troops that might mistake them for something other than just children, or find themselves next to an automobile that might explode, killing them and a hundred others besides.

Obviously it’s been a busy week, which would be why I’ve done little more than cut and paste old Dear San Diego entries. I find myself writer, producer, and primary musician sixteen hours a day of late, so please excuse the lack of entries.

A great deal has occurred over the last week, most notably the official apology and compensation package given Maher Arar by the Canadian government and the idiotic comments of US Ambassador David Wilkins, who actually had the audacity to criticize the Canadian government’s attempts to have Arar removed from American security watch lists.

Things in Iraq remain the same, things in Afghanistan remain the same, tensions between Hamas and Fatah have escalated, Lebanon is heading down the road to civil war, US involvement in Somalia remains underreported, as does the newly approved policy authorizing US forces to take whatever action is deemed necessary against suspected Iranian agents in Iraq if they are considered a threat.

Amidst all of these I would like to use the majority of this entry to focus on a recent statement by the new US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. During his first press conference since assuming office, Gates remarked last Friday…

“It’s pretty clear that a resolution that in effect says that the general going out to take command of the arena shouldn’t have the resources he thinks he needs to be successful certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries.�?

This was, of course, in response to the suggestion that a Congressional resolution could oppose President Bush’s proposed troop surge, which is ironic considering that troops have already begun to be deployed.

I wanted to draw specific attention to Mr. Gates words for one simple reason, one that has to do with the democratic reality within highly militarized states, such as the United States.

The first article of the Constitution of the United States empowers Congress, not the Presidency, and certainly not the military as commanded by the President. Thus, when the President, Vice President, or Secretary of Defense claim that Congressional resolutions won’t hinder administrational decisions, which all three of have of late, they are, in essence, claiming that the people, by way of their elected representatives, have absolutely no power over use of their own military, which, it should never be forgotten, exists at the behest of the people within any democratic society, not beyond them. Of course, that reality with regards to the United States, is, in and of itself, a subject of some enormity, so I’ll not delve into it here. The basic point though is that key officials have, over the last week, claimed that the power of Congress doesn’t a) matter with regards to the deployment of the military, or b) that ways can be found around Congressional attempts to usurp the authority of the administration with regards to the deployment of the military.

Looking at this, one should immediately be drawn to the democratic rhetoric espoused by this administration with regards to other nations, primarily those in which they are currently militarily engaged. If, in the United States, Congress is so easily disregarded, what sort of message does that send to fledgling democracies, never mind those guerrillas or sectarian groups fighting within them?

The Bush administration’s refusal to acknowledge the power of Congress should not be overlooked, and the damage caused by that position should be carefully weighed with regards to the future of the Presidency itself, no matter who is in office.