Vigilantism in High Places

A lot of posters carried Seymour Hersh's NYT article about behind-the-scenes efforts to get this country into war with Iran. I refer readers to the excellent presentation at correntewire.

Hopefully, like the vampires they resemble, these bloodsuckers will creep back into the shadows as the light of exposure hits them. And indeed, everything about war with Iran is so irrational and inimical to American interests that it would seem such a step would be impossible to inflict on us.

There are players of varying degrees of involvement in the grand scheme, reminiscent of the Iran-Contra wackiness that had Ollie North with his clandestine operation inside the Costa Rican border waging war on the Nicaraguan government. For kicking the U.S. illegals out, Costa Rican president, Oscar Arias, famously received a Nobel Peace Prize. That should be comment enough on the world's disdain for the not at all excellent adventures of our paramilitary aspiring infiltrators.

From Hersh:

The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that Negroponte wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.”

It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”

When some one known for his participation in illegal warfare is given pause by the plans of the Darth Cheneys, I can see another opportunity for a Nobel Peace Prize by prevention of this war against sovereignty in Iran.

Dan Froomkin pointed out yesterday that the White House is backtracking from its exposee of last week that attempted to show Iran's complicity in attacks on U.S. troops inside Iraq;

A Rogue Briefer? Hardly

The official Bush administration position on its earlier, unsubstantiated charges of direct Iranian government involvement in the shipping of explosive devices to Iraqi militants is that the anonymous military briefers in Baghdad on Sunday went too far.

But that's baloney.

Consider a few facts:

1) The briefing was being carefully monitored by the White House -- which had postponed it twice previously. National security adviser Stephen Hadley told reporters on February 2: "The truth is, quite frankly, we thought the briefing overstated. And we sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts."
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Can any part of what the administration says about Iran's involvement in Iraq be taken at face value? Given recent history, certainly not without independent verification.

Great, we have in place in the highest places of government another group of rogue warriors out to take over parts of the world that they can't control.

Whether the Congress can keep a bright enough light on the irresponsible operations of the war crowd is becoming a matter of survival and we need such skills just to keep this country out of danger. Public awareness is growing, and the recent demonstrations nationwide are helpful. Whether fear of rejection by Congress and the public is enough to keep the lawless element that has taken over our government is doubtful, however. If they are left in place for two more years, we may be in more trouble than we can get back out of. The world has no patience left with our misuse of military powers.

There is a Nobel Peace Prize in your future if you can lead the effort to remove the vigilantes before they can get us into another war, members of the 110th. A Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú, is running for President of Guatemala. Another is again serving in Costa Rica.

Waging war should be a matter of protecting the U.S. For the cretin in chief and his crew, it has become a threat to the U.S. and to the rest of the world.