-- Was anybody fooled by Hillary's little 'plantation' charade on MLK Day? Somebody on her staff checked the polls and discovered -- surprise! -- that Sen. Mrs. Clinton wasn't doing so hot with the Dem base after her run to the right on flag-burning and other gas-bag issues, so they 'planted' the inflammatory word 'plantation' in her speech, knowing full well that it would get wall-to-wall coverage by the neocon-friendly mass media, always ready to regurgitate the latest empty outrage of the booby-hatch righties. But it also served as an unpaid campaign commercial to black folks and others on the left that says 'I'm one of you' even though her liberal credentials are in tatters. Hill and Bill have vast experience cranking the tail on the GOP bull elephant to make it roar, so watch for these kind of free attention-getters to increase in the future as H.C. makes her mad but futile dash for the White House, especially as the public's dislike for all things Republican continues to grow.
-- Tattlesnake was highly amused the other day watching President Go-It-Alone in action with German Chancellor Angela Merkel calling for 'diplomacy' and 'unity' in dealing with the Iranian nuke problem. Ha, ha, Dub, you've just admitted that with the U.S. military bogged down in your Iraq debacle and your volunteer army reduced to chasing kids who can't graduate from high school for cannon fodder, you don't have the muscle to invade Iran. Since the Europeans aren't dumb enough to sacrifice their kids in a bloody land war in Iran (even Blair can't slip this loser by the British public), that leaves Bush with three options: (1.) Ignore the problem; (2.) Continue air strikes against Iran which, while they may inflame the populace against us, will do nothing to disturb their nuclear plans and may even accelerate the Iran atomic WMD timetable; or (3.) use our own nuclear weapons against them.
If we're lucky, Bush will do (1.). Even if the Iranians develop a nuclear device, they have limited options in delivery systems since they possess no long-range bombers or ICBMs, so the U.S. and most of Europe is safe. And they are well aware that if they dropped the 'Big One' on Israel, America and the other nations of the world would flatten Iran to a glass pancake, following the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD). They also are not crazy enough to hand over a nuke to a terrorist group: first, if it were traced to them, the same MAD principle would be invoked and, second, you can never be sure when your friends might turn against you. (Refer to the U.S.-friendly Osama-led Mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s to the Osama-led Al-Qaeda today.)
Option (2.) does nothing but create more Iranians who hate us and makes it harder for moderates in Iran to gain power. It is also a great waste of taxpayer money, so Bush will probably continue on this course, since he has a talent for always doing the wrong thing, but this will not stop the deep underground bunkers developing Iranian WMD; indeed, it might hasten their completion; the Iranians know full well that the only way to protect themselves from an American invasion is to have some nukes in the inventory, just like dangerous rogue-state North Korea. As we now know, Bush only invades countries that don't have WMD.
(3.) If Bush goes first-strike nuclear, not only would this make the U.S. a pariah internationally, and lead to Euro-Asian nations canceling military treaties and the like (such as Germany kicking us out of the country and the dissolution of NATO), the resulting radioactive fallout would be Chernobyl goosed up to the power of ten. The radioactivity could even drop on our people in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing our own troops. Not that this would stop Bush, but the military commanders who advise him might rebel at such a nuclear strike order, and even many Republicans would want to have Bush removed from office for resorting to first-strike nukes. And it might not even disturb the Iranian nuclear program because -- uh -- it's in deep underground bunkers, but it would give the Iranians left license to come after us with their WMD, with the rest of the world's blessings.
-- A semi-reliable source -- like all of Tattlesnake's sources -- with ancestral ties to the Republican Party, the Defense Dept. and the Pentagon says Don Rumsfeld is definitely out at the DoD, but Bush is waiting to make the announcement because he doesn't want it to look like he was forced to ask 'Heckuva Job' Rummy to resign by popular demand. The Scourge of Our Troops, and the most hated Sec. of Defense in living memory, will, natch, retire with full honors and benefits, and probably even a medal of freedom from Dub. (Sidenote: Word is, Don is so beloved by our grunts in Iraq that no armed soldier or Marine is allowed within shooting distance of him when he visits, except his body guards. The likelihood of someone fragging his ass is obviously very much on Sec. Skeletor's mind.)
Rummy's replacement is rumored to be either Gen. Tommy Franks -- who likely won't take the job -- or, and this is a shocker, dunderheaded neocon firebreather Michael Ledeen. If you thought Rumball was loathed by our guys in uniform, wait until they get a load of Ledeen -- he's got all the charm of a cobra dipped in a septic tank, and is, if possible, even more incompetent and deceptive than Donny.
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Today's Quote
"After all this effort, I am left with two simple sentences for policymakers,...You have no military solution for the issues of Iran. And you have to make diplomacy work."
-- Lt. Col. Sam Gardiner (USAF ret.), a simulations expert from the U.S. Army's National War College, who conducted an Iran "war game" with a group of U.S. foreign policy experts for the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 2004. Quoted by The Progress Report, Jan. 17, 2006.
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Phone Company Records
This horse may be miles away from the barn by now for us, but it might stop intrusions on the privacy of future generations.
"Congress and phone companies have dealt a stunning blow to the privacy rights of everyday Americans by allowing cell and home phone records to be sold online to anyone. Congress must immediately pass a law that strictly prohibits these unauthorized sales, and begin enforcing this law now."
-- MoveOn.org petition
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