Lovely article by Martin van Creveld.

I believe Geraldine Doogue is talking to Martin Indyk, Saturday. He makes good sense, too. 
 

The
Great Decider
(With
Apologies to the Platters' "The Great Pretender") 

by Richard Cummings
 

Oh yes I'm the great decider (ooh
ooh)
Pretending I'm deciding well (ooh
ooh)
My need is such I decide too much
I'm deciding but no one can tell 

Oh yes I'm the great decider (ooh
ooh)
Adrift in a world of my own (ooh
ooh)
I play the game but to my real
shame
You've left me to decide all
alone 

Too real are these decisions of
make believe
Too real when I feel what my Sec
Def
Can't conceal

Ooh Ooh yes I'm the great decider
(ooh ooh)
Just bombing and gay like a clown
(ooh ooh)
I've decided to be what I'm not
(you see)
I decide like I'm wearing a crown

Pretending we've got enough
troops on the ground

Yeah ooh ooh
Too real when I feel what my
SecDef
Can't conceal 

Oh yes I'm the great decider
Just bombing and gay like a clown
(ooh ooh)
I've decided to be what I'm not
you see
I'm deciding like I wear a crown

Pretending that Rove
Pretending that Rove's still
around.

From the Scotsman.com

Iran shells Iranian Kurdish positions in Iraq: PUK
By Shamal Aqrawi

ZAKHU, Iraq (Reuters) - Iranian forces shelled Iranian Kurdish rebel positions inside mountainous northern Iraq on Friday to repel an attack, wounding at least four civilians, Iraqi Kurdish officials said

"This morning Iranian Kurdish fighters infiltrated the border into the Iranian side and the Iranian army bombed the area and repelled them. The shelling hit Iraqi land at Sidakan," said Saadi Pira, an official in Iraq's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party.

The governor of the Arbil region, Nawzad Hadi, said four civilians had been wounded in the shelling of the rebels of the Iranian Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). Sidakan is about 80 km (50 miles) north of the Iraqi city of Arbil and about 10 km (6 miles) from the Iranian border.

The pro-PKK Firat Web site and a rebel spokesman said six Iranian soldiers and five Kurdish guerrillas had been killed. It was not possible to independently confirm that claim.

The incident could fuel tensions in Iraq, where Sunni Arab leaders accuse Shi'ite Iran of meddling in the country's internal affairs.

Read more at the Scotsman

-------------

Gus asks if this is the smoking gun that El Bonsaio is waiting for to press his little red button?

‘I am me & Rummy's he, Iraq
is free and we are all together
See the world run when Dick
shoots his gun, see how I lie
I'm Lying...

Sitting on my own brain, waiting
for the end of days
Corporation profits, Bloody oil
money
I'm above the law and I'll decide
what's right or wrong 

I am the egg head, I'm the
Commander, I'm the Decider

koo-koo-ka-choo’ 

I'm The Decider

‘The George W. Bush administration failed to enter into
negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme in May 2003 because
neo-conservative zealots who advocated destabilisation and regime change were
able to block any serious diplomatic engagement with Tehran, according to
former administration officials. 

The same neo-conservative
veto power also prevented the administration from adopting any official policy
statement on Iran, those same officials say.

Lawrence Wilkerson, then
chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, says the failure to adopt a
formal Iran policy in 2002-2003 was the result of obstruction by a "secret
cabal" of neo-conservatives in the administration, led by Vice President
Dick Cheney.

"The
secret cabal got what it wanted: no negotiations with Tehran," Wilkerson
wrote in an e-mail to IPS.  

The Iranian negotiating
offer, transmitted to the State Department in early May 2003 by the Swiss
ambassador in Tehran, acknowledged that Iran would have to address U.S.
concerns about its nuclear programme, although it made no specific concession
in advance of the talks, according to Flynt Leverett, then the National
Security Council's senior director for Middle East Affairs.  

It also raised the
possibility of cutting off Iran's support for Hamas and Islamic Jihad and
converting Hezbollah into a purely socio-political organisation, according to
Leverett. That was an explicit response to Powell's demand in late March that
Iran "end its support for terrorism".’ 

"Cabal" Blocked
2003 Nuclear Talks With Iran

‘"I have fulfilled my destiny," the president
says manically. He has just entered the nuclear launch codes that will trigger
World War III. Seconds later, he emerges from a bunker. The Secretary of State
squeezes between two soldiers. "Mr. President!" he shouts. "We
have a diplomatic solution!" 

He smiles. "It's too
late," he replies. "The missiles are flying. Alleluia.
Alleluia." 

The above scene, from David
Cronenberg's 1983 adaptation of the horror novel "The Dead Zone," is
a classic if slightly preposterous nightmare of a world destroyed by a demented
demagogue. Now, incredibly, a lunatic out of a Stephen King movie has brought
the United States to the brink of Armageddon. 

Until I read Seymour Hersh's
expose in The New Yorker and subsequent follow-up coverage by other journalists
about the Bush Administration's plans to start a war against Iran, I had
dismissed talk of George W. Bush's messianism as so much Beltway chatter. True,
he hears voices, even claiming that God and Jesus Christ talk to him. "I
believe God wants me to run for president," he told a friend in Texas.
Eschewing mainstream religion, he routinely parrots the apocalyptic ravings of
fringe Christianist cults: "And the light [America] has shone in the
darkness [the enemies of America], and the darkness will not overcome it
[America shall conquer its enemies]," he said during his fevered campaign
for war against Iraq. He mimics Old Testament cadences: "God told me to
strike at Al Qaeda and I struck them," Bush told the Palestinian prime
minister in 2003, "and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I
did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."’ 

Don't Impeach
Bush. Commit Him

We hasta aks ourseffs - would a nation of gun-lovin', huntin', shootin', redblooded he-men, that jest lurved to fight each other to a bloody standstill in a glorious civil war, pass up an opportoonity to kick another bunch of alien ass? 

Still, they did get rid of Tricky Dick, and I remember where I was when the ABC broadcast his resignation speech. Now, who's the VP ...?

We are watching a massive military-industrial complex, quarantined  from politics, embedded in most of the States, implanted round the globe, and desperate to have the last moving oil-powered tank, ahead of the Reds.

This is just what the 51% wanted, now they've got it. That Alternet article is right - it's a reincarnation of Mussolini. I hope his mum taught him to keep his undies clean.

Hasta la vista, and pass the iodine pills. 

When we last left them, our
heroes, Bush Wayne and his trusted companion, Dick Grayson-Cheney, were heading
east to Iran to hunt for weapons of mass destruction, free the Iranian people
from the axis of evil and bring American-style democracy to all the good people
of the Middle East.  

But tired and weary from fighting
their divinely inspired wars for truth, justice, freedom and the American way,
the boys took a detour and headed back to their ranch in Crawford, Texas, for a
well-deserved break from their international crime-fighting spree. 

Now fresh and well-rested after
their year-long vacation, our valiant crusaders - oil executives by day,
freedom fighters by night - return to the world stage once again as:

Batman & Robin: The Caped Crusaders In A Comic Book War 

Caped
Crusaders In A Comic Book War