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my enemy's enemy .....

my enemy's enemy .....

The visit to Iraq by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad highlights the irony that Iran has been hugely strengthened by the removal of its old enemy Saddam Hussein at the hands of its current antagonist, the United States. 

Iran is one of the winners from the US-led invasion of 2003. 

Not only did the Americans get rid of Saddam Hussein, who launched an eight-year war against Iran in 1980, but the government of Iraq is now led by Iran's co-religionists, the Shias. 

The two governments have their differences - the Iraqi reliance on the United States being the main one - but their friendly relations enable Iran not to worry about any threat from its once aggressive neighbour. 

Iran's elections, and more particularly the presidential election next year, will determine whether the hardliners will consolidate their control for the next few years. If they do, the prospects for any settlement of the nuclear issue would be far-off. 

Iranian Power Grows But Clouds Remain

IOUs for war...

But beyond this is the cost to the already sputtering U.S. economy. All told, the bill for the Iraq war is likely to top $3 trillion. And that's a conservative estimate.

President Bush tried to sell the American people on the idea that we could have a war with little or no economic sacrifice. Even after the United States went to war, Bush and Congress cut taxes, especially on the rich -- even though the United States already had a massive deficit. So the war had to be funded by more borrowing. By the end of the Bush administration, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus the cumulative interest on the increased borrowing used to fund them, will have added about $1 trillion to the national debt.

The long-term burden of paying for the conflicts will curtail the country's ability to tackle other urgent problems, no matter who wins the presidency in November. Our vast and growing indebtedness inevitably makes it harder to afford new health-care plans, make large-scale repairs to crumbling roads and bridges, or build better-equipped schools. Already, the escalating cost of the wars has crowded out spending on virtually all other discretionary federal programs, including the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, and federal aid to states and cities, all of which have been scaled back significantly since the invasion of Iraq.

To make matters worse, the U.S. economy is facing a recession. But our ability to implement a truly effective economic-stimulus package is crimped by expenditures of close to $200 billion on the two wars this year alone and by a skyrocketing national debt.

not soon enough...

Mr Bush, singing only slightly off key, then turned to some of the long-term members of his team including Mr Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"For there's Condi and Dick, my old compadre, talking to me about some oil-rich Saudi, but soon I'll touch the brown brown grass of home."

"That old White House is behind me, I am once again carefree, don't have to worry 'bout a crisis in Pyongyang. Down the lane I look, Dick Cheney is strolling with documents he'd been withholding, it's good to touch the brown brown grass of home."

Mr Bush told the audience, which erupted in applause and gave him a standing ovation, that they had witnessed "the first and final performance of George Bush and the Busharoos".

The Gridiron Club holds an annual dinner at which journalists put on songs and skits lampooning Democrats and Republicans alike.

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Gus: meanwhile people have died and are dying because Bushit did not lampoon himself soon enough... 

deuce..

Disillusioned with the US, Navratilova defects again

By James Macintyre
Wednesday, 12 March 2008

Martina Navratilova has regained Czech nationality more than 30 years after fleeing a Communist regime she now compares favourably to that of her adopted country America under President George Bush.

The nine-time Wimbledon champion and one of the world's greatest ever tennis players, Ms Navratilova was born in Prague. She fled in 1975 at the height of the Cold War after being denied the right to compete in professional tennis in the US, where most major tournaments were then played and to where she later moved.

After angering the Communist authorities and living in America for six years, she became a US citizen.

Yesterday, however, she told a press conference in Tokyo that she now has her home citizenship back. "I lost it at the time I defected. I got it back on 9 January," she said.

The widely respected star had previously spoken of her disdain of the government of her adopted nation. "The thing is that we elected Bush," she told the Czech newspaper Lidove Noviny. "That is worse. Against that, nobody chose a Communist government in Czechoslovakia."

one tick to midnight...

Worried Yet? Saudis Prepare for "Sudden Nuclear Hazards" After Cheney Visit

 

from Chris Floyd

I. One Tick Closer to Midnight
Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.

Simple prudence -- or ominous timing? We noted here last week that an American attack on Iran was far more likely -- and more imminent -- than most people suspect. We pointed to the mountain of evidence for this case gathered by scholar William R. Polk, one of the top aides to John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to other indicators of impending war. The story by Okaz -- which would not have appeared in the tightly controlled dictatorship without approval from the top -- is yet another, very weighty piece of evidence laid in the scales toward a new, horrendous conflict.

We don't know what the Saudis told Cheney in private -- or even more to the point, what he told them. But the release of this story now, just after his departure, would seem to be a clear indication that the Saudis have good reason to fear a looming attack on Iran's nuclear sites and are actively preparing for it.

tick for tock?

Iran will eliminate Israel if it launches a military attack on the Islamic state, a senior army commander has been quoted as saying.

Deputy commander-in-chief Mohammad Reza Ashtiani was echoing Iran's late founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who said Israel should be wiped off the map.

"If Israel wants to take any action against the Islamic republic, we will eliminate Israel from the scene of the universe," Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Ashtiani as saying.

"Our answer to any military attack against Iran will be strong."

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Gus: tick for tock or?...