Iran the Biggest Beneficiary of U.S. Invasion of Iraq

Not that we didn’t already know this. But McClatchy today has an article that cuts right to the chase:

One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat,

He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East.

As Tehran’s point man on Iraq, he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to build a pro-Western democracy on the rubble of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.

According to Iraqi and American officials, Suleimani has ensured the elections of pro-Iranian politicians, met frequently with senior Iraqi leaders and backed Shiite elements in the Iraqi security forces that are accused of torturing and killing minority Sunni Muslims.

“Whether we like him (Suleimani) or not, whether Americans like him or not, whether Iraqis like him or not, he is the focal point of Iranian policy in Iraq,” said a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be identified so he could speak freely. “The Quds Force have played it all, political, military, intelligence, economic. They are Iranian foreign policy in Iraq.”

Read the rest.

Via Alex at Martini Revolution.

Clinton and McCain Pander; Car Owners Pay the Price

John and Hillary’s gas tax holiday (emphasis mine):

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

While Mr. Obama’s view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks.

In other words, she’s pandering:

I’d say there’s approximately a zero percent chance that Hillary Clinton or John McCain actually believe this is good policy. It would increase oil company profits, it would make hardly a dent in the price of gasoline, it would encourage more summertime driving, and it would deprive states of money for transit projects. Their staff economists know this perfectly well, and so do they.

But they don’t care. It’s a way to engage in some good, healthy demagoguery, and if there’s anything that the past couple of months have reinforced, it’s the notion that demagoguery sells. Boy does it sell.

But why isn’t it good policy?

… It’s Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied. Cut taxes, and all that happens is that the pretax price rises by the same amount. The McCain gas tax plan is a giveaway to oil companies, disguised as a gift to consumers.

How can McCain and Clinton get away with such glaring demogoguery?

Number one, they watched Bush and learned:

Clinton and McCain have learned a destructive lesson from the Bush era: as Bill Clinton said in 2002, it’s better politically to be “strong and wrong” than thoughtful and right. The goal is to depict Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist. By any means necessary.

Number two, they used Obama for cover and advantage:

So why are McCain and Clinton doing this? Because when they learned that Obama had supported a similar suspension of the Illinois gas tax in Springfield, Ill., before realizing it was a bad idea, they saw an opening. It was like Hillary’s whiskey shot in the bar, only sleazier. Try to show that the guy just doesn’t get it.

Of course, McCain and Clinton do get it. They get that people are hurting and want some relief, even if this form of it makes no sense. They get that voters have been conned into believing that both candidates are responsible public servants because they’re not as bad as some others, so they can trade on that reputation. They get that smacking Obama is more important than anything else on the planet right now, and that for Obama to respond by calling them panderers will take Obama about as far as it took Paul Tsongas in 1992 when he leveled the same charge at Bill Clinton.

In sum, McCain and Clinton get that the media will let them get away with this. You can’t forgive them on this one, Lord, for they know exactly what they do.

Thought of the Day

But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn’t, didn’t already have.

Tin Man by America

We just have to take it back this November.

Chief

Unpacking Jeremiah Wright

There is so much to unpack. But I am so overwhelmed by the total weirdness of this media hysteria about one flamboyant black minister, most of whose statements are completely unexceptionable in substance if not in presentation, that I just don’t know where to start.

Fortunately for me, there is a lot of very smart commentary amid the mounds and mounds of overwrought histrionics from media pundits and right-wing lunatics — starting with John Cole, who titles his post “Obama Kicks Wright in the Junk“:

Because I refuse to say he threw him under the bus, which is now my least favorite expression in the English language. …

[…]

All the talking heads assured me he had to do this, and now he has. I am not sure why it was necessary, as it was pretty clear to me when listening to Wright the past few days that he was not speaking for Obama, but such is the guilt-by-association bullshit of the media.

As to Wright himself, well, I have my own thoughts. First and foremost, I guess I am no longer the delicate fainting flower that most other bloggers and media commenters are these days. I spent several years in the early days of this blog being all sorts of outraged about petty bullshit. I spent days calling Ted Rall an asshole (he still is, I think), days opining about what an asshole Michael Moore is, and so on. I got my panties all in a bunch about Ward Churchhill (also a dick), and stupid things Bill Maher may or may not have said, and so on.

And you know what? They may be assholes, or jerks, or whatever term you want to use, but they sure as hell didn’t run this economy into the ground. They aren’t responsible for turning a huge surplus into a several hundred billion dollar deficit. I have yet to read any memos from Barbra Streisand detailing how we should spy on American citizens.

And so it is with Jeremiah Wright. Is he a jerk? I don’t think there is any argument to be made that lately he hasn’t in fact been one big, giant, puckered asshole. His ego tour the past few days was all about him, but so what? I blame the media as much as I blame him. Is it an offensive notion that the government created aids? Absolutely, but I refuse to get all bent out of shape about it, because the government that tortures people and ran the Tuskegee experiment and wiretapped MLK for years opens itself up to crazy accusations like that.

I bolded those last two sentences because I love them so much, and almost nobody is making that very simple point that you are not paranoid if they really are out to get you (or have been enough times in the past that you have ample reason not to trust them).

Cole also handily takes down Mary Katharine Ham for her breathlessly delivered revelation that Obama is not “anti-political”:

Mary Katharine Ham:

Gee, I wonder why Obama, the anti-political posturer, disowned Wright today. My dad got a call last night that might explain.I got some more information about that call.

It was a live call last night around 7 p.m., not a robocall.

Where do these wingnuts come up with this perception? I see the same sort of crap from the Hillary Clinton blogs and the pro-Clinton commenters- this notion that Obama supporters are somehow unaware that Barack Obama is GASP a politician.

He is a United States Senator. He is running for the highest political office in the land. He is a politician. We are aware of this. Trying to change the tone and tenor in Washington as well as how politics is conducted is not apolitical, and we are all aware of this. What we reject is the current status of our politics, not the notion of politics. What we see in Obama is a chance to change the nature of our current political mess.

What we don’t see is Obama as apolitical. That is just stupid. Some might say it is TOWNHALL stupid.

So, attention wingnuts- We are aware Obama is a politician, and your attempt at witty comments aren’t breaking news to us. All it is doing is proving that we are right to think you are a moron.

I will add one thought to what has been said about today’s events. One of the reasons I support Obama’s candidacy and admire him as a person so much is the way he stretches to try to understand where another person might be coming from. And he continues to do that here. Even though Obama said he was angered and hurt by Rev. Wright’s presuming to know his inner motives (by saying that Obama’s earlier condemnation of his remarks was “political posturing”), and although he (Obama) clearly feels a sense of betrayal (“I don’t think that he showed much concern for me”), he was still able to acknowledge that Rev. Wright might have had legitimate reasons for speaking out that had nothing to do with a desire to hurt Obama’s candidacy (even though clearly that has been the result):

Well, look, as I said before, the person I saw yesterday was not the person that I had come to know over 20 years. I understand that — I think he was pained and angered from what had happened previously, during the first stage of this controversy. I think he felt vilified and attacked, and I understand that he wanted to defend himself.

I understand that, you know, he’s gone through difficult times of late, and that he’s leaving his ministry after many years. And so, you know, that may account for the change.

Okay, why do I suddenly have the lyrics of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” running through my head?

Mountains of Debt

It isn’t the price of gasoline, which, while high by U.S. standards, is not all that high by European standards.  And the price of sweet crude oil at $120 a barrel, or whatever it currently is, does not directly affect you and me.  When you consider the record oil company profits, I am not sure there is much connection between the price of crude oil and the price of gas.

We can survive the run-up in pump prices.  We will, eventually, drive a more fuel-efficient car or have a job and home that are closer. On the grand scale of things, energy problems are eminently solvable.  True that while finding a solution, some disposable income will go to fund fuel costs instead of recreation or remodeling or . . . Well you get the idea.

My concern is how are we going to pay down this huge mountain of debt that we have run up in financing the Iraq excursion in an “off-budget” manner.  Regardless of whether or not the costs of being in Iraq are part of the regular budget or are a “supplemental budget request item” as they have been for the last five years, these costs will have to be paid.  The costs of borrowing money to finance this war are no different than you or I buying a new car and having to make monthly payments.  Bigger payments, for sure, but the concept is identical.

But, where you and I must pay back the money we borrowed to buy the car, Bush’s government can put off the repayment by just paying on the interest.  Of course, somewhere down the line, somebody will be expected to pay down the principal.

I understand what the Bush government was trying to do.  They were betting on the come.  Easily accessed Iraqi sweet crude was worth the many billions it would cost to occupy Iraq.

But that does not do anything to help the U.S. taxpayer.  It is a HUGE windfall for the oil companies who have gotten contracts because they are well connected to the Bush Oil Dynasty and, by extension, to the stock holders, like the Carlyle Group, of those oil companies.

Whom will be taxed enough to pay down the debt.  The presumptive Republican nominee wants to extend the Bush tax cuts.  Hmm-m-m-m, if “freedom” isn’t free and the rich are not paying for it, then who is?

I have yet to see Clinton or Obama address the problem of how to get the United States back on a sound financial track with a  currency that has value.

The Road Less Traveled

“The Road Less Traveled” is a poem by Robert Frost. It is probably his best known work.

My question is, in 2008 what do you think is “the road less traveled?” Is it integrity, which seems to cover so-o-o-o much that it needs to be further defined. Shall we say ‘political honesty?’ Or ‘professional honesty’ when speaking about journalists? How about athletes that use steroids or other performance enhancing drugs to gain a competitive advantage? Are we lazy & fat? Is hard work the road less traveled?

What do you think?  You tell me.

The Foreign Policy of the Madhouse

The Boston Globe‘s Sunday editorial was about Hillary Clinton’s statement on ABC’s Good Morning, America, that she would launch a nuclear war against Iran if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons (emphasis mine):

AMERICANS have learned to take with a grain of salt much of the rhetoric in a campaign like the current Democratic donnybrook between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, there are some red lines that should never be crossed. Clinton did so Tuesday morning, the day of the Pennsylvania primary, when she told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that, if she were president, she would “totally obliterate” Iran if Iran attacked Israel.

This foolish and dangerous threat was muted in domestic media coverage. But it reverberated in headlines around the world.

Responding with understatement to a question in the British House of Lords, the foreign minister responsible for Asia, Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, said of Clinton’s implication of a mushroom cloud over Iran: “While it is reasonable to warn Iran of the consequences of it continuing to develop nuclear weapons and what those real consequences bring to its security, it is probably not prudent in today’s world to threaten to obliterate any other country and in many cases civilians resident in such a country.”

A less restrained reaction came from an editorial in the Saudi-based paper Arab News. Being neighbors of Iran, the Saudis and the other Gulf Arabs have the most to fear from Iran’s nuclear program and its drive to become the dominant power in the Gulf.

But precisely because they are most at risk from Iran’s regional ambitions, the Saudis want a carefully considered American approach to Iran, one that balances firmness and diplomatic engagement.

The Saudi paper called Clinton’s nuclear threat “the foreign politics of the madhouse,” saying, “it demonstrates the same doltish ignorance that has distinguished Bush’s foreign relations.”

[…]

A presidential candidate who lightly commits to obliterating Iran – and, presumably, all the children, parents, and grandparents in Iran – should not be answering the White House phone at any time of day or night.

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

How does a democratic society that values individual freedoms and human rights become a fascist state? With baby steps, as Andrew Sullivan describes here:

The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such “quaint” notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake of security in a time of great and imminent peril. And so defenders of torture have long argued that is is essential to make torture legal – but only in the ticking time bomb scenario. And yet, such a scenario has not yet happened and the United States has still indisputably abused and dehumanized thousands of prisoners in its custody, “disappeared” and tortured hundreds, and seen more than a dozen die in “interrogation”. …

[…]

And so abuse and torture are entirely dependent, we are told, on the apparent motives of the abusers and torturers. But torture is actually defined in the law as an illegal tool devised not for sadism’s sake but as a means to extract information. And notice the extremely slippery slope. We no longer have torture as an extreme last resort in the face of a ticking time-bomb; we have authorized it simply “to prevent a threatened terrorist attack.” …

Supreme Court Okays Indiana’s Voter ID Law

The Supreme Court has upheld Indiana’s voter ID law:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws.

In a splintered 6-3 ruling, the court upheld Indiana’s strict photo ID requirement, which Democrats and civil rights groups said would deter poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. Its backers said it was needed to prevent fraud.

The problem with that argument is that no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Indiana exists:

When Indiana passed a voter I.D. law, it was ostensibly to protect the integrity of the voting process. What better way to prevent voter fraud than to require those participating in an election to produce identification?

Was there any evidence of a voter-fraud scourge in Indiana? No. Would the law make it harder for “certain kinds” of voters (i.e., the elderly, minorities, and the poor) to participate? Yes. Did this look a whole lot like Republican lawmakers trying to discourage likely Democratic voters from taking part in elections? You betcha.

SCOTUS acknowledged both that there was no evidence of voter fraud in Indiana, and that the legislation was probably motivated by partisan considerations, but said those points were immaterial:

The voter ID ruling may turn out to be a significant victory for Republicans at election time, since the requirement for proof of identification is likely to fall most heavily on voters long  assumed to be identified with the Democrats — particularly, minority and poor voters.  The GOP for years has been actively pursuing a campaign against what it calls “voter fraud,” and the Court’s ruling Monday appears to validate that effort, at least in part.  The main opinion said states have a valid interest in preventing voting by those not entitled to do so, even if there is no specific proof of that kind of fraud in the state.

While the Court’s main opinion said it was “fair to infer that partisan considerations may have played a significant role” in enacting the photo ID law, it went on to say that that law was neutral in its application and was adequately supported by the justifications the state had offered.

Adam B. at Daily Kos writes, “The Great Disenfranchisement of 2008 has begun“:

… These laws are not neutral, are not innocent, but are an attempt by Republican legislators to prevent traditionally Democratic voters from casting their ballots. …

BooMan adds:

… If you have ever spent time in the inner city, you know that very few people have driver’s licenses or passports, and that it costs $60-$80 to go down to the Division of Motor Vehicles or Secretary of State and get a photo ID. Most young people either have no picture ID, or use a student ID for identification purposes.

Let me just give you a real life example. In 2004, when I was managing voter registration teams, almost no one I hired in North Philadelphia had a photo ID. Likewise, almost no one they went out and registered in their neighborhoods had a photo ID. Yet, we got tens of thousands of people registered to vote and then we got them to the polls. If I had faced a requirement that everyone of those voters provide an official piece of photo identification, almost none of them would have voted. Why? First of all, because they didn’t have $60-$80 to spend on acquiring the identification. Second of all, even if they did, they would have had to make a special trip to the DMV, which is another part of the city.

More commentary at Memeorandum.

Thought of the Day

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Pick up on one and leave the other one behind

It’s not often easy, and not often kind

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to make up your mind     Lovin’ Spoonful

It long past time for the Dems to make up their mind.

Chief and a million others.