The war with Iran is scheduled for April, according to the Daily Herald in Scotland that quoted “an official report from Sofia” and picked up details from Arab Times in Kuwait. OK. We have the trail of electronic news screens, but where is the rest? I expect we will begin hearing a lot more about this in the next month.

We already knew the plan for a broad attack on Iran, but these stories add a lot of detail.

Is Iran well-enough armed from U.S. military surplus yet to offer a credible stage for the Armageddon so many Americans seek? They better be. The “Stop Arming Iran Act” has been introduced, and opponents will have a difficult time justifying continued arming of Iran to the mainstream.

We’re a long way from the inevitable negotiations to move U.S. oil interests into the country, as are now happening in Iraq. Couldn’t we just skip the war with Iran and move directly to the negotiations this time? That wouldn’t satisfy the Armageddon lobby, would it.

read comments (0)

Saturday, about 500,000 people marched in Washington, DC, to voice their opposition to the war in Iraq.

A protest to be proud of.

500,000 = “tens of thousands” in New York Times math, but dissenters are used to being underestimated in every way. I’m sure the U.S. military know exactly how many people were in Washington, along with their Social Security numbers, since the U.S. military keep such a close watch on anti-war protestors. Close watch, spying, surveillance. Whatever you want to call it, they keep records.

The first speaker invited to the peace rally was none other than Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. In a speech that resembled the stirring speech he gave in Salt Lake City on August 30, 2006, he told the crowd,

No more God-is-on-our-side religious nonsense to justify this immoral, illegal war.

Listen to Rocky Anderson’s Saturday speech at the Salt Lake Tribune, and read about how Rocky ran into Karl Rove, another Salt Laker just like us–well, not JUST like us. Also, just for me, just because I love this song so much, listen to the August speech remixed with the Black Crowes “Soul Singin’” from Head On Radio.

I know you aren’t afraid to face the details of the Iraq war. Watch and read more reports at DC Indy Media, where you can get the close-up local view.

The rally involves more than marching and speeches. In a smart move, those in DC have been encouraged to talk to Congress in an all-out campaign to end this unpopular war. Today is the day for peace activists to visit their Senators and Representatives, voicing their opinions on the war in Iraq. Move On is also asking for a virtual march on Washington this Thursday, February 1st, to send 1 million messages to Congress about the war.

read comments (0)

Here you go–the third in my three-part freak out on outsourcing the U.S. government to achieve a global corporate fascism and, ultimately, white Christian domination until they LEAVE ALREADY.

In the State of the Union address, Bush noted his intention to have Congress help him “design” a volunteer civilian reserve corps to ease the burden on the armed services. I can think of another way to ease their burden. Like so many of Bush’s seemingly pathetic bridges across the aisle, this turns out to be misleading–and far more dangerous than the weak words imply.

The volunteer civilian reserve corps, the mercenaries–let’s just call them Blackwater–are already an important part of the plan to outsource the military since the Republican fascist wave of the 1990s. “In fact,” says Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, “they represent the life’s work of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.”

This is a revolution in military affairs.

This is only part of their outsourcing of many areas of the U.S. government.

This is fed from the same stream of money that created the Family Research Council and other right-wing subversive organizations.

This is the future Eisenhower warned about with the unchecked military-industrial complex.

Scahill has published a series of important articles on Blackwater and on the mercenary phenomenon in The Nation. With five Blackwater employees killed on a security operation in Baghdad just hours before the State of the Union address this week, maybe now is a good time to pay attention. Among the tidbits of information we should know:

• Blackwater and other “private security firms” beat FEMA to New Orleans.
• U.S. govt paid $950 per day per Blackwater guard, which came to $30 million for the Katrina bill. FEMA anticipated needing the guards for 3-5 years.
• From 2004-2006 the U.S. government paid this global private mercenary army $320 million for “diplomatic security.”
• Families say Blackwater cut corners in the interest of profits, resulting in the gruesome deaths of four Blackwater employees in Falluja in 2004. Now Blackwater has Kenneth Starr working as their counsel to tell the families nu-uh. How’s that for independent counsel?

Blackwater and the clean up their global activities imply has even shown up in fiction in CBS’s post-nuclear television show Jericho as Ravenwood, mercilessly marauding pirates trying to raid the good-hearted middle American town. The producers say they had helpful discussions with private security contractors in creating the realistic image of mercenaries for the show.

read comments (0)

The White House and Congress have been heavily lobbied by evangelical Christians seeking Armageddon. They know the (temporarily) all-powerful George Bush will help. He wants nuclear war with Iran as much as they do. He likes their vocabulary (though maybe not Stephen Colbert’s). He likes their pro-Zionist stance, and he loves anyone who will continue to attack Jimmy Carter for speaking truth to lobby.

I don’t want to participate in empty fear mongering that plays into the hands of the Armageddonites. Still, when the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists is concerned enough to move the Doomsday clock to five minutes to midnight, I am concerned. I want to stop them.

We have to believe that the Democratic Congress can stop the madman willing to jump into another war. We have to tell our Senators and Representatives that we do not want to see war with Iran, that we want to see diplomacy —as well as investigation of why previous opportunities for diplomacy were ignored. Use our democratic tools to push the Christofascists back. We need to expose these people for the baseless frauds they are.

read comments (0)

Last week on NPR’s All Things Considered, a conservative commentator said some amazing things. Listening to his commentary, I was surprised how easily he had simply swallowed the prevailing conservative stories of his (and my) youth. If you doubt the power of our narratives about ourselves, consider that it took this man 27 years to question his approach–the even question his approach.

He was embarrassed by Jimmy Carter’s words during the Iran hostage crisis. He was soothed by Ronald Reagan’s victory speech. He accepted the simplistic notions of weak Democrats and strong Republicans. It took years after 9/11 for him to see George Bush as shameful, weak, and incompetant.

Rather than saying, “No kidding, dumbass,” I offer his astonishing turnaround as an example of what might happen if we take a nonviolent approach to telling conservatives why we make the choices we do.

As President Bush marched the country toward war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.

In Iraq, this Republican President, for whom I voted twice, has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this, not under a Republican President. Not after Reagan.

I turn 40 next month. Middle age at last. A time of discovering limits, finitude. I expected that. What I did not expect was to live to see the limits and finitude of American power revealed so painfully. I did not expect Vietnam.

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative: that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word; that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot; that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

read comments (0)