The Iranian Weapons

We now have two aircraft carrier battle groups sailing around the Persian Gulf, with two more on the way.

So, some anonymous briefers in Baghdad tell the American brass that Iran is supplying weapons to Iraqi "extremists and insurgents" to kill Americans.

The proof is supposedly shown in slides of 81 mm mortars. The Times released the information on Monday.
The heart of the Times article from Monday is,

In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.

Needless to say, everybody's skeptical. First, there's the timing. If, as the anonymous briefers claim to have asserted, they linked the weapons to Iranian manufacture 2 years ago, why are they just getting around to talking about it now, the day of the House or Representatives debate on the President's escalation policy?

Secondly, Doesn't the Maliki government in Iraq have weapons exchange programs with the government of Iran, anyway? Just because the weapons were allegedly manufactured in Iran doesn't mean the Iranian government is supplying them to insurgents to attack Americans.

Third, those weapons don't necessarily look Iranian. Tony Snow insists there's no doubt by his "intelligence sources" that the weapons are of Iranian origin, but who will ever take his or BushCo's word for anything like that again? Also, there are doubts about the authenticity of some of the lettering and numbering on the shells that were displayed on the slides in Baghdad on Sunday.

Finally, there's a lot of skepticism now about whether or not any 81 mm mortars are manufactured in Iran at all. This website, purporting to offer the weapons in question, is set up with source code in English, and it has an IP address at a University in Iran.

My mind drifts back to the summer of 2004 when someone anonymously gave CBS news a supposed "copy" of George Bush's service record in the Texas Air National Guard.

Bush's Bully Budget

The news is full of new analyses of the 2008 Fiscal Year budget proposal released yesterday by the White House.

There are at least three distinct totals for Defense spending cited today.

1. Bloomberg talks about, "$622 billion." The New York Times cites the same figure.

2. The Christian Science Monitor calls it "$624.6 billion;"

3. The Washington Post is calling it, "$661 billion."

Not only are the numbers sickeningly profligate, noboby really can say--apparently--what the numbers are that the President is proposing.



From the Bloomberg piece we get a glimpse of the gory details

The fiscal 2008 defense budget provides $27 billion for aircraft programs, up $4.1 billion or 18 percent from this year; $14.4 billion for ship programs, up $3.2 billion or 29 percent; and $6 billion for space programs, an increase of $1.2 billion or 25 percent more than Congress authorized this year.

Altogether, non-war spending would total $481 billion, an increase of 11.3 percent over what Congress authorized in fiscal 2007. Programs of Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp., Textron Inc., Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp. and European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. all are boosted.

``By historical standards that is a very large increase,'' Steven Kosiak, a defense analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment in Washington, said in an e-mailed statement. he said. ``It's roughly as large as the increases that occurred in the first few years after 9/11.''

According to the Boston Globe, Bush's plans to "save" $100 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments would

could destroy the delicate financing that allowed Massachusetts to pass its first-in-the-nation law guaranteeing near-universal health coverage, said Robert E. Gibbons , interim president and CEO of the Massachusetts Hospital Association.

"Freedom" is expensive. We can't fund our military without corresponding austerity in domestic spending. That means, railroad subsidies, education shortfalls, healthcare cuts, and other program cuts that unfairly penalize poorer Americans, according to Bob Greenstein, Director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

When are Congress and the American people going to take our country back from these gangsters?

Zen Confucianist Anti-Terrorism

A senior Chinese official accused the Bush Administration of waging a unilateral war on terror and making global tensions worse.

Some of his quotations are memorable.

The more they oppose terrorism, the more terror they produce

-- Ye Xiaowen, director of China’s State Bureau of Religious Affairs

Ye also said,

Unilateralism and terrorism breed each other, but neither can overcome the other

Speaking of the blindness of western powers and leaders, Dahr Jamail offers a grim example of the spreading chaos and futility engendered by the So-Called War On Terror (SCWOT) of the Bush Administration.

We all marveled in horror at the initial reports of the surrounding and slaughter of a couple hundred "militants" on plantations outside of Najaf earlier in the week.

First, the government announced it was al-Qaeda attacking Najaf, and the glorious Iraqi army forces crushing the attack.

Then the Iraqi government gave out the "official story" that it was a radical Shiite movement that was about to launch an attack on a religious festival in Najaf. The Iraqi intelligence forces were said to have intrepidly learned of the imminent uprising shortly before it unfolded, thereby seizing the initiative on the deadly rebel sect camped on the plantations. After the Americans and British were called, helicopters came and systematically slaughtered all the "militants," killing two hundred fifty or more, altogether.

Now we learn that, in fact, they weren't militants, but a couple of tribes of Shiites attending the Najaf festival. Jamail quotes a local who told him the pilgrims were targeted by the Iraqi security forces because they do not support al-Sistani, the Iranian-born Iraqi Shiite leader.

The Iraqi Iranian-backed Shiite government sought to eliminate the cooperation between these anti-Iranian sects and local Sunnis they were allying themselves with.

Confucius say,

He who try to clean neighbor's house make big mess.