For extremely large values of “better relations”.
And of course, there’s a larger bear behind the bear in front. We’re going to be SO happy to have that one “fostering better relations” when we poke his friend too much…
BTW, John, why are you assuming the ABC journalists are right on this point and Cockburn is wrong? He’s the partisan, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean he might not have more reliable sources, or be putting a more reasonable construction on the same information.
It could, rather, speak to the CIA’s incompetence at performing such actions.
Hmmmm… arming admitted terrorists who hide just across the border from an enemy we dislike at the moment. No way that could backfire on us. I mean, no way unless they’re in Afghanistan or some shit.
Wait, they’re where?
Well, whatever. Just make it quick and clean.
We taught them a lesson in 1953, and they’ve hardly bothered us since then.
Look at the dates on the comments calling ABC a traitor for revealing the secret.
(Whut…?)
The ABC story was last year. Bush has gotten us in deeper.
Has any other journalist picked up this story that Bush has secretly authorized assassinations in Iran? I can’t find nothing is the way of corroboration.
What? Come one Frank, I mean look at how well that worked in…um…well I was going to say South America, but, well, then there was that Carribean thing that…no. Cuba! No, no, not Cuba. It worked that one time in…
I got nothing. 
:smack:
Yeah, like the drum beats to war you tried to convince us of last summer? You’ve been crying wolf about invading Iran for, what, about 4 years now? You come up with all these partisan blogs with their secret sources and then wonder why not everyone believes you? Get a legit cite from an objective source, and then we can talk.
In case you haven’t noticed, lately I’ve come around to thinking W has accepted the impossibility, political and military, and given up on the idea.
Cockburn’s piece moves me to doubt. My worry now is not an actual invasion, but simply that Bush will try to Start Something. Maybe through aerial bombardment, maybe by provoking the Iranians to do something stupid. Something, at any rate, that will still be going on during the election and during the new POTUS’ inaugural.
And as pointed out above – which I should have caught in the first place :smack: – there is no inconsistency between Cockburn’s story and ABC’s because the latter is a year old.
Wow. Your views have changed so much that I’m not sure you are the same BrainGlutton. You’ve really pulled a 360, there. Or at least a 310.
I expect he’ll roll out his product in October, not only to give his party an election day boost, but to ensure that the any nasty consequences can be blamed on his successors handling of the aftermath.
John Bolton chimes in. :rolleyes:
Well, I don’t think there are many people on this board who would claim that there is no chance Bush will try some sort of so-called surgical strike against Iran at some point. At any rate, if you want an honest debate on the subject, post a thread in GD. Ranting about something you read on a partisan web site, without any objective reporting back it up is great if you want the regular Bush bashing circle jerk-- you’re almost guaranteed to get that. Have fun!!
The journalist is a perfectly credible source who knows more about the M.E. than most. He lives and works unembedded in Iraq for extended periods.
He works for a range of respected newspapers and the Counter Punch site articles of his are usually picked up from the Independent or appear there the next day.
He is as credible a journalist as they come and the fact that what you might consider ‘mainstream’ journalists either lack his contacts or work for editors who haven’t the balls to go after a story is neither here nor there.
‘Surgical’ strikes - nice unideological touch there.
That’s the sort of thing the Pit is for. Which is why I didn’t post it in GD. You have an objection?
Alexander Cockburn. Judge for yourself.
And you, John, as well, have been rather careful in your parsing. For instance, in your insistence that anything that is not a direct invasion does not constitute war. A “surgical strike”? One of the more sublime euphemisms I have ever beheld. Rest assured, however the bomber might define it, the bombed have their own definitions. What do we say? "Hey, no fair, you can’t make this into a war because we said ‘not a war’ "?
Wirness WWI, as so brilliantly limned in Ms Tuchman’s The Guns of August. The preparations and committments to war sucked all the parties into its deadly maw, even when none of them wanted war. Nobody “started” that war, nobody wanted that war, but everybody marched off to a swampy hell.
Would you not agree that warlike rhetoric increases the risk of war, however slightly? What then is the advantage gained by threats and covert incursions? Would you not also agree that it is entirely possible, even probable, that an overtly hostile relationship with Iran could have enormous political benefits for the Bushiviks? Worked right handily before, didn’t it?
And, of course, it is a marvelous gift to the hard-line* mullahs * in Iran. What, do you think, is the Iranian equivalent to the “flag pin”?