Everytime this is discussed, I hear of the reasons why a three part division can or can’t work, but based on the latest from the LA Times, via Swopa, a new thought occurred: is a two state partition possible?

After all, the biggest two impediments have always been that the Sunni region would be oil-poor, so the Sunnis would resist. And the Shias, like any majority, would prefer to rule over an intact country.

But what if the Kurds made a sincere effort to work with the Sunnis? It would likely be more acceptable to most of the Arab states, as they’re Sunni, too. And Turkey might be able to relax a bit if they don’t face the prospect of a Kurdistan - historically antagonistic - but a newly combined country that none have foreseen?

It would create a geographic divide between South Iraq and Iran, which many Sunni Arabs and our government might prefer over the potential for a united Shia crescent. On the other hand, the Kurds already have a record of internal power struggles and corruption. Would anyone feel safer if the Sunnis - including the old Ba’athist ruling class - adds their political power aims to that mix?

I don’t really know how likely it is, but I suspect the US oil industry already feels positive about the Kurd’s willingness to deal. After all, the Hunts just signed an oil deal there. And our military is dealing with Sunni tribal leaders. Sometimes it seems like the Shias, with their Interior Ministry death squads, are the biggest impediment to a future united Iraq, as they seem more interested in exacting revenge on the Sunnis for years of corrupt and brutal rule.

Ultimately, no-one can foresee the future Iraq or Iraqs. Each of the three sects has negatives to consider. Experts say families and tribes matter more than the sects. But in a nation that could dissolve into an even bloodier mess, any potential alternative should be considered.

US neocons have previously made it clear that the Middle East conflicts can only be properly viewed as in a par with previous world wars. But since they seem to be the biggest instigators of such a large conflict, I remain convinced the path towards peaceful resolutions requires that the neocons be kept out of the planning. I wouldn’t buy a used car from them, certain they’ve bled the brake lines dry.

Of all the potential partition plans, this might have the least negatives. But whether sufficient trust could gain a foothold to make it possible remauns as bug an unknown as everything else.

As I commented at Steve Benen’s blog, in response to his latest on the vile insults of our troops by Rush Limbaugh:

I was an early responder, possibly the first to call for a Congressional censure of Limbaugh, and certainly the first to ask others to contact their representatives with demands to do so.

But the bigger question is whether the effort to censure gets sustained till it reaches a floor vote. I believe we should push for it daily until it does.

Here’s the questions I now put to Congress:

1) if you censor an advocacy organization for its personal critique of a general, do you plan to do so to counter a critic of soldiers of lesser rank? If not, I can only presume that supporting the troops means ’supporting commanding generals’ and you really do not give a whit about the men and women in the front lines, risking their lives.

2) What message do you plan to send to those troops and to all our younger citizens you intend to recruit for military service?

To everyone else, I hope you ask similar questions when you contact your Reps and Senators today.

It sure beats slavery and makes us the greatest.

We could outsource running the White House to a country where serial murderers are frowned upon. Like to Jena, Louisiana, a country where they’ve successfully stopped the scourge of evolution.

In addition to the reasons slavery wasn’t the sole defining moment of our country (see post below), think about how Black Americans are better off being ignored here as they would be ignored in Africa by overprivileged, ethically deficient smarmy bastards.

This should settle, once and for all several nagging questions:

1) John McCain’s Black children get their make-up tips from Michael Jackson.

2) Mitt Romney’s church no longer avoids questions about the role it assigns Blacks; instead it’s too busy to consider it while out converting the dead ancestors of Jews, who have more money to tithe with, and

3) Rudy Giuliani is still a dick. But a shorter one that doesn’t look like a baby’s arm holding a Big Apple.

Oh. My. Invisible Object of Secular Non-Worship.

Thankfully, we’ve advanced our society to the point that those terrible people stealing our jobs are being appropriately punished: working unpaid like the ingrate darkies did, then being forced to leave.

Lambert at Corrente fills in the details that the DA conveniently left out.

Isn’t there a law against abusing the justice system to promote a discriminatory agenda? No, I’m not naive, but if our society is to gain any credibility in the struggle against the Hate Ethos of bigots in public service, there certainly ought to be a way to insure the DA loses his job and a chunk of change, at least.

Be sure to click through to the details provided by dnA of Jack and Jill Politics’ blog and you’ll see how egregious the DA’s abuse of power was.

Who’ll stop the rain?

How are they going to pay for the Iran War?

The Blackwater Surge

Larry Craig spotted in an Iranian Airport Bathroom doing a recon mission for double secret probation community service as part of his guilty plea agreement.

political, political cartoons, satire, Bush, cartoons,parody,Iran ,Ahmadinejad

zencomix

Of course, Al Qaeda would never attack from the north, would they? I mean, why enter the US where there is no fence and few watchers?

That we haven’t been attacked successfully has little to do with Bush countermeasures and everything to do with the fact that the sheer numbers of terrorists with the capacity to do serious damage is simply overstated, for political and monetary reasons.

How many children does Bush plan to kill in the name of thrift?

The biggest spender in US history, cheaping out so Tiny Tim will die. While his cronies divvy up the spoils of our nation’s second most expensive war.

That’s 10 million children he’s chosen to leave behind.

And the evidence is stark, indeed.

As I mentioned earlier today, they should call themselves the Suicide Bomber Party. And why won’t they censure Rush for calling US troops “phonies”?

This should make it clear why Americans rate Congress the lowest in history.

This is what the next president faces. Which is why they’ll only serve one term. And why I’m more concerned about the 2012 race. In 2008, I’d rather get a veto-proof Congress.

He’s spot on, as usual:

We must return again and again to the roots of human existence and consider our prospects in centuries to come. We must analyze everything open-mindedly, soberly, unideologically and unobsessively, and project our knowledge into practical policies. Maybe it is no longer a matter of simply promoting energy-saving technologies, but chiefly of introducing ecologically clean technologies, of diversifying resources and of not relying on just one invention as a panacea.

I’m skeptical that a problem as complex as climate change can be solved by any single branch of science. Technological measures and regulations are important, but equally important is support for education, ecological training and ethics — a consciousness of the commonality of all living beings and an emphasis on shared responsibility.

Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.

The end of the world has been anticipated many times and has never come, of course. And it won’t come this time either. We need not fear for our planet. It was here before us and most likely will be here after us. But that doesn’t mean that the human race is not at serious risk. As a result of our endeavors and our irresponsibility our climate might leave no place for us. If we drag our feet, the scope for decision-making — and hence for our individual freedom — could be considerably reduced.

That’s the best summary I’ve heard yet: it won’t end the world, but it could enslave you.

When it’s needed for a diversion from the economic bottom. See the table for January through March.
Divert attention from the pain: it’s all Bush has.

Have you grown a pair yet or are you just so glad to have a job with free healthcare that you intend to keep saying “Thank you, Sir; may I have another?

If they let Hans von Spakovsky in, they’ve become the Suicide Bomber Party. And when they blow themselves up, the headstone should read “Good riddance, you worthless schmucks.”

Former Marine intel officer and the UN inspector who successfully disarmed Saddam, Scott Ritter:

From speculation to speculation, the case against the Quds Force by the Bush administration continues to lack anything in the way of substance. And yet the mythological Daqduq has become a launching platform for even graver speculation, fed by the media themselves, that the highest levels of leadership in Iran were aware of the activities of Daqduq and the Quds Force, and are thus somehow complicit in the violence. Not one shred of evidence was produced to sustain such serious accusations, and yet national media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post both ran stories repeating these accusations. Politicians are formulating policy based upon such baseless accusations, and the American public continues to be manipulated into a predisposition for war with Iran largely because of such speculation. No one seems to pay attention to the fact that the U.S. military itself has subsequently contradicted its own briefings, noting in July 2007 that no persons had been captured by the United States that can provide a direct link between insurgents in Iraq and Iran. Again, in August of 2007, the U.S. military stated that it had yet to catch anyone smuggling weapons into Iraq from Iran.

And what of Daqduq himself? It seems that his Iraqi sponsor, Qais Khazali, had fallen out of favor with Muqtada al-Sadr over the strategic direction being taken, and sometime in 2006 split away from Sadr’s Mehdi Army, taking some 3,000 fighters with him. In the lawless wild-West environment which dominates Iraq in the post-Saddam era, the formation of splinter militias of this sort is an everyday occurrence. Radical adventurers have historically been drawn to places of conflict, which would explain the presence of Daqduq. And it would not surprise me to find that Qais Khazali had secured funding from extremist elements inside Iran which operate outside the mandate of government, including some from within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard itself. But the notion of Iran and Hizbollah aligning themselves directly with a splinter element like the “Khazali network” is highly unlikely, to say the least.

But fiction often mirrors reality, and in the case of Iran’s Quds Force, the model drawn upon by the U.S. military seems to be none other than America’s own support of anti-Iranian forces, namely the Mujahedin el-Khalk (MEK) operating out of U.S.-controlled bases inside Iraq, and Jundallah, a Baluchi separatist group operating out of Pakistan that the CIA openly acknowledges supporting. Unlike the lack of evidence brought to bear by the U.S. to sustain its claims of Iranian involvement inside Iraq, the Iranian government has captured scores of MEK and Jundallah operatives, along with supporting documents, which substantiate that which the U.S. openly admits: The United States is waging a proxy war against Iran, inside Iran. This mirror imaging of its own terror campaign against Iran to manufacture the perception of a similar effort being waged by Iran inside Iraq against the U.S. has been very effective at negating any Iranian effort to draw attention to the escalation of war-like activities inside its borders. After all, who would believe the Iranians? They are only trying to divert attention away from their own actions inside Iraq, or so the story goes.

The second story line demonstrates, apparently, that Iranian perfidy knows no bounds. Just this month, the Iranian government tried to organize a visit to Ground Zero in Manhattan by its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who wanted to present a wreath of condolence over the tragedy that occurred there on Sept. 11, 2001. The Iranian president’s proposed actions were consistent with the overall approach the Islamic Republic of Iran has taken concerning the 9/11 attack on America. Iran was one of the first Muslim nations to openly condemn the attack, expressing its condolences to those who lost their lives and calling for a worldwide mobilization against terrorism. But why let facts get in the way of fiction. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Dan Gillerman, set the standard for intellectual discourse on the matter when he told the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organization that a visit by President Ahmadinejad to Ground Zero would be “similar to a visit by a resurrected Hitler to Auschwitz.” Sen. John McCain continued in this vein, stating that allowing Ahmadinejad to visit the site “would be an affront not only to America but to the families of our loved ones who perished there in an unprecedented act of terror.” Both remarks clearly attempted to link the Iranian president, and by extension Iran, to events that they had nothing whatsoever to do with, and which they openly condemned.

9/11 linkage strategies have worked in the past, regardless of factual merit. One only need recall Saddam Hussein and Iraq to understand how easily the American public, courtesy of war-minded politicians and their co-conspirators in the mainstream media, can be so easily led down the path of holding one party accountable for the actions of another. Saddam had nothing to do with the events of 9/11, and we now occupy Iraq. Similarly, Iran had nothing to do with 9/11, and yet due in part to the distortion of fact taking place concerning allegations of Iranian “terror” activity inside Iraq, the link is clear, at least in the minds of many Americans. President Bush calls Iran a “state sponsor of terror.” The military claims Iran is carrying out terror attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq. The Iranian president wanted to visit Ground Zero and was widely condemned by those who plot regime change in Iran. The Americans, bombarded with these false connections, then conclude Iran was part of the 9/11 plot. The logic is so simple, so flawed and yet so dangerously accessible to the minds of an American people fundamentally ignorant of the true situation in Iran and the Middle East today.

Which leads us to the third, and final, story line of the month: Don’t believe the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran does have a nuclear weapons program! For weeks now, the cornerstone for the justification of American military intervention in Iran has been crumbling away, the layers and layers of fear-based fiction crafted by the Bush administration meticulously peeled away by Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei and his team of inspectors from the IAEA. After treading water for years in a sea of political intrigue, ElBaradei and his experts have finally assembled enough data to enable them to close the books on the Iranian nuclear program, noting that all substantive questions have been answered and that contrary to the speculative assessments put forward by the Bush administration it appears that Iran’s nuclear program is, in fact, dedicated to permitted energy-related activities.

And who can stop the next war? Ritter says, only us:

The antiwar movement in America must make a strategic decision, and soon: Contain the war in Iraq, and stop a war from breaking out in Iran. The war in Iraq can be contained simply by letting war be war. There is no genuine good news coming out of Iraq. There won’t be as long as the United States is there. As callous as it sounds, let the war establish the news cycle, and let the reality of war serve to contain it. The surge has failed. Congress may not act decisively to bring the troops home, but it is highly unlikely that Congress will idly approve any massive expansion of an unpopular war that continues to fail so publicly.

Iran, however, is a different matter. Congress has already provided legal authority for the president to wage war in Iran through its existing war powers authority (one resolution passed in 2001, the other in 2002). Likewise, Congress has allowed the Bush administration to forward deploy the infrastructure of war deep into the Middle East and neighboring regions, all in the name of the “global war on terror.” The startup costs for a military strike against Iran would therefore be greatly diminished. Sustaining such a conflict is a different matter, but given current congressional reticence to stand up to a war-time president, it is highly unlikely any meaningful action would be taken to stop an Iranian war once the bombs start falling. And we should never forget that Iran has a vote in how this would end; once it is attacked, Iran will respond in ways that are unpredictable, and as such set in motion a string of cause-effect military actions with the United States and others that spins any future conflict out of control.

The highest priority for the antiwar movement in America today must be the prevention of a war with Iran. The strategic objectives should include getting Congress to repeal the war-powers authorities currently on the books, thereby forcing the president to seek new congressional approval for any new war. Likewise, a concerted effort must be undertaken to counter the disinformation being spread by the Bush administration and others about the nature of the Iranian threat. Every action undertaken by the antiwar movement must be connected to one or both of these strategic objectives. This is not the time for one-off sophomoric newspaper advertisements, but rather for sustained action focused on generating congressional hearings and public debate across the entire spectrum of American society. From the colleges and universities to the churches and on to the public square of small-town America, public information talks, presentations and panels must be held. Communities should flood local media outlets with requests for coverage and appeal to regional media to run stories. Mainstream media will follow. Demonstrations, if useful at all, must be focused events linked to an overall campaign designed to facilitate a strategic objective.

So far Ritter’s batting about 1.000 in defining the facts in Iraq, dating back to the pre-war months.

How many will respond to his warning now?

At the price of increasing sectarian divisions, with US troops in the crossfire.

It’s not about the oil. It’s about using the lives of US troops to satisfy the greed of crooked men. 3800 lives so far and no end in sight.

Update: Bill Maher says Iraq isn’t Vietnam, it’s Enron.

I’m sure Congress will respond with another vote to censure Limbaugh’s despicable insult to the troops.

Right?

RIGHT????

Write your Congressional Senators and Reps right now and INSIST on it.

Steve M. at No More Mister Nice Blog provides Westmoreland’s new math homework.

So why, after 4.5 years, does the Bush administration suddenly pull numbers out of his hat ass?

To prove that a chickenhawk can get to the other side. While still making shit up.

I got your next Supreme Court nominee right here.

Aiken’s got a record that continues to defend the Constitution. If the existing Supremes don’t overrule this one, she’d be a great addition for the next president to make.