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Monday, June 30, 2008 |
Seymour Hersch in The New Yorker: "Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program.
But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.
A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, 'We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.'
The Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose chairman is Admiral Mike Mullen, were 'pushing back very hard' against White House pressure to undertake a military strike against Iran, the person familiar with the Finding told me. Similarly, a Pentagon consultant who is involved in the war on terror said that 'at least ten senior flag and general officers, including combatant commanders' - the four-star officers who direct military operations around the world - 'have weighed in on that issue.'
The most outspoken of those officers is Admiral William Fallon, who until recently was the head of U.S. Central Command, and thus in charge of American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. In March, Fallon resigned under pressure, after giving a series of interviews stating his reservations about an armed attack on Iran. For example, late last year he told the Financial Times that the 'real objective' of U.S. policy was to change the Iranians' behavior, and that 'attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice'."
Any attempt to hit Iran will result in devastating consequences for our economy. Bush is a madman, and it is up to those around him, not in the least the army chiefs, to prevent him from plunging America and the world into chaos.
Bush has already led this world towards a financial catastrophe. Maybe he is trying to divert the attention from his financial debacle by shifting attention to what he considers his enemies abroad. Bush is a madman, who needs to be locked up.
WashingtonPost: "This Recession, It's Just Beginning.
So much for that second-half rebound.
Truth be told, that was always more of a wish than a serious forecast, happy talk from the Fed and Wall Street desperate to get things back to normal.
It ain't gonna happen. Not this summer. Not this fall. Not even next winter.
This thing's going down, fast and hard. Corporate bankruptcies, bond defaults, bank failures, hedge fund meltdowns and 6 percent unemployment. We're caught in one of those vicious, downward spirals that, once it gets going, is very hard to pull out of.
Only this will be a different kind of recession - a recession with an overlay of inflation. That combo puts the Federal Reserve in a Catch-22 - whatever it does to solve one problem only makes the other worse. Emerging from a two-day meeting this week, Fed officials signaled that further recession-fighting rate cuts are unlikely and that their next move will be to raise rates to contain inflationary expectations.
Like the rain-swollen waters of the Mississippi River, this sudden surge of downbeat news has now overflowed the banks of economic policy and broken through the levees of consumer and investor confidence. At this point, there's not much to do but flee to safety, rescue those in trouble and let nature take its course. And don't let anyone fool you: It will be a while before things return to normal."
LACityBeat: "You thought the housing crisis was bad? You ain't seen nothing yet.
While many eyes are focusing on the housing meltdown and its hugely negative effect on an economy clearly moving into recession, few are paying attention to the next bubble expected to burst: credit cards. Combined with the subprime losses, such a credit card nightmare has the potential, experts say, of bringing down the entire financial system and global economy. You and your credit card have become key players in the highly unstable financial crunch. Mortgage lender cupidity and bank credit card greed wedded to financial institution deregulation supported by both political parties, have been made manifestly worse by Bush administration support-the-rich policies. It has brought us to a brink not seen since just before the Great Depression.
There is but one thing to do: impeach Bush, and put him on trial for breaching the Constitution and for war-crimes.
11:03:31 AM 
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© Copyright 2008.
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