Anti-Palin bloggers are pumping out bile with the unrelenting force of an Alaskan gusher. These people are using their blog-power to influence voters. Nothing wrong with that. But fomenting discontent on the basis of rumor alone is an abuse of that power.

We need an example. One blogger who illustrates this obsessive, vicious lampooning of Sarah Palin (and John McCain) is "AKMuckraker" at Mudflats. On one post she insinuates that Sarah Palin is John McCain's latest "trophy girl." In another, she rolls out all the labels she can contrive—"Trooper-Gate," "Baby-Gate," "Bridge-Gate," and "Veep-Gate"—and wails to the world that the GOP campaign will come unraveled in the days left before the election. Many who chime in with comments at her posts exhibit an astonishing willingness to believe on the basis of ethereal fumes. (One shining exception is Gerri; she candidly states that she's pro-Obama, but says she wants proof because she doesn't like rumors and blatant lies. Way to go, Gerri.)

I have four guidelines to recommend to blog browsers whose eyes are burning from all this smoke. If you find that rumor is beginning to influence your outlook, you might find these helpful.

1. Chase the rumor to its source and investigate the source.

The "scandal" that's all the rage today swirls around allegations that Sarah Palin's youngest child, an infant with Downe syndrome, is not her own child but the child of her 17-year-old daughter, and the spectacle of much handwringing about the news that Palin's daughter is pregnant now and will soon marry the father.

Who's behind the effort to bring this to national attention? The advertised culprit is Andrew Sullivan, of TheAtlantic.com, a leftist blogger and adoring fan of Obama, who seems to have proven that he can be truly unscrupulous if it will help the liberal cause. Norman Podhoretz explains what is worse than despicable about Sullivan's behaviour here and here. This criticism extends to Sullivan's channelers throughout the blogosphere.

2. Listen carefully to the tone of the blogger.

Is the blogger being sarcastic? Does the blogger rely on sarcasm to make the "argument"? Is it plausible to suppose that the blogger is being objective? That the blogger is willing to give the candidate the benefit of the doubt? That the blogger is sincere about relying on bullet-proof evidence when evaluating the candidate's character and motives?

Does the blogger consider counterevidence or counterarguments? Are these treated fairly?

Does it sound like the blogger is preaching to the converted? If so, the she probably is.

A muckraker is someone seeks out and publishes alleged scandals information in an underhanded way. The writer at Mudflats calls herself "AKMuckraker." Enough said?

3. Step back and remember what governing this country is about.

Don't lose sight of the issues. This goes to the question, How relevant is the rumor, even if true? What aspect of prudent national leadership is threatened? Make a list the most important foreign and domestic policy issues facing this country. Then ask, How will the candidate who's been smeared address those issues? Does the candidate act consistently with his or her declared principles?

4. Don't expect the candidate to answer every scandalous charge of scandal with counterevidence.

Putting an opponent on the defensive by making frivolous charges is one of the oldest tricks in the book. If Sullivan or someone else broadcasts an allegation, forbear not to believe it, or even to give it another thought, unless and until the sponsor of the claim presents compelling evidence. That his or her responsibility, if a case can be made.

No one should be distracted by, and still less should one believe, a baseless allegation made by a scurrilous troublemaker who is ultimately indifferent about truth.

***

Bottom Line: It's time to shut the Rumor-Gate and get down to the business of sorting out the kind of national leadership, in both foreign and domestic policy areas, that is really needed. Maybe the concentration of muckraking in one party gives us a clue.

Related Posts:

• Biography of Sarah Palin
• Was It Sarah Palin's Speech or Not?
• Do No Harm—John McCain's Choice of Sarah Palin
• Who Is Sarah Palin?

(Michelle Malkin)

It should be obvious by now that d-baggery is an American version of an authoritarian nationalist political ideology. D-baggery rails against cultural decline and decadence, and it seeks to achieve a national rebirth by exalting our great nation (and race!). D-baggery advocates unity, strength and purity both in the spirit and in the flesh. It is the unshakable belief in a strong masculine authority -- a father, a leader, a Dark Lord -- who must remain beyond the reproach of his children, beyond restraint, able to do whatever is necessary at any time and employ His awesome power in whatever way He sees fit, to destroy the enemy and ensure that our traditional life is renewed. He is, of course, a blond beast, one whose fair complexion shows his natural, physical superiority over the degenerate races who were rightfully conquered by our d-bag forbears and put to work making the bricks that compose our national monuments.

D-baggery is much more than just a political ideology though! It is also a lifestyle. It is a worldview. It even comes with its own science. When it looked like d-baggery was on the run in Europe after the end of the Second World War, and when it looked like Soviet era d-baggery was through with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, American d-bags rose to the challenge to resurrect d-baggery using the cast-off scraps from decolonized third world countries like the Philippines, Iraq, Ireland, and Canada. At the end of the Twentieth Century, d-baggery achieved what it had been incapable of achieving in Italy, Germany, Spain or Japan in the 1930s: a coalition of genocidal, racist, sexist, homophobic -- heterophobic! -- revolutionaries who are the very thing they despise! Isn't it wonderful?

Part of the d-bag lifestyle is the mantra, "I deserve it." Of course, the unspoken correlative to the mantra is, "and I'm going to take it from you." Because that's where being a d-bag becomes fun! D-bags understand law, right, and justice to be concepts affected by gravity: the bigger the social object is (e.g. Rush Limbaugh or Scooter Libby) the more the law protects their rights like a force field and the less power justice has to punish. For example, when the poor and powerless shoot heroin they are criminal scum who deserve nothing short of life imprisonment or execution, but when Rush scams fifteen doctors to get his fix of OxyContin -- hillbilly heroin -- he can have the case dismissed and his reputation vouched for by all his upstanding d-bag friends. Government does not have the right to tell you what kind of car you can drive, but it is obligated to provide you with cheap gas -- even if that means prosecuting an unprovoked war. Scooter Libby, following in the venerable footsteps of Oliver North, not only is allowed to break the law, but is obligated to break the law as proof of his patriotism. This is what it means to be a d-bag: the privilege of doing what you accuse as criminal in others.

Though they would never admit it in polite company, d-bags love irony. And the fact that some of the biggest defenders of white, male supremacy should be neither white nor male is an irony that warms the fires of hate in a d-bag's heart -- even during the cold winter of peace and prosperity.

So when a strong woman calls another woman a slut, a bitch or a whore; when a black man calls another black man a nigger, and a cotton-headed coon then berates him for laziness; when an Asian woman calls herself a slant-eyed, slope, zipper-head and a gook, d-bags around the world raise a cheer. These are off-white d-bags. The irony is they are the beneficiaries of the liberal, uplift, social justice ideology they hate. Most off-white d-bags received special privileges unavailable to other people with whom they might be expected to identify. Clarence Thomas got into Yale through affirmative action; Ann Coulter can vote; and the Neo-Cons, denied entrance to the Ivy League were accepted to City College CUNY -- a truly liberal liberal arts institution. But now that they got theirs, they are more than happy to deny the privilege to the new generation of the needy.

Can Filipinos be d-bags? Sure! Can Jews be d-bags? Absolutely. Anyone who thinks God gave them the right to dispossess another human being of his property, liberty, and life without the due process of law or ethical feelings (do to others as you would be done to) is a fundamental d-bag. But because d-baggery is a belief that might makes right, combined with the perverse satisfaction of using fraud and guile to pretend to might without actually having to work for it, off-white d-bags are paradoxically the paragons of d-baggery. They are ideological cover for the continued degradation of ethics, honesty, justice, and morality by the purveyors of hatred, fear, intolerance and perfidy.

Does this come as a shock? Is it surprising that human beings of all backgrounds might want to obliterate any history of oppression and inferiority that clings to their people or themselves? Not at all. Is it a surprise that men and women want to be able to determine their futures and chose their own fates? No. Is it hypocrisy beyond wickedness that a former revolutionary who wants to ameliorate the condition of his people would, when the battle is won, become a more intolerable tyrant the the one he deposed? Yes. But to be a quintessential d-bag, he must also publish the old lie that some citizens are more equal than others, and that war is peace.

 And here we see the terrible utility of off-white d-bags to the cause of authoritarianism: Off-white d-bags prove that tolerance and forgiveness can be shamefully manipulated by the unscrupulous who make a valid claim on our conscience for reciprocity that they have no intention of honoring.

In a certain little corner of the literary world, the battle of the Internet vs. n+1 (and the battle of a couple of bloggers vs. Keith Gessen) has been raging away. It isn’t even confined to a corner any more, I suppose.   A post from this past week on The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/?xrail) recaps the recent back-and-forth between former Gawker Choire Sicha, Emily Gould, Keith Gessen, and Nick Denton. 

I’ve been watching all this unfold from the sidelines and trying to sort out whether there’s any substance to the disagreement between the lit-maggers and their blogging nemesis’s.  Here is a recap of the events from my vantage point: Keith and some of his friends started a magazine called n+1.  They published an article about why the Internet is bad (this is a gloss, I know, but so far as many people are concerned, that’s what the article said).  Uproar commenced online.  Keith and his friends hired interns, who were uppity.  Keith stole girlfriend of one of the interns, then a reporter on the publishing beat at the New York Observer. Girlfriend was a Gawker, girlfriend stopped working for Gawker, Gawker posted piece on breakup.  [You can tell I’m getting bored because I’m omitting articles.]  Keith and Gawker girl Gould broke up.  Gould published self-indulgent amalgam of journal and blog entries in the New York Times Magazine.  Keith organized a panel on the Internet.  Former interns attended and gathered afterwards to discuss the pertinent issues, though all that really got discussed (at least in the presence of yours truly) was how the interns’ writing careers were progressing.  Meanwhile Keith’s blog is “discovered,” I read recent posts on the subway ride home (yes, I printed them out), and spend the evening wondering if this is all an elaborate pissing contest.

At last week’s panel, Keith and the other n+1 editors did say interesting things about the Internet and how it affects the ways we think and interact with each other and with information.  But the most vitriolic responses have been premised on personal attacks, most along the lines of: “How dare you criticize my medium, the Internet, you out-dated self-involved elitist snob?  You’re just mad that the bloggers aren’t saying nice things about your book.”  Which, maybe, but so?  That’s a cheap-trick way to invalidate his argument.  As some of the commenters on Keith’s blog pointed out, there are more important things going on in the world: America’s occupation of Iraq, global warming, genocide, and the list goes on.  But that makes it all the more important for us to take a close look at how the way we disseminate and discuss information affects our thinking.  We’re a nation that can’t get our act together, in large part because we’d rather bicker than reach a consensus.  The Internet--with its tendency to reward writers who rely on emotional gut reactions and to discourage structured arguments that take time / space to unfold--is a symptom and a cause of what’s gone wrong.  It’s a new medium and it’s powerful.  Let’s talk about it.  And maybe next time Keith could organize a panel including speakers who actually make an effort to discuss what’s good about the Internet.

Readers take note: Intellectual Skywriting is out of print. 

This one actually takes a minute of brain power, 'cause it's a little counter-intuitive. Why would a d-bag like -- even love -- Iran? There are so many things to dislike about the place. It's full of Muslims. It is a spoke on the Axis of Evil. It embarrassed the Carter administration and helped get Reagan elected president. Ok, that's not so bad. In fact, this line of thinking is why d-bags, in their secret heart of hearts love Iran. Without Iran there would be no excuse for a d-bag to interrupt polite dinner conversation so he can scream, red-faced, about liberal appeasers, Hitler, and the essentially Satanic nature of government services like socialized medicine, effective disaster relief, and paved roads. Iran is hard proof that Evil (notice the capital "e") exists and that it will use our weakness and lack of respect for authority to contaminate us and taint our purity. It is the Beast of Revelations that calls us forth to battle gloriously for the one, true God.

I bet you're like, Chunque, that rhetoric is soooooo first Bush II term. No one says that kind of thing in public anymore. Maybe not. But just because saber rattling has gone out of style doesn't mean Iran as a justification for d-bag politics has gone away! Check out these articles from Fox News, Reuters, and even the New York Times. That's the "mainstream" media (the same d-bags who sold us Saddam's WMDs). This article by d-bag philosopher Peter Wehner in the latest issue of Commentarymagazine.com tells us as clearly as possible that "if Iran succeeds in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons, it could bring forth ruin on an unimaginable scale." Mr. Wehner, in a heartfelt attempt to resist exaggeration and false analogy tell us "The Hitler analogy is overused these days. But from time to time it can be instructive." Indeed. It is also instructive when talking about Saddam Hussein, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong Il, and even Barack Obama (playing the role of Neville Chamberlain). You say, even Pat Buchanan says the Hitler gambit is played out and misleading. Maybe so, but that didn't stop the POTUS from using it last month to slam the opposition.

Part of what makes a d-bag is their sense of self-worth and importance, which is completely out of proportion to reality. This is why d-bags are so fond of eschatology, or the science of apocalypse, a. k. a. the End Times or Last Days. (Seriously, check that link out!) If you live at the End of History you must be living in the most exciting -- and important -- time there can be! You might even be the one who rises from obscurity to save the unbelieving world from total annihilation -- or better yet, perhaps you will lead the saints to the New Jerusalem! And the road to Jerusalem leads right through downtown Tehran. That many d-bags urge action against Iran because of Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic beliefs is almost too ironic. You can't make this stuff up! For Wehner to say "Ahmadinejad’s policies are driven by his religious worldview" with a straight face is more laughs than an episode of "My Name Is Earl"! Fortunately for the evangelical sort of d-bag (Jewish, Christian and Muslim) history isn't ending any time soon, but there will still be lots of Anti-Christs around to provide a justification for d-baggery. As the A-number-1 d-bag of the twentieth century said in his seminal primer of contemporary d-baggery:

"My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." -- A. Hitler.

P.S. For fun substitute "Muslim" for "Jew" in the passage above and see how familiar it feels!

In the past few years neoconservatives have had a lot of bad press, mainly as a result of the Iraq war debacle, and the highly publicized role of Bush administration neocons such as Paul Wolfowitz in planning and promoting the war.

But according to Walker's account, neocons first came to prominence in the 1970s as a result of their positions on domestic policy. Pioneering neocons such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz were prominent liberals until the 1970s when they felt true liberalism had gone astray. Kristol in particular was a very successful "ideological entrepreneur" who convinced American business leaders that they needed to finance publications and think tanks which would help support and promote the free enterprise system.

Some of the key ideas of neoconservatism are:

• The great wealth making machine that is our free enterprise system does produce inquality, but it doesn't hold people in poverty. Efforts to soften the "bite of poverty" are misguided, because it reduces incentives for people to work hard and rise out of poverty.
• Many social programs, such as Lyndon Johnson's war on party, were unsuccessful because they ignored the role of morality culture and character. Problems of poverty are complex and often intractable because the root causes cannot be solved by social programs and money.

Walker goes on to argue that neoconservatism has been in the ascendancy for the last 20 years in both Democratic and Republican administrations, but that there are recent indications that American public opinion is moving more toward the center.

Während des Kalten Krieges war ich ein Gegner der Idee, dass das sowjetische Imperium ewig halten werde und dass man sich deshalb mit ihm arrangieren müsse. Das römische Reich war endlich, das britische Empire war endlich, warum sollte es bei den Sowjets anders sein? Und warum sollte man ihrem Imperium nicht einen Schubs geben, damit es in sich zusammenbricht? (Ronald Reagan hat das dann endlich getan.) Beim Nahen Osten denke ich ähnlich. Hier haben wir eine Region, die sich gegenüber dem Virus der Demokratie, der sich seit dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs immer weiter verbreitet, als immun erwiesen hat. Warum sollte das so bleiben, wenn man nur fünf oder zehn Jahre in die Zukunft schaut?

Kissinger skeptical of blogs

Last night, conservatives gathered at the Four Seasons in New York City for a Power Line event to honor Norman Podhoretz with a book award. Guests included Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz, who arrived with his infamous love interest Shaha Riza. Henry Kissinger also gave a speech:

As Mr. Kissinger said in his remarks, “I don’t know what a blog is. I don’t know how to find a blog.” His computer, he said, is used to read newspapers. […]

Mr. Kissinger said he was skeptical about the digitalization of media, for if his words and sentences “get shortened for cyberspace, there is no telling what will come out.”

As The New York Times notes, Kissinger should be worried about more than just the digital media getting his words wrong.

LONDON, January 20 (IranMania) - A senior Republican advisor says since it is 'politically impossible' for Bush to attack Iran, the job should be 'outsourced' to Israel, PressTV reported.

If Tehran does not halt its nuclear program, Israel will 'inevitably' wreak mayhem on Iran, wrote Norman Podhoretz in the February edition of Commentary.

Podhoretz, who is considered as one of the founders of neoconservatism, insists that Israel may even be forced to attack Iran's Arab neighbors to prevent them from assisting Tehran if the country acquires nuclear technology.

The neocon godfather is said to have a close relationship with President George W. Bush and is now serving as the foreign policy advisor to Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Podhoretz stated a year ago that the current administration will strike Iran's nuclear facilities before the US president leaves office.

However, the US National Intelligence Estimate released in December concluded that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Podhoretz claimed the NIE report made it 'politically impossible' for the Bush administration to wage war on Iran as the international community believes Iran's nuclear program is civilian.

But bashing Bush – and I am not exactly a fan – only feeds more negative energy into the massively negative forces already unleashed by a besmirched White House to engulf the world like a never-ending tsunami of contrary policies and escalating calamities.

The bloodshed and radioactive genocide in Iraq and Afghanistan… the racist abandonment and restructuring of Louisiana… ripping up Kyoto and blocking Bali and every other international attempt to slow climate shift, elimination of federal alternate energy incentives and other measures in order to increase civilization-threatening petroleum profits and pollution at a time when the United States already outstrips even countries three-times its population in per person carbon emissions… torture and illegal gulags as established U.S. policies… total electronic surveillance of all formerly private communications within the USA… the elimination of Constitutional rights and freedoms over what Bush called “just a goddamn piece of paper”… trillions of borrowed dollars transferred to corporate cronies as China continues to buy strategic U.S. corporations and financial institutions – in other words, the country itself – along with most of the entire planet… the list of disasters not yet specifically denounced by any front-running candidate goes on. And on. But you get the drift. No one has done deeper damage than delusional Dubya.

The thing is, though…

SHADOW PLAYS
It’s not Bush. He is not in charge. This latest in a long line of ventriloquist dummies speaks in the tongues of faceless controllers who “call the shots” by calling in loans and favors… setting the interest rates that determine compounding national, individual and corporate debt… printing money and manipulating currencies that determine individual and national buying power… owning the mass media and daily inserting video clips and “stories” manufactured by far-right/fundamentalist think-tanks and disguised as “news”…

Those guys.

If you want to know who’s throwing the shadow plays on the flickering walls of our blue-lit urban caves check out the membership lists online of the Bilderberg Group, Trilateral Commission, Council On Foreign Relations, Skull & Bones, Project For A New American Century and Defense Policy Board. See how many names and corporations overlap in this old boys’ network of interlocking interests.

And then Google Ed Bernays. Named as one of the 1000 most influential people of all time, this little known “father of public relations” wrote the bible of mass manipulation in 1928.

"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it," Bernays argued in Propaganda. Eagerly read by Goebbels and every media exec who came after, Bernays’ "engineering of consent" perverted the insights and techniques of his uncle Freud to mold mass opinion. Amped up today in the carefully managed “virtual realities” of Hollywood movies and Big Network teevee, these same methods will go “hyper-real” with the coming compulsory advent of HD. (More on this in a later blog.)

“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country,” Bernays revealed. “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”

Get the picture?

SAME OLD, SAME OLD
Anyone who believes that “getting rid of Bush” in the next election will usher in genuinely life-affirming, planet-protecting change is not paying attention to the power elite that has run the USA for personal profit and control ever since the Morgans, Rockefellers and Rothschilds established the Federal Reserve during the Congressional Christmas recess in 1913.

This interlocking power elite of military-corporate-political interests went on to increase its grip through the Vietnam War-enabling bogus Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the carefully triangulated assassination of Federal Reserve-busting President Kennedy, the FBI-assisted bombing of the WTC in 1998, the internal demolition of the Murrah building using explosives with U.S. Army serial numbers, the U.S. Air Force “stand down” that facilitated the thermate-planted “take-downs” of Towers 1,2 and 7 on 9/11, the Patriot Act passed during the Congressional anthrax scare in 2001 – and whatever we allow to come next by not questioning what has been foisted on us before.

Independent Washington journalists Allan Nair and Kelley Beaucar Vlahos recently spoke about the upcoming U.S. elections with Amy Goodman at democracynow!

Vlahos described Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy team as “throwbacks” – “old faces, old names” who “haven’t changed their real vision of the world and foreign policy” since the formative years of the last century.

As Nairn narrated the Hillary Clinton lineup:

Madeleine Albright, she was the main force behind the Iraq sanctions that killed more than 400,000 Iraqi civilians. General Wesley Clark, he was the one who ran the [Depleted Uranium] bombing of Serbia in the former Yugoslavia, came out and publicly said that he was going after civilian targets, like electrical plants, like the TV station there. Richard Holbrooke, in the Carter administration he was the one who oversaw the shipment of weapons to the Indonesian military as they were invading—illegally invading East Timor and killing a third of the population there, and he was the one who kept the UN Security Council from enforcing its resolution against that invasion. Strobe Talbott, he was the one who, during the Clinton administration, oversaw Russia policy, a backing of Yeltsin, which resulted in turning over the national wealth to the oligarchs and a drop in life expectancy in much of Russia of about fifteen years—massive, massive death. And you have various backers of the Iraq invasion and occupation and the recent escalation, people like General Jack Keane, Michael O’Hanlon and others. That’s just Clinton.

Allan Nairn went on to point out that Obama’s top adviser is the same Zbigniew Brzezinski who covets Central Asian oil and boasted he had created the Afghan jihadi movement that produced Osama bin Laden. Anthony Lake – another key Obama adviser – “was the main force behind the US invasion of Haiti… which they brought back Aristide essentially in political chains” to support a brutal World Bank/IMF takeover of [this black nation’s] economy.”

Another Obama adviser, Air Force General Merrill McPeak “sent fighter planes to Indonesia after the massacre in East Timor.

“Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross, oversaw US policy toward Israel/Palestine by insisting that the “legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government.” Another Obama adviser, Sarah Sewall is a former Defense official, who “wrote the introduction to General Petraeus’ Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by US troops in various killing operations. That’s the Obama team.”

Also going unmentioned during the January 15 Democratic “debate” were “anti-lobbyist” John Edwards' top advisers. As Nairn continues: “Many of the military lobbyists are working on the Edwards foreign policy team, because the names that—the Edwards names that are out there mainly come from the Army and the Air Force and the Navy Material Command. Those are the portions of the Pentagon that do the Defense contracts, that do the deals with the big companies like Raytheon and Boeing, etc. One of those listed on the Edwards team is the lobbyist for the big military contractor EADS.”

DIFFERENT FACES, SAME SUITS
Vlahos concludes, “The presence of these advisers makes it clear that these candidates aren’t serious about enforcing the murder laws and that they’re willing to kill civilians, foreign civilians, en masse in order to advance US policy.”

Nairn agrees: “Fundamentally, there’s no difference on the basic principle of, are you against the killing of civilians and are you willing to enforce the murder laws. If we were willing to enforce the murder laws, the headquarters of each of these candidates could be raided, and various advisers and many candidates could be hauled away by the cops, because they have backed various actions that, under established principles like the Nuremberg Principles, like the principles set up in the Rwanda tribunals, the Bosnia tribunals, things that are unacceptable, like aggressive war, like the killing of civilians for political purposes. So, in a basic sense, there is no choice.”

As Vlahos explains:

There is no incentive for these candidates to reach out beyond any of this orbit or galaxy of foreign policy advisers who have been linked in, you know, we’re talking decades of war and events and actions and operations. And there seems, whether it be John Edwards reaching out to the Defense contracting community or Hillary Clinton reaching out to her husband’s former security advisers and operatives or whether it’s Obama reaching out to former Clinton types, there doesn’t seem to be any incentive to reach out beyond that… I think a lot of that is linked to money, it’s sort of like this hand-in-glove symbiotic relationship, where the bigger names you have, the more familiar names, the more entrenched you have in these cliques I spoke to previously, the more money you’re bringing into your campaign. So there’s no incentive to go beyond that, unless you’re ready for some amount of rebuke and some of the spigot being turned off.

How about Washington’s own Republican Guard? Ghoul-iani wants to ramp up the Bush Doctrine of bombing everyone everywhere all the time who does not bow down before U.S. Incorporation. The team of the man connected with the “pulling” of the lightly damaged Tower 7 at the World Trade Center features Norman Podhoretz. “Podhoretz’s new book is World War IV,” Vlahos reminds us. “Podhoretz says, bomb the Iranians. And he’s not just talking about pinpoint Iranian nuclear installations; he’s saying bomb the Iranians. And he says he prays that this will happen. Ex-Senator Robert Kasten, an old major backer of the Pakistani military dictatorships and the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia, he’s another key Giuliani adviser.”

Then there’s Daniel Pipes. Leading the American fascist charge against ‘Islamofascism’ on college campuses, this Pied Piper is establishing his “Campus Watch” brown-shirt pogrom against professors he deems not pro-Israeli occupation and apartheid enough. Martin Kramer, Stephen Rosen, Peter Berkowitz of the right-wing Hoover Institution also hope to vacuum up dissenters – aided by “a small galaxy of neoconservatives from familiar think tanks as the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Hoover, the Hudson.”

Vlahos completes this sorry rundown with a similarly bloodthirsty Bush clone:

McCain has General Alexander Haig, who oversaw the US policy of mass terror killings of civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, when American nuns and religious workers were abducted, raped and murdered by the Salvadoran National Guard. McCain has a younger adviser, Max Boot, who now points to El Salvador, where 70,000 civilians were killed by American-backed death squads, as a model counterinsurgency, a model for what the US should be doing today. Henry Kissinger advises McCain And Kissinger, of course, was responsible for mass death in Cambodia, Vietnam, Chile, countless other places. Bud McFarlane from the Reagan administration, who was a key backer of the Contras. Brent Scowcroft, is a leader of the realist school—the realist school basically says, yes, kill civilians, but make sure you win the war Scowcroft was the one who, during the Bush 1 administration, went to China right after the Tiananmen Square massacre and reassured the Chinese leadership, “Don’t worry about it, we’re still behind you.” [democracynow.org Jan 3/08]

Take your pick.

RIGGED AGAIN
The two candidates who speak truth, stand on personal integrity, and offer the wiser and compassionate leadership of a Ghandi – Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich – “are treated like pariahs by the establishment media,” observes Mike Whitney at Information Clearing House.

“This year we can choose from a slate of 8 candidates; all of whom are members of the secretive Council on Foreign Relations; and all of whom are wholly committed to the off-shoring of businesses, the outsourcing of jobs, the expansion of police-state powers, and the obscene enlargement the already over-bloated War Machine,” Whitney continues:

As for Hillary; she won nothing. The results are completely bogus. Her weepy performance before the balloting was orchestrated to create a credible narrative to explain the fraudulent shifting of votes away from Obama. It was exactly the same trick that Karl Rove played in 2004, when he had the entire corporate media standing behind his cockamamie story that 3 or 4 million fundamentalists—who had never voted before in a general election—suddenly poured down from the mountains to cast their ballot for their champion, George Bush. This absurd narrative was spouted from every media-soapbox in the nation until it was generally accepted as fact. The media then proceeded to quash any investigation of the massive voter fraud which took place across the country (particularly in Ohio) while discrediting critics as conspiracy theorists.

“Is it a conspiracy to think that the same guys who abduct foreign nationals off the streets of cities around the world and take them to black sites – where their eyes are gouged out and their finger nails ripped off – would get squeamish over something as trivial as ballot stuffing?” Whitney asks. “The system is broken… The primary was stolen.” [Information Clearing House Jan 11/08]

Prison Planet thinks so, too. “Going into New Hampshire Ron Paul was polling in the early teens and was a strong bet to take third place behind McCain and Romney. Four days before the vote, Rasmussen had Paul at 14% – a significant lead over Huckabee on 11% and Giuliani on 8% – and yet Ron Paul finished with just 8%.

“The New Hampshire town of Sutton admits that it voided every vote Ron Paul received. The Congressman got 31 votes and yet due to a ‘human error’ Sutton reported zero votes for Ron Paul. [Prison Planet Jan 9/08]

Any remaining doubts of the Democrat’s repressively Republican colors came during last week’s “debate” when the Dem’s quashed free speech by backing NBC’s refusal to include fourth place candidate Dennis Kucinich in the conversation.

Enforced just minutes from air time by a Bush-backing state Supreme Court overturning a lower court decision to let Kucinich speak, the nationally televised rigged roulette game from Las Vegas went to air with Clinton, Obama and Edwards spending only a few more minutes on – what was that again? – oh yeah, Iraq. [truthout Jan 16/08]

So Kucinich lost his first amendment right of free speech in order to “protect” the “freedom” of a press to eliminate free speech before a national audience thirsty for authenticity and truth.

HR 1955 AND YOU
Still, these goon squad tactics probably postponed long term detention of Kucinich and his crazed, Constitution-quoting followers in the homeland gulags already under rapid construction across America by Halliburton and Bechtel. Like so many other issues of extreme and urgent import – such as the deepening water crisis, and the upcoming North American Union under a single currency – the purpose of these detention centers has so far not been discussed by any candidate with access to a media megaphone.

But a bill overturning the constitutionally guaranteed rights to free expression, association, and assembly sponsored by California Democrat Jane Harman and passed in the House last October is certain to be ratified as law by the Senate under the sponsored of Republican Susan Collins.

“When HR 1955 becomes law, it will create a commission tasked with identifying extremist people, groups, and ideas,” reports Paul Craig Roberts at Counterpunch. This McCarthyesque commission will hold witch-hunt hearings across the land, taking false testimony and compiling lists of “dangerous people and beliefs.”
Will you make it onto one of these "extremists" lists? If you are a civil libertarian, a critic of Israel’s policies, a skeptic of the official 9/11 mythology, a critic of this or the next administration's illegal wars and occupations, a critic of U.S., government kidnapping, rendition and torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions, a critic of illegal White House spying on Americans, or a neighborhood mom or dad standing in the way powerful interest groups – “such as politically-connected developers” – welcome to incarceration, Roberts writes.

But you can be politically as quiet as any good German who said nothing against Hitler – and still be loaded into one of those Internet-rumored boxcars. The ones with the leg manacles bolted to the floor.

“That SOB who stole your girlfriend, that hussy who stole your boyfriend, the gun owner next door – just report them to Homeland Security as holders of extreme beliefs. Homeland Security needs suspects, so they are not going to check. Under the new regime, accusation is evidence… That boss who harasses you for coming late to work – he's a good candidate to be reported; so is that minority employee that you can't fire for any normal reason. So is the husband of that good-looking woman you have been unable to seduce.”

But no every one with “extremist views” is destined to be locked up. Or worse. Unelected-President Bush and the Just Us Department can “ignore habeas corpus, ignore the Geneva Conventions, seize people without evidence, hold them indefinitely without presenting charges, torture them until they confess to some made up crime, and take over the government by declaring an emergency” – and not be counted as “extremists” Roberts remarks.
Roberts does not duke it out in the lightweight division. He has served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He’s a savvy insider, and a darn good writer: See his The Tyranny of Good Intentions. [Counterpunch Jan 4/08]

See him inside, too.

UNLESS…
Americans awaken from their interchangeable-candidate, rigged-elections trance and GET MOVING RIGHT NOW to take back our country and our rights.

We can start by challenging candidates on issues of immediate import – including their stance on repealing the Federal Reserve Act, nixing the North American Union, backing Bali and alternative electricity generation that does not involve burning anything, and bringing all the troops home to begin dealing with escalating eco-emergencies already engulfing the red states. (Hello?)

Allan Nairn suggests, “I am making my support conditional on you renouncing support for the murder of civilians, on you firing all of your advisers who have been involved in the killing of civilians in the past, you turning them over to the International Criminal Court if you can get the International Criminal Court to accept it, you signing a pledge that says no more killing of civilians, you signing a pledge that says we will prevent preventable death.”

Other projects for a Survivable American Century include immediate impeachment proceedings against the Bush/Cheney chimera (signalling a significant “mea culprit” course change to the rest of the world), and nationwide town and city dialogues on new directions for the USA.

This much is for sure: Voting for the “lesser evils” next November will only ensure more evil.

Start creating local economic and political alternatives now.

Twin Towers to również apogeum sukcesów amerykańskich neokonserwatystów, uwieńczenie ich zwycięskiego pochodu, rozpoczętego od "Republikańskiej Rewolucji" w połowie lat dziewięćdziesiątych. Od tego czasu zdążyli wprowadzić popieranego przez siebie George'a Busha jr na urząd prezydencki i stać się znaczącą siłą w debacie publicznej. Wspinając się po plecach religijnej prawicy, stali się prawdziwymi elitami "bushystowskiego" państwa. Po wspomnianym już Twin Towers, to oni pierwsi rzucili hasło ataku na Afganistan, oraz w dalszej perspektywie Irak i Iran. Dzisiaj, cztery lata po rozpoczęciu operacji w Iraku, "neoconi" zdają się spadać z piedestału, podobnie jak notowania aktualnego prezydenta.

Sam pamiętam, że swego czasu byłem neokonserwatyzmem zafascynowany- robił na mnie wrażenie ich otwarty imperializm i poczucie misji, a także szacunek dla wolnego rynku, tykanie fundamentalistów religijnych tylko w celach politycznych oraz stanowczość wobec terrorystów. Wydawało mi się, że osiągnięcia Aznara, Blaira, a także zapowiadane jakiś czas później sukcesy niemieckiej chadecji i Sarkozy'ego wynikają w jakiś sposób ze skuteczności takich ludzi jak Podhoretz czy Gingrich. Miałem spóźnione poczucie "końca historii"- armie Zachodu maszerowały aby nieść demokrację ciemnym ludom Wschodu, zgnieść zgniłe socjaldemokracje swoją ideową mocą itp. Cóż, każdy bywał naiwny. Moje "wakacje z neokonserwatyzmem" (skojarzenia z tytułem ostatniej "Krytyki Politycznej" tylko połowicznie dobre...) skończyły się nawet szybciej, niż entuzjazm tzw."światowej opinii publicznej" dla wojny z terroryzmem. O ile nadal uważam walkę z islamistami za potrzebną, o tyle strasznie mi wstyd, że dałem się uwieść trockistom i "campusowym" lewakom, którzy w pewnym momencie nabrali ochoty na zabawę w globalną politykę. Oczywiście specjalnie przesadzam, ale określenia w stylu "islamofaszyzm" (oczywiście, pomijając ich smaczny, populistyczny kontekst) wskazują na pewien prymitywizm, tak charakterystyczny dla pokolenia '68.

Pomimo, że sytuacja w Iraku powoli się stabilizuje, zaś Rudolph Giuliani jest prawdopodobnym republikańskim kandydatem na prezydenta, atmosfera do atakowania neoconsów jest nadal świetna. Szczególnie w Polsce, gdzie z naciąganych powodów, zwykło się porównywać bushyzm do kaczyzmu, zaś tarcza antyrakietowa staje się traumą "spokojnych i zmęczonych brutalnością politycznego szamba" wyborców zwycięskiej partii. Wyraz tym nastrojom daje w opublikowanym około dwóch tygodni temu komentarzu, "pierwszy emo IV RP" (made by Orliński) Cezary Michalski. Widzę w jego słowach wiele prawdy, a zarazem coś dzięki czemu zarówno PiS, jak i neokonserwatyści mają szansę jeszcze powrócić do władzy. Otóż wiceredaktor naczelny "Dziennika" całą swoją uwagę skupia na opisywaniu niewątpliwych błędów Busha, przy okazji omijając potencjalną receptę na problemy, które wyniosły go do władzy. Myślę, że ten tekst o wiele lepiej wyglądałby na jakimś opiniotwórczym blogu, ale w gazecie jest tylko kolejnym ciosem wymierzonym w pseudoprawicowe (bo co z neoconów za prawica...) gęby. A tak, Michalski postawił sprawdzonego Schmitta w jednym szeregu z nigdy nie zrealizowanym Jungerem, i wcisnął na siłę rymkiewiczowskiego żubra w amerykański kontekst. Z tym ostatnim to naprawdę głupota, bo w gruncie rzeczy Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld i banda odnowili spór, który o amerykańską politykę zagraniczną toczy się już od dawna.

Mimo wszystko, nadal podziwiam neokonserwatystów. Dzisiaj, gdy ideologie ustępują miejsca ekonomii, bohaterom mojego tekstu, udało się przebić marazm. Oparli się na establishmencie i wielkim biznesie, aby pewnym kosztem przemycić swoje, a niech użyję tego słowa, monumentalne idee. I choć nie po drodze mi z nimi, myślę, że już na stałe wpisali się do historii i nie do końca wiadomo czy negatywnie- aby to ocenić, potrzeba jednak jeszcze trochę czasu.

THE REPUBLICANS

Mike Huckabee. Huckabee began the week with a head of steam following his strong performance in the CNN/YouTube debate. He rocketed to first place in Iowa and second place nationally in the polls. His aggressive courting of the religious right has clearly paid dividends -- he is now their man. Indeed, his success with the evangelicals -- who have a longstanding distrust of Mormons -- likely drove Romney to make his "JFK" speech more than any other factor.

Huckabee's success has brought new scrutiny, and with it, some troubling stories about his tenure as Arkansas Governor. If he gets the nomination, these skeletons may prove his undoing. First, the name Wayne Dumond may soon become as infamous as Willie Horton -- arguably the story of Huckabee's release of Dumond from prison is far worse. Dumond was a dangerous Arkansas prisoner who Huckabee released despite the protests of numerous victims, and who raped and murdered again following his release. In addition, there's evidence that politics played a role: anti-Clinton forces advocated Dumond's release because his rape victim was a distance cousin of Bill Clinton, and they argued that somehow Dumond's conviction was proof of a conspiratorial travesty of justice by a vengeful Governor Clinton. If this weren't enough, by week's end Huckabee's earlier advocacy of quarantining AIDS victims and homosexuals also began to come to light. Not great for someone who claims to be God's horse in the race.

The interesting part is that while this news might hurt Huckabee among moderate Republicans and independent voters, its unlikely to greatly harm his standing with the evangelical base that has committed to him. He may have reached the point with the base where he'd have to be found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy to lose. These issues are more likely to hurt Huckabee, and the GOP generally, should he get the nomination.

Grade: B

John McCain. McCain also began the week with some momentum following one of his strongest performances in the CNN/YouTube debate. He is helped by the fact the immigration issue has faded somewhat while his support for the surge and experience in national security matters have become more valued assets with the base.

Nevertheless, he can't seem to catch fire and leap-frog Giuliani, who has been fighting more aggressively to own the national security issue. There's a palpable sense, confirmed by the general lack of movement in the polls during the week, that McCain's time has passed.

Grade: B-

Rudy Giuliani: Not a good week. He began slowly with a mixed performance at the CNN/YouTube debate. At times he revealed his nasty and arrogant side, which was not a great introduction to the huddled masses outside New York City. Meanwhile, he has spent the week trying hard to ignore the scandalous reports about his use of the NYPD off-budget for Judy's personal travel and security detail, while he was still married to Donna Hanover. At first, the Giuliani camp tried to explain the unusual practice of providing her with police security and chauffeured excursions as the logical response to a threat on her life. As the week wore on, reports traced the expensing back to 1999, before Rudy's affair was known to the public (or to his wife Donna Hanover). Odd that Judy would receive a threat due to her relationship with Rudy before the affair was publicly known. Other facts, such as Giuliani's unusual practice of prepaying travel expenses, allegedly to avoid close scrutiny of the expense details, have added weight to the story.

The trouble for Rudy is the scandal feeds a larger narrative of arrogance and imperialism -- compounded by Judith in her tiara -- that the rules the rest of us schmucks live by don't apply to Rudy. In some ways, the narrative is a caricature of Bush -- a sense that he will do what he wants when he wants without accountability or shame. The evangelical base never trusted him in the first place, and with Huckabee's rise as their chosen one, Rudy now has a smaller margin of error.

Meanwhile, early this week Rudy rolled out a new ad using the old Iranian hostage crisis as a foil to display his neocon credentials. The ad is horribly wrong on the facts. It coincidentally hit the airwaves just as the NIE was released, which by finding that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003, undermined the lunatic position of Giuliani's chief foreign policy adviser, Norman Podhoretz, who has been demanding the U.S. bomb Iran immediately. The ad implies that Ronald Reagan deserves all credit for the hostages' release within an hour of him being sworn in as president in 1981. First, the Carter administration had brokered the deal for their release and its execution was well underway prior to the swearing in ceremony. Second, Reagan is hardly a poster child for being tough with Iran, given that he secretly and illegally sold the Ayatollah's regime military weapons as part of the Iran-Contra scandal later in his term. Who knows what Iran did with those weapons, but it's doubtful they used them to do favors for the "Great Satan," Uncle Sam, or our allies. Giuliani's alliance with a nutjob like Podhoretz may work during the GOP primaries, but should he win the nomination, his choice of Podhoretz as consigliere will only expose Giuliani's own inexperience and poor judgment in foreign affairs and national security matters.

Grade: C-

Mitt Romney. Romney was damaged goods coming out of the CNN/YouTube debate. His exchanges with McCain (about torture), Giuliani (about immigration) and even Anderson Cooper (about gays in the military) that night seemed to knock him off his talking points and rattle him. Instead of looking like the future leader of the free world, he seemed like a mid-level manager having technical trouble with his power point demonstration. He clearly was focused on Rudy at the start of the week, but as the week wore on, it seemed Romney recognized the "Big Mo" was with Huckabee among the evangelical base. As a result, his mid-week speech on religion was carefully aimed at the evangelical base, not moderate Republicans and independents. That is, unlike JFK's speech to which Romney's was casually compared by the MSM, Romney was not trying to persuade more fair minded voters that he wouldn't be religiously doctrinaire as president; he was trying to persuade evangelicals that they should see him as a zealously committed man of faith who shared their socially conservative values.

The speech was too little, too late for his target audience. Huckabee comes across as the genuine article to the base, while Romney is distrusted for his more socially liberal beliefs while governor of Massachusetts. Without carrying a healthy percentage of the base, Romney will not have the critical mass of passionate voters and volunteers to take him to the nomination.

Grade: C

Fred Thompson. Fred Thompson was brought into the race to be what George Allen was supposed to be before his Macaca moment -- the proxy for Ronald Reagan (or the myth of Reagan as remembered by the base) in this race. But he has failed to use his acting skills like the Gipper to capture anyone's imagination, and it's apparent that Huckabee has taken this leading role.

Grade: C-

Ron Paul. He came across as a fringe candidate at the CNN/YouTube debate, even among the base which despises his position on Iraq, and has done nothing since to change that perception. He continued to register in the single digits in most polls during the week, despite the MSM's fascination with the Paultards.

Grade: D-

Tancredo and Hunter. The GOP's Mike Gravel continue to waste resources with their vanity campaigns.

Grade: F

THE DEMOCRATS

Joseph Biden. Biden continues to show no evidence of running for office higher than secretary of state or vice president.

Grade: C-

Hillary Clinton. Not nearly as bad a week as the MSM, which is starving for a horse-race, would lead you to believe. While the races in Iowa and New Hampshire have tightened, she has not slipped nationally and her supporters are the most committed. The NIE's report on Iran's abandonment of its nuclear weapons program in 2003 might have harmed her with the liberal base, given her vote for the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment, but the focus of that story in the MSM has focused on the Bush administration's veracity during the preceding six months about the Iranian threat. In addition, the attacks from the left only help Hillary position herself for the general election, which no Democrat can win without winning a majority of the independent voters (something the liberal base tends to forget). No major breaking news, good or bad, for the week -- more of a solid workman-like effort with a sense that she is poised to fight as aggressively as necessary. But her success is still largely premised on her tenacity, familiarity and sophisticated campaign rather than a groundswell of affection.

Grade: A-

Chris Dodd. Like Biden, continues to show that he aspires to nothing more than a cabinet position.

Grade: C-

John Edwards. Edwards engaged in his own form of triangulation this week, by positioning himself in the middle of the squabbling Hillary and Obama and above the fray. Apparently, his campaign believes that this kindler gentler approach will be more effective with Iowa voters. However, the reason politicians define their opponents in negative terms is because it works. Edwards' unilateral disarmament is risky and I would expect him to slip to the third place in Iowa. And he can't afford to lose Iowa -- he has probably spent more time in every Iowa county in the last two years than any candidate for governor.

Grade: C-

Dennis Kucinich. It's probably time Dennis began thinking more about retaining his House seat, which is increasingly in jeopardy, than his impossible quest for the presidency. Note to self: If you think you saw something unusual in the sky, don't tell the world you saw a UFO.

Grade: D

Barack Obama. This was the week of Oprah, and this alone makes it a good week for Obama. With this air cover, he shrewdly pursued the parallel strategy of ratcheting up the rhetoric against Hillary. To his credit, his campaign is fast and effective in defining the narrative whenever it finds itself in a battle with Hillary, and in defusing his own gaffes. He also continues to get "transformative candidate" press -- the kind that folks like Colon Powell got earlier in his career when people filled in the blanks about his unknown positions with their own hopes and dreams. Some of the press seems more about what Barack Obama's candidacy could mean to the world symbolically than what kind of president he would actually be. With only a few years in the senate and missed votes on key issues like Iran, he is comparatively untainted by the sausage-making of difficult political compromises that Hillary has had to make in her two senate terms and while in the West Wing. But in due course, he will become more defined, either by himself or his opponents. His gamble is that voters will find the potential he represents to be greater than who he has actually been -- he's the political equivalent of a number one draft pick out of high school who is drafted for his upside potential over the accomplished college senior. For now, this week was essentially a draw. Yet the battle between Hillary and Barack remains the sole source of electoral drama on the Democratic side.

Grade: A-

Bill Richardson. He seems suspiciously similar to Biden and Dodd in his aspirations, although his candidacy seems, oddly, both more credible due to his impressive public record and more amateur. His off-the-cuff remarks in interviews and debates, and general lack of preparedness, suggest he probably should have dropped out of the presidential race to pursue Domenici's senate seat, which was his for the taking. Now that race will likely go to Udall.

Grade: D

Some experts fear the intelligence estimate will sap international pressure to prevent Tehran from getting nuclear weapons.

By Paul Richter, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 7, 2007

WASHINGTON — The new U.S. intelligence report that says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 is suddenly raising concerns among the political center and left, as well as conservatives who have long called for a hard line against the Islamic Republic.

Moderate and liberal foreign policy experts said that U.S. intelligence agencies, possibly eager to demonstrate independence from White House political pressure, may have produced a National Intelligence Estimate that is more reassuring than it should be on the potential risks of the Iranian nuclear program.

Isfahan

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The report, made public Monday, contradicted the Bush administration's assertion that Iran has been secretly working to build nuclear weapons. It also found that Tehran, which says it is enriching uranium solely for civilian energy purposes, appears to have a pragmatic view and has responded to outside pressure and economic sanctions, in contrast to characterizations by administration hawks.

For years, President Bush's anti-Tehran vitriol has drowned out the more circumspect voices in the U.S. foreign policy establishment who nonetheless agree Iran poses a concern. But with this week's report, many experts worried that the pressure they believe is needed to counter Tehran now may dissipate.

Iran expert Ray Takeyh, a former professor at the National War College and National Defense University, said that although his own politics are left of the president's, he agrees with Bush that Iran's nuclear program is a continuing threat.

"The position I take is that President Bush is right on this," said Takeyh, now at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Takeyh, who has long argued for engaging Iran in diplomacy, said the intelligence report was too easy on Tehran by not objecting to the uranium enrichment program, which many Western governments have alleged is meant to build the knowledge base to eventually develop nuclear weapons. The American intelligence agencies, in effect, accepted Iran's contention that the enrichment is for peaceful purposes, Takeyh said.

After the report's release, Bush pledged to maintain pressure on Iran and lobbied for international support. On Thursday, French and German leaders meeting in Paris said they favored continued pressure, although German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not commit herself to backing harsher United Nations sanctions sought by the United States.

The new U.S. intelligence estimate has made any new economic sanctions unlikely, most analysts agree, since it has given nations such as Russia and China a reason to give the benefit of the doubt to Iran, their ally and business partner. As a result, experts of varying political affiliations in Washington believe that efforts to successfully apply pressure on Iran have been hurt by the report.

At the same time, they say, it is questionable whether the Islamic Republic has been responsive to international pressure, as the report suggests.

Sharon Squassoni, a former government nuclear safeguards expert now with the generally liberal Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, noted that the intelligence report said Iran suspended its enrichment program in 2003 and later signed an agreement allowing U.N. inspections.

But, she said, the portion of the report made public was silent on the fact that the Iranians reversed both actions in 2006.

The ability to develop fissile materials is the most important element of a nuclear weapons program, she told reporters.

Gary Samore, who was a top arms control official in the Clinton White House, agreed that the National Intelligence Estimate did not adequately emphasize Iran's continuing efforts to enrich uranium and build missiles.

"The halting of the weaponization program in 2003 is less important from a proliferation standpoint than resumption of the enrichment program in 2006," said Samore, director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Samore said the report undermined Bush's warnings about Iranian efforts to develop nuclear weapons and left Tehran in a strong position, allowing it to develop its enrichment capacity without a substantial challenge from the United States and its allies. The secret weaponization program is "on ice," he said, but Iran preserves the option to resume that when it wishes.

Though American intelligence officials believe Iran has been enriching uranium at a concentration that could only be used for civilian energy purposes, analysts fear that the same basic technology could eventually be used to kick-start a weapons program.

Anthony Lake, who was a national security advisor to President Clinton, found no fault with the intelligence report. But he said a key message was the importance of taking action.

"While we've got more time, we've got to use the time, because the enrichment activities are continuing," Lake said in an interview.

The new report repeats a number of the same cautions and conclusions in its last major assessment, in 2005, when the agencies reached the vastly different conclusion that Iran was determined to develop nuclear weapons. But the new report stresses the more recent findings that cast doubt on Tehran's determination to build a bomb.

As a result, conservatives have denounced the report.

John R. Bolton, the hawkish former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has called for a congressional investigation of the report, which he said is flawed.

In a Washington Post op-ed column Thursday, Bolton alleged that many of the officials involved were "not intelligence professionals but refugees from the State Department" brought in by J. Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence.

Norman Podhoretz, the right-wing commentator who has advocated a U.S. military strike on Iran and who is a foreign policy advisor to Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani's presidential campaign, accused the intelligence community of purposefully "leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush."

paul.richter@latimes.com

Aside from Irving Kristol, few of the writers and ideologues associated with neoconservatism can claim as lasting an influence on the political faction as Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary magazine and an adjunct fellow at the rightist Hudson Institute. Under his editorship, which lasted from 1960 to 1995 (he is now editor at large), Commentary became the quintessential mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, serving as a soapbox from which Podhoretz and like-minded writers shaped the contours of what he called the neoconservative "tendency" as it began to emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. From that platform, Podhoretz and others lambasted the anti-war movement, extolled the virtues of military power, attacked "appeasers" like George McGovern, and condemned the supposed amorality of the counterculture and of liberal social policies. Podhoretz also cofounded the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) in the mid-1970s to serve as a pressure group aimed at fighting back the politics of détente with the Soviet Union and championing a fierce anti-communism that became the central theme of the early presidency of Ronald Reagan.

Discussing Podhoretz's influence, Andrew Bacevich writes in his 2005 book The New American Militarism: "Once his own fling with sixties radicalism ended, Podhoretz launched a 'scorched-earth campaign against the New Left and counterculture.' From his editorial command post at Commentary ... Podhoretz did much to create and refine the fiercely combative neoconservative style. That style emphasized not balance (viewed as evidence of timidity) or the careful sifting of evidence (suggesting scholasticism) but the ruthless demolition of any point of view inconsistent with the neoconservative version of truth, typically portrayed as self-evident and beyond dispute" (p. 72).

In his writings, Podhoretz commonly explicated themes associated with neoconservatism, including its constant preoccupation with weakness, the centrality of the Holocaust, the belief in U.S. exceptionalism, and the view that U.S. military force is a unique arbiter of good in global affairs. For Podhoretz, the Vietnam War was the new "Munich"—"the self-evident symbol of a policy that must never be followed again." (Munich is the classic symbol of appeasement because it is where Neville Chamberlain of Britain and other leaders agreed in 1938 to allow Adolf Hitler to take control of land in Czechoslovakia, thus fostering Nazi expansion.) The debacle in Vietnam had resulted in the lessening of the possibility of the United States wielding its military power, a result that Podhoretz considered potentially catastrophic. As he wrote in 1982: "The survival not only of the United States but of free institutions everywhere in the world depends on a resurgence of American power." Thus, he and other neocons in the 1970s, including his wife Midge Decter, struggled to overcome the post-Vietnam "malaise" in U.S. culture, which they thought was expressed in the counterculture and the "appeasement" polices of both the Nixon and Carter presidencies (quotes in this paragraph cited in Bacevich, pp. 74-75).

Podhoretz gained a reputation while at Commentary for overusing Holocaust imagery to describe contemporary events. Remarking on Podhoretz's work, Peter Novick, author of The Holocaust in American Life , writes: "Once one starts using imagery from that most extreme of events, it becomes impossible to say anything moderate, balanced, or nuanced; the very language carries you along to hyperbole ... Anyone who scoffed at the idea that there were dangerous portents in American society had not learned 'the lessons of the Holocaust.'" This preoccupation also found expression in neoconservatives' views on Israel. As Decter once wrote while criticizing politicians whom she felt were not sufficiently supportive of Israel: "In a world full of ambiguities and puzzlements, one thing is absolutely easy both to define and locate: that is the Jewish interest. The continued security—and in those happy places where the term applies, well-being—of the Jews, worldwide, rests with a strong, vital, prosperous, self-confident United States" (cited in Gerson, Neoconservative Vision, p. 165).

Describing the sharp neoconservative reaction to perceived anti-Semitism in the United Nations following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the conservative scholars Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that a consensus gradually emerged among key neoconservatives like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Irving Kristol, and Podhoretz that "America and Israel ... shared a common ideological struggle against common enemies. The 1970s saw the vague consensus of neoconservatism ... wrap itself tightly around the belief that America must have a self-assured and robust elite, which must be willing to employ U.S. power promptly and resolutely, if need be, and prepared to stand up to the USSR along with its anti-American and anti-Semitic allies at the UN and beyond" (Halper and Clarke, America Alone, p. 60).

For Podhoretz and his cohorts, the world is in a constant state of crisis. Living under this constant threat demands a stark choice between "surrender or war," as Podhoretz once wrote when criticizing the Carter administration (cited in Bacevich, p. 77). Near the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, Podhoretz's Commentary continued to warn of impending doom from the Soviets. In 1987, he published an article by Eugene Rostow, which argued: "The Soviet program of indefinite expansion achieved by the aggressive use of force ... [is still] the central problem ... of world politics and American national security." A year later, the French writer Jean-Francois Revel wrote in Commentary that glasnost was a ruse: "It is an instrument through which [Gorbachev] can consolidate his own power by using the press to indict and, little by little, eliminate his predecessors' men" (quotes from Ehrman, p. 175).

With the end of the Cold War, Podhoretz quickly joined forces with a second generation of neoconservatives who began championing a new U.S. interventionist policy, a notion that found preeminent expression in Charles Krauthammer's 1990 Foreign Affairs article, "The Unipolar Moment," which argued that the United States should take advantage of its position as the unique global superpower to impose its priorities across the world. Unlike some of his contemporaries, such as Robert Tucker and Irving Kristol, Podhoretz fully embraced this new campaign, which eventually coalesced around the many ideologues who created the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997. Podhoretz signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, which called for a "Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity" that would ensure "American global leadership." It added: "we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."

After 9/11, Podhoretz became one of the most prominent supporters of the view, initially dreamed up by neoconservative academic Eliot Cohen, that the United States was fighting World War IV. In a 2004 Commentary article, Podhoretz opined: "We are only in the very early stages of what promises to be a very long war, and Iraq is only the second front to have been opened in that war: the second scene, so to speak, of the first act of a five-act play. In World War II and then in World War III [the Cold War], we persisted in spite of impatience, discouragement, and opposition for as long as it took to win, and this is exactly what we have been called upon to do today in World War IV."

He added, employing that old standby of Holocaust imagery: "For today, no less than in those titanic conflicts, we are up against a truly malignant force in radical Islamism and in the states breeding, sheltering, or financing its terrorist armory. This new enemy has already attacked us on our own soil—a feat neither Nazi Germany nor Soviet Russia ever managed to pull off—and openly announces his intention to hit us again, only this time with weapons of infinitely greater and deadlier power than those used on 9/11. His objective is not merely to murder as many of us as possible and to conquer our land. Like the Nazis and Communists before him, he is dedicated to the destruction of everything good for which America stands."

In a 2002 speech at the American Enterprise Institute, Podhoretz borrowed a line from George Kennan's famous 1947 article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which argued for a policy of containing and rolling back the Soviet Union, to describe the war on terror. Replacing the words "Russian-American relations" in the original with "Islamic terrorism," Podhoretz said: " The thoughtful observer of Islamic terrorism will ... experience a certain gratitude for a Providence which, by providing the American people with this implacable challenge, has made their entire security as a nation dependent on their pulling themselves together and accepting the responsibilities of moral and political leadership that history plainly intended them to bear."

Podhoretz is the author of several books, including The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of his Writings from the 1950's through the 1990's (2003); The Prophets: Who They Were, What They Are (2002); My Love Affair with America (2000); Ex-Friends (1999); The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet (1986); Why We Were in Vietnam (1982); Making It (1980); The Present Danger; Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir (1979); and Doings and Undoings: The Fifties and After in American Writing (1966).

Iran halted work toward a nuclear weapon under international scrutiny in 2003 and is unlikely to be able to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb until 2010 to 2015, a U.S. intelligence report says.

A declassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate found with "high confidence" that the Islamic republic stopped an effort to develop nuclear weapons in the fall of 2003.

[...]

But the latest report says Iran -- which declared its ability to produced enriched uranium for a civilian energy program in 2006 -- could reverse that decision and eventually produce a nuclear weapon if it wanted to do so.

Monday's report represents the consensus of U.S. intelligence agencies. It suggests that a combination of "threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressures, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige and goals for regional influence in other ways," could persuade the Iranian leadership to continue its suspension of nuclear weapons research.

Available intelligence suggests the Iranian leadership is guided "by a cost-benefit approach," not a headlong rush to develop a bomb, the report concludes.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has reported that Iran is cooperating with inspectors by providing access to declared nuclear material, documents and facilities. However, the agency also said Iran is withholding information in other areas, and as a result, the IAEA's knowledge about the status of the program is "diminishing."

[...]

U.S. National Security adviser Stephen Hadley expressed hope after Monday's announcement, but he said Iran remains a serious threat.

"The estimate offers grounds for hope that the problem can be solved diplomatically -- without the use of force -- as the administration has been trying to do," Hadley said in a statement.

"But the intelligence also tells us that the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious problem."

The report comes amid widespread accusations that the Bush administration is attempting to maneuver the United States into a conflict with Iran, which it accuses of meddling in the war in Iraq. In October, the United States designated elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as supporters of terrorism.

This will throw some water on the neoconservative march to war.

Remember, the NIE is the consensus of all sixteen intelligence-gathering agencies in the United States government. And, this time around, they've concluded what we Democrats have been saying all along--while Iran is a threat that has to be taken seriously, they aren't an immediate threat that necessitates military action.

In other words, the neoconservatives and the right-wing Republicans are, once again, dead wrong. They've been claiming for months that Iran is relentlessly pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and that the United States needs to attack right now in order to stop it. Remember when Norman Podhoretz---currently one of Giuliani's top foreign policy advisers--sat down with President Bush and told him he had to bomb Iran in order to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons? He and the entire neocon cabal believe war with Iran was the only way to halt their nuclear weapons program--but, just like with Iraq, the fear of imminent danger were unfounded. Iran's nuclear program hasn't been active in years.

Not only that, but the NIE suggests that Iran can be dealt with, that there are other options out there besides isolating and attacking them. Again, Iran does need to be dealt with, and perhaps dealt with harshly. Nobody's saying that. But what we are saying is that we don't need to launch a war against them, and that there's no immediate threat. We have to take action on Iran, but the right-wing threatening and warmongering is the absolute wrong way to go about it. And now we have the entire American intelligence apparatus saying the same thing.

Of course, expect the neocons to attack the messenger--I'm sure they'll attack the intelligence agencies and everyone else who had a hand in putting the NIE together. Hell, they may even bring up the intelligence failures in the run-up to the Iraq war--ignoring the fact that the intelligence agencies did not fail going into Iraq. In fact, they turned up a significant amount of evidence that proved Iraq wasn't a threat and that poked holes in the administration's rationale for war--unfortunately, Bush and his allies cherry-picked the intelligence that supported their view and ignored all the rest. Personally, I doubt that's the case here, for obvious reasons.

But that won't deter the right wing--remember what George W. Bush and the Republican Party taught us: you can never ever admit you're wrong, even if you have to deny reality itself. And deny reality they will.

UPDATE: The NIE is here [PDF]

But, what about the 2005 NIE on Iran? Does this new report contradict that one?

Well, here's a piece from The Washington Post from August, 2005:

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."

The new National Intelligence Estimate includes what the intelligence community views as credible indicators that Iran's military is conducting clandestine work. But the sources said there is no information linking those projects directly to a nuclear weapons program. What is clear is that Iran, mostly through its energy program, is acquiring and mastering technologies that could be diverted to bombmaking.

[...]

The estimate expresses uncertainty about whether Iran's ruling clerics have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said. Still, a senior intelligence official familiar with the findings said that "it is the judgment of the intelligence community that, left to its own devices, Iran is determined to build nuclear weapons."

[...]

The new estimate extends the timeline, judging that Iran will be unlikely to produce a sufficient quantity of highly enriched uranium, the key ingredient for an atomic weapon, before "early to mid-next decade," according to four sources familiar with that finding. The sources said the shift, based on a better understanding of Iran's technical limitations, puts the timeline closer to 2015 and in line with recently revised British and Israeli figures.

The estimate is for acquisition of fissile material, but there is no firm view expressed on whether Iran would be ready by then with an implosion device, sources said.

The timeline is portrayed as a minimum designed to reflect a program moving full speed ahead without major technical obstacles. It does not take into account that Iran has suspended much of its uranium-enrichment work as part of a tenuous deal with Britain, France and Germany. Iran announced yesterday that it intends to resume some of that work if the European talks fall short of expectations.

"If someone has a good idea for a missile program, and he has really good connections, he'll get that program through," said Gordon Oehler, who ran the CIA's nonproliferation center and served as deputy director of the presidential commission on weapons of mass destruction. "But that doesn't mean there is a master plan for a nuclear weapon."

The commission found earlier this year that U.S. intelligence knows "disturbingly little" about Iran, and about North Korea.

[Emphasis Added]

In other words, the 2005 NIE also contradicted the Bush administration's conventional wisdom on Iran--it also reduced the imminence of the Iranian threat, extending the minimum date for Iran to produce a nuclear weapon by at least a decade.

Meanwhile, while Iran had technology and materials (from a civilian nuclear program) that could be put toward a weapon program, there was no evidence that Iran was putting it toward a weapon program, or even that their government had any intention to begin a nuclear weapon program.

So this NIE appears to be a logical extension of the past one, and it appears that our intelligence agencies have gathered enough information to assert that no, Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program right now, and that no, they aren't using the research and materials from their civilian program to produce nuclear bombs.

I just figured I would look at our past assessment and put this into a bit of context--this is now the second NIE in a row to contradict the Bush administration and the Republican Party's rhetoric on Iran. Hopefully this will allow us to make some real progress on dealing with them--if not, the election is now less than a year away.

UPDATE II: Think Progress brings us this eyebrow-raising headline: Hadley: Bush Learned Of NIE’s Findings ‘In The Last Few Months,’ But Continued To Ratchet Up Rhetoric.

QUESTION: Steve, what is the first time the president was given the inkling that something? I’m not clear on this. Was it months ago, when the first information started to become available to intelligence agencies? […]

HADLEY: [W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

UPDATE III: Atrios brings up a good point:

It must be understood that since our intelligence agencies don't believe Iran has a nuclear weapons program, it also means that they don't know where such a program would be physically located if it did exist. This means that any desires of Dick Cheney and his people to bomb Iran simply involve... bombing the shit out of Iran.

FINAL UPDATE: Norman Podhoretz had this to say about the NIE (via Think Progress):

I must confess to suspecting that the intelligence community, having been excoriated for supporting the then universal belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, is now bending over backward to counter what has up to now been a similarly universal view (including as is evident from the 2005 NIE, within the intelligence community itself) that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weapons.

[…]

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations.

So, either the Bush administration ignored the available intelligence in order to push for an unnecessary war with a country that posed no imminent threat to the United States...or the entire U.S. intelligence community is putting America at risk in order to conspire against George W. Bush. Whch do you believe?

And this man is considered by many to be the "godfather" of neoconservatism--which is actually a fitting title considering his overbearingl belligerence, twisting of the truth, craven politicizing and his very, very loose grasp on reality.

Francois Costes

Avant de laisser Nicolas Sarkozy s'emparer de l'Elysée, mes compatriotes auraient dû s'interroger sur ses alliances politiques internationales. Le clown de Neuilly se drape dans un manteau gaulliste, mais c'est un mercenaire de l'empire israélo-américain. En deux mots, il est notre Tony Blair, un homme dangereux qui représente une sérieuse menace pour l'indépendance de la France et de l'Europe. Faudra-t-il le bouter hors du pays ?

[1] SARKOZY AU PAYS D'ARNOLD

"You've got to hand it to Nicolas Sarkozy. He has chutzpah."

Roger Cohen

The New York Times (USA)

13 septembre 2006

En août 2004, un hebdomadaire juif américain publiait un étonnant article sur l'influence croissante du lobby JAZ (Jewish-American-Zionist) sur le territoire français. Parmi les noms de personnalités soutenues par ce lobby ou par ses partenaires dans l'Hexagone figuraient ceux de Nicolas Sarkozy et de Patrick Gaubert (LICRA). L'American Jewish Congress aurait ainsi passé un accord avec l'Union des Patrons et des Professionnels Juifs de France (UPJF), - dont Nicole Guedj fut l'un des fondateurs -, et son président, Hervé Giaoui. Il fournirait à l'UPJF non seulement conseils et formations, mais aussi un soutien financier. De son côté, l'American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) aurait également développé des "relations avec des groupes juifs en France et ailleurs en Europe afin d'encourager un lobbying de style américain". (01)

En avril 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy s'était rendu à Washington à un déjeuner donné en son honneur par l'American Jewish Committee (AJC). Devant les invités de cette organisation sioniste connue pour ses campagnes anti-françaises, notre ministre de l'Intérieur se flattait de son nouveau surnom, "Sarkozy l'Américain". (02) Il déclarait aussi "partager beaucoup de valeurs américaines" et se comparait à Arnold Schwarzenegger, le gouverneur pro-israélien de l'Etat de Californie.

Les premiers contacts officiels entre Sarkozy et l'AJC remonteraient à octobre 2003. Or, l'AJC est un "lobby qui n'est ni juif, ni américain, en ce qu'il ne sert ni les intérêts des Juifs en général, ni ceux des Américains, ni ceux des Américains juifs, mais uniquement la politique de l'axe gouvernemental américano-israélien (...) dont le peuple palestinien est la principale victime". (03) En février 2004, afin de mieux influencer les autorités européennes, l'AJC s'implantait à Bruxelles (Belgique) en créant le Transatlantic Institute dirigé par Emanuele Ottolenghi. Le 14 avril 2005, le directeur exécutif de l'AJC, David Harris, avait accès à la commission des affaires étrangères de l'Assemblée Nationale, un évènement extraordinaire, car les interventions de citoyens américains devant cette instance sont rarissimes. L'AJC a également ses entrées à Sciences Po et s'invite depuis sept ans aux fameux dîners du CRIF, auxquels se presse notre cabinet ministériel pour s'y faire insulter. (04)

En octobre 2004, Sarkozy, cette fois-ci ministre des Finances, entreprenait un second voyage aux Etats-Unis. Il y confortait ses alliances en rencontrant le président de
la Federal Reserve , Alan Greenspan. Et surtout, il déjeunait au Hudson Institute, où s'activent de redoutables néoconservateurs américains comme Robert Kagan, Elliott Abrams, Bill Kristol ou Richard Perle, le "Prince des ténèbres", qui fut avec Paul Wolfowitz et Douglas Feith l'un des principaux responsables de la guerre contre l'Irak déclenchée en mars 2003.

Lors du même séjour, Sarkozy dînait chez le banquier "démocrate" Félix Rohatyn en compagnie du "républicain" Michael Bloomberg, le maire de New York, un financier qui dépense des dizaines de millions de dollars pour ses campagnes municipales et dont les tendances dictatoriales sont dénoncées aussi bien par les manifestants défilant contre la guerre en Irak que par les cyclistes du mouvement Critical Mass. Plus tard, devant les étudiants de l'université de Columbia, un bastion sioniste de Manhattan, Sarkozy se décrivait comme "étranger dans son propre pays". (05)

En septembre 2006, Sarkozy, de nouveau ministre de l'Intérieur, retournait au pays d'Arnold. Accompagné de Pierre Lellouche, il renouait à New York avec Michael Bloomberg. Il rencontrait aussi, dans les salles de notre consulat et à huis clos, les représentants des puissantes organisations juives pro-israéliennes avec lesquels, bien que sans mission officielle du gouvernement français, il discutait très librement de politique étrangère. Le caractère secret de cette rencontre a été confirmé par le plus grand journal sioniste des Etats-Unis, le New York Times : "Lors d'une réunion privée avec plus d'une douzaine de dirigeants juifs qui s'est tenue ce lundi, [Sarkozy] a affirmé que la France n'aurait pas dû attendre si longtemps avant d'engager des troupes au Liban et s'est démarqué de M. Chirac en critiquant le Hezbollah qu'il a qualifié d'organisation 'terroriste', ce qu'a révélé un des participants de manière anonyme car il lui est interdit de dévoiler ce qui s'est passé pendant la rencontre." (06) Pour David Twersky, c'est "la première fois qu'un des principaux candidats à l'Elysée entretient publiquement de telles relations avec la communauté juive américaine". Etaient présents à cette réunion au consulat français Harold Tanner, président de
la Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Israel Singer du World Jewish Congress, Jack Rosen, président de l'American Jewish Congress, ainsi que des officiels de l'American Jewish Committee, de l'UJA et de l'Anti-Defamation League. Grâce aux indiscrétions d'un autre quotidien newyorkais (07), on sait que Sarkozy leur a déclaré : "Je suis l'ami de l'Amérique, je suis l'ami d'Israël". A propos de l'Iran, il a affirmé à son auditoire restreint et en se référant à de prétendues "autorités françaises" que ce pays posséderait des armes nucléaires dans les deux à trois ans et, selon lui, "la seule réponse possible, c'est
la fermeté. Nous devons envisager toutes les options possibles et ne pas nous lier les mains en nous limitant à une seule stratégie. Il faut nous abstenir de prévenir l'Iran des éventuelles actions du monde occidental". Sarkozy promettait alors à ses interlocuteurs que le dossier iranien serait sa "première priorité" s'il était élu président. "Je ne peux accepter un chef d'Etat qui dit vouloir rayer Israël de la carte", aurait-il ajouté. Pour lui, Israël devrait être "plus proactif", car "quand on est petit, il faut être rapide".

Au cours du même voyage et toujours officiellement en visite privée, Sarkozy faisait à Washington un discours attaquant la politique étrangère de Jacques Chirac et s'affirmait, encore une fois, proche d'Israël. Il déjeunait ensuite avec Michael Chertoff, avant d'aller, en compagnie de Cécilia Sarkozy et du député UMP Pierre Lellouche, serrer la main du président George Bush, - "un évènement exceptionnel pour un simple ministre" précisait le New York Times : "Selon l'entourage du ministre français, le président Bush avait pris connaissance du discours prononcé, le matin, par M. Sarkozy devant
la French American Foundation. Une intervention aimable pour les Etats-Unis, mais moins pour le Quai d'Orsay, qui a paru visé. Après avoir rappelé le contentieux transatlantique de 2003 sur l'Irak, M. Sarkozy a plaidé pour 'l'efficacité de la modestie' face à une 'France arrogante'. (...) Sur l'Iran, le ministre de l'intérieur a été très ferme. A un moment où mêm