ALAN COLMES (co-host): Well, Democrats liken Limbaugh's comments to the [Gen. David] Petraeus-MoveOn.org ad and the heat some of them got for not condemning the advertisement.
I can hardly say that I've met a comparable occasion on which to have taken greater pride as an American, particularly in light of Abu Ghraib, than recently, watching YouTube posts of Iraq Veterans Against The War, better known as IVAW. To put it plainly, those guys rock.
Every morning, or most every, recently, I see their bus at Union Station and its accompanying logo, " Don't Attack Iran." I posted a similar sentiment regarding what appeared to be at the time an imminent Iranian invasion, perhaps hatched by that famous fascist swine warmonger Richard Armitage, on my blog here some time ago, regarding the Natanz Reactor and nuclear safety in general. TroopsOutNow.org reports that half of the U.S. Navy is currently situated in the Persian Gulf, poised for an attack on Iran, with some 1200 targets in hand.
I see the bus from where I usually drink coffee, on the steps of my favorite, if inoperational, fountain, and of course, I know that IVAW, namely in the person of Adam Kokesh, a former Marine, is on the hill to lobby on behalf of its primary constituency - the troops.
The other notables, at least with which I've become familiar are Liam Madden, Eli Israel and Jeff ...
I suppose that for those of us who were and have been opposed to the Iraqi invasion, the question of an Iranian invasion is a no-brainer. Given the state of the housing market - a veritable bubble - the Pentagon could ill-afford, at this time, to accelerate the level of risk that 9/11 and Iraq have already introduced to the global economy, with further destabilization of petroleum markets, which, being largely speculative, invariably translate into higher gas prices and a deceleration of consumption, which drives the economy.
That's a purely economic conjecture. But not one that's inseparable from its redeeming likeness in the form of the political economy. In other words, how susceptible is an economy to politics, in this case, the popularity of a war throughout the world ? What sort of future consequences might Americans encounter as a result of this invasion and a persistant occupation that has, by most accounts, served only to further destabilize the Middle East, geopolitically.
The scenario should have been ideal: a Shiite Iraqi leader and a Shiite Iranian president. Cooperation, in a way that could not have transpired under Saddam, would be immanent. The Sunnis and Shiites at peace would set in motion a wave of peace that would bring peace to the broader Middle East. But now Bush doesn't like Ahmadinejad. So, first it was Saddam, whom the Pentagon claims engaged in some sort of assassination plot directed at Bush 41, and now its Ahmadinejad. But let us not forget the suspect nature, at this juncture, of the Pentagon's credibility, particularly with Blackwater on trial and what appears to be an attempt by the Pentagon to implicate the State Department.
Clearly the Pentagon was wrong about Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction and to most Americans, it is therein that the problem lies. Not only will the Pentagon admit its mistake, it refuses to correct the mistake by ending an occupation that is quite literally and obviously exacerbating a civil war in Iraq. the growing consensus in the Middle East has long been, at least over the past 3 years, that, with major combat operations having ended in 2004, America should depart Iraq. The majority of Americans agree. It's a civil war, but not our civil war, perhaps inevitable post-Saddam, but arguably avoidable, with avoidability being one of the central tenets of the Powell Doctrine, and arguably the result of a mistake, presumably in the person of Curveball, whose flawed intelligence ends up in a State of the Union address, to the bewilderment of the CIA, which claims that other witnesses, namely Sabri, were much more skeptical of Saddam's WOMD capabilties, but that their reports on the matter, dating back to 2002, had been systematically altered.
So, what we're talking about here is the runup to war. Clearly the Pentagon has marketed the war. There's an air of sensationalism about modern warfare ( The Economist ) dating back to the first Iraqi invasion, initiated by Bush 41, who made enemies at the Pentagon for both his perceived unwillingness to send tanks of Somalia and his failure to depose Saddam in 1991. So for the 12 years leading up to this second Iraqi invasion, the Pentagon has been in War-Marketing-Demonize-then-Depose-Evil-Dictator mode. Noam Chomsky, particularly during Vietnam, called it the Manufacture of Consent.
But now there's a new evil dictator to demonize: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, once Mayor of Tehran and former Civil Engineering professor, with a specialization in structural dynamics, which, like once-counterpart, Saddam, we should all be sure either does or will somehow implicate him in 9/11. Trust me, he knew where the critical struts were. As an engineer myself, I actively encourage every engineer, including President Ahmadinejad, to study the collapse of the towers and to openly discuss, as Rosie O'Donnell tried to do, prior to being randomly removed from The View, to openly discuss the various elements of the collapse that one might find to be counterintuitive. I grant you, Mahmoud has denied both the Holocaust and the existence of homosexuality in Iran, the latter of which should come as a real shock when most Iranians have never even read a Playboy. I'm not necessarily suggesting that a sexually repressed society such as the one Iran is perceived to be automatically guarantees a higher rate of homosexuality, but it certainly does appear to lend itself amicably to the phenomenon of denial, an affliction which Mahmoud appears to be suffering in the aggregate across a range of issues.
I grant you also that Mahmoud is not, and thus should not be expected to be, Salman Rushdie. If he was, he would likely have been expelled by now. A westernized metrosexual leader, he's not, which is what The White House appears to want. So why don't we invade Iran; excuse me, why don't we liberate Iran. Why ? Because like Mahmoud, the White House is living in a State of Denial, which, by the way, happens to also be the title of a book written by Bob Woodward.
