The Iran Elections and its aftermath have little to do with the elections itself. It boils down to oil.
Because in most Middle East states, power grows out of the barrel of a gun and out of a barrel of oil — and that combination is very hard to overthrow.
Oil is a key reason that democracy has had such a hard time emerging in the Middle East, except in one of the few states with no oil: Lebanon. Because once kings and dictators seize power, they can entrench themselves, not only by imprisoning their foes and killing their enemies, but by buying off their people and using oil wealth to build huge internal security apparatuses.
There is only one precedent for an oil-funded autocrat in the Middle East being toppled by a people’s revolution, not by a military coup, and that was in … Iran.
How did Iraq turn out, Ehud?
Read more. Had Bush II done what everyone told him, he would have forced Sharon to sit down and make peace with Palestinians… once Palestine would have been established, the ire of the Arab Street would have dissipated, and Iraq would have been forced to focus on getting its standing in the world community back. Iran would have largely been less influential than it is today.
Because of Bush’s incompetence, none of that happened, it is Israel that is now alienated… not even the US can come to her rescue… and Iran’s role is greater than ever, with a Shia block having been propped up in Iran-Iraq-Lebanon.
God bless YouTube for exposing this witch:
From Bloomberg:
Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000 vowing to destroy Russia’s oligarchs “as a class.” Within two years, he’d driven two into exile and imprisoned another.
Now, he may use the global markets meltdown to finish the job.
The $50 billion that the prime minister and President Dmitry Medvedev have pledged to lend cash-strapped companies will extend state control over business leaders. Billionaires seeking bailouts — including Oleg Deripaska, Russia’s richest man, and Mikhail Fridman — will have to give authorities veto power over their companies’ financing decisions.
From Peter Bergen:
Lost in this discussion [of the surge] was the fact that while the surge of some 30,000 American soldiers certainly put more American boots on the ground in neighborhoods from Anbar province to Baghdad to “clear, hold and build” them and was clearly an important element in the sharp decline in violence in the country, there are several other key underlying factors that tamped down the mayhem in Iraq that neither of the candidates addressed:
• First, the appearance in 2006 of the various “Awakening” movements, in which Sunni tribes once allied with al Qaeda turned against it.
• Second, the implementation of the Sons of Iraq program consisting of some 100,000 Sunni militants, many of whom used to be shooting at American soldiers, who are now on the U.S. payroll. Now that’s a surge!
• Third, the previous ethnic cleansings in Iraq and the millions of Iraqi refugees who have fled their homes, meaning there are fewer potential targets of sectarian violence.
• Fourth, the large size and increasing efficacy of the Iraqi army and police, some 550,000 strong, who are now beginning to operate with some level of professionalism.
• Fifth, the increasingly nonsectarian approach of Nuri al-Maliki, the Shia prime minister, who has taken on Shiite militias in Basra and Sadr City, an important signal that the government will act in something like the national interest.
• Sixth, the cease-fires ordered in the past year or so by the leader of those Shia militants, the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose position in Iraq has weakened significantly since 2007.
These underlying factors made the surge a force multiplier for the fragile peace we are seeing today in Iraq.
And now that the surge is over, it is those factors that might ensure that the fragile peace holds, yet neither Obama nor McCain discussed how these factors might change their own Iraq policies going forward.
A missed opportunity in the debate was also to hear from each candidate some specifics about his plans for the size of the future U.S. military presence in Iraq.
McCain, who once famously said that the United States could be in Iraq for a century if American troops weren’t being injured or killed there, never explained in the debate how he plans to ramp up significantly the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan — something he has promised to do, at the same time that he continues to favor a continuing substantial U.S. presence in Iraq.
As Obama noted during the debate, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, has said that given the present commitments in Iraq, it is just not possible to now send thousands more American soldiers to Afghanistan.
For his part, Obama was not asked about the specifics of his plan to withdraw from Iraq in 2010 yet at the same time maintain what he has frequently termed a “residual force” there that would handle key missions such as counterterrorism.
According to military officials I have spoken to, such a residual force tasked with counterterrorism, intelligence gathering on the ground, providing tactical support to Iraqi military operations and protecting U.S. facilities such as the largest American embassy in the world would consist of four to eight brigades.
Depending on the exact size of those brigades, that could mean up to 40,000 American soldiers based in Iraq for many years to come. For obvious reasons Obama has never spelled out what he estimates his residual force in Iraq would look like, as to do so would alienate the liberal, Moveon.org wing of his party, which is laboring under the delusion that come 2010, if Obama is in the White House, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq.
Obama was on firm ground when he attributed the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan to the diversion of American resources to Iraq. This is uncontroversial.
The initial U.S. deployment to Afghanistan was the smallest peacekeeping force, per capita, that America has sent anywhere since World War II, while a RAND study found that, “Afghanistan has received the least amount of resources out of any major American-led nation-building operation over the last 60 years.”
And today, there are four times more U.S. soldiers in Iraq than in Afghanistan, a country that is significantly larger in terms of both size and population.
via CNN.
From The Nation:
Myth 1. It’s a dangerous world. We face an array of serious national security threats that require an experienced Commander in Chief.
Myth 2. The surge has worked. To withdraw from Iraq now would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and embolden Islamic extremists.
Myth 3. We cannot allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists. We therefore must redouble our military efforts there or face another terrorist attack.
Myth 4. Iran is responsible for much of the violence against US forces in Iraq; by using its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, it threatens to dominate the Middle East.
Myth 5. To talk to the leaders of “rogue” states like Iran and Cuba without conditions legitimizes their position and weakens American leverage.
Myth 6. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is an authoritarian state pursuing an anti-American agenda aimed at reconstituting the Soviet Union in the form of a new Russian empire.
Myth 7. Because the American military is stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must increase the size of our conventional armed forces.
Myth 8. A League of Democracies would create a global coalition for peace and freedom and would enable the United States and its democratic allies to intervene to solve humanitarian and other crises when the UN Security Council is paralyzed.
Myth 9. Globalization has strengthened the economy, and we cannot avoid it by hiding behind protectionist walls.
Myth 10. The world needs American leadership.
Interesting myths, no? To find out more about why they are myths, click and read The Nation:
Madness I tell you:
Quoting senior diplomatic sources, Britain’s The Guardian said Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert raised the issue with Mr Bush during his visit to Israel for the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state’s founding.
In a one-to-one meeting on May 14, Mr Bush told the Israeli leader he would not support such a strike because of fears of retaliation, possibly on US targets in Iraq and Afghanistan, and concerns that the Israelis would fail to disable Iran’s nuclear facilities anyway, it said.
Mr Bush’s refusal to support an attack, and the strong suggestion he would not change his mind, is likely to end speculation that Washington could be preparing an “October surprise” before the US presidential election.
Some analysts have argued Mr Bush would back an Israeli attack in an effort to help Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign by creating an eve-of-poll security crisis.
The Guardian reported that Mr Bush’s refusal to support such a strike appeared to be based on two factors.
One was US concern over Iran’s likely retaliation, which would probably include a wave of attacks on US military and other personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan and on shipping in the Persian Gulf.
The other was US anxiety that Israel would not succeed in disabling Iran’s nuclear facilities in a single assault, even with the use of dozens of aircraft. It could not mount a series of attacks over several days without risking full-scale war. So the benefits would not outweigh the costs.
Iran has repeatedly warned it would retaliate with force against any attack. Some Western government analysts believe this could include asking Lebanon’s Shia movement Hezbollah to strike at the US.
Wow. Destroying America for Iraq was clearly not enough. Read more.
Russia’s naval fleet is lining up alongside Syrian waters, to both defend Syria and block off any Israeli jets flying towards Iran. More here and here, via WRH:
The Russians are making clear their intentions of using the large Russian naval presence in Tartus as a deterrent to Israeli air strikes against Syria using the powerful anti-air missiles on-board the Russian naval warships. These missile systems can sweep the sky over most of Syria and knock down Israeli F-15 and F-16 fighters. This changes the balance of power in the air over Syria.
(…)
Ten Russian warships have been deployed at the Syrian port of Tartus based on an accord reached by the two sides after the August south Caucases conflict.
Rear Admiral Andrei Baranov, head of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s operations directorate, said Friday the Russian engineering crew was at Tartus to expand the capacity of the harbor to host additional fleet vessels.
The teams will also be working on expanding Latakia, another Syrian port, possibly for aircraft carriers or guided missile cruisers, said Baranov.
When Israel egged on the USA to attack Iraq, it was hoping that the new American-installed puppet regime in Iraq would open up the Haifa-Mosul oil pipeline. It was also doing it to use Iraqi airspace to strike Iran. But now that the clueless and myopic neoconservatives managed to remove Sunni leader Saddam Hussein and replace him with a Shiite leadership loyal to Iran, using Iraqi airspace won’t be a “slam dunk”.
This is why Russia’s decision to shore up Syrian waters and create a buffer against Israeli missiles and places is a big deal. You might want to look at a map to understand why this is a big deal:
You know the warmongers in Washington DC are throwing around chairs. The only way now would be to fly north, via Turkey… which is not an obvious bet either. This might explain why in addition to having forces in Afghanistan, the US is now making forays into Pakistan.
Washington Post’s latest article takes Governor Palin to task for inflating Alaska - and her own - contribution to the US’ energy landscape.
The woman touted by John McCain as the most knowledgeable person in America on energy issues has been having a lot of trouble getting her basic energy statistics straight. Last week, Sarah Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that her state, Alaska, produced “nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.” On Monday, she told a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., that she had been responsible for overseeing “nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas.” Both claims are way off.
THE FACTS
While Alaska is a leading producer of crude oil, it produces relatively little natural gas, hardly any coal and no nuclear power. Its share of oil production has been declining sharply, and the state now ranks lower than Texas and Louisiana. Alaska is the ninth-largest energy supplier in the United States, accounting for a modest 3.5 percent share of the nation’s total energy production.
After nonpartisan Factcheck.org pointed out Palin’s error in her interview with Gibson, the governor revised her statement somewhat, limiting it to oil and gas. But data compiled by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) contradict her claim that she oversees “nearly 20 percent” of oil and gas production in the country. According to authoritative EIA data, Alaska accounted for 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production in 2005.
It is not even correct for Palin to claim that her state is responsible for “nearly 20 percent” of U.S. oil production. Oil production has fallen sharply in Alaska during her governorship. The state’s share of total U.S. oil production fell from 18 percent in 2005 to 13 percent this year, according to the EIA.
The McCain-Palin campaign did not respond to a request for an explanation.
THE PINOCCHIO TEST
The Republican vice presidential nominee continues to peddle bogus statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers.
Source. Yes people, the lies continue… Why, from Republicans themselves:
While the media is slowly starting to call the McCain campaign on their dishonest tactics, McCain’s staff boasts that they don’t care. As a McCain spokesman told the Politico, “We’re running a campaign to win. And we’re not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.”
Enough said!
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