Will Bush Exploit Crisis to Impose Martial Law?

This article explores the possibility. It's chilling. Sometimes, just bringing out the possibility helps deflate it. The points made here are worth thinking about.

Israel Invades Lebanon 2006: Was It Cheney's Practice Drill for Iran?

Remember 2006, when Israeli bombers decimated the Beirut airport, along with a significant number of innocent civilians - men, women, children, the elderly - while Condi Rice played Head Cheerleader? Remember the news coverage that wept at an Israeli woman's shattered nerves and dented car, but barely managed a quick pan of the human debacle, the decimated infrastructure, the wailing mothers, the dead children, that was on the ground in Lebanon? Remember how Hezbollah brought the Mighty Israeli Military Machine of Legends Past to its knees? Remember how the Middle East saw Nasrallah as a hero conquering the oppressors who kill thousands because of two?

No wonder the U.S. was whistling Dixie and looking in the other direction... it was their idea! With friends like that.... what was Israel thinking??? And guess who was the sinister mastermind behind the carnage? Who else? The ominous Dick Cheney...well, sort of, as an enabler.

Adding to the growing list of war crimes committed by Dick Cheney is a report by Sy Hersh that Cheney actually planned the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He also considers it "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack" on Iran. Ominous times, these...

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive.

Glad to hear someone of Sy Hersh's stature noticed!

The Bush Administration ... was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks.President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to Hersh, a middle east expert stated:

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Note the pattern: YOU WILL BE A DEMOCRACY. But not until we demolish you first! It's crush and convert, the new Holy War, a right-wing "love-fest", sort of like their own Woodstock, except instead of rapes and orgies with women, they assault whole nations, especially middle eastern nations, whom they learned they can call "terrorist" and get away with murder... literally! Instead of drugs, they have Rovespeak, always the perfect way to disconnect reality and "turn on, tune out, drop the opposition off", preferably at the morgue.

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.”

And who else but Israel could do it? Not that Israel minded being the "workhorse" for Bushco's military designs, of course. Now, to be fair to ol' Cheney, the idea to bomb Lebanon was Israel's brainchild, and they actively pursued U.S. involvement. And they were also pretty cool with the idea of bombing Iran, an idea both parties cling to (along with their guns, presumably) to this very day. In spite of all evidence that both ideas are really bad news:

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”...If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

Yes, it succeeded to unite the population - Shi'a, of course, but also Sunni, Christian, Druze, and others - against Israel, and in a sense, also the United States, whose pretend non-chalant "Infrastructure? What infrastructure? Civilians? What civilians? Invasion? what invasion?" didn't exactly win friends. Except among the Saudi royals and their ilk, and apparently among Sunni anti-Shia extremists in - who else? - Al-Qaeda. Both of them were remarkably friendly and sympathetic with the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as were their websites and spokespersons. Guess it's times like these that let you know who your real friends are.

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

Yes, Cheney may not have come up with the idea of invading Lebanon, but he was one of its most passionate cheerleaders. Same is true of the always almost-impending invasion - and an air war against Iran IS an invasion - of Iran. Let's hope he's far, far away from the Oval Office before that debacle and its horrendous consequences could ever get off the ground.

Isn't it time to bury Cheney's crazy, security-bashing ideas and elect someone who won't "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"???

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

MUST READ THIS - use link above (click title)

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American
military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US
presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details
of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive
political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US
troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis
and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the
Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

Wow! Rumsfeld on Tape Says Americans Need "Another 9-11" To Get Them On the "Right" Track

Conspiracy Theorists, rejoice! Harry Reid and Joe Biden, here's vindication! After the Republican Revolution fizzled in 2006, Secy of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is caught on tape saying:

This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in
five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not
surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same
thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I
suppose, is an attack.

Which means, of course, another 9/11... Jason Linkins reports here on Huffpost:

An ongoing exploration of the documents related to the Pentagon's "message
force multipliers" program has unearthed a clip of former Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into
Congressional power, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack, and
doing so in the presence of the very same military analysts who went on to
provide commentary and analysis of the Iraq War.
As documented by Newsvine, it all went down at a valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld
hosted for those analysts on December 12, 2006.

The comments from Newsvine also reveal:

...while the USA is involved in asymmetric warfare, we can't lose
militarily--but we can't win militarily, either.

and this gem, where an analyst says to Rumsfeld:

Iraq needs a Syngman Rhee. Rhee, if you are unaware, was the ruthless authoritarian dictator of South Korea from after World War II through the Korean War to 1960. Yeah, he was a son of @!$%#, but he was our son of a @!$%#, to borrow a phrase Franklin Roosevelt said of Somoza. Well, well, well. So much for "democracy," huh? But the special treat in this little clip--before Rumsfeld wistfully closes by bemoaning the fact that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki is "no Syngman Rhee"--is the way Rumsfeld utterly trashes Maliki's predecessor Ibrahim al-Jaafari,
calling him a "wind sock."

And it goes on:

The kicker in this clip is at the very end where he insults the American people
for "weakened will" as he praises the Iraqi insurgents for being a "hellava lot
more skillful" at influencing the American public than is the Bush
Administration.

This is the perfect description of the Republican concept of "influence" and "argument": it's all about the military solution.

Now will someone ever proclaim loudly that it takes a helluva lot more taxes and spends a helluva lot more government money and makes a helluva Bigger Government to solve everything by war and by promoting "security" via more guns, less education, less health care, less social investment, less diplomacy??? So who's about lying, taxing, spending ... and killing? It feeds into the conspiracy theory that 9-11 was a plot to get people to follow the Republican line.

That may be absurd, but everything's possible when there's no conscience evident. And where is it? Where's the conscience?