Don't ever expect Russia to cut us an inch of slack

"At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred." Patrick J. Buchanan

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One of the strangest things that has happened to me since September 11th, 2001, is finding myself agreeing so often with paleo-conservative, Pat Buchanan. I don't agree with him on one single domestic policy issue that I can think of, but on foreign policy I find him strangely sound... and the quote above, totally.

The way the United States treated Russia at the collapse of the Soviet Union will haunt America for decades. It is without a doubt the stupidest, most frivolous, mistake in our history. It even dwarfs the invasion of Iraq for destructive idiocy. The answer to the question as to why and to whose benefit all this was done is another one for "future Chinese historians" to settle.

We are beginning to harvest the bitter crop sown then. Vladimir Putin went to Tehran to be photographed with Ahmadinejad in the middle of a US diplomatic offensive to isolate Iran… in order to isolate the United States.

It is important to realize that most countries rich in natural resources were formerly ruled by a collection of ex-colonial masters that now calls itself the European Union. It was their natural wealth that caused them to lose their independence in the first place. So it is difficult for them to see that the plans America has for democratizing them are any other than a modern version of the “mission civilisatrice” or “white man’s burden” of former days. Most countries that are rich in natural resources are much more afraid of the USA than they are of Iran.

When Americans defend their sovereignty, it is called "patriotism", when others do; it is called "nationalism". Around the world countries that have nothing more in common than the desire to maintain their sovereignty in the face of US destabilization are banding together: Witness the unlikely alliance of Iran and Venezuela. By standing up to America on the Iranian question, Russia shows resource rich, third world countries that it is protecting their sovereignty. In doing so Russia greatly enhances its own prestige in countries that own oil, natural gas and strategic minerals, commodities whose prices are rising steadily.

Putin’s Russia thus becomes the defender of nationalist sovereignty against internationalist subversion. This is a total role reversal of the cold war, where the Soviet Union tried to change other countries’ political systems by subversion or military action and the US was seen by nationalists as a barrier against Soviet subversion. It is noteworthy that the Latin American military officers that once vigorously persecuted “Marxist Internationalism” now have no problem supporting present day leftist governments that seek to maintain national sovereignty in the face of "Capitalist Internationalism". (read globalization)

I agree with my "guru", William Pfaff when he says, “the serious danger today to America is its pseudo-Marxist ideology of aggressive world security hegemony.” Putin, judoka that he is, is exploiting America's use of its power to rebuild Russia's own power and thus her sovereignty, a sovereignty that was itself seriously threatened by the United States during the Yeltsin period. DS

Patrick J. Buchanan: Who Restarted the Cold War?
Abstract: "Putin's Hostile Course," the lead editorial in The Washington Times of Oct. 18, began thus: "Russian President Vladimir Putin's invitation to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit Moscow is just the latest sign that, more than 16 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, Moscow is gravitating toward Cold War behavior.(...) "(A)t virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests."(...) Missing from the prosecution's case, however, was the motive. Why has Putin's Russia turned hostile? Why is Putin mending fences with China, Iran and Syria? Why is Putin sending Bear bombers to the edge of American airspace? Why has Russia turned against America? For Putin's approval rating is three times that of George Bush. Who restarted the Cold War?(...) Russia let the Berlin Wall be torn down and its satellite states be voted or thrown out of power across Eastern Europe. Russia agreed to pull the Red Army all the way back inside its border. Russia agreed to let the Soviet Union dissolve into 15 nations. The Communist Party agreed to share power and let itself be voted out. Russia embraced freedom and American-style capitalism, and invited Americans in to show them how it was done. Russia did not use its veto in the Security Council to block the U.S. war to drive Saddam Hussein, an ally, out of Kuwait. When 9-11 struck, Putin gave his blessing to U.S. troops using former republics as bases for the U.S. invasion. What was Moscow's reward for its pro-America policy? The United States began moving NATO into Eastern Europe and then into former Soviet republics. Six ex-Warsaw Pact nations are now NATO allies, as are three ex-republics of the Soviet Union. NATO expansionists have not given up on bringing Ukraine, united to Russia for centuries, or Georgia, Stalin's birthplace, into NATO.(...) While Moscow removed its military bases from Cuba and all over the Third World, we have sought permanent military bases in Russia's backyard of Central Asia.(...) Under presidents Clinton and Bush, the United States financed a pipeline for Caspian Sea oil to transit Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Black Sea and Turkey, cutting Russia out of the action. With the end of the Cold War, the KGB was abolished and the Comintern disappeared. But the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and other Cold War agencies, funded with tens of millions in tax-exempt and tax dollars, engineered the ouster of pro-Russian regimes in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia, and sought the ouster of the regime in Minsk. At the Cold War's end, the United States was given one of the great opportunities of history: to embrace Russia, largest nation on earth, as partner, friend, ally. Our mutual interests meshed almost perfectly. There was no ideological, territorial, historic or economic quarrel between us, once communist ideology was interred. We blew it. We moved NATO onto Russia's front porch, ignored her valid interests and concerns, and, with our "indispensable-nation" arrogance, treated her as a defeated power, as France treated Weimar Germany after Versailles. READ IT ALL

What is Iran up to?

Iranian Revolutionary Guards

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The United States is making a great effort to intimidate Iran, militarily, economically and diplomatically. Demonstrations of Bush's "resolve" have taken place in the United Nations and also militarily, as the article I include from Debka indicates.

Obviously the Iranians, by the simple and cheap expedient of capturing 15 British sailors show the world they are not intimidated. Is this a miscalculation? Should they be intimidated?

What would happen if, as the Debka article suggests, the United States finally did attack Iran? Would that be a disaster for Iran? For some Iranians, yes of course it would, but for others it may in fact be the desired result.

If Iran were attacked it would in one stroke finish off any "reform" movement and permit the hardliners to purge all dissenters. In the patriotic fervor that would follow any attack on Iran by foreigners, the faction Ahmadinejad represents would be consolidated for a generation.

What about Iran's atomic program?

An attack might set the atomic program back by several years. Wouldn't that be a major defeat for Iran? ...What if Iran's atomic bomb was nothing more than the cheese in the mousetrap?

Perhaps what is really at stake is Iran's credibility among the world's Muslim masses. Never forget that the only Arab government with any democratic legitimacy is Hamas of Palestine. The moderate Arab governments that the US considers its allies are despised by most of their subjects because of their closeness to the "Zionists and Crusaders".

Any attack on Iran that didn't result in "regime change" would be seen as ineffectual. If Iran is finally attacked by the USA and Israel and is still standing after the attack, then, just as happened with Hezbollah last summer, they will be heroes to Muslims all over the world... and not just Muslims, their prestige in all the the third world would be immense. "Moderate" Arab governments that were seen to be collaborating with the USA in clear benefit to Israel might never live it down.

So perhaps, the United States is walking into yet another trap. DS

Huge US naval maneuvers off the coast of Iran - Debka

Abstract: More than 10,000 US personnel, two aircraft carriers and 100 warplanes begin biggest simulated demonstration of force in Gulf since the 2003 invasion of Iraq(...) military sources note that the exercise was launched March 27 the day before the Arab League summit opens in Riyadh, to demonstrate the Bush administration’s determination not to let Iran block the Strait of Hormuz to oil exports from the Persian Gulf, or continue its nuclear program. Taking part are the USS Stennis and USS Eisenhower strike forces. With Iran’s Revolutionary Guards one week into their marine maneuvers, military tensions in the Gulf region are skyrocketing and boosting world oil prices. Intelligence sources in Moscow claim to have information that a US strike against Iranian nuclear installations has been scheduled for April 6 at 0040 hours. The Russian sources say the US operation, code-named “Bite,” will last no more than 12 hours and consist of missile and aerial strikes devastating enough to set Tehran’s nuclear program several years back. The maneuver also occurs four days after 14 British seamen and one crew-woman were seized by an Iranian Revolutionary Guards warship, with no sign that their release is imminent. READ IT ALL

Iran/Israel: the war of nerves

"It's startling to talk to people who say they are actually losing sleep over when the Iranians will attack," says one Israeli businessman. In a country constantly attuned to the emergence of threats, the intention of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to "wipe Israel off the map" - whether or not his comments have been mistranslated or misinterpreted, as Tehran claims - are not easily dismissed.

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The paragraph above, taken from the Financial Times, sums up neatly what is really going on. Iran is "psyching" Israel out: Ahmadinejad is talking trash and the Israelis are beginning to freak out. As Jacques Chirac said (before he backtracked) the chances of an Iranian atomic first-strike on Israel are negligible. Given Israel's second strike capability, the Iranians are not about to commit suicide. What has the Israelis sweating bullets is the idea that the Iranians themselves would have a second strike capability. This is not really about Israel's physical survival, it is about Israel's nerve. Can the Israelis live with the idea that a hostile power exists in striking distance from them, that cannot be intimidated beyond a certain point?

News Links readers will be familiar with my idea that Israel has become a country whose prosperity overly depends on small group of engineers and scientists who are the backbone (and the ribs and the hands and the feet) of the "New", science based, economy. These people and their jobs are by definition relocatable and outsource-able. If the kitchen gets too hot, none of these people would have any problem leaving. They could all have new jobs in hours, anywhere on earth. If that happened the Israeli economy would simply collapse. The social tensions would be unbearable.

By basing Israel's economy on these scientists and engineers, and the volatile venture capital that pays for their projects, the Israelis have potentially recreated a class of human being that Zionism was intended to specifically eliminate: the "Der Vanderner Yid" or Wandering Jew. Israel may turn out to be the world's biggest victim of the New Economy. DS

America and Israel wary as war drums beat - Financial Times
Abstract: Although a large number of military analysts in the US argue that strikes against Iran's scattered, buried and hidden nuclear facilities do not make sense and would most likely result in serious retaliation, they also concede that this might not stop President George W. Bush. "The 'making sense' filter was not applied for over four years for Iraq and it is unlikely to be applied in evaluating whether to attack Iran," Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel and planning expert, wrote for the Century Foundation, a think-tank. In fact, he says, military operations have already begun, citing reports that US and Israeli commandos started penetrating Iran in 2004 and that covert aid has been supplied to anti-regime militants.That Iran heads up Washington's list of international threats is due in part to Israel's relentless diplomacy on the issue. The Islamic Republic has been at the top of Israel's strategic agenda since long before the war in Iraq. In recent months, however, the spectre of a nuclear Iran has turned these long-standing concerns into a national obsession. "It's startling to talk to people who say they are actually losing sleep over when the Iranians will attack," says one Israeli businessman. In a country constantly attuned to the emergence of threats, the intention of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad to "wipe Israel off the map" - whether or not his comments have been mistranslated or misinterpreted, as Tehran claims - are not easily dismissed. As the threat posed by the Palestinian uprising has receded, Israelis have turned their attention to external dangers, particularly after a Lebanon war that delivered a smarting blow to the concept of Israeli deterrence. READ IT ALL

Iran outfoxes Israel, Blair and Bush

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Today, Tony Blair is calling on "moderate" Arab (read Sunni) Muslim states to form an "alliance of moderation" to counter Iran's growing influence. Blair, who will soon be out of power, may have his eye as firmly fixed on his future lecture fees as on any plausible "peace plan". His anti-Iran alliance is certainly another dog that won't hunt. Blair's idea is to isolate Shiite Iran from its Sunni neighbors. By chance this is more or less Al Qaeda's program too. Ahmadinejad's maneuvering is calculated to avoid such isolation. None of the Sunni regimes has anything like Iran's democratic legitimacy (Ahmadinejad just lost a local election: dictators don't ever lose elections) and the "Arab street" of the "moderate" Sunni regimes is restless. Ahmadinejad's stunts like the Jew-baiting "Holocaust Conference" and Iran's support of Hezbollah resistance to Israel's invasion of Lebanon and Hamas's stoicism in Gaza, all of which Muslims seem to find thrilling and heroic, are an effective insurance policy against just the sort of alliance that Blair is proposing. The Sunni Arab Street would only see their rulers as dropping their trousers one more time for the "Jews and Crusaders". The way tempers are rising this could easily cost them their jobs and even their and their families lives. Also Ahmadinejad by his provocations has forced Israel into a historic error that may cost them the whole "atomic" game itself. By publicly admitting that Israel has the atomic bomb, following US Secretary of Defense Robert Gate's similar revelation, Israeli PM Olmert has cut the legal ground and the international legitimacy out from underneath the planned UN sanctions of Iran. If the Tehran "Holocaust Conference" was planned in order to provoke the Israelis into some stupid mistake, it has been successful beyond its wildest dreams. "I would suggest that all those who want to talk about the issue, for God's sake and for the sake of Israel's security, stop it," said the Israeli Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer. The doomsday climate thickens as Bush seems to have his 'mind" set on one last "grand offensive" in Iraq, which military experts fear may, in true Stalingrad fashion, be the definitive disaster. DS

Ahmadinejad: why does he do it?

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Why did Ahmadinejad organize the Holocaust "conference"? The short answer is because he can and to prove that he can and that nobody can do anything about it. The United States is tied in a knot in Iraq, if it attacks Iran, the beleaguered US army could be cut off from its supply lines and a blocking of the Persian Gulf would mean that America's entire position in the Middle East could collapse in a matter of days and with it... perhaps the world economy. Russia is supplying Iran with advanced antiaircraft missiles that would make that attack itself very costly and Russia and China will not hear of stiff UN sanctions. Why the Holocaust? The Holocaust is the greatest of all western taboos. To relativise its horror is to be struck dead by lightining on the spot. Ahmadinejad, like most Muslims, believes that the United States government is run by "the Jews". By flagrantly breaking the greatest of all western taboos he is rubbing the United State's nose in its own mess. This is what it means to be defeated. Ahmadinejad is clearly sending a message to the "west". The message is, "y'all can kiss my ass". Message received. DS

Blair and Ahmadinejad: the pot calling the kettle black- Steve Bell - Guardian

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Ahmadinejad is the new P.T. Barnum

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Gideon Rachman writes in his first class blog in the Financial Times, "Mr. Ahmadinejad is a rather sinister figure. Or a complete clown." Sinister he may be, but in my opinion, crazy he isn't. What Ahmadinejad is doing by publicity stunts like the "cartoon contest" and the "Holocaust conference", with its endless shocking headlines and photo-ops with rabbis included, is to get lots of media exposure for the central idea he is peddling, which is the question: "Why should the Palestinians be the ones to pay the price for Europe's persecution of the Jews?" The idea that the Holocaust has been thus hijacked has quite a lot of resonance in the 3rd world and even among westerners who don't question in any way the tragic reality of the Holocaust itself. Drilling by repetition the idea that the Holocaust is merely being used to justify the suppression of the Palestinians and that this misappropriation is central to Israeli hasbara or PR machinery. Ahmadinejad is successfully using the headline hungry western media as a sounding box to propagate and repeat the question over and over again. The bait has been taken hook line and sinker. As P.T. Barnum said, "there is one born every minute". DS

Bush the great surrealist - Niall Ferguson - Los Angeles Times

premonitions of civil war - Salvador Dali

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Niall Ferguson is an unapologetic imperialist and certainly very conservative, closer to a 'vieux-con' than a neocon. He is however a man of interesting insights such as the following, "The great category error of our time is to equate radical Islamism with fascism. If you actually read what Osama bin Laden says, it's clearly Lenin plus the Koran. It's internationalist, revolutionary, and anticapitalist-rhetoric far more of the left than of the right. And radical Islamism is good at recruiting within our society, within western society generally. In western Europe, to an extent people underestimate here, the appeal of radical Islamism extends beyond Muslim communities.", which is one of the most intelligent things I've ever read about bin Laden and Islam's future in the west. For his unabashed advocation of imperialism, Ferguson, a professor at Harvard and Cambridge, was once a favorite of the neocons. One can see in this article from the Los Angeles Times, that he is washing his hands of them and all who sail in them. He also takes the lead in discovering the Surrealist vein of Bush.The idea is beginning to take hold that Bush like Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny" is not in his right mind, is a danger to the ship and must be relieved of command. Those Americans who have always laughed patronizingly at Latin America's military coups are in a position to finally understand how their seeds take root when systemic, political, decadence reigns. DS
Abstract: In Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five," the hero has a hallucination — or, perhaps, a vision. A veteran of the strategic bombing of Germany, he turns on his television to be confronted by the uncanny spectacle of history played in reverse. American planes fly backward over Germany, sucking the bombs upward and miraculously extinguishing the flames sweeping through Dresden.(...) I wonder if a similar vision has flickered tantalizingly through the mind of the Iraq Study Group's James A. Baker III: a vision of the Iraq war in reverse. American soldiers, some dead, some maimed, would pick themselves up from the dust of Mesopotamia. Iraqi insurgents would suck the rocket-propelled grenades out of the American Humvees and allow them to reverse all the way back to their bases. Saddam Hussein would be freed from jail, then taken to a hole in the ground where his beard would withdraw back into his chin. After a while, all the Americans would gather in Baghdad and cheer as a statue of Hussein was put back on a plinth. Symbolically, a Stars and Stripes flag would be used to unveil it. As a parting act of philanthropy, U.S. planes would suck dangerous explosives out of Iraqi power stations, ridding the country of the only weapons of mass destruction that were ever there. Unfortunately, time's arrow travels in only one direction, though its precise arc can never be predicted. We are where we are, and there is no going back.(...) On Thursday, Bush struck again. "This business about graceful exit," he told reporters, "just simply has no realism to it at all." Yes, to hell with realism. As for talking to the Iranians (another study group priority). to hell with that too. "Iraqis are plenty capable of running their own business," the president declared, "and they don't need foreign interference from neighbors that will be destabilizing the country." Just in case Baker missed that, the president threatened Tehran with "isolation" if it does not abandon its nuclear program. Only one man in the world can outdo Bush when he is in this kind of Dali-esque form — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Connoisseurs of his surrealist style were given a treat last week in the form of a letter from Ahmadinejad "To the American People."(...) When confronted with such master practitioners of the politics of surrealism, it's hard to know how far back you'd have to go to sort this whole mess out. To find a credible Iraqi prime minister, I'd say you'd need to rewind the tape to 2004, when the opportunity was missed to crush Sadr's Mahdi army. To get to the last credible American president, you'd need to get to 2000. and give the election to Gore. But to find an Iranian leader who wasn't a dangerous fanatic? All the way back to 1979, before the revolution, I fear. Yes, it's been a pretty long road to this slaughterhouse. But, as Vonnegut says, so it goes. READ IT ALL

Patsy Kline was "Crazy", not Ahmadinejad

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I've had a complaint from one of my far flung readers because I referred to Iran's letter writing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "crazy". What I meant, dear reader, was that if an American politician were to say something as perfectly reasonable as, "Would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people? As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness," everybody would surely think he was nuts and his political career would be terminated forthwith. So, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and that makes Ahmadinejad nuts. Sorry. DS

Ahmadinejad: Crazy!!!

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Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a terrible, terrible man and obviously insane. I have taken the liberty of underlining some of the crazier things this loon wrote in his absurd letter to the "Noble Americans" (doesn't that just sound like Borat?). I wonder what would happen if any American politician said any of these dreadful, insane things. DS

Abstract from Associated Press: In an open letter, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged the American people Wednesday to demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq and reject what he called the US government's "blind support" for Israel and its "illegal and immoral" actions in fighting terrorism.(...) "Undoubtedly, the American people are not satisfied with this behavior and they showed their discontent in the recent elections," Ahmadinejad wrote. "I hope that in the wake of the mid-term elections, the administration of President Bush will have heard and will heed the message of the American people." In a message to Democrats, he said, "you will also be held to account by the people and by history." "If the US government meets the current domestic and external challenges with an approach based on truth and justice, it can remedy some of the past afflictions and alleviate some of the global resentment and hatred of America," Ahmadinejad said.(...) In Wednesday's letter, he said, "we, like you, are aggrieved by the ever-worsening pain and misery of the Palestinian people" and accused the Bush administration of disregarding public opinion by remaining "in the forefront of supporting the trampling of the rights of the Palestinian people." "What has blind support for the Zionists by the US administration brought for the American people?" Ahmadinejad asked. "It is regrettable that for the US administration, the interests of these occupiers supersedes the interests of the American people and of the other nations of the world." He urged Americans to support the right of the Palestinians to live in their own homeland.(...) Ahmadinejad said in Wednesday's letter that the US invasion of Iraq, while overthrowing Saddam Hussein which people "are happy about," has led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, an exponential growth of terrorism, and no rebuilding of Iraq's ruined infrastructure. "I consider it extremely unlikely that you, the American people, consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from your treasury for this military misadventure," he said. "Now that Iraq has a constitution and an independent assembly and government, would it not be more beneficial to bring the US officers and soldiers home, and to spend the astronomical US military expenditures in Iraq for the welfare and prosperity of the American people?" Ahmadinejad asked. "As you know very well, many victims of Katrina continue to suffer, and countless Americans continue to live in poverty and homelessness." READ IT ALL

Olmert's drums of war - Aluf Benn - Haaretz

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The flow of play in the Middle East is running strongly against Israel at this moment. Bush and Blair are a pair of stumbling lame ducks and Iran is taking the diplomatic initiative. Spain, France and Italy have troops on the ground in Lebanon and thus the EU really has its "foot in the door" in the Middle East for the first time. When a game of chess or checkers is going badly sometimes the loser will knock over the table to halt the game and re-arrange the pieces more to his liking. That is the danger now. DS

Abstract: In his address to the General Assembly of the Jewish Communities of North America in Los Angeles earlier this week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made it clear that Israel and Iran were headed down a road of confrontation. It is hard to interpret his message any differently: "We have reached the pivotal moment of truth regarding Iran... Our integrity will remain intact only if we prevent Iran's devious goals, not if we try our best but fail."(...) The problem is that the international community hears the threats of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to destroy Israel, and his declarations that Iran will soon celebrate "the manifestation of its nuclear right," and is not really bothered. Members of the UN Security Council are still talking about imposing ridiculous sanctions that will have little effect on Iran, and an international military operation against the Iranian nuclear installations is highly unrealistic. The Democrat's victory in midterm elections in the United States also lessened the likelihood that Bush will bomb Iran. Israel, it seems, is facing Ahmadinejad alone. Olmert stepped up his attacks on Iran's nuclear program without consulting any professionals. His declarations last month have broken his "low profile" policy on Iran that Israel adopted in its effort to present Tehran's bomb as an international problem. As late as last month, Olmert held talks in Israel on the Iranian nuclear program, and decided to stick with the low-profile approach. So what happened to change his position? "A weak prime minister who is dropping in the opinion polls suddenly found himself faced with Benjamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and Effi Eitam, who are politicizing the issue, and with a public that does not have faith in the prime minister due to his lack of security experience," senior officials in Jerusalem explained. (...)Therein lies Olmert's problem: After he made his bold statements, Netanyahu's warnings that Israel is faced with a situation similar to that faced by European Jewry when threatened by Hitler in 1938, and Shimon Peres' description of Ahmadinejad as "a Farsi-speaking Hitler," the moment of truth for Israel's political leadership is nearing. The public will justifiably want to know what has been done to prevent the threat to its existence posed by Iran, and to stop the possible mass exodus of Jews from Israel, as described by Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh. Domestic pressure calling for military action will intensify. However, experts on strategy have voiced doubts regarding Israel's ability to carry out an effective aerial attack on Iran's nuclear installations, similar to the raid that destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981.(...) The U.S. forces in the region could become targets of Iranian retaliation, just like Israel, and therefore there is no way that an independent Israeli action can take place without authorization from Bush. Did Olmert get such a go-ahead and is this why he was pleased with his visit to the White House?(...) The challenge Olmert has set for himself is not a simple one. But the more his warnings intensify, the more difficult he will find it to back down and convince the public that we can live with an Iranian bomb. Therefore, we can assume that the confrontation is moving closer. READ IT ALL

Iran to host Iraq security talks - BBC News

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Things are moving fast now. Diplomatically this is the equivalent of a bank failure. You may have seen pictures where the depositors form long lines in the street hoping to retrieve some small fraction of their life savings. The only thing crueler than America's ongoing humiliation in the Middle East is the endless and needless suffering of the people of Iraq. DS

Abstract: Iraq's President Jalal Talabani has accepted an invitation from his Iranian counterpart to discuss ways of tackling the violence in Iraq. Mr Talabani's office said he would meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on Saturday. Some reports say Syria's President Bashar al-Assad may attend. The US has given a guarded response to the prospect of the talks in Tehran. The Iraqi government has also said Syria and Iraq are planning to restore full diplomatic ties, cut in 1982.(...) Analysts say the US government has been more amenable to regional diplomacy since heavy losses for President George W Bush in 7 November mid-term elections. However, Washington gave a cautious response to the news of Mr Talabani's trip to Tehran. READ IT ALL