Iran and da Bush

Let's start here. About a week ago, Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, told Fox News that President Bush may attack Iran if he thinks it likely that Obama will be elected to the Oval Office.

A few days ago, DownWithTyranny headlined a post this way: "The White House No-Brain Trust sets its beady eyes on an even excellenter adventure in Iran."

That was followed by a quote from Seymour Hersh's "Preparing the Battlefield," which appeared in the July 7 and 14 New Yorker:

"Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country's religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwaza Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program."

This congressional funding was granted "Despite warnings from the military and a National Intelligence Estimate 'that concluded that Iran had halted its work on nuclear weapons in 2003.'"

DownWithTyranny pulled more from RawStory, including the fact that "precious little detail was provided in the 'presidential finding.' Some congressional leaders were upset about that, but as Hersh said, "not enough to derail the plans."

It further appears that attempts are being made by the Bush administration to keep secret as much of this as possible. And, in the words of DWT, "It's hard not to imagine as well that that dribbling psychopath 'Big Dick' Cheney, thinking he's oh so smart, is doing the same thing he did with the gathering and analysis of intelligence to make sure he could have his war in Iraq: diverting as much of our covert activity as possible away from that damned CIA to people he can control better, as long as those CIA people keep sassing him about something they keep calling 'reality,' and refuse to see the world the demented way his diseased brain does."


So, we are engaging in covert ops in Iran to destabilize the religious (which is to say, the only) leadership, but which may be simply the lead-in to a military attack!

But maybe everyone isn't on board with Bomber-Bush and his friends. Again, Seymour Hersh reported this from a Democratic senator (unidentified):

"Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. ... Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preemptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, 'We'll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.' Gate's comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates answer, the senator told me, was 'Let's just say that I'm speaking for myself.' (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he had discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator's characterization.)"

At least one congressman came to his/her senses, suddenly developed a brain and part of a spine and "wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that 'no lethal action, period' had been authorized within Iran's borders. As of June, he had received no answer."

Who is running this country? The most depressing thing is that we cannot depend upon the Democrats in Congress to do their duty. The system is supposed to work this way, according to TChris at talkleft.com:

"Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees -- the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed."

So, despite the warnings of our intelligence services that Iran has dropped its nuclear weapons program and despite there being no evidence to the contrary, our Congressional leaders have cowardly given up their authority and secretly authorized Bush to expand covert activities directed toward Iran which may well be a prelude to a military strike!

These Democrats -- Harry Reid (Senate Majority Leader), Nancy Pelosi (Speaker of the House), John D. Rockefeller IV (Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee), and Silvestre Reyes (chair of the House Intelligence Committee) "have failed to provide oversight of the funds they delegated to covert operations."

This is very serious, because as TChris says, "There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing."

Maybe McCain was not kidding when he said, "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran."