Empty Handed?

Are the IAEA inspectors going to leave Syria empty-handed?

U.N. nuclear investigators will wrap up a four-day visit to Syria on Wednesday, but, thus far, there has been absolutely no indication that they've even managed to scratch the surface of the mystery surrounding a remote Syrian building bombed by Israel in September.

U.S. officials and - off the record - Israel, claim it was a plutonium-producing reactor in the works.

Syrian authorities, who have fervently denied the allegations, have shrouded the visit by International Atomic Energy Agency visit in secrecy. No great surprise: It could well determine the fate of Damascus on the international stage.

There wasn't even official confirmation that IAEA chief inspector Olli Heinonen and his aids were in the country, as the government banned all Arab and foreign journalists from obtaining entry visas.

Just one privately owned daily, Al-Watan - which, like all Syrian media, is close to the government - made any mention of the inspection mission by the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Al-Watan only carried a commentary published by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, highlighting Syria's strong denial of ever possessing a reactor.

A senior diplomat familiar with the Vienna-based IAEA said the visit by the three senior inspectors, which included a trip to the al-Kibar site flattened by Israeli war planes, went "well," but he declined to elaborate.

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IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei said last week there was no evidence that Syria had the skills or fuel to run a major nuclear complex. Syria's only declared nuclear facility is an ageing research reactor long under the watchful eye of IAEA monitors.

Under its inspection agreement with the IAEA, Damascus has an obligation to report nuclear projects at the planning stage. Israel refuses to sign the agreement.

Analysts believe Damascus opened its doors to the inspectors in hopes of preventing Iran-like global sanctions, and keeping up dramatic diplomatic gains that have come from a recent thawing of relations between Damascus and the West.

Good luck selling that to the wingnuts. The same is true of Iran--it's difficult to say whether or not they'll ever come close to building a nuclear weapon because they don't have the resources to get them over the top--as in, the skills and the fuel to run a large enough operation to make a run at it. In the rush to drop bombs and start a war, is there anyone left who has the credibility to explain the contingencies to the American people? Or are we going to be bullshitted and told a bunch of lies over and over again?

Someone Help Mr. Bolton From the Stage...

Sheer ridiculous wankery from John Bolton...

I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

It's hard to count just how many ways that Bolton is wrong when he speaks like this in public. No credible news organization should look to him for analysis or commentary, at least not the ones who value what they put out as far as content is concerned. Bolton reads and sounds like the last Neocon standing, a relic of 2003 that simply can't find anyone to take him seriously anymore.

His statement is wrong on so many different levels--but yes, it would technically be true to say that many Arab nations would like to see Israel "disarm" Iran and "destroy their nuclear weapons capability." Except that there are a whole host of other reasons they would be horrified and would react accordingly against it--namely, I don't think OPEC would sit there and do nothing. I don't think Jordan and Syria would allow their airspace to be used for any kind of overflight, at least not without serious protest or military force. The fledgling Iraqi government would likely collapse into hysterics over such a thing.

Does anyone seriously think Israel could do such a thing? Well, no, because, for starters, Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons capability--hence, the disconnect in Bolton's logic. He knows they don't have one, but he cannot make his case if he has to sit there and patiently explain just how far away they are from having one. They have a series of initiatives and programs headed in that direction, and there's a good chance they could get there in five to ten years with a massive effort and an influx of money, and with support and technology they don't currently possess. However, there are at least a handful of other nations around the world that you could say the same thing about. But no one talks about Algeria or Taiwan like this, do they? No one talks about the fact that Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Spain, Romania, or South Korea could probably beat the Iranians in the race to get a weapon if they put forth that same herculean effort. How seriously do you take a country like Iran when they're largely incapable of doing anything other than talking and repressing their own people?

So we're to believe that Arab countries would celebrate an aggressive projection of Israeli military force into a distant country, one that "succeeded" in destroying dozens of facilities, and left Iran defenseless? Because in order for Israel to destroy Iran's nuclear program, it would involve sending thousands and thousands of sorties over hostile territory into hostile territory, it would involve systematically destroying the Iranian air defense systems which use some fairly modern SAMs and SAM systems, and it would take months. Months of attacks, months of assessing damage, and months of determining what the end state of the situation was. As in, did we get it all? Did we get everything?

All while expecting Iran to do nothing in response to this.

Last time I looked into this, Iran was a founding member OPEC. They're not the end all, be all, but they're part of an organization which is running the table right now on energy prices. When was the last time anyone stood up and said, "you know, Iran is part of OPEC." Why do we never hear anyone point that out? We hear the likes of Bolton, we hear the proxies and the shills, and they always conveniently fail to point out that Iran is a member of OPEC.

So is Bolton being ridiculous? Yes, of course. Should Israel do nothing? Of course not--but how do you explain this to the Neocons? They're not totally wiped out, unfortunately. They're like the last shithouse rat looking to bite someone just to see if they can still pull it off.

Until we are rid of them, we are cursed with their presence in the media.

--WS

Michael Gerson Tries to Lecture Us All on Decency

Michael Gerson pretends that what Al Franken has written is obscene, when, in fact, we think the real obscenities have been carried out by the Bush Administration. But what do we know?

In the razor-close and nationally important Senate race in Minnesota, Republican incumbent Norm Coleman is presented with a unique political problem. Should he raise in his ads the issue of comedian Al Franken's offensive vulgarity? Or would this risk a backlash against Coleman for coarsening the public conversation? Remember that when Ken Starr detailed Bill Clinton's most repulsive antics -- stained dresses and such -- it was Starr who was accused of sexual obsessiveness.

Franken's defenders explain that his edginess is the result of being a "satirist" -- a term he embraces. "My work, dare I say, is provocative, touching and funny," Franken has explained. "It sounds immodest, but I now have a brand name in political satire."

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Our popular culture, of course, violates even these expansive boundaries of tastelessness with regularity. We laugh at comedies featuring the C-word and at cartoons of foul-mouthed third-graders. In the cause of relevance and realism, our common life is already decorated with excrement. Why should political discourse be any different?

For at least one reason: Because vulgarity is often the opposite of civility. This is not, of course, always true. I know a brilliant and large-hearted academic with roots in south Philly who uses the F-word with the frequency of "like" or "and." But the vulgarity of "The Jerry Springer Show" or misogynous rap music -- the cultural equivalents of Franken's political "satire" -- generally expresses contempt and cruelty. Franken is not content to disagree with Karl Rove; he calls him "human filth." He is not satisfied to criticize Ari Fleischer; Franken terms him a "chimp." The objects of Franken's humor -- including political opponents and women -- are not merely mocked but dehumanized. His trashiness is also nastiness. Rather than lampooning the emptiness and viciousness of our political discourse -- a proper role for satire -- Franken has powerfully reinforced those failures.

Some institutions must be more than a mirror to our culture, including families, religious communities and government. At its best, politics can offer examples of civility and generosity that challenge selfishness and prejudice -- the tradition so far embraced by both John McCain and Barack Obama. At the very least, politics should not actively push our culture toward vulgarity and viciousness. This is not prudery; it is a practical concern for the cooperation and mutual respect necessary in a functioning democracy. And it is hard to believe those causes would be served by a Sen. Franken.

Where to begin?

First of all, Gerson warns the readers of the Washington Post that they may need to remain close to their fainting couches if they dare read his column today. It never ceases to amaze me--when someone writes this:

Warning: The following contains extreme vulgarity by a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

--you're not actually expecting the reader to put the paper down and flee the premises. You're expecting their eyes to bulge and their blood pressure to rise as they devour every word.

As Dick Cheney himself might say, "Go Fuck Yourself."

Second of all, Gerson relies almost entirely on quotes from a rather bland and unfunny piece Franken wrote for Playboy--a piece that is heavy on the naughty talk and light on substance. But here's what I want to know--who the hell is stupid enough to think you can pick up an issue of Playboy and NOT find something naughty and prurient and inappropriate for kids? I mean--common sense here. It would be news if everything in it were wholesome and appropriate for Mrs. Gerson's idiot kid Michael.

Third, Gerson comes off as a wet blanket. Has he actually lived in this country as an adult? What's obscene to him is bland and pedestrian to the rest of us.

Gerson reveals his ignorance of the culture in more ways than are possible. Al Franken is a long shot to win a Senate Seat in Minnesota because of the simple fact that people there got tired of the celebrity/politician freak show, thanks to the likes of James Janos, a man so enamored of himself he couldn't serve as the Governor without using a fake name. The state that sent Hubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstone and Walter Mondale to serve in the US Senate has sent some lightweights and idealogues in recent years--most notably the "one and done" Mark Dayton and the wingnut TV announcer Rod Grams. Norm Coleman is merely the latest in a long line of lightweights, but he'll probably keep his job if he can continue to run from the policies of the Bush Administration.

Franken's problem is that he hasn't lived in the state as much as he probably needed to in order to build up legitimacy. What he needs to do is emphasize his intelligence, his grasp of the issues, and his dedication to public service. On the basis of his efforts to participate in the United Service Organization (USO) shows alone, he would definitely get my vote. He needs to run ads showing him on USO tours and he needs to run as someone who will end the war, bring the troops back home, and represent the state effectively.

Gerson's lack of understanding of the background of Al Franken is striking. Franken, at one time, was writing jokes for some of the most popular comedians in the country and his work was universally accepted into the culture, no rejected by it. The inherent crudity of the 1970s is well understood by anyone who lived during that time. Gerson, having been born in 1964, missed entirely what it was like to be Al Franken--someone who was living and working as a comedy writer in New York City in the late 1970s and was on television every week.

There's no way Gerson--who claims that Jimmy Carter was his childhood political hero--can understand that it was Al Franken's job to feed Dan Ackroyd lines on a weekly basis to mock Jimmy Carter in front of millions of people.

Franken went on to write books, movies, and appear regularly on television. Franken is merely getting the same out-of-context treatment that James Webb received when he was running for the Senate in Virginia. When voters were exposed to snippets of Webb's work, they were supposed to be outraged and reject him. When it was understood that Webb was a writer of substance and merit, and that his body of work was serious and literary in nature, they didn't fall for the trick. Franken has excellent work in his background--notably, the acclaimed film When a Man Loves a Woman and a whole host of biting pieces of satire. He can be described as an artist with a varied background, and the Playboy article he wrote that Gerson cites is merely a tiny fraction of his work and doesn't rate as one of his better pieces.

There's also no way that Gerson can get away with criticizing Al Franken on what he wrote without being criticized himself for coining the term "the soft bigotry of low expectations" and labeling Iran, Iraq and North Korea the "Axis of Evil" and for this statement:

Gerson proposed the use of a "smoking gun/mushroom cloud" metaphor during a September 5, 2002 meeting of the White House Iraq Group, in an effort to sell the American public on the supposed nuclear dangers posed by Saddam Hussein. According to Newsweek columnist Michael Isikoff, "The original plan had been to place it in an upcoming presidential speech, but WHIG members fancied it so much that when the Times reporters contacted the White House to talk about their upcoming piece [about aluminum tubes], one of them leaked Gerson's phrase — and the administration would soon make maximum use of it.

Now THAT'S an obscenity. Don't let your kids read that.

Pumping up the specter of the bogeyman

As they jockey for position heading into the general election, McCain and Obama are both guilty of overstating any "threat" posed by Iran.

On the campaign trail, both of them are guilty of taking a little bit of known information and blowing it up to ominous proportions. I expect fearmongering and lying from McCain - he's a warmongering old republican fuckhead. But Obama? I have standards where Democrats are concerned, and if he wants to bear the standard for me, and a whole bunch of other people who know what the fuck is going on, he needs to get some fact-checkers on the job and stop asserting facts not in evidence.

What has me pitching this bi-partisan hissy-fit so early on a Tuesday morning, you ask? For starters, it pisses me off to hear people who know better - or should, at least - assert as fact the unsubstantiated allegation that Iran is, without a doubt, developing nuclear weapons.

It gives me pause. Have they even bothered to look at the public record? Or are they both selectively, yet deliberately, dishonest?

Given the Iraq fiasco and the way we were lied into it, I am in no mood to brook any foolishness or abide any willful and deliberate distortion of fact when they turn their sights on Iran.

We all know that where Iran is concerned, every word out of McCain's mouth is distorted, including "and" "the" and "of." His speech to AIPAC yesterday was unwatchable, so palpable was the bloodlust. This does not surprise me.

But when Obama says "Iran is stronger now than when George Bush took office. And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons," I call bullshit.

And so does McClatchy.

The 16 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community said last November in an unclassified National Intelligence Estimate that it concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had halted an effort to develop a nuclear weapon in fall 2003.

A senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said that U.S. intelligence agencies stuck by the NIE's judgment of "moderate confidence" that Iran hadn't reactivated the alleged effort.

There is no evidence that Iran is pursuing the ends that American politicians accuse them of, and Obama plays into the hands of the republican AIPAC fluffers and warmongering chickenhawks when he cedes them even an inch and repeats even watered down versions of their lies.