This is getting too cozy for comfort...

Let me point out my prejudices right up front.

I am the ultimate cold-war brat. When a teacher asked if anyone knew what the Great Plains were, my hand shot up and I answered "The F-14's!" I was still my Dad's dependent when I married my husband on a Saturday afternoon, and by the end of the following week, we were living atop 18 10-megaton Titan II ICBMs, and would live with those massive killing machines until the last one was pulled out of the ground. The first decade of our marriage, we both did our part to complete the SAC mission and win the Cold War.

The thing is, I never really thought it was "won" in the traditional sense, because George H.W. didn't get together with the top commie and sign a treaty ending it all. Hell, I have always thought the end of the Cold War was less of a sure thing than the Korean armistice. The Soviet Union simply collapsed, but the same people were still running things, they just weren't encumbered by the party any longer, and criminal enterprises - never in danger of extinction in Russia - has flourished. I have never trusted our former adversaries, and thought the administration was beyond stupid to underestimate Putin and the Russian inclination to empire.

So this stuff disturbs me...

Remember that two weeks ago, Putin made a "Nixon goes to China" trip to Tehran, the first Kremlin leader to visit Iran since 1943. That trip took place just days after he snubbed and mocked Condi Rice and Bob Gates when they went to Moscow.

Well, as I type another Russian potentate is in Tehran. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, while in the neighborhood on a visit to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, popped in on Ahmadinejad for tea. A spokesman said the impromptu visit was to discuss Iran's nuclear activities as well as bilateral ties between the two nations.

After the visit by Putin, Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Laranjani (who resigned last week over differences with Ahmadinejad) said that the Russian leader had delivered a proposal to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that represented a new approach to the current nuclear standoff with the Bush administration. Neither the Russians not the Iranians were willing to divulge details of the proposal, but the Iranian side was said to be studying it.

State-run television and news agencies quoted Ayatollah Khamenei at the time as telling Putin, "We will think about what you said and about your proposal," even as he added that Iran was "determined to provide our country's need for nuclear energy."

In the ever-escalating one-upsmanship that the aWol bush maladministration mistakes for foreign policy, unilateral sanctions against Iran were imposed last week in a feeble attempt to punish Iran for their nuclear program, and accusing the Revolutionary Guard of illegally spreading WMDs. Iran seemed to brush off the administrations latest hissy-fit.

Putin reportedly mocked the move, and news agencies quoted him as saying "Why worsen the situation by threatening sanctions and bring it to a dead end?"

In the meantime, I am viewing this new "BFF" status that the Iranians and Russians seem to be with a wary eye. We have been down this path before with the proxy wars between the two superpowers. They facilitated the deaths of 58,000 Americans in Vietnam, and the United States backed the Mujihideen fighters in Afghanistan, who killed approximately 15,000 Red Army soldiers.

I do not believe that the recent muscle-flexing by Russia is just that. I think the messages are quite clear. The world is realigning along an energy axis. Iran and Russia have it, and we need it. But so does China, and they can pay for it with the intrest we pay them on the debt accumulated to finance aWol Bush's vanity war!

Thanks to the arrogance, ignorance, jingoism and hubris of this administration, American influence has been drastically undermined and American interests have been compromised. Perhaps to a point they can't be repaired.

This one is for posterity and the "missing the point" chronicles

I wish the rest of the world would stop with setting their locks alight over Iran and nukes. Nukes aren’t chocolate chip cookies. Development takes time. Here is how Iran is going to work, if George doesn’t lose what’s left of his mind: Nukes will take longer to develop than the Bush administration can possibly last. As soon as there is a sane American president, the Mullahs will ditch Ahmedinejad and the overtures will start. Given the amount of time it takes to develop nukes, the least-bad option is to let the Iranians proceed. Not ideal, certainly nothing I would have settled for seven years ago, back when we had a President and a functioning State Department, but to the extent that George Bush has fucked up his Middle-East wet-dream, it’s probably the best we can hope for. Sorry 'bout the reality.

Now – If you want to get nervous about something, I have something for you to think about that ought to shrivel your nut-sack. China is expanding it’s Navy. Right now, I do not consider China an imminent threat militarily (economically is another story) because they don’t have any functioning modern aircraft carriers. They have two floating dilapidated recruiting centers and military themed amusement parks, purchased from the remnants of the Red Navy.

If that changes, teach the kids Mandarin.

I would guess that the Chinese will have carrier groups five full years before the Iranians can possibly have nukes. Aircraft carriers are one of the three things that define a superpower. A blue-water, high-seas navy is the other prong of a superpower, and China already has nuclear weapons, and they are holding the note on a lot of foreign debt, giving them nearly unchecked economic power, far more economic power than they would need to qualify. (In fact, economically, China is in what is know as "the Catbirds Seat.")

Rear Admiral James Kelly, the commander of US naval forces in Japan, said the strategic shift would see China developing a "blue water navy" capable of projecting Chinese power well beyond its shores.

He said the shift had become apparent in October last year when a Chinese submarine surfaced near a US carrier group in international waters off Japan.

Kelly was speaking in the Australian capital, Canberra, where he is on a visit to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea in World War II.

Commenting on the expansion of Chinese naval power her said there was a heightened need for transparency between the world's navies "so we don't have a misinterpretation of something out on the high seas."

I don’t just find this news troubling. I mean, I find it extremely troubling. But I find the fact that the national security beat isn’t reporting this and I have to go to the international press to get real information even more troubling.

Those who control the flow of information are missing the lede all over the place these days. They ignore the compromised state of national security – in favor of titillation and fear.

If you think the DC Madam story is about sex, and that an Iranian nuke is the biggest threat we face…well…I’m not sure I even know where to start with your education. Both are mere distractions from the real story that is being ignored in favor of massages and mythical mushroom clouds.