Taki I think your hatred of Bush has warped your judgement like a moonbat. You are factually wrong on almost every count.

To wit:

1. Most governments including the Saudis thought Saddam had chemical and other weapons. He’d had a long history of having them and using them, and had been caught cheating on that, nukes, ballistic missiles since the 1991 Cease-fire. No “deal” could be made with the guy because he kept cheating.

If Jordan, the Saudis, the UN, even the French thought Saddam had WMDs (which might have been shipped to Syria, or back to Russia, or simply buried) then how could the US Intel actually “know” he didn’t? Intel on Saddam was a black box, essentially.

2. The old anti-semitic charge of dual loyalty echoes what Lefties like Fonda, Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and Howard Dean’s lunatics say. The worst thing I can about your comments is that they could have been lifted word-for-word from Daily Kos or ANSWER.

3. America’s security is not going to be attained by moonbat efforts ala Fonda to get “loved.” Being “respected” has about as much to do with America’s security as Shaq’s ability to do calculus in his head has to do with playing Center in the NBA.

4. The US as the engine of Globalization has been identified by Islamists from Al Qaeda to Iran as a mortal threat to Islam and the Islamic community. The idea of blue jeans, music, and personal freedom is simply incompatible with the vision of society that Khomeni or Qutb have. Conflict is inevitable and must be managed to the advantage of the US since no “deal” can be struck. The US merely existing threatens Islam.

5. This is an old struggle, and continuation of what Washington to Jefferson faced. It’s easier and cheaper at first to pay off the terrorists or Barbary Pirates, and that’s what the US did until the costs consumed 20% of the Federal Budget.

6. Iran is a mortal threat to the US, has been since 1979 when Jimmy Carter cowardly quivered in fear of doing anything about the act of war (invading our Embassy). Our continued weakness and appeasement of this enemy like the Barbary Pirates has only emboldened them. From Reagan’s half-baked Iran-Contra idiocy after Iranian Beirut barracks bombings to Clinton’s suppression of Iran’s orchestration (so says his own appointee, Louis J. Freeh, former FBI Director) in Khobar Towers, we have responded to Iranian acts of war with cowering cowardice. Inviting only more attacks. Such as Iranian supply of advanced weapons to the militias and jihadis killing Americans, and kidnapping and killing our troops. Weakness invites more aggression.

7. Nuclear technology is 62 years old, well understood, as are ballistic missiles. North Korean, Pakistani, and Chinese technical assistance make this more akin to setting up a semiconductor fabrication plant in Malaysia than anything else. Difficult and expensive but not prohibitively so when you sit on a sea of oil.

8. Iran’s ambitions (US out of the ME, Iran reconstituting the Persian Empire under Shia Islamist guise) can ONLY be accomplished by nukes, and makes WAR with the US as inevitable as it was with Japan in the late thirties. Everyone can see the US has only two choices, both of which suck.

*Surrender and run away from the ME, in the hope that Iran will hit us last with their (eventual) ICBMs.

*Fight on the most favorable terms to defeat Iran before it goes nuclear.

Either way we will have War.

That Bush is incompetent and a fool however does not change this.

[Iranians going back to Khomeni and including the “moderate” Rafsanjani have said Iran can destroy Israel because of their larger population and willingness to be martyred. Considering the Basij—hundreds of thousands of young boys as young as 8 being sent against Iraq as human minesweepers; I’d take past Iranian actions as making this threat very credible indeed. A regime that would sacrifice so many boys still playing with toys to clear mines would not shirk from nuking Israel knowing at least half of Iran would die.]

Jim, death is certain. War does not have to be. Fear of attack, such as you describe it is a fearful and alarmist point of view. It is also a strategic choice that projects you, as well as this country, on a weakened trajectory.

Jim Rockford,
if we wanted the same old tired propaganda we wouldn’t be on Taki’s website, we could easily turn to any television station and consume your lies.

And note sir- at no time did Taki declare any NeoCon to have “dual loyalties” as none do.

Their loyalty IS TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL*.

I guess you didn’t read what Taki wrote, you just saw the topic and cut-n-paste some boilerplate, hoping someone, anyone, on this site, would be dumb enough to buy it.

You were wrong.
*alone

I hope this new venture, welcome in itself, does not signify any schism with Patrick Buchanan and “The American Conservative”.

Iran is a mortal threat to the US

Laughable. People like you desperately *want* a mortal enemy to exist,
because it allows you to dominate the political agenda with your military
fantasies. And after all who doesn’t want to cast themselves in the role
of Churchill or Roosevelt, stern and resolute in the face of aggression,
covered in glory for all time? But the situation is not the same, and your
vision is clouded by your vanity. Personally I wish that historians were
less inclined to glorify victorious war leaders (Roosevelt and Churchill
both being quite flawed in other ways), since I think that kind of thing
plays a key role in seducing people like you into stupid and all-too-predictable
mistakes.

The worst thing I can about your comments is that they could have been lifted word-for-word from Daily Kos or ANSWER.

Ah, it would have been refreshing had you actually tried to argue that these
comments were *wrong*, but I see that you’ve dodged that problem and gone for
a smear by association instead.

Typical paranoid, bed-wetting neo-con drivel from Jimmy Rockford.  Like Taki, I once beleived this crap as well.  Then I grew up. And I learned a few things from men who actually fought these “necessary” wars, started by compensating cowards from who the neo-cons get their ideology.  “It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry for blood, more vengeance. More desolation.” —William Tecumseh Sherman

“Talk of imminent threat to our national security through the application of external force is pure nonsense. Indeed it is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.” — Douglas MacArthur, 1951

“Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervour - with the cry of grave national emergency.  Always, there has been some terrible evil at home, or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded.” —Douglas MacArthur, 1957

“When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it.  After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing.”—Dwight D. Eisenhower

“All of us have heard this term ‘preventive war’ since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time...I don’t believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn’t even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing.”—President Dwight Eisenhower, 1953, upon being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Stalin’s Soviet Union

Jim,
Boy oh boy are you gonna wake up with one
heck of a hangover!
Go sleep it off or at least offer the rest
of us a drink too!

willb

Let’s say the neocons primary loyalty is to Israel, as you say. If that’s true, than why would they have wanted to attack Iraq?  Iraq wasn’t a military threat to Israel.  If they wanted to use the power of the U.S. military to defend Israel, why not advocate bombing Hamas in Gaza, which was actually killing Israelis at the time?

Advocating democracy in the Middle East isn’t a pro-Israel position: Arab democracies will inevitably be anti-Israel. 

Scapegoating second- and third-tier administration officials who happen to be Jews doesn’t change the reality that America’s adventure in Iraq is the latest in a long string of imperial forays going back to the occupation of The Philippines.  Were McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, JFK and Johnson were all Fifth Columnists too?

Buying these guys off would be a hell of a lot cheaper than blowing them up.  When the bombs and missiles and
tanks used against these guys cost hundreds of times more than what they are destroying - there is a problem.

Iran is not going away, unless you plan on nuking the population out of existence.  Iran/Persia has had a
large hegemonic presence in the Middle East for thousands of years - and six million Israelis aren’t gonna
change that.  At some point the dust has to settle - and trade with Iran is better for everyone than war.

This idea that what’s good for Iran (and the Middle East) is bad for the US is as wrong headed as the whole
“Pimps Up, Hoes Down” mantra the kids are saying.

Also, there Are No Pro-Americans in the Iraqi Government

It is truly sickening to think that the Bush admin and it fervent wacko supporters are responsible for *inadvertent* installing an Islamic fundamentalist government in direct response to the horrific attacks of 9/11.

9/11 + Iraq = Bush’s Islamic Fundamentalist Middle East

WTF?

U.S. military: Iraqi lawmaker is U.S. Embassy bomber
From CNN Correspondent Michael Ware

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN)—A man sentenced to death in Kuwait for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French embassies now sits in Iraq’s parliament as a member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s ruling coalition, according to U.S. military intelligence.

[snip]

Here’s more on Al-Dawa….

Keywords: Al Dawa, Islamic Fundamentalism, Sharia, Iran and Iraq, terrorism, US Embassy attack

1) Large Turnout Reported For 1st Iraqi Vote Since ‘58 The Washington Post, June 21, 1980

In another development today, Al Dawa, a clandestine Iraqi fundamentalist Moslem organization, claimed responsibility for yesterday’s grenade attack on the British Embassy here in which three gunmen reportedly were killed.

An Al Dawa spokesman told Agence France-Presse by phone that the attack was a “punitive operation against a center of British and American plotters.”

2) Iraq Keeps a Tight Rein on Shiites While Bidding to Win Their Loyalty The Washington Post, November 30, 1982

Membership in Dawa, which means “the call,” is punishable by execution. Dawa guerrillas were known for hurling grenades into crowds during religious ceremonies, and attacks claimed by the party were frequent until the middle of 1980.

3) U.S. HAS LIST OF BOMB SUSPECTS, LEBANESE SAYS Detroit Free Press, October 29, 1983

The source said the drivers of the two bomb-laden trucks were blessed before their mission by Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Dawa Party, a Lebanese Shiite Muslim splinter group.

4) SHULTZ SEES LINK BETWEEN BEIRUT, KUWAIT ATTACKS OFFICIALS IDENTIFY MAN WHO DROVE TRUCK BOMB, The Miami Herald, December 14, 1983

Secretary of State George Shultz said Tuesday that there “quite likely” was a link between the U.S. Embassy bombing in Kuwait and attacks on American facilities in Lebanon. He warned of possible retaliation.

(snip)

The sources said the investigators matched the prints on the fingers with those on file with Kuwaiti authorities and
tentatively identified the assailant as Raed Mukbil, an Iraqi automobile mechanic who lived in Kuwait and was a member of Hezb Al Dawa, a fundamentalist Iraqi Shiite Moslem group based in Iran.

5) KUWAIT NABS 10 SHIITES IN BOMBINGS 7 IRAQIS, 3 LEBANESE ‘ADMIT’ TERROR ATTACKS
The Miami Herald, December 19, 1983

Kuwait Sunday announced the arrests of 10 Shiite Moslems with ties to Iran in the terrorist bombings that killed four people and wounded 66 last week at the U.S. Embassy and other targets.

(snip)

Hussein said fingerprints from the driver who died in the blast at the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait identified him as Raad Akeel al Badran, an Iraqi mechanic who lived in Kuwait and belonged to the Dawa party.

6) 10 Pro-Iranian Shiites Held in Kuwait Bombings, The Washington Post December 19, 1983

Kuwait announced yesterday the arrest of 10 Shiite Moslems with ties to Iran in terrorist bombings that killed four people and wounded 66 last Monday at the U.S. Embassy and other targets.

“All 10 have admitted involvement in the incidents as well as participating in planning the blasts,” Abdul Aziz Hussein, minister of state for Cabinet affairs, told reporters after a Cabinet session, United Press International reported.

Hussein said the seven Iraqis and three Lebanese were members of the Al Dawa party, a radical Iraqi Shiite Moslem group with close ties to Iran.

7) Beirut Bombers Seen Front for Iranian-Supported Shiite Faction, The Washington Post, January 4, 1984

The terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the bombing of the U.S. Marine compound and the French military headquarters here may be a front for an exiled Iraqi Shiite opposition party based in Iran, in the view of a number of Arab and western diplomatic sources.

Authorities in Kuwait say their questioning of suspects in the recent bombing there of the U.S. and French embassies indicates a clear link between Islamic Jihad, a shadowy group that says it carried out the Beirut attacks, and Al Dawa Islamiyah, the main source of resistance to the government of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Al Dawa (The Call) has been outlawed in Iraq, where it wants to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state to replace the secular Baath Socialist government of Saddam Hussein, who is a Sunni Moslem.

It draws its strength from the large Shiite population in southern Iraq. Thousands of its most militant members were expelled to Iran in 1980 before the outbreak of the Iranian-Iraqi war and joined Al Dawa there. But it also has a large following in Lebanon among Iraqi exiles and sympathetic Lebanese Shiites.

While Al Dawa operates out of Tehran, it is not clear whether its activities abroad are under direct Iranian control or merely have Iran’s tacit acceptance.

8) Baalbek Seen As Staging Area For Terrorism, The Washington Post, January 9, 1984

Al Dawa, according to Arab and western sources, is believed to have had a role in the Oct. 23 suicide bomb attacks on the U.S. Marine and French military compounds in Beirut.

9) Message From Iran Triggered Bombing Spree In Kuwait, The Washington Post, February 3, 1984

Al Dawa, for example, is no household name in the United States.

But it is a name important to this story.

It leads us back to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the ruling figure in Iran; to Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the militant Lebanese Shiite leader who has been implicated–despite his denials–in the Marine and French bombings in Beirut; to Hussein Musawi, Fadlallah’s strong-arm lieutenant; to the Hakim brothers in Iran and their connections to the Middle East terrorism industry.

Iraq: Bush’s Islamic Republic
By Peter W. Galbraith
NYRB, Volume 52, Number 13 · August 11, 2005

When President Bush spoke to the nation on June 28, he did not mention Iran’s rising influence with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. He did not point out that the two leading parties in the Shiite coalition are pursuing an Islamic state in which the rights of women and religious minorities will be sharply curtailed, and that this kind of regime is already being put into place in parts of Iraq controlled by these parties.

[snip]

Instead, President Bush depicted the struggle in Iraq as a battle between the freedom-loving Iraqi people and terrorists. Without the sacrifices of the American servicemen and -women, and the largesse of the US taxpayer, the terrorists could win. As Bush put it, “The only way our enemies can succeed is if we forget the lessons of September 11—if we abandon the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi.”

[snip]

Real power in Shiite Iraq rests, however, with two religious parties: Abdel Aziz al-Hakim’s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa (”Call,” in English) of Iraq’s Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Of the two, SCIRI is the more pro-Iranian. Both parties have military wings, and SCIRI’s Badr Corps has grown significantly from the five thousand fighters that harassed Saddam’s regime from Iran in the decades before the war; it now works closely with Iraq’s Shiite interior minister, until recently the corps’ commander, to provide security and fight Sunni Arab insurgents.

SCIRI and Dawa want Iraq to be an Islamic state. They propose to make Islam the principal source of law, which most immediately would affect the status of women. For Muslim women, religious law—rather than Iraq’s relatively progressive civil code—would govern personal status, including matters relating to marriage, divorce, property, and child custody. A Dawa draft for the Iraqi constitution would limit religious freedom for non-Muslims, and apparently deny such freedom altogether to peoples not “of the book,” such as the Yezidis (a significant minority in Kurdistan), Zoroastrians, and Bahais.

This program is not just theoretical. Since Saddam’s fall, Shiite religious parties have had de facto control over Iraq’s southern cities. There Iranian-style religious police enforce a conservative Islamic code, including dress codes and bans on alcohol and other non-Islamic behavior. In most cases, the religious authorities govern—and legislate—without authority from Baghdad, and certainly without any reference to the freedoms incorporated in Iraq’s American-written interim constitution—the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL).

Dawa and SCIRI are not just promoting an Iranian-style political system —they are also directly promoting Iran- ian interests. Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, the SCIRI leader, has advocated paying Iran billions in reparations for damage done in the Iran–Iraq war, even as the Bush administration has been working to win forgiveness for Iraq’s Saddam-era debt. Iraq’s Shiite oil minister is promoting construction of an export pipeline for petroleum from Basra to the Iranian port city of Abadan, creating an economic and strategic link between the two historic adversaries that would have been unthinkable until now. Iraq’s Shiite government has acknowledged Iraq’s responsibility for starting the Iran–Iraq war, and apologized. It is an acknowledgment probably justified by the historical record, but one that has infuriated Iraq’s Sunni Arabs.

Jim Rockford: Iran is a mortal threat to the US

If that is true, why did Bush-with your unfliching support-in Iraq force the reins of power into the hands of men who are pro-Iranian, pro-Syria, pro-Hamas, pro-Hizbollah, etc.

You are emboldening the enemy you jackass!

If one does NOT believe that the unnecessary war of choice in Iraq is a war
for Israel, then, they do NOT know who Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Douglas
Feith, William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, Richard Perle and Murdock are. 
This war in Iraq was pushed into being with lies, distortions, and half truths by
people whose true interests lie OUTSIDE the boundaries of the USA.  And, as
retired USMC LTG Neubold noted, (in summary) they do not have a day in uniform. 
wake UP, America!

Colonel Neubold should be familiar with Marine Corps history. More often than not, over the last two hundred years U.S. Marines have served in all kinds of missions that had little if anything to do with defending America: from Shanghai to Belleau Wood, to Haiti, etc. Bill Kristol didn’t send the Marines to any of those places. 

BTW, the Bush administration is the only one I can think of where everyone knows the name of the number 3 guy in Defense.  You have Christians at President, VP, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, etc., but the number two and number three guys in the Pentagon happen to be Jews and they have primary responsibility for launching invasions.  OK, crazy.

Phil

Of course the Iraq War was conducted at least in part for the benefit of Israel.  While true democracies in the Middle East would not be beneficial to Israel, there is little evidence that this was the goal.  There is however reason to believe that the goal was to stir ethnic conflicts, forcing the disingration of an existing state, into enclaves much less powerful politically and militarily than they otherwise would have been.

This is one of the problems with equating the neo-cons with Jacobins.  While the analogy is not altogether inaccurate, it wrongly assumes that neo-con planners and policy makers were primarily motivated by an utopian idea of democratic revolution.  While there were and are some that fall under that category, there are many others motivated by fanatical devotion to Israel and equally fanatical hatred of Arabs.

I feel that we could economically isolate Iran, keep developing alternative energy sources, and thus cheapen oil, and wait for Iran’s ageing demographics to make her less of a threat to anyone.

Intelligent anti-fundamentalist, SUBTLE propaganda could well undermine Islam in the next 30-40 years as these countries modernize and people begin to live for themselves and not their clans and mosques.

The neo-cons are making us the “world’s biggest enemy” from China, Arabia, Russia, and even South America. There are better ways to procure Israel’s safety than risking a real world war over it. We need to practice real statecraft and diplomacy. We can start by not electing anymore coroporate hacks like George Bush.

Taki is wrong on his facts about the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution vote.  Both Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska voted against it.

Taki, your pen is as deft and lively as your fighting spirit in the dojo. Teimoc sensei

Bravissimo, as usual, Taki! The only thing you’re factually wrong on is the medal LBJ “won” in WWII. It was the Silver Star, not the Bronze Star.

Well this site is quite a find!  I don’t know very much about Taki (have ordered his book to find out more) but any site with articles by Justin Raimondo and Glenn Greenwald on the same day is one I’ll have to keep reading. If Paul Craig Roberts can make it over here too, that’d be great.  (I suppose it’s too much to hope for that Dennis Kucinich and Cynthia McKinney could make the occasional appearance here too? We can send them copies of books by F. Hayek after the revolution.) Good luck! Site looks great.

Regarding Iraq and Israel, Israel had already attacked Iraq once, remember? While Saddam was effectively neutralized, Saddam was not going to last forever, and the government that replaced him might be more effective at getting sanctions lifted. Without sanctions, without a war to fight, with a better government more representative of its people, a modern and prosperous Iraq would have threatened Israel by the very fact of its existence, since it would be proof that Arabs were not the backwards filthy people that Israel’s propagandists paint in order to justify denying citizenship to 4,000,000 Arabs that have been relegated to an apartheid-style “Bantu-stan” under their jurisdiction.

So what does Israel get out of the Iraq invasion? Why was General Jay Garner, an effective administrator, replaced by L. Paul Bremer whose every action appeared calculated to create an insurgency where there was none under Garner? What Israel gets is simple—a failed state in the Middle East that will take decades to rebuild its political and physical infrastructure and thus will allow Israeli propagandists to continue justifying denying citizenship to the Arabs under their rule (because, y’know, those Arabs are just simple primitives who can’t govern themselves, so it’d be rash and disasterous to give them the vote!).

As for Iran, Iran must be taken down because Iran is also a rapidly modernizing and increasingly democratic Islamic society. While not as dangerous to Israel’s campaign to deny civil rights to the Arabs under its rule due to the fact that Iranians are Persian rather than Arab, they still may serve as a uncomfortable role model to the Arab states around them if they continue to democraticize. Attacking Iran will allow the ayatollahs to immediately slam the breaks on democratic movements in Iran, thereby setting back democracy in Iran for another generation. because democracy is the one thing that Israel fears more than anything. If Israel was a democracy, after all, the European carpetbaggers who currently rule Israel would get voted out of office at the next election by the Arab majority.

Dylan is right when he says the Middle East democracy was never the true goal for the Israel-first crowd in Washington. Their think tanks have made it clear for years that chaos and instability was the most likely outcome in Iraq, followed by either a pro-US not-anti-Israel dictator, or a tripartite state, of which the Kurds would have direct relations with Israel including an oil Pipeline to the port in Haifa/Acre.

Instability in Iraq or a state split by ethnic lines means no future challenge to Israel in the form of a strong and rich Arab democracy. Instability also means no one is paying attention when more and more of the West Bank is annexed by settlements and walls.

On September 11, 2001 the United States discovered late in the game that there were groups of people that wanted us dead.  The groups had been telling us in a wide variety of forms since the 1970’s. But 9-11 got our attention.

When someone want you dead, they do not want to go to dinner and negotiate, they want you dead; phyically, economically, politically.  If you discover this intent early enough—that is before you are dead—you have two choices: role over and die or make them die.

Many do-gooders would have you believe that we should take the former choice.  I believe the latter is better.  If, like me, you choose the latter, then you have two more choices:  kill them here in America or kill them somewhere else.  If we choose the former, many more of our citizens will die before we can kill them.  If we choose the latter of this series of choices we can hope to kill them with fewer of our citizens at risk.

The decision now becomes where shall we draw them to us so we can kill them.  Saddam is paying money to kill others, why not take over Iraq and make it the flypaper to draw the enemy to us.  If we layout the flypaper and suck enough Islamists in to make it worthwhile, our citizens will remain safer than if we draw them to the US.

Justifications aside, this is what occurred and we are safer because of it.  Seriously now, would you really prefer the Islamists to take the fight to us?

There were fuel tanks at Vinh, but no torpedo boat base anywhere near Vinh.  Also, while I do not think LBJ’s World War II medal was earned, he had at least gone into battle--gone along as an observer on a plane that was going into an area where there it was obviously going to encounter Japanese fighters, and where it did indeed encounter Japanese fighters--in order to win that medal.

All the problems for the USA in the Mid-East come back in the end to the desires of"The Lobby”. Israel’s wants are paramount,and AIPAC and it’s enforcers in the Zionist Lobby always see that Israeli policy come first.  Talk about the tail wagging the dog!
They must all be shown the door !