A KING AND AN ACE

The King is no joker, but the Decider Long War President Bush is.

Some of the cards were missing from his deck before and after the Decider landed on a different type of deck as an Ace (or ass) when he proudly announced that the MISSION WAS ACCOMPLISHED in Iraq.

When the Bush family's oil buddies in Saudi Arabia (NO LESS THAN THE KING HIMSELF!) begin telling the world the same things that the American people (AND THE WORLD!) have been telling Mr. Decider, it is time for this Long War President to put out the fires of his burning bush in Iraq!

George W. Bush is scaring us to death.

Start Impeachment hearings now, or things will only escalate and become worse.

But Impeachment will be moot and meaningless after Iran begins to get bombed…no thanks to Mr. mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But a few rational voices are offering resolutions for avoiding MORE WAR.

One voice is that of former secretary of state Madeleine Albright.

She fears what most of us do, a war with Iran, and she is suggesting that a third party should investigate and reveal the truth about what exactly happened when the British soldiers were captured by Iran.

Will the paragon of animals blow it again?

He told the biggest lie of all and has not been prosecuted for it. What he doesn't realize is that's not because he was not under oath. It's because he didn't tell it to a Congressional committee. He told it to the entire world and that's not a crime even though to date it's gotten 3400 American soldiers killed, more than 25,000 American soldiers wounded and depending on what reports you choose to read, between 200,000 and 600,000 Iraqis killed. Mr. Bush's lie is the lie that continues to give, as more soldiers and Iraqis die and are grievously wounded daily.

www.counterpunch.org

March 31 / April 1, 2007

Bush and the Politics of Falsehoods

If You're Going to Lie, Lie Big

By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI

The Botched US Raid That Led to the Hostage Crisis
By Patrick Cockburn

A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.
Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.
In reality the US attack had a far more ambitious objective, The Independent has learned. The aim of the raid, launched without informing the Kurdish authorities, was to seize two men at the very heart of the Iranian security establishment.
Better understanding of the seriousness of the US action in Arbil - and the angry Iranian response to it - should have led Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence to realise that Iran was likely to retaliate against American or British forces such as highly vulnerable Navy search parties in the Gulf. The two senior Iranian officers the US sought to capture were Mohammed Jafari, the powerful deputy head of the Iranian National Security Council, and General Minojahar Frouzanda, the chief of intelligence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, according to Kurdish officials.
The two men were in Kurdistan on an official visit during which they met the Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, and later saw Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), at his mountain headquarters overlooking Arbil.
"They were after Jafari," Fuad Hussein, the chief of staff of Massoud Barzani, told The Independent. He confirmed that the Iranian office had been established in Arbil for a long time and was often visited by Kurds obtaining documents to visit Iran. "The Americans thought he [Jafari] was there," said Mr Hussein.
Mr Jafari was accompanied by a second, high-ranking Iranian official. "His name was General Minojahar Frouzanda, the head of intelligence of the Pasdaran [Iranian Revolutionary Guard]," said Sadi Ahmed Pire, now head of the Diwan (office) of President Talabani in Baghdad. Mr Pire previously lived in Arbil, where he headed the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Mr Talabani's political party.
The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan. There is no doubt that Iran believes that Mr Jafari and Mr Frouzanda were targeted by the Americans. Mr Jafari confirmed to the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, that he was in Arbil at the time of the raid.
In a little-noticed remark, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Iranian Foreign Minister, told IRNA: "The objective of the Americans was to arrest Iranian security officials who had gone to Iraq to develop co-operation in the area of bilateral security."
US officials in Washington subsequently claimed that the five Iranian officials they did seize, who have not been seen since, were "suspected of being closely tied to activities targeting Iraq and coalition forces". This explanation never made much sense. No member of the US-led coalition has been killed in Arbil and there were no Sunni-Arab insurgents or Shia militiamen there.
The raid on Arbil took place within hours of President George Bush making an address to the nation on 10 January in which he claimed: "Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops." He identified Iran and Syria as America's main enemies in Iraq though the four-year-old guerrilla war against US-led forces is being conducted by the strongly anti-Iranian Sunni-Arab community. Mr Jafari himself later complained about US allegations. "So far has there been a single Iranian among suicide bombers in the war-battered country?" he asked. "Almost all who involved in the suicide attacks are from Arab countries."