Been away almost a week at another croquet tournament in Palm Beach. Won eight matches, lost two. It's escape therapy. Otherwise, totally unremunerative. Have I missed anything? Oh, yes. Mr. G.W. Bush did gave a speech from the White House concerning Iraq and his "war on terror" and related issues, viz., Iran and Syria. This business with Bush has become embarrassing, predictable, sad and infuriating, because the man has not a shred of credibility. I saw bits and pieces of Bush's performance on TV the next day. He looked shell-shocked. He read the prepared text like an automaton, without conviction. Remember Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate?

Who is programming Bush? One wonders what "neocon" hack in the basement of the White House wrote the speech. From one cover story to the next. All that matters is determining who and what are behind the cover. Bush Jr. is asking us to throw more men and money at a gigantic problem which did not exist until his Administration, either through gross incompetence or by deliberate design, created it. In sum, the situation is absurd, on top of everything else.

It seems that the Cheney White House is in transition. For the thoroughly deluded Dick Cheney and his band of arrogant "neocons", things have not worked out precisely as planned. Still, for them the results are by no means the disaster which it appears to most observers. For them, despite the lack of oil at the moment, "Operation Iraqi Freedom" counts as a success.  After all, Iraq has been destroyed as a nation-state, and the country is tearing itself apart. This development is good news for the "neocons" and for Tel Aviv; it has all been achieved as the direct result of the American invasion and U.S. foreign policy. True, this does make the President of the United States appear positively ridiculous, and it has cost the American taxpayer billions and has nearly wrecked the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, but what does that matter? The larger goal of promoting Tel Aviv's perceived strategic interests has been accomplished.

This private agenda with respect to Iraq goes back to the first Gulf War of 1991. It was carried forward by Bill Clinton's all-Zionist, all-Jewish Middle East foreign policy team of Madeleine Albright, Samuel Berger, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk. The draconian Clinton embargo of Iraq--inherited from George Bush Sr.,--cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, while U.S. Senators and Congressmen of both political parties sat on their hands. After the softening-up process, came Wolfowitz's War in 2003, the coup de grâce, which most Democrats either cheered or acquiesced in. No one wanted to be left behind, remember?

There was only one conservative Democrat, Senator Robert Byrd, who proactively and single-handedly attempted to stop the invasion. In the meantime, the Palestinians were thrown to the dogs by Bill Clinton, just before he exited the White House...and then they were thrown to the dogs again by Bush, Jr. immediately upon entering the White House. Recall that the son of Bush would not even talk to Arafat on the phone, for fear of displeasing the war criminal, Ariel Sharon.

With Cheney/Bush and the Enterprise of Iraq, we are simply witnessing the fruition of a long-term Israeli covert operation, using the assets and personnel of ExAmerica to get the job done. It is a tremendous, bipartisan scandal which is under-appreciated. The current fiasco in Iraq is due to the hard work of "neocons" like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, Elliott Abrams, Irving Libby, et al., all of whom were acting as de facto agents of Ariel Sharon and Likud inside the U.S. Administration. Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and G.W. knew what was happening, of course, and went along with it for the political benefits the arrangement provided, which benefits were substantial. I wrote in a missive ("Business as Usual") dated November 9th, 2006: "The wholesale appointment of 'neocons' in the Administration and the invasion of Iraq were both part of the same political stratagem to place the Israel Lobby on the side of the Republicans. It worked."

The next item on the now-not-so-hidden agenda is Iran. The clock is ticking. Bush's speech last Wednesday telegraphed that intention, with his offhand remark about Patriot missiles for "our allies".  Patriot missiles are handy, if you expect to be counter-attacked. The much-ballyhooed speech was supposedly about the dispatching of twenty-five thousand more U.S. ground troops to Iraq. Everybody knows this is a drop in the bucket which will not quell the chaos in Iraq. The White House could have carried out "the surge" quietly. Instead, Cheney and the die-hard "neocons" wanted to prepare the public and the Congress for the ultimate mission: the enterprise of Iran.

The assault on Iran will be probably be executed either by Tel Aviv or by Israel's client-state, the United States of America, at some point before G.W. Bush takes his last Presidential plane ride to Crawford, Texas at the end of 2008. Make no mistake, the clock is ticking. The "neocons" and the Israel Lobby must utilize their useful idiots, Bush and Cheney, before their time in office is up. The fun part will be watching the Democratic leaders on Capital Hill go stone silent in an instant, and run for the tall grass. At the moment, it is a cakewalk to excoriate Bush and his bankrupt policies in Iraq, now that this endeavor has blown up in his face. It is quite another matter to criticize Tel Aviv's cherished project of bombing Iraq's neighbor, Iran.

Even though the bombing of Iran would place American troops in danger, and would create more chaos in the region, still the Democrats will find a way to embrace it. After all, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to be invited back to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's next extravagant Washington convention. The romancing of the Jews must continue. More to the point, Pelosi and Reid, not to mention Senator Hillary Clinton, want their gang, the Democratic Party, to continue to be generously funded in preparation for 2008. The Israel Lobby already owns Hillary--lock, stock and barrel.

Herewith is an updated and abbreviated version of "The Surge and Iran", dated January 1st, 2007, which takes into account the execution of Saddam Hussein. I sent out an earlier version on December 26th.

***

The “Surge” into Iraq and The Enterprise of Iran

January 1st, 2007

They are dusting off the hot seat for Tehran. All signs indicate that the Cheney/Bush White House is preparing to execute a "shock & awe" power display in the skies over Iran at some unknown point in the not-too-distant future. The Christmas weekend UN Security Council resolution aimed at Iran's nuclear program is pure gold for the Washington "neocon" warmongers and for the geopolitical strategists in Tel Aviv.

Their spokesperson, the nominal President of the world’s lone surviving "Superpower", will point to Resolution 1737 by a unanimous Security Council in New York as confirmation that Iran is building an atomic bomb, that Iran is a threat to humanity, to the region, and to "our allies", and whatever. The American public and Congress will buy this bunkum, just like they bought the brazen  fabrications about WMD in Iraq and the implied connection between Saddam and 9/11.

In short, the member states of the UNSC have handed the White House the triggering device to launch another unnecessary war. It is amazing and alarming. One can only imagine the arm-twisting and economic intimidation which must have gone on behind the scenes to arrive at something so provocative, hypocritical, bizarre and intellectually dishonest.

UNSC Resolution 1737 targets a regime--Tehran--which is seeking to provide electricity via nuclear energy under international inspections; at the same time, Resolution 1737 was inspired and instigated behind the scenes by a regime--Tel Aviv--that is in possession of hundreds of atomic bombs and the means to deliver them, and which has never permitted international inspections of any kind of its own nuclear facilities.

One straw in the wind among many is from the December 18th, 2006 column by Arnaud de Borchgrave in The Washington Times... "A prominent neocon columnist, speaking privately at one of Washington's pre-Christmas bashes, said, "We should bomb their [Iran's] nukes before they nuke Israel." This pronouncement is a  window on the irrational parallel universe in existence inside the White House. Everything about the remark is nuts, over the top; it embodies the essence of "preëmption" with no justification; it reveals that Israel, not America, is the centerpiece of Washington's policy.  Please be advised that (a) Iran is not planning to nuke Israel, and (b) Iran does not have the capability to nuke Israel, whereas (c) Israel has the capability to nuke Iran back to the Middle Ages.

This certainly sounds like a re-run of the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, doesn't it? A similar game plan is being utilized. Keep lying, keep moving, and never look back. Dick Cheney is once again leading the charge, offering no apologies for his past fabrications and distortions.

Is there a nexus between the Enterprise of Iran and the proposed "surge" of American troops in Iraq, ostensibly to quell sectarian violence? I suspect that there is. The cover story for "the surge" is that it will allow G.W. Bush to attempt a final push for "victory" in Iraq. This is not credible.

No one can now define what "victory" means or would look like. In truth, there is nothing to be won. “Operation Iraqi Freedom” is a debacle, because Washington has allowed itself to become hopelessly bogged down in an urban guerrilla war it cannot win. This is a conflict in a godforsaken landscape where American soldiers are little more than moving targets among a people they do not comprehend. In a word, a nightmare.

All that remains to be done is the long good-bye. In terms of an exit strategy, therefore, the "surge" does make sense. For Pentagon planners it will soon be a straightforward, simple matter of providing protection for our own troops as they withdraw. In those circumstances, the more firepower, the better. This is especially true, in the event of a U.S. or an Israeli attack on Iran. Such an attack would be reckless, irresponsible and unwise in the extreme, but that is beside the point. The White House is now free to do as it pleases.

In brief, if the true reason for a "surge" of U.S. combat troops to Baghdad is to prepare for an attack on Iran, then the White House should say so. Heretofore, American troops have been engaged primarily against Sunni "insurgents", terrorists and so-called “dead-enders”. But once the White House orders air strikes against Iran--or even if Tel Aviv attacks on its own--American troops will then be fighting both Sunnis and Shiites, simultaneously. The Shiites in Iraq will feel obliged to come to the aid of their fellow Shiites under attack in Iran. Reinforcements will urgently be required in Iraq to help protect the U.S. Army and Marines and American civilian personnel on the ground, all of whom will be trapped.

Then there is the intermediate kicker: the execution of Saddam by the Shiite-dominated, American-installed government in the Green Zone. The lynching of the deposed, demonized President has re-ignited the Sunnis, big time. They have little to lose. Americans on the ground, military and civilians, can expect to be attacked from all sides, as Iraq further self-destructs and explodes. Chaos will reign supreme. Uncle Sam will be stuck with the bill and the blowback.