. . . Chahr Shanbeh Souri five times superfast?

Just kidding. Seriously, this is cool, give it a read. Cool pictures, eh? Some aspects of traditional religion never die, even in Islam.

John Nichols | March 13

The Nation - ...the decision by Pelosi and her allies to rewrite their Iraq legislation to exclude the statement regarding the need for congressional approval of any military assault on the neighboring country of Iran sends the worst possible signal to the White House.

It is not too much to suggest that Pelosi disastrous misstep could haunt her and the Congress for years to come.

Here's how the Speaker messed up:

The Democratic proposal for a timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq included a provision that would have required President Bush to seek congressional approval before using military force in Iran. It was an entirely appropriate piece of the Iraq proposal, as the past experiences of U.S. involvement in southeast Asia and Latin America has well illustrated that when wars bleed across borders it becomes significantly more difficult to end them. Thus, fears about the prospect that Bush might attack Iran are legitimately related to the debate about how and when to end the occupation of Iraq.

. . . is popping up on more radars every day. Today it's at Steve Clemons' site, give it a read.

Update: Wapo: Former Iranian Defense Official Talks to Western Intelligence

Much more in the comments and at minute 13:37 of tonight's radio show.

. . . the Iranian New Years' celebration are about to begin. Take a look. Of course, I had to visit Iran in the midst of Ramadan. Believe me, Norooz would have been much more fun!

. . . of Iran in a day or two so until I work up a new post on the subject check this Wes Clark video out and then sign the petition. A little action item here and there never hurts.

Nizar Khazraji who went missing.

Now it's a general from next door: Gen. Ali Reza Asgari.

Stratfor reports this:

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is prepared to pursue its enemies across Iran's borders, IRGC commander-in-chief Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi said Feb. 28.

But the IRNA article on the same issue says nothing of the kind.

What gives? Is there another source out that corroborates what Stratfor is saying?

by Dennis Kucinich

President Bush has claimed the Iranian government is supplying deadly weapons to fighters in Iraq and that those weapons are being used to kill US troops in Iraq. This sounds horrific and frightening--and that is the point. The Administration is preparing for a military strike against Iran. The justification chosen by the Administration is the one circumstance in which a President could bypass Congress and still wage a military conflict.

Continued at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070312/kucinich

. . . that could only be made in Iran? Well the Wall Street Journal has a story adding to the unraveling American claims these weapons were made only in Iran:

An American military raid in southern Iraq uncovered a makeshift factory used to construct advanced roadside bombs that the U.S. had thought were made only in Iran.

Ooops.

Commentary No. 203, Feb. 15, 2007
by Immanuel Wallerstein

The French have an expression fuite en avant, which the dictionaries translate as "headlong rush." But the translation loses the real meaning. A fuite en avant is something one does when one is in a losing situation, and one hopes to salvage it by doing more of the same or worse, thereby creating a situation in which one hopes people will feel they have to support you. Is this what Bush intends to do in Iran?

Continued at http://fbc.binghamton.edu/203en.htm

Will the media hype the story of Iranian academics and scholars denouncing Ahmedinejad's Holocaust Denial Conference?

Probably not. It's not sexy enough.

here.

From Agonist reader MF:

No...it's worse than that. We are now forced to support the natural allies of those who attacked us on 9-11 STRICTLY AND ENTIRELY because we freely and without coercion attacked and destroyed the only counterbalance to Iran (Iraq) on the pretext that we were avenging 9-11 even though no Iraqis were involved in 9-11. Weird, huh? That is the crazy and backward world of the Middle East.

Confused? Me too!

. . . all I can say about the Hersh piece is that I'm very concerned about Bandar Bush's fingerprints being all over our new policy. And what I don't understand is why we are allying ourselves with the very forces that attacked us on 9/11 against a nation that should be our natural ally? The Bush Administration really does get everything wrong, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, top generals say they'll resign if it comes to an attack on Iran.

You can watch Sy Hersh on CNN this morning here.

Nota bene: I'm wondering about something. The Los Angeles Times article discussing the intelligence the US has passed to the IAEA says this in passing:

In November 2005, U.N. inspectors leafing through papers in Tehran discovered a 15-page document that showed how to form highly enriched uranium into the configuration needed for the core of a nuclear bomb. Iran said the paper came from Pakistan, but has rebuffed IAEA requests to let inspectors take or copy it for further analysis.

The documents included detailed designs to upgrade ballistic missiles to carry nuclear warheads, drawings for subterranean testing of high explosives, and two pages describing research on uranium tetrafluoride, known as "green salt," which is used during uranium enrichment. IAEA officials remain suspicious of the information in part because most of the papers are in English rather than Persian, the Iranian language.

Didn't we once provide Iran with plans for a nuclear weapon?

. . . in this post it appears as if we have activated real planning, as opposed to the usual contingency planning, for an attack on Iran, although we'll have to wait for the New Yorker to post the article online to see what kind of goods Hersh has this time.

We've also been passing bad intel on Iran to the IAEA. Didn't we do the same thing with Iraq?

* THE REDIRECTION
by Seymour M Hersh
Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism? h/t LJ

So the preacher was droning on and the sermon improver (coffee) wasn't working...

"The Israelites wandered for 40 years in the Wilderness..."

Bah! Call a spade a spade man! They were refugees. That's what the word means. Hmm. I wonder how many of the current refugee populations in the world have been out there for 40 years or more....

Get home, start Googling. Ah,"protracted refugees" is the UNHCR term.
http://www.un.org/events/tenstories_2006/story.asp?storyID=2600
Answer: by wildly conservative measures (25000+ people, 5 years or more, non-urban, excluding Palestinians, ....) there are 33 "protracted refugee" situations lasting (so far) on average 17 years and they have roughly doubled since 1993.

. . . and encouraged people to visit, or learn more about Iran and in general, while I wrote as much as I could trying to demystify the nation one interest group attacked me pretty vociferously. No, it wasn't conservatives. It was Gay Rights activists. I can't tell you how dismaying this was to me. "Look," I said, "I'm not gay. Do you expect me to go out in Tehran and try to find and learn about a community I know nothing about?" It didn't matter what I said. The people attacking me weren't going to listen, no matter what I said.

This is another aspect of the problem the left in general faces when it comes to supporting Iranian reform. Everyone has their issue, and gay rights is certainly a serious, valid issue, but should it be able to detract from the totality of supporting reform in Iran? I don't think so. (I'm sure I'll be branded insufficiently sensitive to the issue, now as well. All I can say to that is: nothing could be further from the truth.)

Anyway, I digress. The whole point of this post was to alert you to this CBC special about the gay underground in Iran. It's sad. People should be free of oppression based on sexual orientation, in whichever country they live.

. . . this story comes as no surprise to anyone here. I mean, just read the lede:

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.

Does this sound familiar?

One particularly contentious issue was records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran.

Need a little more info? OK:

In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forged, and there are still reservations within the IAEA about its authenticity, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate in the agency.

I wonder if the forgery came from Italy?

Sometimes the news is over the edge. We all know better than to start talking about crazy conspiracy theories found on Rense, Prison Planet, and the like. Keep this stuff off the NewsWire. Fine with me.

But it only takes a few days and we are being warned to watch for a false flag operation as a pretext for war with regards to Iran. Who warned us? Was it one of the grassy knoll crowd? Some foamer? Who was it? Zbigniew Brzezinski? Oh.... Meanwhile, in Salt Lake City, we find that Terry Nichols is saying that a high-ranking FBI official to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing of Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building. Is he to be believed? Why would some high FBI official direct this operation? How should I know? But the Salt Lake Tribune ran the story.

On February 11, U.S. officials in Baghdad claimed that EFPs that have killed some 170 American troops in Iraq since 2004 were Iranian-made and supplied to Iraqi insurgents by “the highest levels of the Iranian government”. Familiar stuff from the run-up to the Iraq war—but then something unscripted happened Gen. Pace, visiting in Australia, said that Iranian government involvement was not proven. Generals as experienced as Pace do not contradict their political masters by accident.
http://www.straight.com/article-71974/general-could-halt-iran-foray

Iranian Free Will
It is sad, so sad, that we Iranians just cannot do, what every human being on Earth has managed to do. Why is it, that we cannot just talk to each other, about having a peaceful union? Surely if we Iranians, talked about peace and love amongst each other, we can overcome anything, especially anything that wants to take away our Iranian Free Will.

Neighbour
So have you looked around you, to see if you and your fellow neighbour get along? You probably know that you care for each other. Now why not think that the whole of Iran can agree the same way? We can then peacefully unite. That unity is a mighty force. A unity based on peace, that would be able to oppose hatred.

Quiet Revolution

As the standoff with the United States heats up, Iranians are united on nuclear policy, but little else
by Deborah Campbell
Published September 2006

Quotes from the Article:

Shirin Ebadi, a 2003, Nobel Peace Prize winner:

"How much have they hurt Iraq Yet with no casualties, the people in Kazakhstan won."

US soft theocracy

. . . to tonight's show here and here.We're still working out some kinks, but tonight's show was a good one. Big thanks to Danny Postel, great interview.

. . . Middle East arms bazaar.

By the way, we attacked al Sadr's offices today.

Methinks someone is looking for a trigger?

DefenseNews says there is no firm evidence the Iranians are providing EFPs to Shi'ites or Sunnis. Go figure.

Lastly, Lambert point out the Zbig and his warning of a possible 'false flag.'

Today the BBC reported that war plans for Iran were complete. But the BBC clearly buried the lede on this. It's not news that the US has completed its target set on Iran. William Arkin reported on Iran war-gaming and planning last year in his blog, Early Warning and in the Washington Post.

The disturbing news revealed in this article is the revelation of two supposed triggers that would lead to an American attack on Iran. The first, says the BBC, is "confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon. . . ." Now, whether you think a nuclear Iran is a good or bad idea, this trigger has been made clear for quite some time. So, no surprise here.

But what of that second trigger? The "alternative [trigger is] a high-casualty attack on US forces in neighbouring Iraq," writes the BBC.

This is entirely too vague a trigger, especially for this President, if you ask me. Bush is not to be trusted with vague 'triggers,' or any kind of triggers at all, really.

So, what do Pelosi and Reid have to say about this? Has the Bush Administration denied this? Or issued a non-denial denial?

The BBC article is not long on specifics, so perhaps the US media might do some journalism and pin someone down on this?

The articulation of a casus belli for war with a nation of 70 million people sounds kind of important to me.