Their aim is to instill regime change.

This props up the Sauds and their world influence, with their longstanding closeness to James Baker.

This continues client status for Israel, Iran’s biggest potential military opponent at this time.

They drafted a Chapter 7 resolution of the United Nations Security Council calling for the disarmament of Iraq and saying in Paragraph 14 that if Iraq complies, sanctions will be lifted. Within months of this resolution being passed–and the United States drafted and voted in favor of this resolution–within months, the President, George Herbert Walker Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, are saying publicly, not privately, publicly that even if Iraq complies with its obligation to disarm, economic sanctions will be maintained until which time Saddam Hussein is removed from power.

That is proof positive that disarmament was only useful insofar as it contained through the maintenance of sanctions and facilitated regime change. It was never about disarmament, it was never about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction. It started with George Herbert Walker Bush, and it was a policy continued through eight years of the Clinton presidency, and then brought us to this current disastrous course of action under the current Bush Administration

Baker set the future policy under Bush Sr. He’s tight with the House of Saud as their counsel vs. 9-11 survivors.

The West fears their bailing out of the world market to go eastward or shifting what it is they have bought into on the West.

Iran’s a block from them going east entirely. It has location and resource advantages past the peak of Arabian oil. We could probably call Arabia’s bluff on the market, there’s two sides to every business transaction.

Go ahead, turn your back on the West, watch radicals overtake your own homeland, watch others outmaneuver your market entry eastward.

For that reason they run parallel to Israel and its interests. Israel wants to be the doorway to the Mediterranean from the Mid East still. The Trans Arabian and Trans Iraqi pipelines flow through Southern Lebanon, land Israel has eyes for.

It’s still about money and oil strategically. Tactically it’s about water, but that is another topic.

We could give Iran recognition, place the region into favored trade status, and ease oil concerns internationally. The price benefit on oil alone would fuel an economic boom.

Expanding markets would accelerate transition economies to scale levels. Diplomatic demands could meet benchmarks to go with increased demand for expanded services in building infrastructure and helping NGO in offering aid.

Arabia would go along provided we channel much of the USAID moneys through their economic institutions. They need to get ahead of transitional phases in their own right.

Israel has the same need, to see moneys channeled through their institutions as a hedge against regional conflict, as both sides begin to share in the success of the future.

We could play a hard hand on Baker’s buddies(forfeiture on scale numbers for class action to survivors of the day used to justify all of our current wars). It would basically be a shot across the bow, or they can go along with us, profit along the lines of drawing interest and sharing in the development of neighbors.

Israel can get closer to their enemies by empowering buffer zones in neutral or non-declared neighbors. They can’t build walls against the rest of the world forever.

If walls worked Jericho would still be standing. Why have we not learned this? Perhaps a package of incentives could help them realize what works best for everyone’s strategic interests. Sweeten the song with some extra money and bring those walls down.

I do find people entertaining who think they’ve invented the wheel, but only discovered the flat-tire.

I heard most of these arguments – with many of the same lame putdowns – back in the 70’s.

The left will never be burdened by a surplus of original thoughts.

The “jungle telegraph” in Washington is booming with news of the Iran NIE. I am told that the reason the conclusions of the NIE were released is that it was communicated to the White House that “intelligence career seniors were lined up to go to jail if necessary” if the document’s gist were not given to the public. Translation? Someone in that group would have gone to the media “on the record” to disclose its contents.

‘Intelligence career seniors’, whoever you are, you are my heroes. We have been waiting for someone with the courage to step up and speak the truth (that is before retiring and writing a book, while the truth can still help prevent disaster) and here you are doing it when it’s not just your job on the line, but potentially your liberty. We owe you a great debt. God bless.

Moral equivalence?

We have nukes, so it’s only fair that anyone else – flagrant nut jobs included -can posses the power to blow up alarge part of the world?

Ah, the logic of blind patriotism!

I answered this.