Bush's War 2

Iranian forces crossed Iraqi border: report
Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces have been spotted by British troops crossing the border into southern Iraq, The Sun tabloid reported on Tuesday.
Britain's defence ministry would not confirm or deny the report, with a spokesman declining to comment on "intelligence matters.
An unidentified intelligence source told the tabloid: "It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran -- but nobody has officially declared it."
"We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us. It is very hard for us to strike back. All we can do is try to defend ourselves. We are badly on the back foot."
The Sun said that radar sightings of Iranian helicopters crossing into the Iraqi desert were confirmed to it by very senior military sources.
In response to the report, a British defence ministry spokesman said: "There is evidence that explosive devices used against our troops in southern Iraq originated in Iran."
"Any Iranian link to armed militias in Iraq either through weapons supply, training or funding are unacceptable."
Britain has about 7,100 soldiers in Iraq, most of whom are based in the southern city of Basra
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Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, by Glenn Grenwald to be released by Crown Publishing this Tuesday. The book is available now at Amazon. :
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday Iran should not show weakness over its nuclear program, a day after Tehran ignored a United Nations deadline to stop nuclear work which the West says could be used for making bombs.

"If we show weakness in front of the enemy the expectations will increase but if we stand against them, because of this resistance, they will retreat."
The simplistic and moralistic Bush mind-set -- by which even the most vexing problems and complex conflicts are reduced to a contest of "strength" in the face of Evil -- can perhaps be seen most clearly in the president's treatment of Iran. Throughout 2006, the president's Iran policy became mindlessly antagonistic, and was reduced eventually to the point where it was shaped by a handful of absolutist and moralistic premises which bordered on the cartoonish. Bush's perspective amounts to this:
Iran is governed by Evil leaders. They are the moral and practical equivalent of Hitler's Nazis. They are intent on regional, perhaps even world, domination. They are so insane and so Evil that they will attack other countries with nuclear weapons even if it means that they would then be annihilated. Particularly if they acquire nuclear weapons, they would pose a grave, imminent, and undeterrable threat to the United States. Their leaders do not fear death, and in fact crave it as a result of their religious extremism. They cannot be negotiated with because they are both Evil and deranged. The only feasible course of action with Iran is to treat it as a Nazi-like enemy, refuse to negotiate, and stop it by any means necessary, which -- due to its leaders' inability to be reasoned with -- inevitably requires "regime change," by military confrontation if necessary.
With those premises bolted into place, the Bush administration has transformed what was -- especially after the 9/11 attacks -- a rapidly improving and cooperative relationship with the Iranians into a bellicose chest-beating exercise whereby the likelihood of military confrontation of some sort increases every day. The two-dimensional Good vs. Evil framework that the president has applied to a complex and diverse Iran leaves virtually no other alternative.
Most disturbing, there is a great potential for military confrontation between Iran and the United States even if the president does not actively choose to attack. The proximity of Iran to Iraq, and the nature of the president's rhetoric make an unintentional war -- one that is sparked by miscalculation or misperception -- increasingly likely.
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WASHINGTON — For six years, Vice President Dick Cheney had his way with a compliant Republican-led Congress while dismissing Democrats as nuisances.
Perhaps the most famous example of the Cheney approach came when a Democratic senator tried to make small talk after earlier criticizing the veep. Replied Cheney on the Senate floor: ``Go f--- yourself.''
That was then. Now the Democrats run Congress, and Cheney faces a confrontation this week with a man who's his match in profanity and perhaps his superior at using the machinery of government to back it up.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, on Wednesday will propose cutting all appropriations for Cheney's office from the bill that's needed to finance the executive branch.
It's a response to Cheney's assertion that he isn't bound by a presidential order on secrecy because he isn't really part of the executive branch. Cheney says the Constitution makes him unique in government: one foot in the executive branch as next in line to the presidency and the other foot in the legislative branch as presiding officer of the Senate.
The White House says the constitutional argument from Cheney is interesting, but moot. The president's order requires executive agencies to report data about their use of classified documents to the National Archives. Spokeswoman Dana Perino says Bush never meant to include Cheney in the order covering other executive department agencies and that the president is the "sole enforcer'' of his own orders.
But Emanuel is using the argument to ridicule and bludgeon Cheney.
First, Emanuel released a chart showing four branches of government: the executive, the legislative, the judicial and the Cheney.
Then he went to work picking apart Cheney's argument.
``If the vice president truly believes he is not a part of the executive branch, he should return the salary the American taxpayers have been paying him since January 2001, and move out of the home for which they are footing the bill,'' Emanuel said.
Emanuel's proposed amendment would withhold the $4.4 million for Cheney's office until the vice president admits he's in the executive branch or the Government Accountability Office determines which branch Cheney serves in.
The goal is not to cut off the money, but to force a recognition that Cheney is in the executive branch and subject to the order on secrecy.
``The vice president has a choice to make,'' Emanuel said. ``If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch. However, if he demands executive-branch funding, he cannot ignore executive branch rules.''
A veteran of bare-knuckled politics from hometown Chicago to the Clinton White House, Emanuel is better known than Cheney for anger laced with profanity. He is, after all, a man who once mailed a dead fish to a pollster, a sinister message reminiscent of the "Godfather" mafia saga.
Emanuel's barbed-wire personality is so familiar in Washington that
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney joked this year that ``he's vice-presidential material."
It's still unclear which side will win this clash. What is clear, though, is that this time Cheney ran up against someone who can give as good as he gets.
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The Huffington Post
Clinton Assails Bush to Win Liberals
WASHINGTON — Trying to win over her party's liberal activists, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday accused President Bush of disregarding the Constitution and promised to bring a new progressive vision to the White House.
Bush's government has "a stunning record of secrecy and corruption, of cronyism run amok," she said in one of the more partisan speeches of her campaign. "It is everything our founders were afraid of, everything our Constitution was designed to prevent."
Clinton returned to the Take Back America conference where she was booed last year for opposing a set date for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq. This time, she said she is working to deauthorize the war.
Her comments on Iraq at the end of her 30-minute speech drew heckles, but she also won applause for promising to get out of Iraq and for embracing liberal positions on domestic issues such as health care, worker rights, education and stem cell research.
Bush vetoed a bill later in the day that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem cell research. Clinton, who spoke about six hours before the veto, promised to lift the restrictions if elected.
"This is just one example of how the president puts ideology before science, politics before the needs of our families, just one more example of how out of touch with reality he and his party have become," she said. "And it's just one more example as to why we're going to send them packing in January 2009 and return progressive leadership to the White House.
One audience member yelled, "Impeach him!"
After his veto, Bush said he will not allow human life to be destroyed to save others.
On Iraq, Clinton said the military has succeeded by removing Saddam Hussein from power, giving Iraqis the chance for free and fair elections and to govern themselves.
"The American military has succeeded. It is the Iraqi government which has failed to make the tough decisions that are important for their own people," Clinton said, although a loud chorus of boos cut off the end of her sentence.
"You know, I love coming here every year," Clinton said with a smile while the crowd continued to boo, with her supporters trying to drown the protesters out in cheers.
Members of the anti-war group Code Pink stood up throughout the audience, raising signs and holding up their fingers in a peace sign.
"I see the signs _ 'Get us out of Iraq now.' That is what we are trying to do," she said. She said she is working with Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., to sponsor legislation to deauthorize the war.
One of the protesters was Laurie Meier of St. Louis, who was wearing a police-style cap and shirt that said "Pink Police" on the back. She said Clinton is responsible for her vote to authorize the war and for repeatedly voting to fund it, until the most recent spending bill that she voted against.
"To blame it on the Iraqis is a cop out," Meier said.
Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich, another presidential candidate, also spoke Wednesday. He said Vice President Dick Cheney should be impeached and won enthusiastic applause from the audience.
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Arianna Huffington: A [Secret] Woman in Charge -- Hillary's Disturbing Secrecy Problem
Historians will be debating for decades what the worst element of the Bush White House was -- but at the root of the entire cancerous structure is George Bush and Dick Cheney's shared fixation on secrecy. Their mutual contempt for the public's right to know knows no bounds. As a result, Democratic voters are asking themselves which presidential candidate will be most effective at rolling back the Bush years. Well, if you read Carl Bernstein's A Woman In Charge (as I just did) you'll come away with the inevitable conclusion that when it comes to secrecy and operating in the shadows, the candidate least likely to turn on the lights is Hillary Clinton.