"Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once"

[VioletLake]

They're so wrong about everything because they're criminals.

Credibility, like virginity, can only be lost once and never recovered. Hence, the problem the Bush administration has in dealing with Iran is that having been so wrong about Iraq, who can believe it now?

I recognize that a majority of Americans shrugged off going to war on false premises. The rest of the world is not so forgiving. The Bush administration's unprofessional, undiplomatic approach to the question of Iran's nuclear intentions sounds too much like the Iraqi dialogue. That dialogue consisted of American officials calling the Iraqis liars and the Iraqis denying they had weapons of mass destruction.

Now we're hearing the same childish dialogue directed at Iran. Iran insists it is not attempting to build nuclear weapons, and the United States replies with name-calling.

Credibility Can Only Be Lost Once
By Charley Reese

[classof56]

1. But they're criminals with a mandate.

Bush & crowd simply do not care what anybody, we as Americans or any other country in the world, thinks about what they do. And the election is their "ace in the hole", since they interpret the win as a "landslide victory" and they now have complete authority to carry out the "will of the people". Iran is one of the "axis of evil", it's on the PNAC list and unless enough of us rise up in rebellion, it will be invaded. I hear that grandparents are now being pressed into service in Iraq, so I'm guessing none of us is safe from being sent to the next "moral" war, no matter where it is. Bush & crowd have framed the debate and reframed history and definitions, just as the powers that be did in "1984" and so here we have it--our future:

War is Peace
Slavery is Freedom
Ignorance is Strenth

And I say: May God help us all.

[ooglymoogly]

2. good post good link thanks. n/t

[VioletLake]

3. I agree with your comments,

but I don't believe that they won the election. The "mandate" isn't a product of interpretation.

[VioletLake]

4. How to lose an army.

Here's another interesting POV from Antiwar.com.

Knowing nothing about war, the neocons probably expect any Iranian response to be symmetrical: an air and missile counterstrike. But Iran cannot do much that way, and surely knows it. Why shoot a few ineffective missiles at Israel when you have two juicy targets right next door, in the form of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq?

An Iranian riposte in Afghanistan probably would come slowly, in the form of a guerilla war in that country's Shi'ite regions. That might also be Iran's response in Iraq, where it already has Revolutionary Guard troops in Shi'ite areas. But there is another possibility. Under the cover of bad weather, which winter often provides, Iran could strike suddenly into Iraq with several armored divisions. Our forces are scattered throughout Iraq, and they cannot mass rapidly because Iraqi guerillas control the roads. With skill that is not beyond what Iran might manage (the Iranian army is better than Saddam's was) and a bit of luck, they could roll us up before American airpower could get the clear weather it needs to be effective. America would not only lose a war in Iraq; it would lose an army.

Last Exit Before Gas
by William S. Lind