FOX and Friends has Bill Kristol on with the post-Labor Day drive to Iran

[sabra]

http://www.newshounds.us/2007/09/04/bill_kristol_starts_off_the_postlabor_day_drive_to_iran_rhetorically_of_course.php

<snip>

FOX and Friends led the charge this morning, with Weekly Standard Editor and PNAC Chairman Bill Kristol telling Steve Doocy that the US will probably have to take action against Iran, not for their nuclear program so much as for their aggressive support of Iraqi insurgents.

Doocy made an awkward segue from the ostensible topic, North Korea's promise to shut down its nuclear program by year's end, saying that development simultaneously focused people's interest on Iran, where they are "spinning and cooking up the really good uranium stuff."

Kristol enumerated the talking points that Iran has been beliigerent across the board, taking American citizens "hostage," going forward with a nuclear program despite our demands they stop, and are aggressively helping our enemies in Iraq - training Shia sectarian militias and providing weapons. "We may have to do more to stop Iran, at least with respect to Iraq, leave aside the nuclear program."

[mrreowwr_kittty]

1. Bullshit. The Saudis are funding way more Sunni insurgents.

Oh but they're our friends. :eyes:

[Kelly Rupert]

6. Well, right now the Sunni insurgents

are tentatively US-allied against foreign terrorists. As it turns out, Iraqi nationalists don't like Al-Qaida bombs going off in their marketplaces any more than they like American ones, and they (for the moment) tend to believe that religious zealots are a more-immediate threat to their tribal control than Americans are. At the moment, they're not the primary cause of violence towards civilians.

At the moment, the competing Shi'a militias are a bigger problem, both in a humanitarian who's-killing-more-people sense and a political who-has-the-real-power sense.

However, the mind boggles at the fact that there are apparently still people--people of influence--listening to those who believe the best way to minimize the impact of radical actors is a broad, intense aerial bombing campaign.

[Hamlette]

2. Holy crap. did you read this?

They . . . have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."

http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/sep/02/iraq_with_an_n_anatomy_of_a_rumor_that_has_to_be_taken_seriously

And so it begins. If Bush can get 35% approval from Americans, he bomb Iran.

[sabra]

3. yep, so Fox having Kristol on this morning was no surprise...

[underpants]

5. Well at least they waited until they had all the labor issues taken care of

:sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

4. Still a lying sack, our Billy. The IAEA says no, they're not. n/t

[kineneb]

7. if the asshats want war, then THEY should go to fight it

and leave the rest of us out... I can just see all those pasty office doughboys surviving in Iran's deserts for more than 3 days... they don't realize the local nomadic tribes don't take "kindly" to strangers...

[Kelly Rupert]

8. Not so much worried about the "nomadic tribes."

There are bigger problems with war with Iran.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qods_Force
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basij

[kineneb]

9. I know

but the locals would be more hacked off than the Iraqis have been, and the population is much larger.

I have lived in Iran and am a bit familiar with their thinking process, the terrain, and traditions, which is more than can be said for the US Gov. I also still have family there. Iran is not a post-WWI/post-Ottoman Empire construct as was Iraq, nor is it an artificial grouping of rival tribes as is Afghanistan. It has been a real country for 2500+ years and has a sense of nationalism and history that Americans can hardly understand.