Pumping up the specter of the bogeyman

As they jockey for position heading into the general election, McCain and Obama are both guilty of overstating any "threat" posed by Iran.

On the campaign trail, both of them are guilty of taking a little bit of known information and blowing it up to ominous proportions. I expect fearmongering and lying from McCain - he's a warmongering old republican fuckhead. But Obama? I have standards where Democrats are concerned, and if he wants to bear the standard for me, and a whole bunch of other people who know what the fuck is going on, he needs to get some fact-checkers on the job and stop asserting facts not in evidence.

What has me pitching this bi-partisan hissy-fit so early on a Tuesday morning, you ask? For starters, it pisses me off to hear people who know better - or should, at least - assert as fact the unsubstantiated allegation that Iran is, without a doubt, developing nuclear weapons.

It gives me pause. Have they even bothered to look at the public record? Or are they both selectively, yet deliberately, dishonest?

Given the Iraq fiasco and the way we were lied into it, I am in no mood to brook any foolishness or abide any willful and deliberate distortion of fact when they turn their sights on Iran.

We all know that where Iran is concerned, every word out of McCain's mouth is distorted, including "and" "the" and "of." His speech to AIPAC yesterday was unwatchable, so palpable was the bloodlust. This does not surprise me.

But when Obama says "Iran is stronger now than when George Bush took office. And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons," I call bullshit.

And so does McClatchy.

The 16 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community said last November in an unclassified National Intelligence Estimate that it concluded with "high confidence" that Iran had halted an effort to develop a nuclear weapon in fall 2003.

A senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said that U.S. intelligence agencies stuck by the NIE's judgment of "moderate confidence" that Iran hadn't reactivated the alleged effort.

There is no evidence that Iran is pursuing the ends that American politicians accuse them of, and Obama plays into the hands of the republican AIPAC fluffers and warmongering chickenhawks when he cedes them even an inch and repeats even watered down versions of their lies.

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Annapolis: The 1 1/2 state solution

Let’s be honest. Even if Annapolis did propose to solve anything, the “solution” it offered would be from the U.S.-Israeli point of view. And that point of view is, bluntly, the 1 1/2 state solution.

Now, that phrase, “1 1/2 state solution,” can be understood in one of two ways. The first way would be that Israel doesn’t want a fully independent Palestine for quite some time. That may or may not be the case, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

No, the U.S.-Israeli 1 1/2 state solution is the solution of only recognizing Mahmoud Abbas’ rump Fatah Palestinian government in the West Bank. That’s been the “solution” both countries jumped on ever since Palestinian Hamas won a free parliamentary election in January by a smashing margin.

For years, Likud-based governments in Israel have deliberately puffed up Hamas’ psychological profile in order to make it easier to demonize Palestinians in general. Labor, the times it’s been in coalition, has basically gone along for the ride.

Well, guess what, Likud? That’s now blown up in your face.

George W. Bush has been all about democracy promotion in the Middle East, ignoring clear evidence, such as Algeria’s late 1990s election, that free elections in the Middle East are most likely to elect Islamicist parties.

Well, guess what, W.? That happened in Palestine and it’s now blown up in your face.

But, it’s not just W. Way too many Democrats, let alone Republicans enthralled by end-time prophecies of the Christian Religious Right involving red heifers, temple rebuildings and Jewish conversions, are under thrall of Zionist strains in Israeli politics and Zionist-grounded Jewish-American political action groups such as AIPAC.

Until these shackles are shaken off, Middle East peace conferences are going nowhere.

I’m not excusing past terrorist acts by Hamas, as wingers are wont to claim left-liberal dialogue about Palestine and Israel does. Nor am I excusing Yassir Arafat’s post-Oslo lack of statesmanship. I’m simply stating the fact that anything short of a full two-state solution is bound to fail.

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