New roll-out (propaganda campaign) for war with Iran?

Thanks for the New Yorker article Bernie.

What struck me was the European assessment that Gordon Brown is most supportive of an American strike.

He's a clever cookie. The Labour party are surging ahead in the polls in large measure because Brown is not Blair and seen as standing up to Bush (a bit). But its a false image. Brown is every bit as keen to support the US as Blair was. Given this fundamental understanding, Brown can allow one or two critical voices of US policy to surface, knowing Bush wont be too worried, whilst giving every appearance of putting distance between London and Washington for UK domestic consumption.

Also whats not talked about here much is the humilliating defeat of the Royal Navy by a few Revolutionary Guards in rubber boats. The Marine equivalent of the SAS is now officially the SASSS. (Surrender Apologise Sell Story to Sun)

Blatham,

I did read Hersh's article.

Interesting, gossipy report of the often disjoint impressions of the author's sources,

all set in the context of a postulated insane U.S. regime bent on yet another mindless attack regardless of the consequences. The problem, of course, is that, even though this assumption is taken as revealed truth by Hersh,

you and many of the chattering class,

it is not neecessarily true, and indeed not even likely. There are other equally coherent explanations that appear (at least to me) far more likely.

A second issue I have with the piece is that, while it makes no attempt whatever to present (or even to refer to) an alternative solution to an admittedly complex strategic problem,

it is suffused with the certainty that the administration's actual actions, contemplated ones, and subjective intentions are all necessarily wrong.

I was bemused by the cited opinions of Zbigniew Brzezinski - now a sage elder much in favor with the liberal establishment. He was Jimmy Carter's NSC Director during the Iranian Revolution. Given the abject failure of that unlamented Administration's policy with respect to the outrageous events surrounding that revolution, and their shameless betrayal of a dying former ally (who as history has subsequently shown ran a more progressive government in Iran than the present one) , Brzezinski is in no position to be taken seriously by thinking people today.

Criticism is itself often valuable. However people with an experience of responsibility and accountability know it is no substitute for a coherent alternative strategy, and that in the real world it is often guided by unseen motives and assumptions.

I got into "Gold" four years ago c.i.

I don't fancy all this technical jargon.

Washington, DC - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today announced that she is co-sponsoring legislation introduced by Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) that prohibits the use of funds for military operations against Iran without explicit Congressional authorization (S. 759).

But what really pisses me off here in that last sentence is "accountability". There is almost none. And that is absolutely intentional. Withholding information, denying access to staff, attempting to pass legislation which will protect them retroactively, etc etc. Perhaps you think they will be held accountable by historians. Like Stalin

Certainly a wiff of something, though I suspect it has more to do with self-righteous & vain posturing (on the part of the ever-strange Jim Webb), and pre-election opportunism (on the part of the ever-adaptable Hillary).

Never mind that the Constitution has something to say about the matter.

The purportedly perfidious role of Iran in Iraq sits at the center of the case for war. One can hardly open a newspaper or political magazine without reading table-pounding condemnations of Tehran. The Washington Post's editorialists declare that Iran "is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible," and Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute warns Newsweek's readers that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps "have long given aid to a varied list of terrorists, including, quite possibly, al Qaeda."

The curious thing about the case against Iran, however, is that hawks have created this perception without providing so much as a Powell-at-the-UN-style dossier of evidence. Although administration officials have parroted claims against Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for months, the charges are wholly based on inferential and nonspecific evidence that pales in comparison even to the trumped-up charges leveled against Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

No citizen could dare trust the agenda-driven print media -- The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times -- to figure out, let alone accurately tell, the "real" story.

But now the State Department is in the blogosphere, and says it "offers the public an alternative source to mainstream media for U.S. foreign policy information." The blog, launched last week and called "Dipnote," is "taking you behind the scenes."

This is what we've all been waiting for! No more media filters and distortions. Unbiased news directly from the federal government, a news source long noted for truthful, unbiased reporting. The Clinton administration and most all its predecessors vowed to end-run the media, and they finally have the new electronic media to help them to do it.

I think that your underlying assumption, that the Administration has no moral compass and will lay waste people's lives in large numbers in the service of dividends, a not unknown circumstance I'll admit, is wrong. And if it is right there is some fundamental flaw in the educational system and in the electoral process which produced it and twice elected it.

a news source long noted for truthful, unbiased reporting.

Your assumption that media could only be envious of the power of politicians is telling about how you personally would act in a similar position.