Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was among a group of governors who met recently with President Bush. There were no surprises on Iraq: Bush is committed to staying the course.
“There is no timetable, there is no adjusting this schedule. What you see on the television is what we see behind closed doors,” Sebelius told the Lawrence Journal-World.
“He is very determined that this has to work and convinced that it will work. We wish him Godspeed, but we could not get a very clear answer about what is the next game plan. No real willingness to engage in dialogue with other regions and other countries,” she said.
In other words, vintage Bush.
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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19 Comments
Truer words were never spoken, Madame Governor. My God! How could anyone brought themselves to vote for such a shallow and inept person such as the Shrub. His recent little field trip, on the direction of “President” Cheney, to photo-op with the tornado survivors in Alabama showed his pathetically fake sincerity. These poor people will get jobbed by FEMA just like the Katrina victims.
Kate, despite what you say, you’ll complement Bill Richardson immensely as our next Vice-President.
Yeah KCScott, how could they?
I mean the Republicans just stole the elections from your two best sons, Bore and 3 month Vietnam Vet 12 medal Kerry.
There’s not one Democrat employed in the entire US Government, it’s all ran by Republicans. So the fault of any failures couldn’t be a Democrats.
The Democrats are showing the way to successful retirement, just put that laundered money in your freezer for safe keeping.
One track mind bush.
Too bad he has dragged the rest of us along for the ride.
Oh he will have a legacy. We’ll be mired in the mid east for the foreseeable future.
Just exactly as he and his handlers intended.
Bush is a evangelical Christian and his justification for murdering Arabs is found in his Christian Crusade.
He will not respond to the logic of creating new enemies for the United States by murdering Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, etc, who have done nothing to the United States other than defend their country, or the sheer moral implications of murdering innocent people and destroying their families { 2 million Iraqis have fled to Jordan and other Mideast countries, trying to escape his brutality and making Iraq unlivable }.
Bush gave Ariel Sharon an antique map of “greater Israel” {a forgery } which stretched all the way from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River in Iraq and that is the “stay the course” dictating delusion inside his head.
Bush is being played for a sucker by the Israeli Zionists, who have a different goal of becoming the world’s next Superpower. The first step toward that goal is controlling the world’s oil supply by proxy through being able to direct US foreign policy.
I am not a crook.
“A lease-purchase agreement with developers who have political and professional ties to Gov. Kathleen Sebelius could end up costing the state more than $1 million for property the developers bought for $275,000 three years ago.”
Washington’s escalation of threats against Iran is driven by a determination to secure control of the region’s energy resources
Noam ChomskyFriday March 9, 2007The Guardian
In the energy-rich Middle East, only two countries have failed to subordinate themselves to Washington’s basic demands: Iran and Syria. Accordingly both are enemies, Iran by far the more important. As was the norm during the cold war, resort to violence is regularly justified as a reaction to the malign influence of the main enemy, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. Unsurprisingly, as Bush sends more troops to Iraq, tales surface of Iranian interference in the internal affairs of Iraq – a country otherwise free from any foreign interference – on the tacit assumption that Washington rules the world.
In the cold war-like mentality in Washington, Tehran is portrayed as the pinnacle in the so-called Shia crescent that stretches from Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon, through Shia southern Iraq and Syria. And again unsurprisingly, the “surge” in Iraq and escalation of threats and accusations against Iran is accompanied by grudging willingness to attend a conference of regional powers, with the agenda limited to Iraq.
Presumably this minimal gesture toward diplomacy is intended to allay the growing fears and anger elicited by Washington’s heightened aggressiveness. These concerns are given new substance in a detailed study of “the Iraq effect” by terrorism experts Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, revealing that the Iraq war “has increased terrorism sevenfold worldwide”. An “Iran effect” could be even more severe.
For the US, the primary issue in the Middle East has been, and remains, effective control of its unparalleled energy resources. Access is a secondary matter. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. Control is understood to be an instrument of global dominance. Iranian influence in the “crescent” challenges US control. By an accident of geography, the world’s major oil resources are in largely Shia areas of the Middle East: southern Iraq, adjacent regions of Saudi Arabia and Iran, with some of the major reserves of natural gas as well. Washington’s worst nightmare would be a loose Shia alliance controlling most of the world’s oil and independent of the US.
Such a bloc, if it emerges, might even join the Asian Energy Security Grid based in China. Iran could be a lynchpin. If the Bush planners bring that about, they will have seriously undermined the US position of power in the world.
To Washington, Tehran’s principal offence has been its defiance, going back to the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 and the hostage crisis at the US embassy. In retribution, Washington turned to support Saddam Hussein’s aggression against Iran, which left hundreds of thousands dead. Then came murderous sanctions and, under Bush, rejection of Iranian diplomatic efforts.
Last July, Israel invaded Lebanon, the fifth invasion since 1978. As before, US support was a critical factor, the pretexts quickly collapse on inspection, and the consequences for the people of Lebanon are severe. Among the reasons for the US-Israel invasion is that Hizbullah’s rockets could be a deterrent to a US-Israeli attack on Iran. Despite the sabre-rattling it is, I suspect, unlikely that the Bush administration will attack Iran. Public opinion in the US and around the world is overwhelmingly opposed. It appears that the US military and intelligence community is also opposed. Iran cannot defend itself against US attack, but it can respond in other ways, among them by inciting even more havoc in Iraq. Some issue warnings that are far more grave, among them the British military historian Corelli Barnett, who writes that “an attack on Iran would effectively launch world war three”.
Then again, a predator becomes even more dangerous, and less predictable, when wounded. In desperation to salvage something, the administration might risk even greater disasters. The Bush administration has created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. It has been unable to establish a reliable client state within, and cannot withdraw without facing the possible loss of control of the Middle East’s energy resources.
Meanwhile Washington may be seeking to destabilise Iran from within. The ethnic mix in Iran is complex; much of the population isn’t Persian. There are secessionist tendencies and it is likely that Washington is trying to stir them up – in Khuzestan on the Gulf, for example, where Iran’s oil is concentrated, a region that is largely Arab, not Persian.
Threat escalation also serves to pressure others to join US efforts to strangle Iran economically, with predictable success in Europe. Another predictable consequence, presumably intended, is to induce the Iranian leadership to be as repressive as possible, fomenting disorder while undermining reformers.
It is also necessary to demonise the leadership. In the west, any wild statement by President Ahmadinejad is circulated in headlines, dubiously translated. But Ahmadinejad has no control over foreign policy, which is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US media tend to ignore Khamenei’s statements, especially if they are conciliatory. It’s widely reported when Ahmadinejad says Israel shouldn’t exist – but there is silence when Khamenei says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine, calling for normalisation of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of a two-state settlement.
The US invasion of Iraq virtually instructed Iran to develop a nuclear deterrent. The message was that the US attacks at will, as long as the target is defenceless. Now Iran is ringed by US forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Turkey and the Persian Gulf, and close by are nuclear-armed Pakistan and Israel, the regional superpower, thanks to US support.
In 2003, Iran offered negotiations on all outstanding issues, including nuclear policies and Israel-Palestine relations. Washington’s response was to censure the Swiss diplomat who brought the offer. The following year, the EU and Iran reached an agreement that Iran would suspend enriching uranium; in return the EU would provide “firm guarantees on security issues” – code for US-Israeli threats to bomb Iran.
Apparently under US pressure, Europe did not live up to the bargain. Iran then resumed uranium enrichment. A genuine interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons in Iran would lead Washington to implement the EU bargain, agree to meaningful negotiations and join with others to move toward integrating Iran into the international economic system.
© Noam Chomsky, New York Times Syndicate
· Noam Chomsky is co-author, with Gilbert Achcar, of Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy
I almost blew past fleetie’s post on corruption in governor leadership’s admninistration.
The I read this:
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/16879277.htm
Wow. Just Wow.
Funny, almost the same thing is going on with the purchase of the Circle K ranch owned by hays and russell. Funny, mike hayden, parks and wildlife, and joe harkins are up to their necks in THAT little deal too.
You know that deal? The one where governor leadership and mike hayden and joe harkins want to take the Circle K Ranch off the hands of hays and russell for ONE MILLION DOLLARS over the ranch’s appraised value?
Why is it that john bird’s wife was recommended for appointment to Ms. Copp’s group, then the appointment was withdrawn?
And what have I been saying about the ties to Sebelius campaign contributors and the Kansas Water Board? Like Steve Irsik?
I’m telling ya, there is rotting garbage just below the surface of this administration. And funny how it always leads back to water, parks and wildlife, and campaign contributors.
But the sheeple dream on, secure in their slumber….
hee hee hee hee
Sorry, I can not leave without one more cheap shot.
I wonder if she was taking notes in washington on cronyism and environmental destruction? Learning at the feet of bushco?
heheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheheh
Ok, I’ll go sit in the penalty box for knocking down the easy joke…
After 9/11 we bombed Bin Laden’s camps leaving nothing besides rubble and punished the Taliban for harboring him, but what excuse do we possibly have to continue to allow our troops to die or become maimed by waring against the Taliban, now going into its six year?
Bush is crazy, but that’s not reason enough.
KC and the shitshine band. He/she/it is another example, just like Frmpig of really wanting the govt to hand over those checks to them. The reason they bitch about Bush and his tax cuts is because they don’t pay any taxes, just reap those checks from the taxpayers. Be honest with yourselves Frmpig and KC. The welfare line has been drawn and your timeline has runout. Do yourself a favor and the rest of us taxpaying folk, get a damn job.
Hey, Slob One, got a plan yet for paying off that National Debt? It is up to $8.839 Trillion as of today.
The projected GDP for 2007 is $12.39 trillion. Any good ideas?
BTW – In addition to the $9 trillion Debt, we also have about $40 trillion in SS or Medi obligations. Since all of the Social Security Trust fund has been “loaned” to the General Fund, there is no money.
Got any good ideas for us?
Hey Slob, I’ll have you know that I have been working in some form of employment for 41 consecutive yesrs, ever since I was 10 years old. Not once have I ever gone on the Dole, aptly named after the former Kansas senator.
BTW, I PAY my taxes and bitch about it like everone else.Go back to your pork rinds and your 20-pack of Keystone light, you rube!
This has got to be the only state left in the country where anyone tries to defend Bush, even with idiotic “the Democrats were there too” arguments (Genghis RepubliKhan). Oh…there is Nebraska. Forgot about that one.
What will it take for people to admit that they were wrong?
Not a rhetorical question, Republicans. I’m honestly interested because it seems he cannot do anything stupid enough. It’s like he’s daring you: “Bet ya’ll didn’t b’lieve I’d be THIS hard-headed and ignorant!” What will Bush have to do to get all of you to admit he was a mistake?
I just love her. Really I do. I hope she’s a lesbian. I pray she is. I want to do her so bad I can taste her. Mmmmmmmmm!
Obviously the post at 8:48 p.m. WAS NOT MADE BY ksfarmgrrl.
Hey Linda! You post ignorant stuff everywhere. Glad to see gone on Kansas.com. You’re a dumb bitch with half a brain. Eat me!
Great, the troll picks on the person who least deserves it. What a pos.
KC and the Sunshine band. How is that job going little man? 33% my arse. You do the dumbocrap math I see. Pretty hee hee hee little boy!
This thread seems to be a troll magnet. That and a flop for useless posters.
Troll? SLob? Probably one in the same?
If you feel the need to vent, my email is live. We can discuss manners. We can discuss your issues. Failing that? Well you’ve pretty much defined yourself here. Your job is done. Get on back to your usual rest area restroom facility. There is new material for you there.