Congressional leaders late last year secretly agreed to fund and expand a Bush administration push for covert operations against Iran, according to a new investigative piece by Seymour Hersch in the New Yorker.
Considering the administration’s track record in Iraq, one must ask: Why?
The White House objective, according to Hersch’s inside sources, is to destabilize Iran’s religious leadership, foment regime change, and lay the groundwork for a possible U.S. military strike before President Bush leaves office. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other Pentagon leaders are said to have strongly opposed a military strike.
It’s startling that Democratic congressional leadership would sign off on such an operation, given a National Intelligence Estimate in December that concluded Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. One source is quoted as saying that the oversight process had been “co-opted” by the White House: “The process is broken, and this is dangerous stuff we’re authorizing.”
Hersch’s piece portrays a president who remains committed to regime change in the Middle East and isn’t going to go quietly from office.
“I do not believe nation-building in Iraq is going to be the issue come November - whether things get better there or worse. I think nation-building in America is going to be the issue,” wrote columnist Thomas Friedman. “It’s the state of America now that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans, not al-Qaida or Iraq. Anyone who thinks they are going to win this election playing the Iraq or the terrorism card - one way or another - is, in my view, seriously deluded.”
Friedman’s advice to voters: “We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started. Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters.”
Retired Gen. Wesley Clark wasn’t wrong in noting how John McCain’s military service does not automatically qualify him to be commander in chief, but he sounded disrespectful of that service in saying on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he doesn’t think “riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” A spokesman for Barack Obama said Monday that Obama “honors and respects Sen. McCain’s service, and of course, he rejects yesterday’s statement by Gen. Clark.”
In a speech Monday in Missouri, Obama paid tribute to McCain, who he said “endured physical torment in service to our country.” Obama also vowed not to question the patriotism of others during the presidential campaign but said that he would “not stand idly by when I hear others question mine.”
“The cheap populism is really rich coming from Karl Rove,” columnist Maureen Dowd wrote about Rove’s attempt to label Barack Obama as a “coolly arrogant” elitist. She added: “The absurd spectacle of rich white conservatives trying to paint Obama as a watercress sandwich with the crust cut off seems ugly and fake. Obama can be aloof and dismissive at times, and he’s certainly self-regarding, carrying the aura of the Ivy faculty club. But isn’t that better than the aura of the country clubs that tried to keep out blacks?”
It should worry adults that the percentage of teenagers who smoke leveled off between 2003 and 2007, after earlier years of steady decline in tobacco use, according to a new study of data by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Are teens not getting the message about the health risks of smoking? Maybe not, according to health experts, who say many states have scaled back high-profile anti-smoking campaigns aimed at youths that have proved very effective in reducing smoking.
Meanwhile, “The tobacco industry never stopped promoting its products,” said Terry Pechacek of the CDC. “They have increased their effort and maintained a very active effort to promote tobacco while prevention efforts have lost funding.”
Congressional leaders late last year secretly agreed to fund and expand a Bush administration push for covert operations against Iran, according to a new investigative piece by Seymour Hersch in the New Yorker.
