Just enough time to let Bush

Run for cover in January 2009?

WASHINGTON -- Army Gen. David H. Petraeus has recommended that President Bush postpone sharp troop cuts in Iraq until next year, delaying a large-scale shift of combat forces to Afghanistan and reflecting concerns that widespread violence could return to Iraq.

Admiral Fallon explains.

Or doesn't:

Washington, D.C.(AHN) - America's former top military official for the Middle East has spoken for the first time since being replaced by the Pentagon. Admiral William J. "Fox" Fallon says in a New York Times interview that he had come under pressure after he went on record with his position for greater diplomatic engagement with Iran.

Fallon stepped down on March 11 as Commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) after a little over a year of service. He cited "the current embarrassing situation of public perception of differences between my views and administration policy and the distraction this causes from the mission" as the reason for his resignation. At the time, Esquire magazine had recently published an interview with Fallon that depicted him as criticizing President George Bush over wanting to invade Iran.

Over the weekend, Fallon again spoke to the Times about the "misperception" that he had come in conflict with the Bush administration over policy toward Iran. "There was a huge perception that I was publicly at odds with the president, which was not true. I had serious concerns that my subordinates - my soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines - had that perception. It put me in a difficult position. I felt very uncomfortable," he said.

But he also admitted that pressure had been building against him for months, and that there had been disagreements with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Multinational Force in Iraq and Fallon's replacement as CENTCOM chief. Fallon had pushed for troop withdrawals from Iraq that were more than those proposed by the Pentagon.

So you weren't preventing the White House from attacking Iran, but you were tossed out because you wanted to remove more soldiers from Iraq that they wanted to? ... It still doesn't make much sense, but thanks for trying.

With Fallon gone and Petraeus in charge,

Iran is now within reach for Cheney and the neocons:

WASHINGTON - The nomination of General David Petraeus to be the new head of the US Central Command ensures that he will be available to defend the George W Bush administration's policies on Iran and Iraq at least to the end of Bush's term and possibly even beyond.

It also gives Vice President Dick Cheney greater freedom of action to exploit the option of an air attack against Iran during the administration's final months.

Petraeus will take up the CENTCOM post in late summer or early autumn, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The ability of the administration to threaten Iran with an attack both publicly and behind the scenes had been dramatically reduced in 2007 by opposition from the former CENTCOM commander, Admiral William Fallon, until he stepped down from the post under pressure from Gates and the White House last month.

Petraeus has proved himself willing to cooperate closely with the White House on Iraq and Iran, arguing against any post-"surge" reduction in troop strength and blaming Iran for challenges to the US military presence. Along with the deference to Petraeus in Congress and the media, his pliability on those issues made him the obvious choice to replace Fallon.

But Petraeus had already effectively taken over many of the powers of the CENTCOM commander last year.

As the top commander in Iraq, he was in theory beneath Fallon in the chain of command. In reality, Petraeus ignored Fallon's views and took orders directly from the White House. Petraeus was in effect playing the role of CENTCOM commander in regard to the twin issues of Iraq and Iran.

Fallon clashed with Petraeus repeatedly from the beginning of his command about the "surge" and US withdrawal from Iraq. Fallon opposed the "surge" and believed the US should begin the withdrawal of most of its troops from Iraq, but he was effectively stymied by the close Petraeus-White House link from being able to influence US military policy in Iraq and the region as a whole.

Fallon had also pushed very hard, according to a source familiar with his thinking, for trying to negotiate an agreement with Iran over innocent passage through the Strait of Hormuz to ease tensions caused by US-Iranian differences over the obligations of navy vessels transiting the strait. But any such negotiations would have conflicted with the administration's emphasis on confrontation with Iran, and they weren't interested.

So what did Cheney do right after Fallon was booted?

Fallon's resignation announcement on March 11 was followed less than a week later by a 10-day Cheney trip to the Middle East in which the vice president talked explicitly about the military option against Iran during visits to Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That suggested that Cheney felt freer to wield the military threat to Iran with Fallon neutralized.

Cheney aggressively solicited political support from Turkish leaders for a US strike against Iranian nuclear facilities during his visit to Turkey last month, according to a source familiar with Cheney's meeting in Ankara.

Cheney was "very aggressive" in asking Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, as well as Turkey's chief of general staff General Yasar Bukyukanit to get "on board" with such an attack, according to the source, who has access to reports from the Cheney visit.

Remember what the reaction of the Saudis was right after Cheney's visit: researching procedures to handle radioactive fallout.

And why did the Bush administration 'open up' the file on Israel's bombing of Syria unless it was to prepare the world for the inevitable bombing strikes on Iran? You have to ask why they did it right now, because they've never released any kind of information unless it benefits their agenda:

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration went public Thursday with sensitive intelligence meant to show that North Korea spent years helping Syria build a covert facility for nuclear weapons before the plant was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike last year.

The disclosures offered a rare look at evidence gathered by U.S. and allied intelligence agencies and were part of a choreographed campaign by the administration to put pressure not only on North Korea and Syria, but also on other adversaries accused of pursuing nuclear weapons, including Iran.

The previously classified information included satellite images of the Syrian facility, photos of a man identified as a North Korean nuclear expert in Syria, as well as pictures taken by someone with access to the structure as it was being built.

The photos were presented in a glossy dossier that called attention to similarities between the Syrian plant, at a desert site called Al Kibar, and North Korea's nuclear reactor at Yongbyon.

The evidence left several questions unanswered, such as how Damascus would fuel the plant or manufacture bombs, and was greeted with skepticism by some nuclear experts and foreign officials.

U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged that they had not obtained evidence indicating Syria was working on nuclear weapons designs and had not identified a source of nuclear material for the facility.

In detailing the alleged North Korean-Syrian cooperation and the destruction of the plant, the Bush administration broke a long silence. U.S. officials confirmed the Israeli attack on the site and indicated that they had cooperated intensively with the Israelis on intelligence and policy issues. They denied any U.S. involvement in planning or executing the Sept. 6 strike.

Further into the article:

As the briefings concluded, the White House issued a statement condemning North Korea and Syria and warning Iran that it should relinquish any nuclear weapons aspirations.

I don't think this has anything to do with Syria or North Korea.

They're going to bomb Iran and hand the disaster over to the Democratic president. Two birds with one 500 ton bomb.

Update: And here is more preparation of the excuses we'll give:

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff today accused Iran of increasing its shipments of weapons to militants in Iraq, despite promises by Iranian leaders that they would cut off the flow of arms.

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, the Joint Chiefs chairman, said there was not a massive infusion of weapons but said over time there had been "a consistent increase" in arms shipments. Speaking at a morning news conference, Mullen said weapons had been intercepted in Iraq that showed evidence of relatively recent manufacture in Iran, adding that Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, would lay out a fuller account of the evidence in the weeks to come.

Update: Sinfonian of Blast Off says it better.

crossposted at American Street

It's way past April first

So this can't be a joke.... can it?:

At the cost of nearly $500 million, a Los Angeles-based company is “developing the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience, a massive American-style amusement park that will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.” The park “is being designed by the firm that developed Disneyland.” The company’s owner says “the time is ripe” for profit and entertainment to collide in Iraq...

Ripe? Profit and entertainment? Are you kidding me? Just who on earth is supportive of this ridiculous effort?

But Mr Werner, whose company manages several hundred million dollars of equity, sees Iraq as a great opportunity. “Iraq to me is an open field. I have never in my life seen an opportunity with the potential that Iraq has with its skilled workforce and oil reserves.” He has begun partnerships with several Iraqi factories in the last year, investing tens of millions of dollars in joint ventures. But the Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience could prove the most ambitious. General David Petraeus, head of US forces, is said to be a “big supporter” of the project, according to Mr Brinkley.

Really? This makes me feel so much better about Petraeus having a firm grip on the reality on the ground.

How does it feel?

How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

How does it feel to be the excuse for Bush to continue the war? How does it feel to keep soldiers in the war zone until they slowly go mad or die? How does it feel to be leg-chained to the worst administration in US history and know your name and face will be forever linked with them in the history books?

How does it feel?



I know how I feel just listening to you two.

crossposted at SteveAudio

Is this so we will ever so conveniently have no one our diplomats can talk to?

General Petraeus, do you support a war with Iran? Do you support Bush and Cheney's obvious desire to attack Iran? What are you going to do about Iraq and Afghanistan if you start a third war? Have you considered what Iran's reaction will be if we do attack? Have you considered what the world's reaction will be if we do?

General Petraeus, do you have political ambitions?

The top US military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, has accused Iran's ambassador of belonging to an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

Gen Petraeus said Hassan Kazemi-Qomi was a member of the Quds Force, which the US believes backs foreign Islamic revolutionary movements.

Gen Petraeus said he had no doubt Iran was behind attacks that had led to the deaths of US soldiers.

Iran has so far not commented, but regularly denies any such involvement.

Separately, the US military said it had captured three Iranian-linked Shia militiamen believed responsible for abducting five British security contractors in May.

General Betray Us

The Washington Post fact checks MoveOn.org's ad about Petraeus:

The data provided by Gen. Petraeus on sharply declining Iraqi casualty rates is certainly open to analysis, debate, and challenge. We plan to take a closer look at them in a future post. However, MoveOn.org does not provide adequate factual support for its larger assertion that Petraeus is "constantly at war with the facts" and is "cooking the books" for the White House. In the absence of fresh evidence, we award MoveOn.org three Pinocchios.

Politicizing the military

(Via whig at Cannablog):

Because of the Senate vote, MoveOn.org raises $500,000

Via John Aravosis at Americablog:

From Eli Pariser, the Executive Director of MoveOn.

Dear MoveOn member,

Yesterday, an amazing thing happened. After the Senate's shameful vote, and after President Bush called MoveOn "disgusting," our email started to fill up with messages like this one:

I'm currently in Iraq. I do not agree with this war, and if I did support this war, it would not matter. You have the RIGHT to speak the truth. We KNOW that you support us. Thank you for speaking out for being our voice. We do not have a voice. We are overshooted by those who say that we soldiers do not support organizations like MoveOn. WE DO.

YOU ARE OUR voice.

And then came the donations. By midnight, over 12,000 people had donated $500,000—more than we've raised any day this year—for our new ad calling out the Republicans who blocked adequate rest for troops headed back to Iraq.

The message from MoveOn members was loud and clear: Don't back down. Take the fight back to the issues that matter.

So today we're shooting for a very ambitious goal: Reach $1 million so we can dramatically expand the campaign we launched yesterday going after politicians who support this awful war. Can you chip in $25 toward our goal?

Diplomacy and ass-kissing

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Fallon did not get Georgie's memo:

Gates on Iran:

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - In a new move to tackle the potential nuclear threat in the Middle East, the U.S. is planning to address issues with Iran using diplomatic and economic means, according to new statements from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. After speculation that Washington was contemplating a military solution to a nuclear Tehran, Gates took to television to discourage the thought of a war with Iran, but did not rule it out.

In an interview with Fox News, Gates didn't confirm if President George Bush will consult Congress before launching a military strike against Iran. "I will tell you that I think the administration believes at this point that continuing to try and deal with the Iranian threat, the Iranian challenge through diplomatic and economic means is by far the preferable approach," Gates said.

Admiral Fallon on Petraeus:

WASHINGTON - In sharp contrast to the lionization of General David Petraeus by members of the US Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus's superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (Centcom), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad in March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be "an ass-kissing little chickenshit" and added, "I hate people like that," the sources say.

[snip]

Fallon's derision toward Petraeus reflected both the Centcom commander's personal distaste for Petraeus's style of operating and their fundamental policy differences over Iraq, according to the sources.

The policy context of Fallon's extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus's agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W Bush administration's effort to sell its policy of increasing US troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in early February just before the Senate debated Bush's troop increase. According to a report in the Washington Post on February 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to McConnell's office to hear Petraeus make the case for the "surge" policy.

Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus's role as pitchman for the "surge" in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia - the area for which Fallon's Centcom is responsible.

The Centcom commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region. "He is very focused on Pakistan," said a source familiar with Fallon's thinking, "and trying to maintain a difficult status quo with Iran."

[snip]

Fallon also expressed great skepticism about the basic assumption underlying the "surge" strategy, which was that it could pave the way for political reconciliation in Iraq. In the lead story of September 9, the Washington Post quoted a "senior administration official" as saying that Fallon had been "saying from Day 1, 'This isn't working.'"

Georgie's losing control of his mighty manly muscly military....

I guess this is the new Rovian math they were talking about

30,000 doesn't mean 30,000 anymore.

Via Joe Sudbay of Americablog, NPR interview with Petraeus:

I want to ask about the reduction in troops that you've talked about. I want to first make sure that I understand the numbers that you're talking about. It's been said that what you've described is a reduction in 30,000 troops. Is that, in fact, what you –

[Petraeus] What I've described is a reduction of five brigade combat teams, Army brigade combat teams, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, which actually is coming out this month without replacement, and two Marine battalions. Now, we want to take out other –

That's a little less than –

[Petraeus] Well, we have to do the math, candidly. We've got – I have not yet said how many thousands of troops.

So when people have said 30,000, they're not quite accurate. It might be 30,000 — it might be quite a bit less.

[Petraeus] Well, we've got to determine what it can be. The mission so far, in a sense, was to figure out how to bring these down while sustaining the gains that our troopers and Iraqi troopers have achieved, and also, then, to figure out the larger picture of where else can you reduce forces — which is something we want to do anyway.

So what on earth kind of tap dance will Bush be planning for his mighty-manly-mission-accomplished so-we're-unsurging speech tonight?

He doesn't know.

But we do.



We are not safer. We do not have port security. We do not have border security. We have people at airports being stopped for water in sippy cups and having last names like Johnson.

We do not have a comprehensive plan for the next inevitable terrorist strike. We do not have a plan at all. The Department of Homeland Security and the Bush administration showed its incompetence during Katrina.

It's not government that's incompetent.

THIS administration is incompetent.

We've seen governments that knew what to do in an emergency. They knew what to do when disaster struck. But if your whole administration is based on corruption, cronyism, and gutting the treasury for your own coffers, that's all that you'll produce.

We will not be safe until we get Bush out of office and we've weeded out all the neocons. And I mean weeded out, dug up the tap roots, and salted the neocon earth so nothing ever again grows from this evil and inhumane philosophy.

Catapulting the propaganda and grinding up the Right Wing Smear Machine will not make us forget.

We know.

A fatal dilemma

SPIEGEL: How would you describe the situation of the Bush White House today? What options does it have?

KOLKO: The Bush Administration suffers from a fatal dilemma. Its Iraq adventure is getting steadily worse, the American people very likely will vote the Republicans out of office because of it, and the war is extremely expensive at a time that the economy is beginning to present it with a major problem. The president's poll ratings are now the worst since 2001. Only 33 percent of the American public approve of his leadership and 58 percent want to decrease the number of American troops immediately or quickly. Fifty-five percent want legislation to set a withdrawal deadline. In Afghanistan, as well, the war against the Taliban is going badly, and the Bush Administration's dismal effort to use massive American military power to remake the world in a vague, inconsistent way is failing. The US has managed to increasingly alienate its former friends, who now fear its confusion and unpredictability. Above all, the American public is less ready than ever to tolerate Bush's idiosyncrasies.

SPIEGEL: What went wrong? Was the war doomed from the very beginning? How can the US military and the US government which is spending $3 billion per week in Iraq be losing the war?

KOLKO: The US is losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the very same reasons it lost all of its earlier conflicts. It has the manpower and firepower advantage, as always, but these are ultimately irrelevant in the medium- and long-run. They were irrelevant in many contexts in which the US was not involved, and they explain the outcome of many armed struggles over the past century regardless of who was in them, for they are usually decided by the socio-economic and political strength of the various sides -- China after 1947 and Vietnam after 1972 are two examples but scarcely the only ones. Wars are more determined by socio-economic and political factors than any other, and this was true long before the US attempted to regulate the world's affairs. Political conflicts are not solved by military interventions, and that they are often incapable of being resolved by political or peaceful means does not alter the fact that force is dysfunctional. This is truer today than ever with the spread of weapons technology. Washington refuses to heed this lesson of modern history.

SPIEGEL: What is the position of the US military? Are its forces united behind the war?

KOLKO: Some of the most acute criticisms made of the gross simplisms which have guided interventionist policies were produced within the American military, especially after the Vietnam experience traumatized it. My history of the Vietnam War was purchased by many base libraries, and the military journals treated it in detail and very respectfully. The statement at the end of July by the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, that "no amount of troops in no amount of time will make much of a difference" if Iraqi politics fails to change drastically reflects a current of realism that has existed among military thinkers for some decades (whether he acts on this assumption is another matter and depends greatly on considerations outside of his control). But the senior military remains extremely disunited on this war, and many officers regard Gen. Petraeus -- the top military commander in Iraq -- as a political opportunist who ultimately will do as Bush commands.

Admiral William J. Fallon, who commands American forces in the region and is Petraeus' superior, is publicly skeptical of his endorsement of the president's policies in Iraq. The Army, especially, does not have the manpower for a protracted war and if the US maintains its troop levels after spring 2008, it will face a crisis. It will have to break its pledge not to leave soldiers in Iraq longer than 15 months, accelerate the use of National Guard units, and the like -- and it will lose the war regardless of what it does.

And still, no one is listening...

Another response to General Petraeus

Response to the 'Petraeus Report'

Just wait six more months...

Then six more and six more and then surprise!! Bush is outta office, and the mess is somebody else's to fix.

Via Atrios at Eschaton, the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 9 — The top American commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, has recommended that decisions on the contentious issue of reducing the main body of the American troops in Iraq be put off for six months, American officials said Sunday.

Haven't we noticed a pattern yet with this preznit?

They need a monstrous enemy

Not just a few dudes in a pickup truck:

The size and impact of al Qaeda in Iraq is hugely overblown by the media, elected figures, and military officials. Further, and perhaps even more importantly, its purported strength is essentially the only security-related reason claimed by the administration for maintaining our occupation. Political manipulation by government and military leaders -- combined with a lack of knowledge of situational specifics on the part of commentators and the public -- results in a profound general misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.

Incidentally, according to General Petraeus the surge is aimed at al Qaeda, a group about which he is severely deluded. It's all such a debacle.

Are the Democrats able to support the troops

By bringing them home like we asked?

Via jurassicpork at Welcome to Pottersville,

Paul Krugman:

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

Now you see it

Now you don't:

In the latest twist to the ongoing saga over the Petraeus White House report, a senior military official tells the Washington Times today that there will actually be no report at all:

A senior military officer said there will be no written presentation to the president on security and stability in Iraq. “There is no report. It is an assessment provided by them by testimony,” the officer said.

The only hard copy will be Gen. Petraeus’ opening statement to Congress, scheduled for Monday, along with any charts he will use in explaining the results of the troop surge in Baghdad over the past several months.

Like everything else the Bush administration has done. Promised but never delivered.

Is the Petraeus-Bush rumpus another fake-out?

Laura Rozen writes for Mother Jones:

Add me to the list of the puzzled. Many signs are from those advising Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus that he and his advisors think they have a strategy that they say is somewhat succeeding and don't want Congress to pull the plug. In other words, Petraeus and the White House are ostensibly pretty close in advocating a continued large scale US presence in Iraq for as long as possible.

So it's bizarre that the White House is apparently indicating that it wants to preempt his findings and hijack the Petraeus report from Petraeus, and confine Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker to testifying before Congress in closed session.

So puzzling that one is suspicious: is the White House ultimately going to "give in" to Congressional pressure and "let" Petraeus testify, only to have it revealed, that, what do you know, it turns out that the good general too thinks the surge has done wonders and, with time, might reduce violence to a degree that greater political reconciliation takes hold. He even forecasts that over the next year, he might be able to move troops out of the areas where violence has gone down, hinting at a lower US troop presence by next year, without offering too many specifics.

Of any reported White House effort to silence or sideline Petraeus, one of the general's close associates emails me, "I do not believe it."

I'm getting a little dizzy... maybe it'd be easier if we forgot all this and bombed Iran.