The Bush administration is spreading freedoms and democracy

By bringing in cholera to Iraqis, poisoning their environment, ruining their infrastructure. Perhaps even building nuclear bases in the country...

By an uptick in violence in Afghanistan.

By breaking the world's economies.

Heckuva job, Georgie!

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

Nukes over Iran

Nukes now and nukes forever, Dick Cheney, Amen. The neocons have been lusting after the ability to use nukes ever since we set them off at the end of WWII, and now they have their zombie fingers of death on the red button.

I have hijacked Empire Burlesque's Chris Floyd's article because it is so terrifying:

I. One Tick Closer to Midnight
Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors," one of the kingdom's leading newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed the paper's story.

Simple prudence -- or ominous timing? We noted here last week that an American attack on Iran was far more likely -- and more imminent -- than most people suspect. We pointed to the mountain of evidence for this case gathered by scholar William R. Polk, one of the top aides to John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to other indicators of impending war. The story by Okaz -- which would not have appeared in the tightly controlled dictatorship without approval from the top -- is yet another, very weighty piece of evidence laid in the scales toward a new, horrendous conflict.

We don't know what the Saudis told Cheney in private -- or even more to the point, what he told them. But the release of this story now, just after his departure, would seem to be a clear indication that the Saudis have good reason to fear a looming attack on Iran's nuclear sites and are actively preparing for it.

Chris Floyd goes on to discuss Cheney and Bush in his next section, II. A Nuclear Epiphany in Iran?

Twelve hours is the maximum time necessary for American bombers to gear up and launch an unprovoked sneak attack – a Pearl Harbor in reverse – against Iran, the Washington Post reports. The plan for this "global strike," which includes a very viable "nuclear option," was approved months ago, and is now in operation. The planes are already on continuous alert, making "nuclear delivery" practice runs along the Iranian border, as Sy Hersh reports in the New Yorker, and waiting only for the signal from President George W. Bush to drop their payloads of conventional and nuclear weapons on some 400 targets spread throughout the condemned land.

[snip]

Now this paranoid sect has at last seized the commanding heights of American power...they have found a most eager disciple in the peevish dullard strutting in the Oval Office. Under their sinister tutelage, Bush has eviscerated 40 years' worth of arms control treaties; officially "normalized" the use of nuclear weapons, even against non-nuclear states; rewarded outlaw proliferators like India, Israel and Pakistan; and is now destroying the last and most effective restraint on the spread of nuclear weapons: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The treaty guarantees its signatories – such as Iran – the right to establish nuclear power programs in exchange for rigorous international inspections. But Bush has arbitrarily decided that Iran – whose nuclear program undergone perhaps the most extensive inspection process in history – must end its lawful activities. Why? Because the country is led by "madmen" in thrall to pure evil, impervious to reason, who one day may or may not threaten America with weapons they may or may not have....

So the NPT is dead. As with the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution, it now means only what Bush says it means. Force of arms, not rule of law, is the new world order. The attack on Iran is coming...The obvious, murderous insanity of such a move in no way precludes its implementation by this gang – as their invasion of Iraq clearly shows.

The nuclear sectarians have waited decades for this moment. Such a chance may never come again. Will they let it pass, when with just a word, in just twelve hours, they can see their god rising in a pillar of fire over Persia?

They don't give a fuck what happens afterwards. They will have broken all treaties, all humanitarian agreements, all reason if they do this. It will spell the end of the world as we know it. And they don't care.

They will have shocked and awed the world into a glassed over radioactive ground zero.

And they don't care.

They don't care and can't be stopped.

God help us.