Pleasant Nightmares

I will return to the realities of Obama's foreign policy -- as opposed to the empty (and/or frequently awful) words he offers, words that appear to delude many people who ought to know far better, certainly by now -- in an upcoming installment of my "Against Prosecution" series. But in my unstinting efforts toward the elusive goal of more completeness in all things terrifying and unnerving, I provide you this:

Obama Orders Update to Iran Attack Plan

On NBC’s Today Show this morning, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that President Obama has ordered him to update the plans for a US attack on Iran, plans which were last updat[ed] during the Bush Administration. Gates says the plans are “refreshed” and insists that “all options are on the table” with respect to the potential attack.

It was only a month ago that Secretary Gates was warning vigorously against the potential attack, saying that it would create a “disastrous backlash” against the United States to hit Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. The Obama Administration has insisted it is intending to pursue the matter diplomatically with Iran, but Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said the administration doesn’t expect diplomacy to work, and the effort seems to be primarily to rally international support for more measures against Iran.

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It is unclear whether Gates’ revelation portends a serious potential for an imminent US attack on Iran, or whether the move is more international posturing. Still, it seems unlikely the news will be greeted warmly in Iran, which is in the middle of an election campaign in which potential US talks are a major issue.

In "Played for Fools Yet Again: About that Iran 'Intelligence' Report," after analyzing the numerous conventional misunderstandings and deliberate lies about the nature of "intelligence" and the role it plays in policy decisions (distortions and lies which are accepted by almost everyone, on both left and right), I wrote:

As I said above, this latest NIE makes it considerably more difficult for the [Bush] administration to use this particular argument to justify a criminal act of aggression against a non-existent threat. But if the administration is determined to attack Iran, they have plenty of other arguments to use, and many of those arguments have the full and enthusiastic support of the Democrats. See "The Worsening Nightmare," and the numerous related essays listed there: the drive to worldwide dominance, by means of military force as required, is a fully bipartisan affair, as it has been for over a century and especially since World War II.

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Now, with the news of the latest NIE about Iran, many people breathe sighs of relief, believing the danger has lessened. It has not, except perhaps for a tragically brief moment. Their relief, even in the smallest degree, reveals their inability and/or refusal to understand the lethal forces in play, and their inability and/or refusal to comprehend that those dangers continue on their murderous and bloody path.

And so we still refuse to move, even now.

Even now.

All this continues to be fully applicable to the Obama administration. As just two examples out of many, see "Songs of Death," about the overall contours of Obama's foreign policy, and "The Hideous Horror of the Biden Selection," about, well, the hideous horror of the Biden selection.

Yes, I told yo--- Never mind. I say that too often (the final section of that post discusses what I found to be a very interesting analysis from Jonathan Turley about why the Democrats act, and fail to act, as they do; torture was among the subjects he touched on). If only events would cease providing an endless array of opportunities for me to do so...and frequently about, you guessed it, Iran. Funny, that.

This is yet another example of why I recently remarked to a friend that I am seriously, very seriously, considering going into fortune-telling. There's a huge demand for that sort of thing. That's where the money is, certainly not here.

Yet I have a regrettable aversion to lying and pretense. A terrible pity. I must get over it someday soon. I shall work on it over the weekend.