“No surprise, folks. When you ask old men old questions, you get old answers.”

KNOXNEWS Opinion Columnist Thomas P.M. Barnett has a great piece up regarding the Bush administration’s recent attempt to bring back the cold war. A very good read!

What reviving Cold War will end up costing us

The West’s re-demonization of Russia is in full swing, with aging advocates barely able to conceal their glee in resurrecting the “good old days.” It’s a sad commentary on our grand strategic thinking that we so blithely add back the Cold War to our already full plate of global security interests. [...]

Osama bin Laden must be laughing all the way to his cave tonight. Nothing suits his long-term interests better than renewed East-West tension. When the next 9/11 happens, and the inevitable questions arise, it won’t be enough to say, “But we were busy making the Caucasus safe from Russian imperialism.”

In our supreme lack of strategic imagination, we’ve said no, choosing instead to expand NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep and - just now - to get Poland’s agreement to install missile defense. NATO, we tell ourselves, began as an anti-Russia military alliance, and so it must stay. Instead of building something new that could include Russia, we’ve hung onto our Cold War safety blanket, inserting thumb in mouth.

Republicans happily (but falsely) claim that Ronald Reagan ended the cold war. If that were the case, then why try to revive it?

I’m no big fan of Pat Buchanan, but I think he gets it right in this interview with Russia Today

Did US officials know about Georgia’s plans to attack its breakaway region? The issue deserves a special hearing in the US Congress, according to American political commentator Pat Buchanan.

More news from the Georgia/Russia war:

Fuel train explodes after running over landmine

U.S. warships deliver humanitarian aid (and who knows what else) to Georgia

Georgia was tricked, but by Russia or U.S.

Now, if you dare, here’s Russia Today’s interview with Richard Armitage:

It’s going to be interesting to see how the Bush administration handles this.

Iraq insists on withdrawal timetable for US troops

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.

The comments by Mouwaffak al-Rubaie were the strongest yet by an Iraqi official about the deal now under negotiation with U.S. officials. It came a day after Iraq’s prime minister first said publicly that he expects the pending troop deal with the United States to have some type of timetable for withdrawal. [...]

“Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong … We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn’t have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq,” al-Rubaie said.

A congressional committee exploring whether the Bush administration has pushed Iraq oil contracts to U.S. companies released documents Wednesday showing that Hunt Oil Co. officials and U.S. diplomats talked several times before the company signed an exploration deal in Iraq last September.

The documents show that U.S. officials expressed no objections to what the Dallas-based company was doing, despite their later criticism that the exploration deal could undermine Iraqi unity.

Included in the documents were two letters from company chief executive officer Ray Hunt to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board last year outlining his company’s pursuit of an oil deal in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

After the Sept. 8 deal was announced, State Department officials criticized the company for signing a contract with a regional government before the Iraqi Parliament had passed a national law covering participation of foreign companies in Iraq’s oil industry. President Bush, a friend of Mr. Hunt, said he “knew nothing about the deal.”

More at Dallas Morning News

Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

(more…)

The Bush Administration was quick to react to the latest abuse of power lodged against them; they clammed up.

When they do speak, I wonder what their answer will be?

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices. [...]

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. “The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.

Condi Rice:

“This story is still being written, and will be for many years to come. Sanctions and weapons inspections, prewar intelligence and diplomacy, troop levels and postwar planning — these are all important issues that historians will analyze for decades. But the fundamental question that we can ask and debate now is, Was removing Saddam from power the right decision? I continue to believe that it was,” she notes.

Somehow I don’t think history will be as kind to these criminals as they believe it will.

George Bush:
U.S. President George W. Bush claimed Wednesday that he had no regrets about the decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in 2003 and reiterated his determination to force Iran to halt its nuclear program.

Former press secretary Scott McClellan may have given us more than he bargained for. In his newly released book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” McClellan pretty much confirms what we already knew about the Bush administration being rotten to the core.

From an email I received from Congressman Robert Wexler:

Dear Buck,

Last night, significant news broke that directly impacts our push for Impeachment Hearings and a possible Inherent Contempt charge for Bush Administration officials such as Karl Rove:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has revealed in his upcoming book that:

• Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Vice President Cheney lied about their role in revealing the identity of Valerie Plame Wilson - actions easily amounting to obstruction of Justice.

McClellan also admitted that:

• There was a coordinated effort within the Bush Administration to use propaganda to pump up the case for the Iraq war and hide the projected costs of the war from the public.

(more…)

The White House on Tuesday flatly denied an Army Radio report that claimed US President George W. Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term. It said that while the military option had not been taken off the table, the Administration preferred to resolve concerns about Iran’s push for a nuclear weapon “through peaceful diplomatic means.”

Army Radio had quoted a top official in Jerusalem claiming that a senior member in the entourage of President Bush, who concluded a trip to Israel last week, had said in a closed meeting here that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were of the opinion that military action against Iran was called for.

The official reportedly went on to say that “the hesitancy of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice” was preventing the administration from deciding to launch such an attack on the Islamic Republic for the time being.

The Army Radio report, which was quoted by The Jerusalem Post and resonated widely, stated that according to assessments in Israel, the recent turmoil in Lebanon, where Hizbullah has de facto established control of the country, was advancing an American attack.

More at the Jerusalem Post

And once in a while you read some good news:

Plumas forest projects halted

In a resounding repudiation of the Bush administration’s national forest management, a three-judge federal panel has ordered a halt to three major logging projects in the Plumas National Forest.

Logging had been set to begin June 1 but now cannot go forward until an environmental impact assessment conforms to a Clinton administration forest management plan, the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Judge John T. Noonan Jr. wrote the opinion and also a concurrence that says the U.S. Forest Service has an inherent conflict of interest when it sells large trees to finance fire protection efforts, as called for under the Bush plan.

“The financial incentive of the Forest Service in implementing the forest plan is as operative, as tangible, and as troublesome as it would be if … the agency was the paid accomplice of the loggers,” Noonan wrote.