Write Your Own Caption: Cheney in Baghdad

Cheney: "Read my lips: one negative word about how things are going here Petraeus and I'll break your kneecaps and have them stuffed to hang up in my office."
 

Quote du Jour: Cleland Smacks Down Bush & Cheney

On Monday's CNN Situation Room:

BLITZER: And you've been very critical of the administration's policies in Iraq.

I want you to listen to what the vice president said earlier today because he is once again insisting that if your advice and the advice of other Democrats, other critics of the president's strategy are implemented, al Qaeda wins.

Listen to the vice president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DICK CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When members speak not of victory, but of time limits, deadlines or other arbitrary measures, they're telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Senator, if you could sit down with the vice president and have a direct one-on-one meeting with him, what would you say to him?

CLELAND: Where the hell were you in the Vietnam War?

If you had have gone to Vietnam like the rest of us, maybe you would have learned something about war. You can't keep troops on the ground forever. They've got to have a mission. They've got to have a purpose. You can't keep sending them back and back and back with no mission and no purpose.

As a matter of fact, the real enemy is al Qaeda. It's al Qaeda -- stupid. It's not in Iraq. That's why we have to withdraw the ground forces there, settle Iraq with a diplomatic solution and go after al Qaeda.

That's what we should have been doing for the last four years.

Instead, this administration and this vice president and this president wants to send more troops to Iraq. Unbelievable.

BLITZER: And what would you say to the president?

CLELAND: You screwed up royally when you said, four years ago, major combat over, mission accomplished, bring 'em on. That means you should have gone to Vietnam and learned that you don't challenge guerrillas that way, people who want to blow themselves us just to take you out.

That's exactly what we've got going on in Iraq. That's what we've got going on in Afghanistan. We're in deep trouble and we're not even chasing the enemy. We're just bogged down in Baghdad with no hope of getting out under this administration.

Ouch! You tell 'em, Max!

Crooks and Liars has the video.
 

Name That Senior Administration Official

The White House has posted a briefing on its site titled 'Interview of a Senior Administration Official by the Traveling Press'. Let's play Name that senior administration official just for fun.

SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL:...Let me just make one editorial comment here. I've seen some press reporting says, "Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them." That's not the way I work. I don't know who writes that, or maybe somebody gets it from some source who doesn't know what I'm doing, or isn't involved in it. But the idea that I'd go in and threaten someone is an invalid misreading of the way I do business.

I would describe my sessions both in Pakistan and Afghanistan as very productive.

Cheney: he who shall not be named...
 

Blast in Afghanistan; Cheney Unhurt

Via the IHT:

KABUL, Afghanistan: An explosion outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan killed at least two people and wounded 12 on Tuesday during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, though the vice president was apparently not in danger, officials said.

The blast happened near the first security gate outside the base at Bagram, killing two people and wounding 12, said Kabir Ahmad, the district chief of the Bagram region.

Maj. William Mitchell said it did not appear the explosion was intended as a threat to the vice president, who was "safely inside the base" during the blast.
[...]
Cheney, who spent the night at Bagram, ate breakfast with U.S. soldiers Tuesday morning, Mitchell said. He was expected to later meet with President Hamid Karzai after their meeting was scrapped on Monday because of bad weather that prevented him traveling to Kabul.

Makes you wonder, with all of the corruption in the Afghanistan government, if someone leaked Cheney's presence at the base (which is huge, btw) to whoever set off the blast.

Update: Apparently, the IHT has decided to update the article I linked to above with new information:

BAGRAM, Afghanistan: An explosion outside the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan killed 19 people and wounded 11 on Tuesday during a visit by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, though the vice president was apparently not in danger, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The blast happened near the first security gate outside the base at Bagram, killing 19 people, said Khoja Mohammad Qasim Sayedi, chief of the province's public health department. Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said "18 to 20 dead bodies" lay on the ground after the blast.

 

On Iran: Mind Your Sources Pt 3

The conservative British newspaper The Daily Telegraph is running a story about the Israeli government supposedly negotiating with the US military for permission to use Iraqi air space in an eventual attack against Iran, according to anonymous sources. The Israeli government was quick to issue a denial.

Asked if Israel had turned to the U.S. to use Iraqi airspace in any possible attack, Ephraim Sneh [Israel's deputy defense minister] told Israel Radio: "No such approach has been made -- that is clear."

"Those who do not want to take political, diplomatic, economic steps against
Iran are diverting attention to the mission we are supposedly said to be conducting," Sneh said.

"(They) are anxious to spread the idea that we are planning to attack Iran in order to absolve themselves of the need to do the things that have been requested of them," he added.

As I've written before in Mind Your Sources (April 2006) and Mind Your Sources Pt 2 (January 2007), this public saber-rattling against Iran through the use of anonymous sources is nothing new. (Remember the recently bizarre Baghdad briefing that the Bush administration had to back off from?). Neither is the "publicize, deny" method of taunting ones enemies.

There is no doubt that the US and Israel have drawn up war plans against Iran. They've both said that all options are on the table. Cheney reiterated that position on Saturday in Australia.

This was the Iranian government's response:

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran said Saturday the United States was not in a position to take military action against it and urged Washington and its allies to engage in dialogue.

"We do not see America in a position to impose another crisis on its tax payers inside America by starting another war in the region," Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared itself for any possibility, but insists on constructive cooperation, Mottaki said.
[...]
Mottaki said negotiations, not threats, were the only way left to resolve the standoff over Iran's nuclear activities and urged the U.S. and its allies to return to dialogue when they are scheduled to meet in London next week.

"The only way to reach a solution for disputes is negotiations and talks. Therefore, we want the London meeting to make a brave decision and resume talks with Iran," Mottaki told reporters during a press conference with Bahrain's visiting foreign minister.

There is an obvious push/pull relationship between the US and Israel that is often played out in the media - just as it has been between the US and the UK. It doesn't take much to plant a story in a newspaper, forcing your ally to respond, all the while working in tandem to apply pressure to a third country like Iran. And while the Bush administration will call for tougher sanctions against Iran this week, it will have an uphill battle convincing other countries that do business with the regime to endorse such measures.

As for military attacks, the US and Israeli governments know that they don't have much to stand on in the international community. The wars with Afghanistan and Iraq have already drained allies' resources and the idea that so-called surgical strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities would be a quick and easy fix unmet by Iranian retaliation is a fool's dream. Militarism has not worked in Afghanistan or Iraq. Both situations require political remedies - a fact sorely missing from the neocons' empire-building playbook.

So, whether or not the government of Israel is seeking US cooperation for Iraq overflights is beside the point. There is war planning going on. Everybody knows that. What's important to focus on when unsourced stories like these come up is the propaganda value behind them and there certainly has been no shortage of coordinated efforts on that front pertaining to the situation with Iran. That's one of the few things the neocons actually do well: spreading the message of fear and intimidation. What they don't seem to realize, however, is that very few people are actually buying what they're trying to sell anymore. Bush would do well to set aside My Pet Goat to start reading The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Related: 26.02.07 New Evidence of Iranian Weapons in Iraq? Not Exactly.