By Dave Lindorff

Some people are expressing consternation and disbelief at a report
by journalist Seymour Hersh that Vice President Dick Cheney had
discussed the idea in his office of having some Navy Seals dress up as
Iranians, and then putting them in faked Iranian speedboats to make a fake
attack on US ships in the Persian Gulf. The ensuing faked battle, with
fake Iranians shooting at US ships and US ships firing back, he
suggested, could be used to spark a war between the US and Iran.

` I don’t know why people would find it hard to believe that this
vice president would think up an idea like having Americans shoot at
other Americans in the interest of his own warped view of national
security.

After all, this is a guy who shoots his own friends.

TELL THE SENATE TO RALLY BEHIND THE WEBB AMENDMENT TO PRECLUDE ATTACKING IRAN

Call your members of Congress now toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803.

Don't let anyone ever tell us again our voices are not heard. Today the Senate REJECTED an attempt to strip the Iraq withdrawal time line from the current supplemental, just as you called for them to do. And in the remaining days of the week, before Congress takes a spring recess, there is one more urgent call we must make, to tell the Senate to pass an amendment being offered by new Senator James Webb to head off a NEW war with Iran without express congressional approval.

Ah yes, the Poodle Punts whilst the Chimpsters escalate. And yet the Smirkites say it's a good thang... yeah right! Bullshit ALERT. Denmark's also pulling out... that makes it the Coalition of the Leaving! Guess the bribe money's runnin' out...

Blair announces Iraq troops cut

Some 1,600 British troops will return from Iraq within the next few months, Prime Minister Tony Blair has told MPs. He said the 7,100 serving troops would be cut to 5,500 soon, with hopes that 500 more will leave by late summer. Remaining troops will stay into 2008, to give back-up if necessary and secure borders, but the Iraqis would "write the next chapter" in Basra's history... (more w/videoes)

In scenes reminiscent of the 6th Armies assault on Stalingrad, president Bush’s “surge” appears to be a last ditch, all or nothing attempt to bring a military victory in Baghdad that it cannot realistically achieve.

Battle for Baghdad: City braces itself for US surge
Urban fighting amid the ruins
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 28 January 2007

Lina Massufi, a 32-year-old Iraqi laboratory assistant with two children, is a widow - her husband was killed by US troops when he accidentally drove down a closed road in 2003. In the past three months she has seen her house raided and her furniture smashed 12 times.

update - 11:05PM Iraqi TV Says Saddam Hussein Executed
It's likely that as I'm typing this Saddam is swigin' from a rope. But Robert Fisk brings forth an analysis of the situation far more eloquent than anything conjerred up by myself...

"...In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001 we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent - we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam's shame at Abu Ghraib - and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created...."

Robert Fisk: A dictator created then destroyed by America
Published: 30 December 2006
Saddam to the gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold - that crack of the neck at the end of a rope - than the Beast of Baghdad, the Hitler of the Tigris, the man who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us in a few hours that it is a "great day" for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed - by the Iraqi "government", but on behalf of the Americans - on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world... (more)

It's the equivalent of another Downing Street Memo... Huge news!, but I've found only ONE MSM news report of it in this country, "Ex-British expert on Iraq says intel overstated". And Google News returns ZERO matches for that one news report! Imagine that.....

Diplomat's suppressed document lays bare the lies behind Iraq war
The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act... (more)

By now you've doubtless heard about the New York Times coverage of still more memos from high up in the British government that blow the doors off the "we got bad intelligence" garbage we've been fed from the beginning.

It's no news to us, of course, that Bush was warned that the alumninum tubes Iraq had procured were for conventional weapons, not uranium refining. And we already know that Bush knew he wouldn't find WMD in Iraq, either.

Welliwelliwelliwell...it has long been speculated that Tony's reward would be a sweet sinecure at one of the World's top war profiteers...

(The Sunday Mirror) Tony Blair is expected to join one of the most exclusive groups of businessmen in the world after he leaves Downing Street.

The PM is being lined up for a highly lucrative position with the Carlyle Group - an American-based investment giant with strong links to the White House and the defence industry.

The corporate newspaper cartels have as yet to publish the secret UK war memo in any major US paper or online. Thought we here at democrats.com ought to have a copy of our very own... before the UK London Times yanks it.

May 01, 2005

The secret Downing Street memo

::nobreak::SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell