I Hope We Make It Out Of This Administration Alive....

Attack Iran? Cheney's Already Tried
By Gareth Porter, IPS News
Posted on June 10, 2008

WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official.

J Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier "launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran", citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think-tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make "a policy decision about how far the administration would go - what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks".

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD "knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question".

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. "It's clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue," he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran, according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post on July 20, 2007, in which he gave no hint of Cheney's proposal, but referred to "options" for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran "smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers".

Gerson cited two possibilities: "Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran." But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has "escalation dominance" in its conflict with the United States.

That meant, according to Gerson that, "in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs".

Carpenter's account of the Pentagon's position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran's ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran.

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney's proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in "the tank" at the Pentagon on December 13, 2006, and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according to a report by Time magazine's Joe Klein last June.

After he become head of the Central Command (Centcom) in March 2007, Admiral William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran's nuclear program and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney's proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons - especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) - and training to Shi'ite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with General David Petraeus.

As Inter Press Service reported earlier last week, Cheney had already used Petraeus' takeover as the top commander of US forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney's proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shi'ites that would require US forces beyond his control.

At that point, Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon's forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become Centcom chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.



© 2008 IPS News All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/87488/

Time For Some Humor (or is it true?)....

Everything Falling Apart, Reports Institute For Somehow Managing To Hold It All Together
May 14, 2008 Issue 44•20 of The Onion

WASHINGTON—Officials from the Institute for Somehow Managing to Hold It All Together warned that, despite their best efforts, everything appears to be falling completely apart and "getting way out of hand," according to a strongly worded report characterized by panic, frustration, and numerous typographical errors that was released to the American public Monday.

"The country today faces a number of pressing issues, including potential economic collapse, the continued threat of global warming, and the decaying national infrastructure," ISMHIAT chairman Kenneth Branowicz said during a press conference to announce the study's findings. "And we just can't keep it together anymore."

"Furthermore, we just found out that my fucking hot water is being turned off," Branowicz added.

The report outlines a number of disturbing trends, such as a steadily weakening dollar, skyrocketing national debt, the car still being in the shop after three whole weeks, a polarized electorate that remains divided across ideological lines, and the fact that the wife is staying at her sister's and for all they know may not ever be coming back.

"In summary, we have no choice but to accept that managing these complex and varied crises may be untenable at this time," the report concludes. "We're in way over our heads here, people. Oh God. God. What are we going to do?"

The institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank formed in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his Depression-era For God's Sake, Somebody Do Something Initiative, has issued similarly dramatic warnings in the past. In 1953, ISMHIAT released the now-historic findings on how they had talked and talked until they were blue in the face but they'd had it with these damn teenagers today. And historians still cite its famous 1968 report, a rambling, semi-coherent study titled "The Hell If We Know," recommending the immediate nationwide throwing up of hands.

This latest warning, however, could be the most alarming and desperate to date.

"Among the new challenges America faces is a deteriorating public education system, a vast healthcare crisis, new and frightening bioethics quandaries related to the privatization of human genetics, and, of course, the whole fossil fuels thing," the 5,000-page study, which was due in November 2007, notes. "While much has been done to alleviate immediate effects, the situation has become OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE—I just spilled coffee all over my pants—wait, don't type that—damn it, we're out of paper towels AGAIN—Gwen, don't put any of that last part in the report—why are you still typing?"

Some have criticized the report as being alarmist and exaggerated, urging that the nation should just cool out for a minute until the situation can resolve itself.

"While they have certainly generated plenty of attention, these findings represent an unnecessary overreaction, and should be met with restraint and calm," said James H. Walloch of the California Center for Not Worrying About Stuff So Much. "It is my opinion, as an expert in this field, that it's probably not that big a deal."

Walloch's agency is not the only one coming down hard on ISMHIAT. Others have accused the institute of shortsightedness and even gross negligence for failing to keep on top of such issues.

"The current state of world affairs is completely unacceptable," said Dr. Hyram Klemper, codirector of the Sitting Around and Expecting Others to Take Care of Everything Foundation, which has historically had a contentious relationship with ISMHIAT. "We rely on the institute to keep things together, yet, evidently, this bloated bureaucracy is incapable of fulfilling its mandate from the American people. Now I've had to cancel my Hawaiian golf vacation to return to Washington and address this issue."

Dr. Thomas Dyers, of the National Blame Allocation Council, echoed Klemper's statements, stating that if the ISMHIAT cannot handle its responsibilities, its duties should be turned over to another organization, such as the Federal Fall Guy Bureau, under the supervision of Ed Haversham, the national Scapegoat Czar.

God Their Leaving Quickly It Seems......

Alton Kelley, psychedelic poster creator, dies
Joel Selvin, Chronicle Senior Pop Music Critic

Tuesday, June 3, 2008


Alton Kelley, one of the founding members of the '60s San Francisco rock scene, died Sunday at his home in Petaluma after a long illness. He was 67.

Mr. Kelley will be remembered as the creator (with his artistic partner, Stanley Mouse) of hundreds of classic psychedelic rock posters, such as the famed "skull and roses" poster for a Grateful Dead show at the Avalon Ballroom. Mr. Kelley and Mouse created 26 posters for just the first year of the Avalon's operation.

But Mr. Kelley was also one of four people who called themselves the Family Dog and decided to throw the world's first psychedelic dance-concerts at Longshoreman's Hall in September 1965, essentially starting the San Francisco scene. The quartet had just returned to the Bay Area after spending an LSD-drenched summer restoring a silver rush dancehall in Virginia City, Nev., called the Red Dog Saloon.

Mr. Kelley, a motorcycle enthusiast since his New England youth who painted pinstripes on bike gas tanks, designed the flyers advertising the original Family Dog shows, but lacked drafting ability. When he met Stanley Mouse, who had recently relocated from Detroit where he made a name for himself doing hot rod art, Mr. Kelley found the draftsman he needed. The two formed Mouse Studios and cranked out art together, Mr. Kelley's drawing skills eventually improving to the point where left-handed Mr. Kelley would be working on one side of the easel, right-handed Mouse on the other.

"He had the most impeccable taste of anybody I knew," said Mouse, "He would do the layouts, and I would do the drawing."

They worked together steadily for 15 years and on and off thereafter. Their Mouse Studios was located in a converted Lower Haight firehouse where Janis Joplin first rehearsed with Big Brother and the Holding Company. They also opened a store called Pacific Ocean Trading Company (POT Co.), one of the first head shops in Haight-Ashbury. Recently, the two collaborated on the cover to the program for this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction dinner.

Mouse said they could work for hours in silence. "We knew what to do," he said. "We didn't have to talk."

During the heyday of the Avalon Ballroom, the pair would frequent the public library looking for images they could employ in their poster-making; Edward Curtis photographs of American Indians, illustrations from 19th century novels (the skull and roses was adapted from "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam"), often laughing so loud at what they found the librarians would ask them to leave.

"They thought it was the funniest stuff in town," said Paul Grushkin, author of "The Art Of Rock.

"The twinkle in Kelley's eye - he knew it was all a giggle."

"Stanley and I had no idea what we were doing," Mr. Kelley told The Chronicle last year. "But we went ahead and looked at American Indian stuff, Chinese stuff, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Modern, Bauhaus, whatever. We were stunned by what we found and what we were able to do. We had free rein to just go graphically crazy. Where before that, all advertising was pretty much just typeset with a photograph of something."

The work of Mr. Kelley and Mouse has come to be recognized as a 20th century American counterpart to the French poster art of Henri de Toulouse Lautrec during the Belle Epoque, although the two psychedelic artists never imagined at the time they were creating anything of enduring value, anything more than another crazy poster for this week's Avalon show.

"We were just having fun making posters," said Mouse. "There was no time to think about what we were doing. It was a furious time, but I think most great art is created in a furious moment."

Mr. Kelley continued to make posters all his life, although his artwork in the recent past concentrated on his air-brushed paintings of hot rods and custom cars that was both sold as fine art and reproduced on T-shirts.

He is survived by his wife, Marguerite Trousdale Kelley, and their children: Patty of San Diego, Yosarian of Seattle and China of Sacramento; two grandchildren; and his mother and sister.

Memorial plans are pending.

Contributions can be made to the Washington Mutual Western Street branch in Petaluma for a memorial bench in Sonoma County Park.


E-mail Joel Selvin at jselvin@sfchronicle.com.

Old Men Still Got Th' Funk........

Hey Bo Diddley...Peace Be With You

Another pioneer's done gone. Bo got me movin' and shakin' it long before most were even Hearin' th' beat. Thank you Bo.

-Alan

Bo Diddley, one of the founding fathers of rock and roll, died today in his home in Archer, Florida, where he had lived for 20 years. The cause was heart failure, according to a spokesperson. Diddley performed live until May 2007, when he suffered a stroke; three months later, in August, he also suffered a heart attack. The spokesperson said that he was surrounded by family and friends when he died. Public and private services are scheduled for this weekend.

In the summer of 2005, Rolling Stone writer Neil Strauss caught up with Diddley for the magazine’s last major feature on him, the award-winning “Indestructible Beat of Bo Diddley.”

• The Indestructible Beat of Bo Diddley by Neil Strauss (RS 981, August 25, 2005)

• The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time: Bo Diddley by Iggy Pop (RS 946, April 15, 2004)

• Bo Diddley: The Rolling Stone Interview by Kurt Loder (RS 493, February 12, 1987)

• Photo Gallery: Shots From Bo Diddley’s Five Decade Career