Michael Bryan As Bush contemplates deploying up to 10K National Guard troops to the Mexican border, the Sentate seems to have settled upon a compromise that could open a path to permanent legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants. Of course, there remains a vast gulf between the likely Senate bill and the Sensenbrenner bill passed earlier … Read more
Likely, if you live in Pima County and you’re registered to vote, you got a tabloid format mailing from the Yess!! For Regional Transportation Committee today. In it, we learn that everyone who opposes the RTA initiative is a C.A.V.E person. A Citizen Against Virtually Everything. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so offensive an … Read more
Via: Whiskey Bar. A new New York Times/CBS poll (PDF) shows Bush’s favorability rating has stepped off a cliff and is falling into the rarefied atmosphere of the twenties, where so few Presidents have gone before; Carter, Nixon, Truman, Bush I: A veritable litany of the most successful Presidents of our time. Bush must be … Read more
Via Informed Comment:
The question of US intelligence on Iran is very much an item of interest these days. Sy Hersh’s revelation that the U.S. military is doing operational planning for a possible nuclear strike on Iran to preempt a civilian nuclear program that is still years away from the possibility of building a nuclear weapon caused a firestorm (pardon the imagery) of interest. Of course, a superpower does a lot of planning, and evey option is considered. But the Penatgon tried to remove the option of using tactical nukes from operational plans for Iran, but where ordered not to by the White House.
We are of course talking about a direct, preemptive targeting of a non-nuclear nation that presents no threat to Americans and would cause massive civilian casualties. This is causing a lot of tension between the military leadership and the civilian leadership, with the possibility of several senior command officers retiring in protest. The bellicosity of the Bush Administration is stunning and may be pushing nuclear proliferation rather than containing it, and may harm prospects for peaceful reform in Iran, especially should there be a military strike by America or Israel.
Veteran CIA Middle East analyst Ray Close
reacted to rumors that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may have already sent
Special Operations forces into Iran on intelligence missions. (One
clarification: in popular parlance we speak of CIA "agents." But in the
intelligence world, an "agent" is actually a local person recruited by
an intelligence field officer.)
Close writes:
Via RickBoston’s Daily Kos Dairy: The rationale for poll tests have always been to ensure that the voters understood the principles that animate our system of government. If a voter hasn’t a clue what it means to be an American, or any appreciation of our system of government or laws, he or she cannot be … Read more