as I live a few more questions

Guardian Report: U.S. drawing up plans to strike Iran in the spring

And the madness continues.  I am speechless. 

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office...

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

No wonder Bush is pushing for even more troops to be shipped over to Iraq.  Despite the upheaval that is going on in Iraq, it would still be the perfect staging ground for an attack on Iran—right next door.  How on earth does the Bush administration figure they can pull off a surgical strike on Iran's nuclear capability without falling into yet another quagmire, especially given their recent track record?

read the original Guardian news report | digg story

How Much Blood? [a Creative Commons remix]

Today's Anti War Protest in Washington D.C.

Anti War Protest Washington DC, originally uploaded by squinn4420.

Photos speak louder than words.

Sins of Stubbornness: "Because I told them it had to"

"He's tried this two times — it's failed twice," the California Democrat said. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' "

Asked if the president had elaborated, she added that he simply said, " 'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is." (source: "Pelosi says she wasn't consulted on Iraq", CBS News)

Boy, if that doesn't sum up Bush's approach to the war in Iraq: "Let's just throw more troops into the killing fields."  Then again, this is the same stubborn administration who still insists that Maher Arar is a terrorist, even after complete exoneration in a public report, a handwritten apology from our prime minister, the resignation of the head of the RCMP, and a $10 million cash settlement. 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Friday that his government would continue to press the Americans to take Mr. Arar off the watch list.

“The government has sent letters to both the Syrian and American governments firmly objecting to the treatment of Mr. Arar. Canada has removed Mr. Arar from Canadian lookout lists and we have specifically requested that the United States amend its own records accordingly,” the Prime Minister said.

He defended Public Security Minister Stockwell Day's urging of Washington this week to remove Mr. Arar from the list, an action that was criticized by U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins as an attempt by the Canadians to meddle in U.S. affairs.

“The government of Canada has every right to go to bat for one of its citizens when the government believes a Canadian is being unfairly treated by another country,” Mr. Harper said. (Source: Galloway, Gloria.  "Exoneration and an apology, but U.S. won't budge on ban", Globe and Mail, Jan. 26, 2007)

Thank God for people like new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and those Democrats (and some Republicans) who are speaking out about the enduring folly of the Iraq war.  And for people like American Senator Patrick Leahy, who has the opportunity to use his influence to speak out about the terrible injustice that has been done to an innocent man in the name of "homeland security". 

Cold Ground for a Summer Love

"For more than three months, she has come to Arlington National Cemetery to talk to Colin about the minutiae of her life, to kiss his narrow white headstone topped with a Star of David and to stretch out her slim body next to his as if they were lying together again.

Kira is no war widow. She is 19, and just barely, at that."

(Sandhya Somashekhar, "Cold Ground for a Summer Love", Washington Post, Monday, January 1, 2007, page A01; base photograph at left by Sarah L. Voisin; photoshop by Ryan Schultz)

read more | digg story

"I never made so many coffins a day"

"Before the war, we were making about two or maximum three coffins a day for people who had died from diseases or car accidents. But today we make at least 20 a day for victims of the violence." -  An Iraqi coffin-maker's story which comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service.

read more | digg story

Thirty-Nine Percent

There Goes The Neighbourhood: North Korea Tests Nuclear Weapon

It has now been confirmed, by both the South Koreans and the U.S. Geological Service, that North Korea has tested a nuclear device in an underground explosion.   The USGS says the test created a quake of magnitude 4.2.   Here is the location of the seismic event in North Korea, via Google Maps.

Well, this is gonna push the Foley scandal off the front pages of the newspapers tomorrow morning.  The most whacked-out nation on earth, a nation starving its own citizenry and relying on external food aid, now has nuclear capability.  Oh joy.  Would somebody please explain to me how this came about?

I can bet you that the U.S. is going to have to start rethinking its military priorities, starting TONIGHT.  With its own Taepodong-2 long-range missiles, North Korea is now thought to be capable of sending nuclear missiles as far afield as Indonesia, India, the European part of Russia, even Alaska.

So North Korea has nuclear capabilites, and Iran is well on its way to having nuclear capabilities.  It's ironic, isn't it, that of the three nations labeled "the axis of Evil" (North Korea, Iraq, Iran), the Americans invaded the single nation which was the furthest from having weapons of mass destruction--Iraq? 

Seymour Hersh Bombshell

(via digg.com, my new go-to site for news nuggets like this)

According to CNN (link to video via youtube.com) and a newly-posted story in New Yorker, reporter Seymour Hersh (the man who helped bring the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghirab to public light) has dropped a bombshell, claiming that the Bush administration actively planned for, encouraged, and abetted a very strong Israeli bombing of Hezbollah, as a sort of "test bombing" for an anticipated war against Iran.

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. (Hersh, S. "Watching Lebanon", New Yorker, August 21st, 2006, posted online August 14th, 2006)

If this is true then it is sickening indeed.  How would you explain this to the all the people (including Canadians) who lost family members to Israeli bombs in southern Lebanon, and to all those Israelis whose lives have been disrupted and destroyed by Hezbollah rockets?  Sorry for the deaths and destruction of your homes, but the U.S. wants to run field tests before it engages Iran in a war.

At this point a predict a U.S.-Iran war is inevitable, and I suspect the reasons for entering the war will be as shaky as the ones put forward by the Bish administration before the U.S.-Iraq war.  At times like this I am grateful that I have not brought any children into this mad world.

The New Normal

On CBC Newsworld I am watching the funeral service for Major Paeta Hess-von Kredener, the Canadian United Nations observer who was recently killed along with three others by an Israeli bombing in Lebanon.

I'm also browsing the Internet for the latest news on today's thwarted terrorism attacks on American planes leaving from the U.K.  So now you can't bring anything on-board with you, even a novel (I heard that they're making an exception for personal medications in a clear plastic bag, but that's it).  And you have to dump out all the liquids and gels you're carrying--everything from bottled water to baby's milk to perfume to toothpaste.  They have to be discarded before they'll let you on the plane.  Welcome to the new normal.  I'm just so glad I'm not stepping on a plane today.

I've decided to take this week off in order to get some badly-needed cleaning done around here (which is, of course, why I am sitting here composing a blog entry ;-) and thinking about all this madness that has enveloped us.  I noticed elsewhere (via digg.com) that 30% of Americans polled could not identify the year (2001) in which the 9/11 terrorism attacks occured (Source: news.com.au, Article from Agence France-Presse, Aug. 10th, 2006).

SOME 30 per cent of Americans cannot say in what year the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington took place, according to a poll published in the Washington Post newspaper.

While the country is preparing to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attacks that claimed nearly 3000 lives and shocked the world, 95 per cent of Americans questioned in the poll were able to remember the month and the date of the attacks.

But when asked what year, 30 per cent could not give a correct answer.

Of that group, six per cent gave an earlier year, eight per cent gave a later year, and 16 per cent admitted they had no idea whatsoever.

This memory black hole is essentially the problem of the older crowd - 48 per cent of those who did not know were between the ages of 55 and 64, and 47 per cent were older than 65, the poll shows.

The Post telephone survey was carried out July 21-24 among 1002 randomly selected adults. The margin of error is plus or minus three percentage points.

And THAT piece of news is probably the scariest one I've read today.

The best place to stay on top of this breaking story?  I have two:

1. http://newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=UK+Airlines+Terror+Threat (U.K.-based Newsnow scans over 24,000 news sources, and the page refeshes itself every five minutes; this is the best place to stay perched for the latest news)

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot (Wikipedia has a quickly-updated page on all breaking news stories; please keep in mind that the facts and details will often change as contradictory reports come in, but it is often a good compilation of currently-known information on a current news item)