1 Boring Old Man

Iranian Unit to Be Labeled ‘Terrorist’
U.S. Moving Against Revolutionary Guard

The United States has decided to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country’s 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "specially designated global terrorist," according to U.S. officials, a move that allows Washington to target the group’s business operations and finances.

The Bush administration has chosen to move against the Revolutionary Guard Corps because of what U.S. officials have described as its growing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its support for extremists throughout the Middle East, the sources said. The decision follows congressional pressure on the administration to toughen its stance against Tehran, as well as U.S. frustration with the ineffectiveness of U.N. resolutions against Iran’s nuclear program, officials said.

The designation of the Revolutionary Guard will be made under Executive Order 13224, which President Bush signed two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to obstruct terrorist funding. It authorizes the United States to identify individuals, businesses, charities and extremist groups engaged in terrorist activities. The Revolutionary Guard would be the first national military branch included on the list, U.S. officials said — a highly unusual move because it is part of a government, rather than a typical non-state terrorist organization.

The order allows the United States to block the assets of terrorists and to disrupt operations by foreign businesses that "provide support, services or assistance to, or otherwise associate with, terrorists."

After years of the Bush Administration’s pronouncements about the Middle East, I’m afraid my only response is "Show me." "Show me" your evidence that Iran is doing what you say they are doing. Don’t expect me to believe what you say. Show me your evidence. Prove that your provocation and pugilism is justified. Then explain how what you suggest is a reasonable response capable of altering the problem. If you’re not willing to show me, show the Congress your evidence.

Professor Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes arch rival, is a paradigm for the evil genius – the fictitious brilliant master criminal so popular in much of fiction. Such characters march across the pages and screens of our murder mysteries, spy stories, science fiction thrillers, and action "guy flicks." But do such people exist? More to the point – is Karl Rove such a character, as he is often portrayed?

His Wikipedia entry chronicles the sea of "dirty tricks," proven and unproven, that characterize his career as a political conultant. It’s not a pretty story – something more in the range of anything goes, hit and run, character assassination. But leaving aside his immorality and poor relationship with truth, there’s something else that is very not brilliant about his way of playing the political game.

Whatever the personal ambitions of these flawed souls, they’ve already failed. What remains to be determined is if the electorate is still vulnerable to the kind of political game Rove and his buddies played. Can someone else play on our fears, our prejudices, our religious affiliations in the way Rove and Company have gotten away with? Either we will demand honesty and integrity, or we’ll have forgotten that such things exist and follow the next Rove-esque line of malarky.

Like the gunslinger in the old westerns, he rides into the sunset leaving the town to pick up the pieces… 

Cheney urging strikes on Iran

President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.

At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned of unspecified consequences if it continued its alleged support for anti-American forces in Iraq. U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker had conveyed the warning in meetings with his Iranian counterpart in Baghdad, the president said.

Bush wasn’t specific, and a State Department official refused to elaborate on the warning.

Behind the scenes, however, the president’s top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran’s support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy.

The debate has been accompanied by a growing drumbeat of allegations about Iranian meddling in Iraq from U.S. military officers, administration officials and administration allies outside government and in the news media. It isn’t clear whether the media campaign is intended to build support for limited military action against Iran, to pressure the Iranians to curb their support for Shiite groups in Iraq or both.

Nor is it clear from the evidence the administration has presented whether Iran, which has long-standing ties to several Iraqi Shiite groups, including the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Muqtada al Sadr and the Badr Organization, which is allied with the U.S.-backed government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, is a major cause of the anti-American and sectarian violence in Iraq or merely one of many. At other times, administration officials have blamed the Sunni Muslim group al Qaida in Iraq for much of the violence.

The Economist: Republicans in Big, Big Trouble

After a long six and a half years of watching almost helplessly as the Republican Party loots, rapes and pillages everything from the Constitution to the middle class to non-threatening countries overseas, it’s always satisfying to see rats call a spade a spade and jump off the pirate ship known as the modern GOP.

But rarely has the sense of schadenfreude been more poignant to me than when reading the latest Economist article today about the woes of the Republican Party and American conservative movement in general.

The article, titled The American Right Under the Weather, is but one piece in the new overall issue covering the leftward shift of American politics in recent months. As anyone who has read the magazine knows, the editorial staff of The Economist is certainly no friend to Democrats, favoring a decidedly corporatist agenda valuing "free trade over "fair trade" and a foreign policy usually at odds with progressive values. As a result, however, they find themselves increasingly at odds with the social conservatives who have all but taken over the Republican party’s activist base: in fact, they say so directly in the cover article:

The Economist has never made any secret of its preference for the Republican Party’s individualistic “western” wing rather than the moralistic “southern” one that Mr Bush has come to typify. It is hard to imagine Ronald Reagan sponsoring a federal amendment banning gay marriage or limiting federal funding for stem-cell research. Yet Mr Bush’s departure hardly guarantees a move back to the centre. Social liberals like Mr Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger are in a minority on the right. On the one issue where Mr Bush fought the intolerant wing of his party, immigration, the nativists won—and perhaps lost the Latino vote for a generation.

As a result, The Economist‘s temporary post-mortem on the enthusiasm and dynamism of the American right is a strange mix of joy and tears: it contains equal doses of worried regret, tempered with palpable glee at the overreaching failures of the social conservatives whom they blame for much of popular rejection of Republican ideology. But it’s nothing if not utterly brutal–and well worth the read.

Giuliani Family Values

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Well, check out whom Rudy Giuliani’s daughter favors in the 2008 race: Barack Obama.

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But what does it mean that two of the people who know Giuliani the best–his son and daughter–are not aboard his presidential express? (Earlier this year, his son said he would not be campaigning for the old man.) What a good query for social conservatives and any debate moderator.

And imagine if the Giuliani kids were to explain their opposition to their father’s presidential bid. How would Giuliani’s campaign spinners spin that? Claim that he spoiled them? The Giuliani soap opera (and I haven’t even mentioned his past and present wives) has the potential to eclipse the Clinton soap opera. That would be some accomplishment.

Bush urges Congress to update eavesdropping rules before recess

President George W. Bush said Friday that Congress should stay in session until it approved legislation modernizing a U.S. law governing eavesdropping on foreigners.

Bush Aide Addresses Missing RNC E-Mails
^{At Senate Hearing, Jennings Is Silent on U.S. Attorneys’ Firings; Rove Is Absent}

A young White House political aide was grilled inconclusively by the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday about the firings of U.S. attorneys after Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, failed to show up at the committee’s hearing in response to a subpoena.

J. Scott Jennings, 29, the deputy political director for the White House, refused to address the firings but tried to explain how thousands — or possibly millions — of White House e-mails to and from the political office were transmitted only through communications accounts controlled by the Republican National Committee.

That use of the RNC accounts put some of the political office’s messages outside the reach of the National Archives, which sought to preserve them under a federal law mandating eventual public access, and the reach of Democratic congressional investigators, who have sought to look at them for evidence of improper actions.

Jennings offered a stripped-down explanation: He wanted a White House-supplied BlackBerry and was told no, and so he got one from the RNC, as many other political affairs aides had done. "I was receiving a lot of e-mail on my official account. And I requested [a BlackBerry] at that moment, and I was told that it wasn’t the custom to give political affairs staffers those devices," Jennings said.

Documents show Kyl’s opposition to attorney oustings

Documents released Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee show that Sen. Jon Kyl, a Republican, was upset with Bush administration officials who forced Arizona’s top federal prosecutor to resign late last year.

The committee is investigating why the administration pushed out former Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton and eight others last year. The Justice Department has been slowly but steadily releasing e-mails to the committee, which has made them public.

The latest e-mails refer to Kyl, who was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and was notified by the administration about the plan to force Charlton out. Though one message released in the spring characterized Kyl as "fine" with the plan, he has always maintained that he opposed it. Wednesday’s batch of e-mails supports that.

"I understand that Kyl is significantly disturbed over the Charlton issue," Rebecca Seidel, a deputy assistant attorney general, wrote to several other top Justice Department officials. "We need to ensure that (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales) is adequately prepared to deal with a question over the firings of the (U.S. attorneys). . . . I am hoping that Kyl would not bring it up in an open hearing."

Kyl did publicize his disagreements over the forced resignation. He told The Arizona Republic in March that he backed off because Charlton had decided not to fight for his job, but that he thought the Justice Department had handled the situation in a "ham-fisted" way.

If you read the recent four part series on Dick Cheney in the Washington Post, you’ll recognize this immediate turn to political wheeling and dealing as his modus operandi. It’s at the center of their secrecy and disdain for oversight. They want to do what they want to do when they want to do it. When they’re crossed, they reflexly fight back. Rebecca Seidel is one of the gang. She didn’t say, "Kyl is disturbed. Maybe we ought to take another look at Paul Charlton."

On the playground, such people have a name. They’re called bullies.