I know, it sounds like a joke, but it's deadly serious.

A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

Pastor John Hagee has two best friends in the Senate: John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. This video shot by Max Blumenthal show just how crazy this guy is. Forward to about 5:05.

Frank Rich's new March 23 Column in the NYT is a good read. Most of the Column is about the Democratic race and has some interesting things to say about Clinton. These I'm sure will be quoted and blogged about soon.

But his verbal assault on McCain is positively poetic.

More blow the fold.

Let's not forget what actually happened 5 years ago and who did what to enable it. Shining light on this truth is still the primary weapon against McBush.

This 2002 USA Today story is very instructive. From McCain's last major European tour.

Sen. John McCain warned Saturday that the USA is prepared to make Iraq its next target in a widening military campaign against global terrorism.

This must be common knowledge to New York news junkies but I only found out about it today. What an incredible story.

When David Paterson was three months old, he got an ear infection that spread to his optic nerve, leaving him legally blind. Fifty-three years later, Eliot Spitzer’s resignation, effective Monday, will make him the first blind governor of New York.

The only reason I'm giving these assholes the time of day is so we can find out who they and the campaign could be prepared for this so-called evidence. ... that and they're really funny.

His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, who was a radical Muslim from Indonesia. At age six, Barack H. Obama, Jr., moved to Indonesia with his mother and step-father, where he attended a Muslim school but also spent two years in a Catholic school. Obama sometimes conceals his Muslim roots by emphasizing that he attended a Catholic school. Obama's step-father is the one who introduced him to Islam, and he enrolled young Barack in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Here let it be noted that Wahabism is a Radical teaching embraced by Muslim terrorists waging their holy war against the United States.

A Pakistani TV channel has released new images that show Benazir Bhutto was shot in the head before a suicide bomber set off explosives.

This according to Press TV (Iranian).

The indefatigable husband and wife team Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett lay out the best "what's next" scenario in their NYT OpEd titled How to Defuse Iran.

They start out with a sensible question:

Democrats and others are criticizing President Bush for again having "hyped" a nuclear weapons threat. This criticism, while deserved, does not address the critical policy question: What do we do now?

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley is live on CSPAN talking about Annapolis.

For years the neo-fascist and racist blog "LGF" has been following the footsteps of right wing propaganda sites (such as MEMRI) in posting without permission images and video from middle eastern news agencies, particularly Syrian, Palestinian and Iranian. Of course, there is no one to fight a copyright infringement for the "axis of evil" so they get away with it. But now, they've started doing it to western news agencies with specific photographic reproduction clauses displayed right on the pages.

To be perfectly fair, the exact words used in this AEI press release are these:

Indeed, as Ledeen demonstrates in The Iranian Time Bomb, the relationship between Iran and al Qaeda over the years has been so close that it is difficult today not to conclude that Iran was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

[Hat Tip to this guy over at Iranian.com]

The Kyle-Lieberman (and now Coleman and Alexander) amendment that I diaried about a few days ago is likely to be voted on today. The amdendment is nothing short of another blank check authorizing military "retaliation" to "contain or roll back" Iran and designate Iran's military a "terrorist" organization. The key part of the amendment says:

(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;

(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments in support of the policy...

Please call your Senator right now and ask for a No vote on SA 3017.

More background info, including statement from Sen. Webb below the fold.

Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit to New York City is providing the perfect opportunity to move us closer to a war with Iran. Our Neofascist friends over at National Review couldn't help spill the beans on the next significant step toward war with Iran which is coming up on Tuesday or later in the week.

The resolution — an amendment to a defense appropriations bill — is sponsored by Jon Kyl, Joseph Lieberman, Norm Coleman, and Lindsey Graham. It expresses the sense of the Senate that the U.S. should "combat, contain, and roll back" Iran’s "violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq." It counsels doing so "through the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of [U.S. power], including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments." It also urges the administration to designate the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

5 Star General Dwight D. Eisenhower at American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

Representatives from Sunni and Shia groups in Iraq agreed on a road map to peace based on the experience in Northern Ireland after four days of secret talks in Finland, reconciliation group the Crisis Management Initiative said last night.

That's right, the Iraqi factions are showing not only that they are capable of coming to the table on their own, but also that they wholeheatedly reject the logic of the imperialist aggressors and former colonial powers, embracing solutions previously adopted by the very victims of colonialism.

This piece in Today's Guardian is worth reading.

Astonishingly, the calamity of Iraq has failed to dampen the belligerent clique within the White House. The arrival of an IAEA team in Tehran yesterday to discuss inspections is equally unlikely to dissuade advocates of a strike, nuclear or conventional. Such an assault would be in flagrant breach of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but it would hardly be the first time the US has disregarded the 1968 accord.

This may border on too obscure even by Daily Kos standards, but it's important nevertheless.

Well known neocon and all around batshit crazy, of the "Crazies" fame, Ken Timmerman, is trying to make sure the American people do not get to hear Trita Parsi, the President of the National Iranian American Council.

He's put out an APB on his "Foundation for Democracy in Iran" website "iran.org", trying to put a stop to a congressional hearing that has Parsi as a panelist. The informal hearing is organized by Amnesty international and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).

Rice and her colleagues in the administration decided to embark on a daring and risky third course: a coordinated campaign, directed with the help of the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates...