Iran So Far Away

If you watched the news this weekend you probably know that President Obama made a carefully-crafted speech at AIPAC to saber-rattle enough to sound plausible to the Zionist lobby while sounding reasonable and sane enough for normal Americans (and Israelis). Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, explained the differences between Obama and the outright warmongers at Huff Po:

The dispute on the nuclear issue is centered on red lines. Israel, like the Bush administration, considers a nuclear capability in Iran a red line. It argues that the only acceptable guarantee that Iran does not get a nuclear weapon is for Iran to have no enrichment program.

The Obama administration puts the red line not at enrichment-- which is permitted under international law-- but at nuclear weapons. This is a clearer, more enforceable red line that also has the force of international law behind it.

While expressing his sympathy and friendship with Israel, Obama did not yield his red line at AIPAC. With the backing of the U.S. military, he has stood firm behind weaponization rather than weapons capability as the red line.

The Republican presidential contenders-- at least all of them but Ron Paul-- want to claim they'd back an Israeli-preemptive attack on Iran. But, as George Will pointed out on ABC's This Week yesterday the Republican stance is hard for a rational person to take seriously. "They want to bomb Iran," he scoffed, "but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.” Romney really is the most craven major party candidate to ever run for the presidency.

But the real news about Iran this weekend wasn't about U.S. election maneuvering; it was about the actual elections-- in Iran on Friday. They left Ahmadinejad basically a lame duck. Politicians backing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei won around 75% of the seats in the Majlis (parliament).

The widespread defeat of Ahmadinejad supporters-- including his sister, Parvin Ahmadinejad-- is expected to reduce the president to a lame duck after he sowed divisions by challenging the utmost authority of Khamenei in the governing hierarchy.

...But analysts said the combative Ahmadinejad-- who is constitutionally barred from running for a third presidential term-- would not readily bow to the ballot box rout of his supporters and may fight back.

"Ahmadinejad's camp has not been demolished. We have to wait and see what happens after the new parliament convenes in June," said analyst Hamid Farahvashian.

"The vote showed that there is a deepening rift between the ruling elites. It might emerge in the coming weeks."

Ahmadinejad is likely to be summoned to an unprecedented hearing in the outgoing parliament by Friday to answer questions focusing on his rocky handling of the economy, while Khamenei kept ultimate control over foreign policy.

Critics say Ahmadinejad has inflicted higher inflation on Iranians by slashing food and fuel subsidies to cut spending and purge waste, and replacing them with cash handouts of around $38 a month per person.

Parliament could impeach Ahmadinejad if his explanations are unconvincing, but Khamenei's green light would be needed.

Analysts said Ahmadinejad is likely to survive his term-- but as a lame duck president.
"The establishment is under Western pressure and does not want to look divided," said analyst Babak Sadeghi. "Ahmadinejad will finish his term as a weak executive."

Under mounting Western pressure over its nuclear programme and concerns that Israel might attack, Iran's clerical elite needed a high election turnout to shore up their legitimacy damaged since Ahmadinejad's 2009 re-election, in which fraud allegations triggered eight months of anti-government protests.

Khamenei said a high turnout would be a message of defiance to "the arrogant powers bullying us," a reference to Western states and sanctions against Iran.

State officials said the turnout was over 64 percent, higher than the 57 percent in the 2008 parliamentary vote.

Absent from the vote were the two main opposition leaders. Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who ran for president in 2009, have been under house arrest for more than a year.

Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's Foreign Minister, speaking for Ayatollah Khamenei, said on Tuesday that "We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons-- quite the opposite. The production, possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin.” Take it up with Santorum, Gingrich, Romney and Republicans who want to use scare tactics-- and a war if they can-- to win November's election here in the U.S. And Khamenei himself gave a foreign policy speech, last week, claiming Iran has a no first strike policy, that it will not fire the first shot in any conflict and essentially repeating the same thing Salehi said:

The Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons. There is no doubt that the decision makers in the countries opposing us know well that Iran is not after nuclear weapons because the Islamic Republic, logically, religiously and theoretically, considers the possession of nuclear weapons a grave sin and believes the proliferation of such weapons is senseless, destructive and dangerous.

The election-- in which all the candidates were pre-approved by the Guardian Council-- was basically between two conservative factions. But the conservative faction that is steadfastly against nuclear weapons beat the conservative faction that fears nuclear weapons are the best way to deter an eventual American attack.

Today I learned from pundit David Ignatius that something might be going on in Iran

Who ever had more "inside" dope than the big dope, Big Dick?

by Ken

This morning, against my better judgment, I decided to take a look at David Ignatius's Washington Post column, "For Iran's Spies, A Putsch." It was the fleetingest of impulses: that perhaps something is going on in Iran which I should know something about, and it should be possible to get some idea even from a pile of standard-issue Village hack punditry.

Wrong.

There appear to be some actual facts. In July, the minister and four deputies in Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security were relieved of their posts, presumably at the instigation of President Ahmadinejad, trying to consolidate his power in the face of difficulties with the country's still-supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

I'm prepared to accept all of this as fact, including the hypothesized tension between the president and the supreme leader. It's certainly not hard to believe that both Ahmadinejad's self-promoting stridency and his heavy-handed handling of the presidential election and its aftermath have created problems for Ayatollah Khamenei that he and his allies didn't need and don't appreciate, even if they did choose to stand behind his "reelection."

But the rest is all speculation and theorizing and claims and likenings and especially epithets. The decommissioned minister, for example, is "a ferocious cleric named Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei who is nicknamed 'the viper' by some Iranians." Once this has been poked around by enough "analysts," the removal of Mohseni-Ejei and the four deputies has blown up into a full-fledged "internal coup." And for sure, what less than a coup could bring down a ferocious viper?

Well, how about a Stalinist purge? That could bring down anybody. And sure enough, Ignatius has "one U.S. analyst" who "likened" the five apparent firings (I say "apparent" because it occurs to me that we don't actually know how and why each of the five departed gentlemen was separated from his job) to a Stalinist purge. "In the process," Ignatius adds, "Ahmadinejad made some potentially dangerous enemies."

Now I hate to be a party pooper, but in figuring out how much credence to give any particular pundit's punditry, one thing we have to do is apply our common sense. And a Stalinist purge in which none of the five purgees suffers any known consequences other than the occupational doesn't resemble any Stalinist purge I've ever heard of. In fact, as Ignatius himself informs us, "No sooner had Mohseni-Ejei been fired at the intelligence ministry than he resurfaced as the country's prosecutor general." Already this is looking like one sorry-ass Stalinist purge. And a Stalinist purge that created "potentially dangerous enemies"? I don't think so. Pretty much the whole point of Stalinist purges was to eliminate potentially dangerous enemies.

Ah, but you see, "as is usually the case with Iran, the situation is more complicated," and we are treated to a whole series of machinations by parties from various Iranian factions, all reported with about as close to no real-world documentation as you can get (which these days in the Washington Post appears to be pretty darned close). We get one morsel from "one Iranian political figure" (by way of "a Western intermediary") and another from "a second prominent Iranian politician, who is close to Khamenei."

Now, the reality is that any real information coming out of Iran might be "sourced" exactly this way, and I'm certainly not in any position to say that any of Ignatius's hypothesized facts and speculations are wrong. They just don't sound very credible, and it seems all to likely that their intent is simply to arouse American fears and to fortify resolve to take a tough line against those Stalinist Islamofascists. We are already warned -- not by Ignatius directly, of course, but by one of his Iranian "sources" (the one received through the "Western intermediary") that "the Obama administration may have unwittingly encouraged the regime's power grab" with two letters sent to Iran, which "may have emboldened Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to think they had a free hand on June 12."

Again, I can't say this isn't so. I just have the feeling that I know less about what's happening in Iran after reading Ignatius than I knew before. And I can't help feeling that what this column is really about is yet another burst of puffed-up Village Insider-itis -- a pundit either trying to make himself feel important or, more dangerously, trying to push an agenda based bits and pieces of "inside knowledge" that may or may not bear any relationship to reality.

I don't know much about Ignatius's particular agenda. Glancing at the comments appended to his column, I see that a lot of folks out there with computer access seem to think he's a shill for the Israeli regime, but then, the tone of their indictments suggests that these are people who are writing from the confines of their straitjackets after refusing to take their medications for a long period. In the end, I don't much care what Ignatius's agenda is. All I can get from his column is that something, possibly political and possibly involving President Ahmadinejad and Ayatollah Khamanei, may be going on in Iran. Possibly. (But be warned: "On this issue, as with so many others, the adminsitration is nearing decision time.")

I might add that this is why I stay out of discussions of what we should be doing in Afghanistan. People I respect have widely divergent views of what we might hope to accomplish and how we might accomplish it. I respect the historical-continuity argument, pointing out just how difficult it is for outsiders to impose their will on Afghanistan, but the subject is just too complex for my limited understanding, which even so I suspect may be deeper than that of many partisans who have no hesitation in advancing their dead-certain views. As against the historical-futility argument, I think about the desirability of simply leaving the country to the Taliban. That worked out pretty well last time, didn't it? I just wish I knew who to listen to.

Still, I've built up a long list of connected "insiders" not to listen to. Shouldn't we have learned that lesson, if no others, from the carnival of catastrophe that was the Bush regime?

Nobody anywhere has ever had more "inside information" than Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney, and I'm unaware that among all that pile of unintelligence as much as a single fact ever crept out. If you were a foreigner peddling disinformation, or for that matter a domestic disinformant, "Big Dick" might as well have had a "FOOL ME" sign plastered across his big butt. Everybody on the planet, except the thugs, loons, and patsies of the American Right, knew that Cheney was a low-rent wackjob who had concocted a loony sci-fi-type fantasy universe in his sclerotic brain, and that his belief in his fantasy universe was so powerful that he would believe any bit of "intelligence," no matter how preposterous, that conformed to his lunacy and would dismiss absolutely any source, no matter how credible, that didn't.

Does the name of Ahmed Chalabi, first president of the united liberated Iraq, ring a bell?

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Mike Pence Is No Charlie Wilson And Iran's Internal Politics May Not Be What They Seem Through The Prism Of CNN, Let Alone Fox News

M and M

The immutable law of unintended consequences, in this case, short-sighted American meddling in Afghanistan, brought us Osama bin-Laden and 9/11 and, worst of all, the Bush-Cheney assault on American democracy. On one of the plane rides I took recently I watched Charlie Wilson's War for the first time. Wilson, a colorful Texas Democrat had flare and verve but he was as utterly clueless about Afghanistan as the prohibitively uncolorful Mike Pence-- who has neither verve nor flare-- is about Iran.

With GOP potential presidential contenders dropping off the face of the map weekly, the narrow-minded, priggish and extraordinarily churlish Pence has tossed his unlikely hat into the ring. He's #3 in the House Republican hierarchy and he embodies the GOP strategy of obstructionism and the "Just Say No" mentality. He's even less in tune with what America is looking for in a national leader than John McCain was and his presence in the race will only serve to make a bland and visionless Mitt Romney appear to be a political giant by comparison. He may appear to have more intellectual heft than Sarah Palin but... appearances can be very deceptive.

Most Americans have never heard of Mike Pence and they're not missing much. But in the last few weeks he made himself a champion of his own disconnected definition of Iranian "freedom," irresponsibly decrying President Obama's unwillingness to put an American imprinteur on the dangerous political upheaval in Tehran. Other than being a thorn in the side of Obama, Pence didn't seen to know quite what he wanted-- unless it was the blood of innocent Iranians flowing in the streets. A friend of mine stationed in Baghdad turned me on the Stratfor's Global Intelligence Report. It may occasionally get things wrong but it speaks with a lot more authority than a clown like Mike Pence and a recent edition explained how the real struggle in Iran is very different from what fools like Pence thought they were seeing. That struggle was never really about us and never really about the liberalization of the detestable theocratic/military dictatorship there. "Rather, it has been about the role of the clergy-- particularly the old-guard clergy-- in Iranian life, and the future of particular personalities among this clergy." It's ground Mike Pence knows nothing about and has no feel for-- not that that would ever cause him to think before he speaks.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran his re-election campaign against the old clerical elite, charging them with corruption, luxurious living and running the state for their own benefit rather than that of the people. He particularly targeted Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an extremely senior leader, and his family. Indeed, during the demonstrations, Rafsanjani’s daughter and four other relatives were arrested, held and then released a day later.

Rafsanjani represents the class of clergy that came to power in 1979. He served as president from 1989-1997, but Ahmadinejad defeated him in 2005. Rafsanjani carries enormous clout within the system as head of the regime’s two most powerful institutions-- the Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council and parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, whose powers include oversight of the supreme leader. Forbes has called him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Rafsanjani, in other words, remains at the heart of the post-1979 Iranian establishment.

Ahmadinejad expressly ran his recent presidential campaign against Rafsanjani, using the latter’s family’s vast wealth to discredit Rafsanjani along with many of the senior clerics who dominate the Iranian political scene. It was not the regime as such that he opposed, but the individuals who currently dominate it. Ahmadinejad wants to retain the regime, but he wants to repopulate the leadership councils with clerics who share his populist values and want to revive the ascetic foundations of the regime. The Iranian president constantly contrasts his own modest lifestyle with the opulence of the current religious leadership.

Recognizing the threat Ahmadinejad represented to him personally and to the clerical class he belongs to, Rafsanjani fired back at Ahmadinejad, accusing him of having wrecked the economy. At his side were other powerful members of the regime, including Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who has made no secret of his antipathy toward Ahmadinejad and whose family links to the Shiite holy city of Qom give him substantial leverage. The underlying issue was about the kind of people who ought to be leading the clerical establishment. The battlefield was economic: Ahmadinejad’s charges of financial corruption versus charges of economic mismanagement leveled by Rafsanjani and others.

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. By the end of the week, Khamenei decided to end the situation. In essence, he tried to hold things together by ordering the demonstrations to halt while throwing a bone to Rafsanjani and Mousavi by extending a probe into the election irregularities and postponing a partial recount by five days.

The key to understanding the situation in Iran is realizing that the past weeks have seen not an uprising against the regime, but a struggle within the regime. Ahmadinejad is not part of the establishment, but rather has been struggling against it, accusing it of having betrayed the principles of the Islamic Revolution. The post-election unrest in Iran therefore was not a matter of a repressive regime suppressing liberals (as in Prague in 1989), but a struggle between two Islamist factions that are each committed to the regime, but opposed to each other.

The demonstrators certainly included Western-style liberalizing elements, but they also included adherents of senior clerics who wanted to block Ahmadinejad’s re-election. And while Ahmadinejad undoubtedly committed electoral fraud to bulk up his numbers, his ability to commit unlimited fraud was blocked, because very powerful people looking for a chance to bring him down were arrayed against him.

The situation is even more complex because it is not simply a fight between Ahmadinejad and the clerics, but also a fight among the clerical elite regarding perks and privileges-- and Ahmadinejad is himself being used within this infighting. The Iranian president’s populism suits the interests of clerics who oppose Rafsanjani; Ahmadinejad is their battering ram. But as Ahmadinejad increases his power, he could turn on his patrons very quickly. In short, the political situation in Iran is extremely volatile, just not for the reason that the media portrayed.

Rafsanjani is an extraordinarily powerful figure in the establishment who clearly sees Ahmadinejad and his faction as a mortal threat. Ahmadinejad’s ability to survive the unified opposition of the clergy, election or not, is not at all certain. But the problem is that there is no unified clergy. The supreme leader is clearly trying to find a new political balance while making it clear that public unrest will not be tolerated. Removing “public unrest” (i.e., demonstrations) from the tool kits of both sides may take away one of Rafsanjani’s more effective tools. But ultimately, it actually could benefit him. Should the internal politics move against the Iranian president, it would be Ahmadinejad-- who has a substantial public following-- who would not be able to have his supporters take to the streets.

The question for the rest of the world is simple: Does it matter who wins this fight? We would argue that the policy differences between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani are minimal and probably would not affect Iran’s foreign relations. This fight simply isn’t about foreign policy.

Rafsanjani has frequently been held up in the West as a pragmatist who opposes Ahmadinejad’s radicalism. Rafsanjani certainly opposes Ahmadinejad and is happy to portray the Iranian president as harmful to Iran, but it is hard to imagine significant shifts in foreign policy if Rafsanjani’s faction came out on top. Khamenei has approved Iran’s foreign policy under Ahmadinejad, and Khamenei works to maintain broad consensus on policies. Ahmadinejad’s policies were vetted by Khamenei and the system that Rafsanjani is part of. It is possible that Rafsanjani secretly harbors different views, but if he does, anyone predicting what these might be is guessing.

Rafsanjani is a pragmatist in the sense that he systematically has accumulated power and wealth. He seems concerned about the Iranian economy, which is reasonable because he owns a lot of it. Ahmadinejad’s entire charge against him is that Rafsanjani is only interested in his own economic well-being. These political charges notwithstanding, Rafsanjani was part of the 1979 revolution, as were Ahmadinejad and the rest of the political and clerical elite. It would be a massive mistake to think that any leadership elements have abandoned those principles.

Sounds like just the kind of character someone like Pence, who probably wasn't even aware that Rafasanjani was president nor that Mousavi, as prime minister, was no friend of the U.S. by any stretch of the imagination, would get behind-- at least in domestic Indiana politics. Nor would someone like Pence care. He's just a Party of No hack-- in it to make some trouble and to let the chips fall where they may.

Reuters-- as well as other western mass media outlets-- seems to arbitrarily assign political positions to members of the regime. Ex-President Khatami criticizes the election and, in their world, it makes him a "moderate" and "pro-reform," just like Hezbollah's best friend Mousavi. I don't expect our dumbed down media to go into any really serious analysis but at least they can just try remembering for a few seconds while they turn out this drivel that the world really isn't as U.S.-centric as they seem to believe it is.

Meanwhile, Stratfor makes 3 overall points: "there was no democratic uprising of any significance in Iran... there is a major political crisis within the Iranian political elite, the outcome of which probably tilts toward Ahmadinejad but remains uncertain... there will be no change in the substance of Iran’s foreign policy, regardless of the outcome of this fight. The fantasy of a democratic revolution overthrowing the Islamic Republic-- and thus solving everyone’s foreign policy problems a la the 1991 Soviet collapse-- has passed," regardless of what bozos like Mike Pence, John McCain and Marco Rubio think.

That means that Obama, as the primary player in Iranian foreign affairs, must now define an Iran policy-- particularly given Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s meeting in Washington with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell this Monday. Obama has said that nothing that has happened in Iran makes dialogue impossible, but opening dialogue is easier said than done. The Republicans consistently have opposed an opening to Iran; now they are joined by Democrats, who oppose dialogue with nations they regard as human rights violators. Obama still has room for maneuver, but it is not clear where he thinks he is maneuvering. The Iranians have consistently rejected dialogue if it involves any preconditions. But given the events of the past weeks, and the perceptions about them that have now been locked into the public mind, Obama isn’t going to be able to make many concessions.

Who's Who In The Iran Elections? If Ahmadinejad Is Bobby Jindal, Then Mousavi Is Susan Collins

Superficial western media has decided that anyone is better than current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so they've labeled his opponents all "reformers." The only real reform candidate, from a western perspective, is Mehdi Karroubi, a former speaker of the Majlis (Iran's Parliament). Mohsen Rezaei is even a crazier, more right wing sociopath than Ahmadinejad. He thinks Ahmadinejad is a softy! Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a former prime minister, is a mainstream conservative. So in American terms, think of Ahmadinejad as Bobby Jindal or Eric Cantor; Mohsen Rezaei as Michele Bachmann, Dick Cheney or Ann Coulter; Mir-Hossein Mousavi would be like Susan Collins or Ben Nelson; and Mehdi Karroubi more like... well, not quite Bernie Sanders or Donna Edwards... maybe Pete DeFazio or John Kerry.

It looks like there was a record turn-out, maybe 32 million voters (70-80%). Immediately after counting started both Ahmadinejad and Mousavi claimed victory. Then it all disappeared into a black box-- not unlike Bush's 2000 "victory." Apparently Ahmadinejad is being declared the winner. There are rumors that Mousavi and Karroubi have been taken into custody by the intelligence department (allies of Ahmadinejad). There's certainly going to be a big let down in Iran, especially in Tehran where people are very aware that whatever semblance of democracy there was, was a farce. Sad day for Iran!




UPDATE: Light Rioting

At least a few Tehranis took to the streets to protest the theft of their national elections. Recall that when Bush-Cheney stole the 2000 election the only sound that could be heard was Joe Lieberman congratulating them. And in 2004 when Rove had the elections rigged in Ohio... crickets. No one in Iran believes that Ahmadinejad wound up with 62.6% of the vote. Juan Cole offers some evidence (kind of) that the Iranian election was fixed. Too bad the U.S. lost the ability to take the high moral ground after we just yawned as Bush stole our own elections twice.

Riot police clashed with supporters of presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi in the center of the city Saturday evening after the government declared that he had been defeated in a landslide by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tear gas and batons were used by police to battle angry crowds, a bus was set on fire and explosions were heard in the distance.

On some streets, the protesters pushed back the riot police. Women wrapped their headscarves around their faces to ward off the tear gas. Stones were thrown at the police.

Mousavi, a former prime minister who waged a heated campaign against Ahmadinejad's bid for reelection, urged his supporters to reject a "governance of lie and dictatorship." He attributed the results to widespread vote fraud and vowed to resist a "dangerous manipulation" of the balloting.

Apparently Mousavi isn't under arrest or in detention (or is he?) and he's calling the election theft "treason." The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameni, an Ahmadinejad partisan, blessed the voter fraud and called on everyone to shut up and back the results. Another Ahmadinejad partisan, Iranian Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli-- the Katherine Harris or Ken Blackwell of this election-- charged with counting the votes, dismissed, out of hand, accusations of massive fraud. Ironically, among the biggest winners in this were the far right Israelis and their treacherous AIPAC backers in America who want to "deflect U.S. pressure to endorse the creation of a Palestinian state and freeze the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank."

BUSH RAN-- IRAN WALKED... WAVING AND SMILING

Bush slinked in and out of Iraq for a quick unannounced photo-op and some handshakes on a heavily guarded American airbase. They never turned off Air Force One's engines... just in case the Iraqi people found out that the author of their misery was in the country. Now that he's murdered Saddam and his two sons, Bush's main nemesis in his world of power politics is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And he's in the midst of a much heralded, high profile visit to the country that it's self-declared "liberator" and "rebuilder" and "protector" is scared to death of.

U.S. policy in Iraq-- i.e., Bush's war and occupation-- accomplished very little of what it set out to accomplish (other than the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and his subsequent brutal quasi-judicial murder)... unless you're Iranian. Bush's Iraq policies accomplished everything Iran has been working towards for decades. A hostile, war-like and implaccable foe dominating it's entire western border has been replaced by a supine, toothless failed state ruled largely by its allies and co-religionists. The single biggest instigator of Bush's Iraq agenda, darling of the clueless Inside-the-Beltway Neocon establishment, Ahmad Chalabi, was-- as the CIA and State Department warned Bush and Cheney (who didn't believe them)-- an Iranian double agent. Cheney and Rumsfeld may think he's swell, and still want to see him running Iraq, but he managed to get the U.S. to spend over a trillion dollars to accomplish most of Iran's goals for Iraq.

Meanwhile Iran and Iraq are celebrating a new chapter in brotherly relations in Baghdad today while Bush skulks around his pig farm in Crawford, Texas muttering darkly about Iranian nukes and terror exportation.

Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian head of state to visit it's closest neighbor since Bush I, Rumsfeld and Cheney plotted with Saddam to attack Iran-- launching a devastating 8 year war-- in 1980. Over a million people were killed. He rejected Bush's accusations that Iran is inciting and arming Iraq's Shia majority to attack American soldiers occupying their country.

"We tell Mr. Bush that accusing others will increase the problems of America in the region and will not solve them," Ahmadinejad said in at a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in the American-guarded Green Zone. "The Americans have to understand the facts of the region. Iraqi people do not like America." (Wait, what happened to the monuments and squares to the glory of Bush we were told they would build in downtown Baghdad?) His goal, upstaging Bush and making him more of a laughing stock, seems to be working.

Unlike Bush, who has traveled to Iraq twice unannounced and on his last visit never left an American base in Anbar province, Ahmadinejad not only announced his trip in advance but also is planning to visit two major Shiite Muslim holy sites, Karbala and Najaf, at the end of a mammoth Shiite pilgrimage that was marred by a suicide bombing.

The out-of-town visits raise security questions in the face of the continuing threat from Sunni Islamist extremists. But the images of Ahmadinejad at sacred sites are certain to impress Iranians, who in two weeks will vote in parliamentary elections at a time when soaring oil prices haven't eased Iran's economic troubles.

...'The Iranians are trying to make it clear to the U.S. and the Arab world that they are a force in the region,'' said Karim Sadjadpour, an associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in Washington. "What the Iranians like to say is that the U.S. has hard power in Iraq-- they have tens of thousands of soldiers and artillery-- but Iran has soft power. No matter how many soldiers the U.S. has, they're never going to have the cultural affinity and popular affinity that the Iranians have in Iraq.''

Ahmadinejad got a red-carpet welcome (4 kisses) from Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. "We had very good talks that were friendly and brotherly. ... We have mutual understandings and views in all fields, and both sides plan to improve relations as much as possible,'' Ahmadinejad said in a news conference with Talabani at the Iraqi president's residence, located across the Tigris River from the new U.S. Embassy in the fortified Green Zone.

Aside from the racism and personal attacks the McCain camp is readying to deploy against Obama-- one McCain top aide already quit in revulsion at the game book-- the only possible way for McCain to win a third Bush term is to convince skeptical, angry voters that the occupation of Iraq is working. The mass media has been working-- working overtime to never mention the word "surge" without also mentioning it has been a success. It hasn't been a success except in the most narrow and fleetingly tactic sense imaginable. Strategically it has accomplished nothing at all. Today Rove was on Fox trying to scare people into thinking that if we end the occupation of Iraq, oil prices will shoot up to $200 a barrel. When Bush invaded Iraq, a barrel of oil was $36. Now it's $100. America has entered a cycle that could easily turn into catastrophic inflation thanks to the policies of Bush, Cheney, Rove and McCain. I think we've heard more than enough from these crooks and spinmeisters.