Nuking Reality

* larisa:

"Nuking Reality . Our carriers are nearly in position as are nearly all the key players and pieces. Israel, as it turns out, will be the proxy element through which the US will spread nuclear democracy across Iran. We are screwed and Israelis are screwed while our two extremist, rogue governments are leading the planet into disaster. Forget the horsemen of the apocalypse. We have the lunatics of fascism and chaos."

* thinkprogress:

"This morning on CBS’s Face the Nation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that Congress may refuse to authorize funding for an escalation of U.S. forces to Iraq if President Bush cannot justify the strategy."

* Glenn:

"While it is difficult to be more dishonest than Ledeen, it is difficult to be more wrong than Charles Krauthammer. "

* buried at the bottom of a long article on Iran in the LAT:

"In fact, Iran's oil and gas dilemma appears to point up a "genuine" need for civilian nuclear power, Stern said.

"When I first started hearing this claim that Iran needed these nuclear plans to substitute for oil and gas, I thought, 'That's ridiculous,' " he said. "So it has really been a surprise to me," he added, to see evidence that Tehran's stated purpose for the nuclear reactor is not "simply a weapons deception."

"I don't think they're nice guys," he said. "This is a regime that funds terrorism and is making outrageous claims that Israel should disappear. But it just happens to be a convenient truth for them that they do need nuclear power.""

* Newsweek:

"A CIA panel has told former officer Valerie Plame she can't write about her undercover work for the agency, a position that may threaten a lucrative book project with her publisher.... The panel refused Plame permission to even mention that she worked for the CIA because she served as a "nonofficial cover" officer (or NOC) posing as a private businesswoman"

* Richard Sale:

""Contrary to the bland stories in The New York Times and Washington Post of Friday, Negroponte did not go voluntarily to State from his job as director of intelligence. In fact, there was tremendous administration pressure to get him out of his current job. The chief cause of the quarrel involved Negroponte's balking at at request from Vice President Cheney to increase domestic collection by the National Security Agency on U.S. citizens.

Negroponte flatly refused, Cheney bridled, and from then on the pressure built to get rid of him. (The White House did not return phone calls, but there is nothing new is that.)"

* Richard Sale:

Regarding Cheney's recent trip to Saudi Arabia. Cheney went there to get the Wahabis to start ratcheting up actions against the Hizbullah in Lebanon and elsewhere in the region. Saudi relations with Syria have cooled dramatically since the Hariri murder. As senior CIA officials told me in 2001, Hariri was a Saudi agent for a long time.

* SteveA:

"You have to wonder whether Saddam Husseain was executed to shut him up. This fact will make his execution nothing more than a political crime.

The American people are being represented by rulers so compromised that justice from them, for whatever cause, is just not possible."