More on Bush/Cheney Iran lies...

This week's 'toon may require you to have previously seen professional darts on TV to get the joke. Here's a couple of clips if you haven't had the pleasure. Funniest thing ever... a bunch of dumpy, sweaty guys playing a bar game, but the crowd and the announcers act like they're watching Michael Jordan in his prime. IT'S DARTS! I had a lot more British colloquialisms in the cartoon (as I understand them), but I had to weed them out because I didn't feel like the joke would translate well in written form.

Here are some articles:

• Seymour Hersh had it a year ago that Bush knew there was no conclusive evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program. If you don't want to believe a Pulitzer Prize winner, then take it from Bush's own NSA, Stephen Hadley, who says that senior members of the Bush administration were told "beginning in July" about the new intelligence. Bush's excuse (which some call "preposterous"), that DNI Mike McConnell told him "they had new information" but didn't tell him what it was, even if true, is meaningless. The entire administration bears responsibility for what comes out of Bush's mouth... does anybody think he comes up with a single thought himself? When Bush made threats in October about the coming of "World War III," it was a lie and they all knew it. Do they deserve any benefit of the doubt whatsoever after Iraq and WMD's? Bush on Dec. 5:
  

  "The Iranians have a strategic choice to make,” Bush said in Omaha, Nebraska. “They can come clean with the international community about the scope of their nuclear activities and fully accept the longstanding offer to suspend their enrichment program and come to the table and negotiate, or they can continue on a path of isolation that is not in the best interest of the Iranian people. The choice is up to the Iranian regime."

  
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this pretty much the same damn "choice" we gave Iraq when all along we were just going to invade them anyway??


• Cheney (just back from another hunting trip) is now being forced to make the hilarious admission that he has "no reason to question the intelligence released this week showing that Iran is not an imminent nuclear threat." Even more ridiculous, he claims that his position "has not changed" that we need to deal with Iran "diplomatically." Riiiiiiight...
  
  Reportedly, Dick and his pals are "infuriated" by this "breathtaking repudiation of [their] policy arguments."


• Greg Sargent has been all over the media's role in this one. The funniest thing I've seen: CNN was forced to postpone their "speculative documentary" titled "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear." The show was described as being a "what-if scenario" where "fictional cabinet members" debate how to deal with the Iranian threat.
  
  Yeah... that's good journalism.


• The truth is (and I believe people like Noam Chomsky have been saying this for years) that Iran is a rational actor, despite the scary stories told to us by Israel and the Bush administration. As such, the NIE found that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic and military costs."