I probably shouldn't have called it "his latest article" as it's about him and his wife not by him, but, well, you get the point. I do make mistakes sometimes. It's stll a great article which i hope everyone does go check out.

Very informative. Thanks for the post.

Mann and Leverett are interviewed in this months esquire also its a pretty good article

Loonie @ 3:

What the White House Doesn’t Want You To Know About Iran: "Anything".

Exactly. The sad thing is how few if any in this country do know anything about Iran. Most people think the Iranian Revolution and the Hostage crisis was a failure of Jimmy Carter, not the result of the US' overthrow of a progressive secular democracy over oil and the installation of a US puppet dictator whose CIA trained secret police tortured and killed all opposition for 25 years.

There's a reason they don't like us, and if another country did it to us, we wouldn't like them either.

I have a question: This is not my wheelhouse, so I'm probably over-simplifying it.

Why can't the international community develop an independent agency to administer and store enriched uranium for countries wanting to develop nuclear power? It seems that if there were full-time, on-site, administrators that most concern for misusing the uranium could be put to rest. In essence the country would own the nuclear power facilities; but the agency would own the uranium.

Their Esquire article should be required reading for every US citizen and resident.

Iran has always been the end game in the Middle East.

WE ARE A NATION OF WAR CRIMINALS

PurplePatriot @ 10:

I have a question: This is not my wheelhouse, so I'm probably over-simplifying it.

Why can't the international community develop an independent agency to administer and store enriched uranium for countries wanting to develop nuclear power? It seems that if there were full-time, on-site, administrators that most concern for misusing the uranium could be put to rest. In essence the country would own the nuclear power facilities; but the agency would own the uranium.

A great solution that the US would never agree to.
Nor would the rest of the world as long as they rightly perceive the US as a threat.
We need a leader that represents strength through peace.

Kucinich 08

We're f@cked.

nwmuse @ 16:

Amen to Kucinich.

Well, ...

"What about Kucinich?
You might as well be voting for Saddam.
That guy's a vegetarian for Christ's sake"

You know who said that? You'd probably be surprised.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUiNiB2yVCQ

:lol:

People realized all right! I realized and many of the other people who frequent this blog and the many other blogs have been saying it for years. The problem is that Joe Sixpack and Betty Winebox don’t want to listen or they want to believe the O’Reillys and Hannitys and the Becks and the Limpdicks of the world. When the shit hits the fan it’s “tough shit” for the “Sixpacks” and the “Wineboxes” of the country. We told you so idiots. I’m armed and ready. Are you with me or against me?

So you've got hard liners in the US administration with heroic view of history making using Iranian nukes as political resource. Then you have hard liners in Iran playing the Sadam rope-a-dope, practically asking for "surgical" bombing to achieve political advantage that can be parlayed for years to come. The real bad news for all the innocents that get caught up in collateral.

Bombing of facilities years from achieving results will only prove falsely that Iran had the immediate potential having nukes. As to state sponsored terrorism and supply of arms to terrorists, US probably has the worst record in such supply and also in suffering blowback with the use of same. What was Iran Contra about?

Turk Meister @ 25:

Hey Flynt, thanks for the heads up 4+ years too late.

What! We went to war w/ Iran 4 years ago? I thought when he and his wife came out against this administration's plans to go to war with Iran last year it was still well before we went to war with them.

Did I just sleep through that? What year is this?

The clown playing President is in for a rude ending.

This is a "letter to the editor" that I sent yesterday to the New York Times.
I don't think that they will publish it, but I'd lke you to see it, and I would be interested in whatever comments you might have.

Recently, the Vice President went on television to let it be known that he is serious about military action against Iran. The President also appeared on television to announce that the world community must place greater pressure on Iran in order to prevent Iran from as much as having the knowledge or capability to build nuclear weapons. This he said, was necessary in order to avoid World War III.

Meanwhile, Turkey is preparing to send it's troops into Northern Iraq to PKK assaults on its territory. The US is in no position to oppose Turkey in attacking Kurdish "terrorists" based in Iraq, but the Kurds are America's only reliable ally in Iraq. President Putin recently visited Tehran to express his support and respect for Iran's sovereignty.

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have each announed their determination to extend the war into Iran, possibly igniting a Third World War in the Middle East.

Unless you are foolish enough to believe that such a war is necessary and would have a purgative effect, you understand that such a war would inevitably be catastrophic, and must be avoided at all costs.

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are determined to enlarge their present illegitimate war, if they are contemplating an attack on Iran, or the use of nuclear weapons in such a war, they must be removed from office as quickly as possible. They represent a threat to the United States, to the rest of the world, and to our future generations.

Impeachment must be placed back on the table. The stakes are too high. Life and death.
Dennis Kucinich has presented a Bill of Impeachment against Vice President Cheney.
It certainly deserves more attention than it has been getting. And certainly, a Bill of Impeachment for George W.Bush should long ago have been presented in Congress if the US were a functional democracy. To survive it may have to actually become one.

tjb @ 5:

Hitler would have done the same thing

Paint a little mustache on Bush and....

It's simple. Have all the American people you can get to write to the current administration and FORBID them declare war on Iran on pain of death. And if they refuse...take them out bodily and imprison them. If they refuse...

SadButTrue @ 35:

What Washington doesn't want you to know about ________________ (fill in the blank), you probably will never find out.

Consider this: the last time you bought a car or a major appliance, you probably checked out several models each from several different manufacturers - what features they had, how long the warranty was, how well made they were. If you were smart, you visited some consumer sites or purchased reviewer magazines. You did the research before you laid out your hard-earned money.

Goddamn it, I wish people would put the same kind of effort into where their vote goes. The #1 determining factor of who gets in is still how much money is spent on the campaign, leading very quickly to the #2 factor, name recognition. How pathetic is that? "I voted for this guy because I've heard his name more often than the other guy's name."

Let's apply some of those fine-tuned consumer skillz to politics, shall we?

Hon, many many people just buy the car they see on TV the most--it's why auto makers keep spending money making commercials. You know that.

I get what you are saying, and yeah, I researched the hell out of my last auto purchase, as I do each and every vote. But then again, I don't watch TV...
;)

Turk Meister @ 37:

Turk Meister @ 27:

What, Flynt resigned in March 2003 because of differences he had with the administration about Iraq and then proceeded to voice his concerns in public and out loud to anyone who would listen? Oh, I must have slept through that since this is the first time I've ever heard of him.

My point is that I never heard him speak out against the attack on Iraq even though he knew it was coming and disagreed with the adiministration so much so that he resigned in apparent protest. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate his efforts to prevent a similar crime as it relates to Iran it's just that no insiders spoke out about Iraq when it might have done some good.

You need to check out Leverett and Mann's redacted op-ed in the NYT from December 22, 2006. They've been trying to "speak out" about the administration's Iran-baiting (their area of expertise, not Iraq) for a while now, but they're not being allowed to speak freely, which might explain why this is the first time you've heard of him.

I, for one, salute Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann as true heroes for their courage, fortitude and persistence. And thanks to C & L for being on top of this story-- the Esquire piece is a very, very chilling portrait of how this administration operates and the tremendously stupid, callous things that are being said and done in the name of the American people.

Turk Meister @ 37:

My point is that I never heard him speak out against the attack on Iraq even though he knew it was coming and disagreed with the adiministration so much so that he resigned in apparent protest. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate his efforts to prevent a similar crime as it relates to Iran it's just that no insiders spoke out about Iraq when it might have done some good.

1) You can't speak out and keep your job when you serve at the pleasure of the President, especially this President. Yes he could have spoken out before Iraq, although as an Iranian policy advisor I'm not sure what he really knew about Bushco's plans involving Iraq. You are making one hell of an assumption that he did.

2)By your (il)logic, everyone who disagreed with Bush should have quit and spoken out. While it MIGHT seem admirable I think that would only have exasperated the problem considerably by ensuring that there were no sane voices or opinions in Bush's cabinet, only sycophant dittoheads. None of the others who have quit and spoken out (Richard Clarke comes to mind) made crap of a difference to Bushco. They just attacked them and went right on with their PNAC plans anyway.

3)Flynt sounds like he was that sorely needed sane voice, and he quit (or was pushed out? We don't know, but it coincided with the invasion of Iraq) when his advice was not listened to. He then immediately began speaking out, joining the Brookings institute and going on shows like Democracy Now.

Perhaps it's because I've been outside the states for over a decade but I just cannot see the U.S. invading Iran.
It makes so little sense.
The military cannot stand to be stretched any further and for fuck's sake, we've got to be running out of defense contractors with pockets to line.

In all seriousness, anyone in the military or who works closely with the military could tell you that we don't have the resources to invade Iran. The military is simply too thinly stretched as it is.

An invasion of Iran would be an invitation for North Korea to attack us or for China to shut down our economy by demanding payment on the money we owe them.

Not even bush and cheney can be so deluded or care so little about America. I just can't see it. They are evil but not even Hitler or Stalin were capable of that level of depravity.

Again, I just can't see it happening. There is zero logic in it.

#42 Tim in Japan...
There are so many things happening in this country that I never would have imagined, but then here we are. We have torture, suspension of habeus corpus, extraorindary rendition, illegal spying on Americans, expansion of presidential power to such a point that it feels more like a dictatorship, and stolen elections, to name but a few. The republicans have turned Congress into a completely dysfunctional institution, and basically broken the government. I barely recognize this country anymore, and I'm certainly having a hard time feeling proud. It's very frightening, not to mention depressing. What saddens me the most is that I have an 18 year old son I'm getting ready to send out into an America that seems more and more like a Banana Republic than the great country I used to know.

These look like important bits of reading, but my system administrator has blocked these sights, because they are listed as entertainment and "provacative attire". Di they appear anywhere in other publications?

"See, we have to invade Iran. We've just discovered that the Iranians have hands, which could be used to build nukulilurian weapons!"

justabill @ 40:

Turk Meister @ 37:

My point is that I never heard him speak out against the attack on Iraq even though he knew it was coming and disagreed with the adiministration so much so that he resigned in apparent protest. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate his efforts to prevent a similar crime as it relates to Iran it's just that no insiders spoke out about Iraq when it might have done some good.

1) You can't speak out and keep your job when you serve at the pleasure of the President, especially this President. Yes he could have spoken out before Iraq, although as an Iranian policy advisor I'm not sure what he really knew about Bushco's plans involving Iraq. You are making one hell of an assumption that he did.

2)By your (il)logic, everyone who disagreed with Bush should have quit and spoken out. While it MIGHT seem admirable I think that would only have exasperated the problem considerably by ensuring that there were no sane voices or opinions in Bush's cabinet, only sycophant dittoheads. None of the others who have quit and spoken out (Richard Clarke comes to mind) made crap of a difference to Bushco. They just attacked them and went right on with their PNAC plans anyway.

3)Flynt sounds like he was that sorely needed sane voice, and he quit (or was pushed out? We don't know, but it coincided with the invasion of Iraq) when his advice was not listened to. He then immediately began speaking out, joining the Brookings institute and going on shows like Democracy Now.

I'm sure as an expert on Iran he had no expertise on Iraq since they share a common border, and during the 80's had a protracted conflict. It seems a reasonable conclusion rather than one hell of an assumption that an expert on Iran would have just a bit of knowledge about Iraq. Even a dimbulb president like Bush might have asked his expert if there were any ramifications concerning Iran when proposing to invade Iraq.

And sure, the others who spoke out got the GOP sledgehammer to quiet dissent. Any maybe one more voice would not have mattered. No one can know for sure. And perhaps the problem would have been exacerbated. I, for one, am exasperated by the continued outrages. Doubtless Flynt is not the enemy and deserves our full support in order to prevent the next foreign policy blunder (illegal war) Bush and his merry band lunatics have planned.

grover nerdkissed @ 45:

oh, but Code Pink is "too theaterical"!

Bush cannot adequately argue with Code Pinks' valid claims; so he is using non-sense. He's not making an argument, but making noise.

The President has lost a legal foundation for justifying any continued support. He should be peacefully arrested and lawfully removed from office: A sitting president can be prosecuted outside impeachment.

Ah...So begins the secret war on Laos...oops! I mean Iran

I am a constant watcher of C-Span. You need to focus on last week's eloquent and to-the-point remarks by former Judge, Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tx) on the death penalty. Pure poetry from the former prosecutor/judge.
A great man with GREAT IDEAS, indeed.