What is it about Democratic hawks that makes them so indistinguishable from Republican hawks? From the AP:

Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy said a strategy decision on new deployments involving the U.S. and other troop-contributing nations would be made within the next few weeks, according to an official transcript released Saturday.

Flournoy, the Pentagon's policy chief, led a U.S. delegation that briefed NATO ambassadors Thursday on the Obama administration's review of the Afghan war. Officials released a transcript of her remarks from that meeting.

"No one is talking about leaving Afghanistan, or even standing pat. We are increasing our commitment and we're talking about how best to do that with both civilian and military resources," Flournoy was quoted as telling NATO ambassadors.

Tell me, Ms. Flournoy, how many thousands of troops NATO is going to be providing, given their limited participation to date and their nations' people also coming out more and more against further involvement in Afghanistan? How many more years, how many more deaths, how many more billions will it take before Afghanistan is "secure"? Honestly, someone needs to clue in Ms. Flournoy about the failed wisdom of following in the footsteps of the "stupidest guy on the face of the planet."

I have never understood the grasping need of Dem politicians to be viewed as being as tough as - and often, as foolish - Repub politicians when it comes to issues of national security. Afghanistan is not vital to American security interests - going after al Qaeda is, and they're in Pakistan. We need a strategy of containment rather than one of nation-building - we can't afford the current strategy, and it's overdue for a change.

The media, conservatives and the democratic deficit hawks are telling America that the cost of reforming America's health care system better not add one red cent to the deficit. Why doesn't the librul media explain to America that we are paying 10 billion dollars a month on two wars that Americans hate?

I asked Rep. Alan Grayson on a live chat on C&L how much the US of A spends each month on the wars, and he answered thus:

The appropriated cost is around $10 billion a month, which is enough to pay for the entire health care plan by itself. But that doesn't include the future health care costs for injured American soldiers, which is staggering. Nor the cost to the Iraqis or Afghans, of course.

Our soldiers get killed or maimed by one war that has been botched by Bush and we're no closer to a solution in Afghanistan after eight years of occupation and another war that Bush lied us into known as Iraq. The media is uncomfortable whenever we use the word "lie," for some reason. I wish they could give us a truer description of what happened, don't you?

Yet, the media never bothers to explain to us how much money we are actually spending each month that does NOTHING to help Americans. Well, it does fund the military complex and mercenaries like Blackwater, but why the f*&k does it matter to these budget freaks if we have to spend some jack to save the health-care system in the long run? Have they completely decided that America is staying in both countries endlessly and the costs for sustaining these wars is a non-issue?

UPDATE: You can donate to our "No Means No!" Afghanistan action here.

I always ask teabaggers when I run into them, how any federal deficit has hurt them personally? They can't respond to that. They have no answer except to cry "socialism."

Sure, it's much better to have a surplus like Clinton did, but these same deficit hawks were quite happy when the Bush tax cuts came down and the rich got richer and the economy collapsed. But I ask again: How has deficit spending hurt you?

Long term debt is nothing to sneeze at, but when we're talking about reforming health care for America, who really cares if it's $700 billion for 10 years or $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion? (By the way, I love the way the press never tells America what it would cost per year because then the figure doesn't sound so bad. They make it appear that the cost is $700 or 900 billion a year.)

Go ask a teabagger about costs and see what they say. What will it matter in the long run? We can figure out how to pay for it. Even FDR was hampered by these deficit hawks when he brought the country out of the Great Depression, and now these deficit hawks almost put us back into a Depression because they were so deficit crazy.

The deficit hawk is code for keeping the rich---rich. And then finding ways to keep their money pouring in.

Digby has a great post up today about costs:

The Peterson Foundation is ready with the news. They released a report (pdf) on the Kennedy Bill today...

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The fact is that if all these benefits were actually realized, the country would be far, far better off, both financially and otherwise. Nobody expects that spending will go down, merely that the growth in spending will be less. Therefore, if the government finds itself having to pay out all that money in health care benefits, this healthier, more prosperous nation can surely afford to levy the necessary taxes to pay for it, right?

I don't give a damn what this is going to cost in 2029. And nobody else should either because these projections are based on bullshit. Nobody can see that far into the future. If we can pay for it now, then we should do it now. And if it costs more down the line, then we will find a way to pay for it. This nonsensical obsession with deficits decades into the future is nothing more than a scam designed to keep the gravy train going for the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else.

If these numbers are correct, then the fiscal scolds are going to have to argue that people today have to die so that wealthy people in 2029 don't have to pay higher taxes. It's that simple.

The president is also talking about having a deficit neutral bill, but he's being attacked for it by the usual suspects.

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Anyone who is aware of all Internet traditions has by now seen the footage of Barney Frank taking down the Larouchie who asked him if he would support a "Nazi policy" by asking her, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" But Rep. Frank was in rare form that night, standing up to the uninformed shrieking of the right and offering a real lesson in how to argue with conservatives. Rep. Frank's office provided C&L with the tapes of that town hall meeting in Dartmouth from last week, and I put together a sort of greatest hits reel.

Frank explains what deficit hawks should concern themselves with:

"I am struck by those who say, well, you don't care about the deficit. No, I do. I do care about the deficit. That's one of the reasons, not the only one, why I voted against the single most wasteful expenditure in the history of America. The Iraq war. If we hadn't gone to the war in Iraq, which I thought was a terrible mistake and voted against, we would have had more than enough money to pay for health care."

He argues with a "tenther" who thinks that Congress isn't authorized to provide health care for their citizens:

Frank: Do you think Medicare is unconstitutional, sir?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: Do you think it's unconstitutional? You said that the Constitution doesn't give us the authority to do it, but Medicare was done. And, do you think Medicare is unconstitutional?

Teabagger: I think that Medicare needs to be reformed.

Frank: But you won't tell me whether you think it's unconstitutional, which you said--

Teabagger: I am not a Constitutional scholar-

Frank: Then why did you start off arguing about the Constitution?

That's really a fantastic exchange, where Frank digs an inch below the surface and finds nothing. He insists on having this questioner back up the rhetoric he cribbed off of Free Republic or wherever he got it, and the guy just couldn't do it.

And this is my favorite part:

Teabagger: Can you pledge to all of us here tonight, that if a new government single-payer system is instituted, that you will opt out of your Cadillac insurance?

Frank: Yes I am in favor of single payer, and that's why I like Medicare. (yelling) You act as if you people have discovered it is August. I have been a co-sponsor of the single payer bill, I think it would be better...

Teabagger #2: But we watch tapes of Obama and everyone else secretly say they're in favor of an eventual single pay system.

Frank: I haven't... sir, it's been 21 years since I've had a secret. (Laughter) And I don't have one now! You have discovered that I'm for single payer! I've been a sponsor of single payer for years!

What you see here is several things: 1) Rep. Frank is always in control; 2) he concedes nothing; 3) he allows his opponents to hang themselves with the outlandish logic of their own claims; 4) he knows when to throw in a well-timed bon mot. At one point, Frank says, "When you say things that people can't refute, they try to drown you out. That's understandable." That's someone who is confident in their beliefs. Democrats could learn something from that.

Paul Rieckhoff from IAVA gave me a heads up on this yesterday. Ralph Peters is one of those wacko military hawks that FOX News uses to ramp up the Rambo style militia movement they hold so dear to their hearts. He was prattling on (almost spitting up as he spoke) about how this soldier might be a deserter and if that was the case--he should be executed by the Taliban. Yea, real sane analysis by Peters.

Peters: Now look, Julie, I want to be clear. If, when the facts are in, we find out that through some convoluted chain of events, he really was captured by the Taliban, I'm with him. But, if he walked away from his post and his buddies at wartime... I don't care how hard it sounds, as far as I'm concerned, the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills.

Antman11 has more:

I couldn't believe my ears, but just minutes ago on "America's News HQ," guest pundit Ralph Peters suggested something to the effect that the Taliban should "save us the headache" and execute captured 23 year-old American soldier Bowe Bergdahl, because "it looks like" Bergdahl deserted his unit. While prefacing his comments by stressing that a military decision should not be made until all of the facts surrounding Bergdahl's capture are determined, Peters then ignored his own advice and encouraged the Taliban to kill this young man. Fox News' Julie Banderas was visibly shocked at the words coming out of Peters' mouth, but did not challenge any of his statements before awkwardly ending the segment.

You might have forgotten that Ralphie boy also thinks the media should be murdered by our troops too. He's a real psycho. Just the kind of pundits FOX loves.

Peters: Rejecting the god of their fathers, the neo-pagans who dominate the media serve as lackeys at the terrorists’ bloody altar.

Pretending to be impartial, the self-segregating personalities drawn to media careers overwhelmingly take a side, and that side is rarely ours. Although it seems unthinkable now, future wars may require censorship, news blackouts and, ultimately, military attacks on the partisan media.

Vice President Biden gave a much-anticipated speech at an international security conference in Munich on Saturday. Before an audience of several hundred - including General David Petraeus (seen scribbling notes while the VP spoke), Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser Jones, French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Merkel - Biden set out a US foreign policy vision which was both less hardline than the Bush administration's and yet firmly hawkish.

There's much to be glad about in Biden's speech.

To meet the challenges of this new century, defense and diplomacy are necessary. But quite frankly, ladies and gentlemen, they are not sufficient. We also need to wield development and democracy, two of the most powerful weapons in our collective arsenals. Poor societies and dysfunctional states, as you know as well as I do, can become breeding grounds for extremism, conflict and disease. Non-democratic nations frustrate the rightful aspirations of their citizens and fuel resentment.

Our administration has set an ambitious goal to increase foreign assistance, to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015, to help eliminate the global educational deficit, and to cancel the debt of the world's poorest countries; to launch a new Green Revolution that produces sustainable supplies of food, and to advance democracy not through the imposition of force from the outside, but by working with moderates in government and civil society to build those institutions that will protect that freedom -- quite frankly, the only thing that will guarantee that freedom.

We also are determined to build a sustainable future for our planet. We are prepared to once again begin to lead by example. America will act aggressively against climate change and in pursuit of energy security with like-minded nations.

But there are some glaringly hawkish moments that reveal America isn't quite as willing to give up acting from its position of possessing overwhelming force as it would like others to be.

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Hat tip - Noah at Danger Room

When Iraq launched a three-stage rudimentary satellite booster into space in December 1989, probably based upon the Argentinian "Condor" ballistic missile, hawks in the West went crazy, declaiming that this proved Iraq was after an intercontinental WMD ability. We all know how that turned out.

Today it's "deja vu all over again" as Iran becomes the eleventh nation to prove it can launch a satellite into orbit - something it stated it would do as long ago as January 2004. It's stated aim is to grab a slice of the lucrative satellite launch industry - alongside major players like Russia, the US, China and Europe but also alongside nations like Brazil, Israel, Japan and India - as well as launch its own satellites for telecommunications, weather and earthquake monitoring and security (spy-sat) purposes. It already has one satellite in orbit, which it paid Russia hard currency to launch.

In the Guardian, Julian Borger looks at how the launch is seen differently in Iran and the West.

For the Iranian government it is an important milestone along the road to reclaiming Persia's ancient claim to major power status, which it feels the jealous west is trying to deny it.

It is also enormously significant in Iranian internal politics. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad got elected promising economic benefits for the common man and modernisation. He has made a complete mess of the first part of that mission. Delivering the second is important for his prospects of re-election in June, in the eyes of both the average voter and – even more importantly, given the controlled nature of Iranian democracy – the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

From Washington, London and some other western capitals, the launch is seen primarily through the prism of Iran's nuclear project. The capacity to put an object into space, together with the feared capability to build a nuclear device, spells – for some at least – the eventual threat of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that could reach the US.

"There are dual applications for satellite launching technology in Iran's ballistic missile programme. As a result we think this sends the wrong signal to the international community, which has already passed five successive UN security council resolutions on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes," Bill Rammell, the minister of state at the [British] Foreign Office, said today.

Iranian assertions that their staging experiments were always aimed at getting into the lucrative satelite launching business, rather than at ICBMs, go forgotten...when Iran proves to prospective customers that it can launch a satellite. Amazing.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Sometimes a matter of national pride and foreign currency income doesn't have a more sinister agenda behind it. Mohammed El-Baradei reminded the WaPo on Monday that neither the IAEA nor the US intelligence community has any evidence of a current Iranian nuclear weapons program. It's become fashionable of late to just ignore that - President Obama being one keynote offender - but eventually the hawks will have to confront the lack of evidence, if they can.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Did anyone think that the people who managed to slant US analysis so badly that it was sure there were WMDs in Iraq would give up easily on agitating for their next war of choice, Iran? In their last months with free run of the corridors of power, the necons and Cheneyites are doing their best to torpedo Obama's diplomatic route for Iran, something Democratic hawks and AIPACers are only too happy to aid them in.

For over a year now, their aim has been to create "strategic ambiguity" - deliberately muddying the waters about Israeli and American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with the West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn't play ball. D.C. hawks have gotten on board to such an extent that it is already an accepted fact among the Very Serious Person set that Obama's idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, and then the bombs will begin to fall.

There's more of the same in Haaretz this Thursday, reporting a planted story that Obama will extend the U.S. nuclear umbrella to Israel, which has plenty of nukes itself. The story is sourced to a single someone "close to the new administration". Whether that source is someone like Dennis Ross, Susan Rice or Tony Lake - all of whom have been cozy with the "real men go to Tehran" faction recently - or actually outside Obama's nascent administration looking in, even perhaps a part of the Bush team's transition liason, is unclear. Haaretz might even be the target of deliberate disinformation or making the story up out of whole cloth in a way that can't be proven. But one of those Real Men, Jim Geraghty, is beside himself with glee that the idea was first put out there by another Manly Man, Charles Krauthammer, back in April.

When he proposed it, liberals declared this idea was evidence that Krauthammer is insane. When Hillary Clinton echoed the proposal, Keith Olbermann said it was "far further to the right than John McCain. This may be far further to the right than the Bush administration policy about the Middle East, which you didn't think was physically possible." Rachel Maddow said it was "hard to imagine a conception of American interests broad enough to make this a prudent promise to make to the world, particularly to this volatile part of the world."

Hear that, netroots? From Krauthammer's column to Obama administration policy. Glad you put all that effort into beating McCain, huh?

The proposal is, of course, insane and idiotic, as Haaretz notes even some in the Bush administration admit.

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Rupert Murdoch's Jerusalem Post has to keep finding its daily quota of Iranian fearmongering and war hype. No other Israeli newspaper keeps, as a permanent and prominent section right after Headlines and before those for other Missle East or international news, one entitled "The Threat From Iran". Today, it reported anonymously sourced claims that Israel is ready to go it alone in attacking Iran, after the US has repeatedly refused to co-operate in airstrikes.

It is, of course, an insane notion -- one designed to keep up the pressure of bellicose rhetoric aimed at Iran in the mistaken idea that the Iranian regime will thus become less entrenched and enjoy less domestic support. Even some conservative commentators know this (Ed Morrissey for one):

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There's a rapidly developing consensus among Washington's Very Serious person set that Obama's plans to negotiate with Iran should get only one try, and if that fails then the bombing should begin.

Today Iran's parliamentary Speaker and the Ayatollah's most trusted negotiator, Ali Larijani, told the press that Iran's parliament is considering a request from the U.S. Congress to "parliamentary negotiations between the two countries". (And just wait till the wingnuts start howlking about a Dem Congress sidelining the Lame Duck In Chief!) Also today, France's President Sarkozy partly walked back his previous confrontational rhetoric on Iran and said that Obama's statements "reflect our shared views on the necessity of dialogue without concessions with Tehran as the only way to obtain a negotiated end to the crisis."

It would seem that prospects for an international consensus on negotiations, and prospects for Iran actually taking those negotiations seriously, are quite hopeful. Yet David Ignatius in today's WaPo leads the bellicose VSP charge to give Obama a very short timeline to make any diplomatic initiatives work, echoing the tack of more rightwing and neocon thinktanks.

He begins by lamenting the fact that the Bush administration's hawks appear to have failed in their push to attack Iran and then recapitulates hawkish hype over Iran's nuclear program, conveniently forgetting that both the IAEA and the last US intelligence community's NIE say there's no evidence Iran has a weapons program behind its civilian one. He then goes on to catalogue repeated Bush administration failures in the diplomatic arena, seemingly without irony, and to say that Obama must have a Plan B if his own venture fails at the first hurdle.

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    The International Atomic Energy Agency has just produced it's latest report on Iran's nuclear program. (Full report here in PDF, leaked by US officials as usual.) Mainstream media outlets are going with a US-pushed narrative that centers around increases in the number of centrifuges Iran is operating and around IAEA criticism of Iran for not being forthcoming enough about alleged previous work which may have had military applications. The report is being seen as giving added impetus to calls for more UN sanctions.

A confidential IAEA report said Iran had raised the number of centrifuges enriching uranium by 500 to 3,820 since May and was testing an advanced model able to refine nuclear fuel 2-3 times faster, in continuing defiance of U.N. resolutions.

But a senior U.N. official familiar with IAEA findings said Iran seemed at least two years away from enriching enough uranium for an atomic weapon, if it eventually chose to do so.

"On the issue of possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program, we have arrived at a gridlock. Without Iran's assistance and cooperation, we cannot move forward," said a second senior U.N. official.

... The United States called on Iran to shelve enrichment or face the possibility of more U.N. sanctions, adding to relatively modest punitive measures Tehran has shrugged off.

Britain went further, accusing Iran of showing "contempt for the IAEA by continuing to refuse to respond" to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's serious concerns about research with possible military nuclear dimensions.

"We will therefore push hard for further U.N. sanctions in the coming weeks," a British Foreign Office statement said.

Sanctions don't really worry Iran much, though. They have too much that the world needs in the way of oil and gas and have become an important diplomatic lever in containing American unipolar ambitions for Russia and China, both of whom have UN vetos. Neither will vote easily for really effective sanctions.

The best thing about the new IAEA report, though, is that it provides no new cause for war.

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Dave Schuler at Outside The Beltway:

... like us, Russia is quite paranoid. Or, as Woody Allen once quipped, what’s a three syllable word beginning with ‘P’ that means you think that everybody’s against you? Answer: perceptive.

Dave argues that the Bush administration simply went along "fat, dumb, and happy" with the Clinton Administration's policy of making clear to Russia that there had only been one winner of the Cold War and I think there's a lot of truth in that, although the Bush hawks have taken it to a whole new level. But as Clinton-era hawks commenting on the Georgia crisis have reminded us, they don't really believe in compromise and diplomacy. While in domestic politics "It's Clinton's Fault" doesn't hold water 8 years later, in foreign policy, where other nations see "America under successive leaders" while Americans see "the Clinton and Bush administrations", 8 years is just enough time to put a good hoppy head on the home-brew of resentment.

The real problem, however, is that we're in danger of turning that perception into one of "three successive American leaders".