Antiwar.com Blog

Insight magazine, associated with the conservative Washington Times, is reporting that Vice President Dick Cheney is going to “retire” “within a year.”

The reason? A “growing rift” between the OVP and the White House, the denouement of which will result in Cheney being “persuaded” to leave. And while the recent shooting incident underscored the growing distance between Cheney and the President — Bush, it seems, was left out of the loop, along with the rest of the country, with the news — the core reason is the upcoming trial of his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby:

“‘The Libby case is far more lethal than the hunting accident,’ another GOP source said. ‘If the heat gets too much, Cheney might say his health requires him to leave office. Whatever happens, the president will make sure it’s handled delicately.'”

Shocking news for some, but not for longtime readers of Antiwar.com, who were let in on the secret some time ago:

“If Libby is implicated as having anything to do with Plame’s ‘outing,’ then that, in turn, implicates Cheney, who must take responsibility. The Vice President’s resignation, under these circumstances, is a distinct possibility. Will we soon hear an announcement that he’s retiring ‘for health reasons’?”

Furthermore, we gave some advice to the President in that column, dated, October 3, 2003, and we aren’t saying he picked up on it, but given the tenor of the developing Bush-Cheney “rift,” it looks like the following may have been more than just wishful thinking:

“As the scandal metastasizes, and threatens to engulf the White House, one might hope this administration would learn the lesson of history. Before the Democrats can take hold of this, and use it, George W. Bush must launch a preemptive strike against the cancer eating away at the vitals of his presidency.

“Ditch the neocons, Mr. President, and get us out of the quagmire they created – before it’s too late.”

Maybe someone in the White House has finally realized they’d better dump the neocons — and Cheney, their promoter and protector — before the country dumps the GOP.

“One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.”

That’s from William F. Buckley Jr.’s Friday piece on National Review online. Buckley has made dissenting noises about Iraq before, but this time the judgment is unambiguous. Whatever one thinks of Buckley blaming the Iraqis (“Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable”) and insisting that we mustn’t abandon the larger democratic crusade (“To do that would be to register a kind of philosophical despair”), can any honest observer deny the disaster any longer by invoking purple fingers?

I know it’s in the highlights section today and all, but I really want to draw extra attention to the latest article by historian Gareth Porter, where he explains, “How the Neocons Sabotaged Iran’s Help on al-Qaeda,”

“The United States and Iran were on a course to work closely together on the war against al-Qaeda and its Taliban sponsors in Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002 – until Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stepped in to scuttle that cooperation, according to officials who were involved at the time.”

This reminds me, didn’t I just read something about how one of the purposes of the famous Ledeen-Franklin-Rhode-SCIRI-SISMI-Iran-Gorbanifar meeting in Rome in December of 2001 was to thwart a plan that was in the works where the Iranians were going to turn over 5 al Qaeda terrorists to the US in exchange for some MEK terrorists?

Lemme see here, oh yeah, it was over on Juan Cole’s blog…

Ah, ha, here it is! Bastards. Everyone remember to link to this when something blows up and Iran gets the blame.

PS: One could do a lot worse than to go through that whole page at the Juan Cole link.

I read Francis Fukuyama’s renunciation of neoconservatism with amusement, as I realized that he did not so much object to its goals (American empire, global “democrayc”) nor even its means (warfare, propaganda) but to its manner – i.e. unilateral, callous, arrogant. Jim Lobe’s excellent piece, highlighting the key points in Fukuyama’s apostasy, confirmed my initial assessment: Fukuyama abandoned neocons, only to join the “neolibs.”

Instead of denouncing the whole concept of American Imperium, with an omnipotent, aggressive state both at home and abroad, Fukuyama is peddling “realistic Wilsonianism” and multilateral interventionism. It’s lipstick on a pig; perhaps, had G.W. Bush never happened, the world could still blithely accept Clintonian justifications for imperial aggression, but now that they’ve had the taste of the iron fist sans the velvet glove, will they ever be so gullible about Washington again?

Fukuyama’s supposedly radical break isn’t radical at all; he’s still an imperialist, only in slightly different colors. But his vision of the Imperium smells as rank as what we have today.

Something a friend noticed while I was doing the morning carnage searches was that nowhere was a news story that mentioned the fate of the tombs inside the Golden Mosque. Not a single paper reported that they survived, which I figured would be an important item to mention, and which leads me to believe that they may have been damaged or even destroyed. A more intense search pulled up an obscure site I had never visited before, which claimed:

“There were no casualities, but the explosion destroyed the tombs of the tenth and eleventh of the 12 Imams revered by the Shia as the legitimate successors of the Prophet Mohammed.”

I don’t know anything about the credibility of this source, but it’s worth noting. It seems to be an Italian site that monitors the Arab Middle East.

Of course the reason not to broadcast this fact would be that the local media has been forbidden from reporting it, and that foreign media can’t confirm it — a simple desire not to fan the flames wouldn’t be a pact that could be kept by every single media source in the world.

If anyone has any information, please let me know ASAP.

UPDATE: Turns out that since Islamic tombs tend to be about 20 feet below the surface, that the tombs are likely fine. What is above ground are the shrines that mark the tombs, and those are likely destroyed.

“Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”

– George Washington, in a letter to Edward Newenham, Oct. 20, 1792.

Hat Tip: The other Scott Horton (you know, the famous anti torture hero.)