Sarah Palin reposts 2008 article on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, seemingly unaware that he has not been the President of Iran since 2013.

You can see McCain's face in the back almost pleading with Palin not to say anything stupid.

Courtesy of Foreign Policy Barbie's Facebook page: 

The more things change the more they stay the same in the Orwellian Obama World… here were some of my thoughts on Iran almost exactly 7 years ago during the 2008 campaign.

With that the post links to a ghostwritten 2008 speech that Palin was unable to give in September of that year because rally organizers thought she was too polarizing.

Instead The New York Sun published it instead.

Now at some point the argument will be made that Palin DID realize that Ahmadinejad was no longer in power and the the article, entitled "Palin on Ahmadinejad: 'He Must Be Stopped', was really about Iran and not it's then president.

But that may be a difficult sell since the article/speech is riddled with statements like these: 

He must be stopped. 

The world must awake to the threat this man poses to all of us. 

 He dreams of being an agent in a "Final Solution" — the elimination of the Jewish people. 

And of course this:

On our soil, he will exercise the right of freedom of speech — a right he denies his own people. He will share his hateful agenda with the world. Our task is to focus the world on what can be done to stop him.

There is of course some stuff in there about Iran's nuclear capabilities and unfair treatment of women, but the main focus is all Ahmadinejad.

Like I said damage control will insist the article is about Iran and not it's one time president, but if Palin wanted to make that clear then she should have fired up the old ghostwriter and had another article written for her to put her hoofprint on.

Of course an article written for her by Nancy French or RAM would surely pale by comparison to one written for her by John McCain's crack team of political advisers and the "Make Sarah Palin look smart" makeover specialists.

P.S. By the way it should be noted that the article has nothing but good things to say about Hillary Clinton, whose foreign relations credibility the Republicans were openly aggrandizing as yet another shot at Obama. 

"Serial Fabricators" helping to spread hate and distrust of Iran.

Courtesy of Truthout:
 
Behind a mysterious December 22 Associated Press story about "finding of fact" by a District judge in Manhattan Friday that Iran assisted al Qaeda in the planning of the 9/11 attacks is a tapestry of recycled fabrications and distortions of fact from a bizarre cast of characters. 

The AP story offers no indication of the nature of the evidence in the case except that former members of the 9/11 Commission and three Iranian defectors provided testimony. What it didn't say was that at least two of the Iranian defectors have long been dismissed by US intelligence as "fabricators" and that the two "expert witnesses" who were supposed to determine the credibility of those defectors' claims are both avowed advocates of crackpot conspiracy theories about Muslims and Shariah law who believe the United States is at war with Islam. 

The only real effect of the case is to promote right-wing political myths about Iran. One of the peculiarities of such cases is that the witnesses are not subject to cross examination in court. The witnesses have every incentive, therefore to indulge in false testimony, knowing that there will be no one to challenge them. 

The lawyers and the "expert witnesses" behind the accusation of Iran in regard to 9/11 hoped to sell the press and public on recycled claims first made by Iranian "defectors" several years ago that they had personal knowledge of Iranian participation in the 9/11 plot. The lawyers produced videotaped affidavits by three such defectors who were identified, with a dramatic flourish, as Witnesses "X," "Y" and "Z." 

I would imagine that this is the same kind of "intelligence" that has convinced those bat-shit crazy Politichicks that Iran is going to attack America at any moment, and that Sharia Law is already being used in courtrooms all across our country.

However the facts about Iran, how they in fact deal with al-Qaeda, and how they tried to reach out to America after 9-11, are significantly different than what we have been lead to believe by the GOP warmongers.


US Ambassador Ryan Crocker revealed last year that, in late 2001, the Iranians had been willing to discuss possible surrender of the senior al Qaeda officials it was detaining to the United States and share any intelligence they had gained from their investigations as part of a wider understanding with Washington. But the neoconservative faction in the administration rejected that offer, demanding that Iran give them the al Qaeda detainees without getting anything in return. 

Iran's crackdown on al Qaeda continued in 2002-03 and netted a number of top officials. One of the senior al Qaeda detainees apparently detained by Iran during that period, Saif al-Adel, later told a Jordanian journalist that Iran's operations against al Qaeda had "confused us and aborted 75 percent of our plan." The arrests included "up to 80 percent" of Abu Musab al Zarqawi's group, he said, and those who had not been swept up were forced to leave for Iraq. 

In further negotiations with the Bush administration in May 2003, Iran again offered to turn over the senior al Qaeda detainees to the United States in return for the MEK captured by US forces in Iraq. The Bush administration again refused the offer. 

By 2005, a "senior US intelligence official" was publicly admitting that 20 to 25 top al Qaeda leaders were in detention in Iran and that they were "not able to do much of anything." 

In 2008, one US official told ABC news that administration officials had not been raising the al Qaeda issue publicly, because "they believe Iran has largely kept the al Qaeda operatives under control since 2003, limiting their ability to travel and communicate." 

But in the world of the right-wing Islam-hating extremists and others pushing for confrontation with Iran, reality is no obstacle to spinning tales of secret Iranian assistance to al Qaeda. 

Not quite the picture that the Neo-cons tried to paint of Ahmadinejad and the Iranian people, now is it?

And as you have seen recently even the current crop of  GOP presidential hopeful are going well out of their way to vilify Iran, and make it the new "terrorist bogeyman" in order to frighten Americans into voting one of them into the White House, so that THEY can protect us from another false threat to "our freedoms."

Look Iran is indeed a potential threat to Israel, and could really make life hell for them, but they are not a threat to America in any substantive way. Even if they were to get a nuclear weapons that would still not significantly increase their influence in the Middle East, nor make them anymore dangerous.

Remember Israel has nuclear weapons as well, and it is ridiculous to entertain the notion that Iran is considering an act that would result in their mutual destruction.

And let's not forget how this same type of fraudulent information impacted how we dealt with Iraq.

I certainly hope that by this time Americans have finally started to notice that one of the political parties in this country is determined to keep America in a perpetual state of war.

Here's a hint: It's NOT the Democrats!

(P.S. There is much more in the Truthout article and I encourage all of you to read it.)

Will ignorance and superstition solve our problems in Iran?

From the Guardian:

Close allies of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

The arrests come amid a growing rift between Ahmadinejad and Khamenei which has prompted several MPs to call for the president to be impeached.

Sorcery, WTF?

I find myself torn between excitement over the idea that Ahmadinejad might be impeached, and being a little freaked out that Iran's policy decisions are impacted by charges of dabbling in magic.

Even if Ahmadinejad gets ousted there is no telling what kind of leader might be chosen to replace him. It could be somebody worse.  Hell he could be a goat who the Iranians believe is possessed by the spirit of Ayatollah Khomeini. Though that might not be so Baahh'd. (Sorry could not help it.)

Clearly this is a country which would benefit greatly from a little nudging toward the 21st century. Or maybe even just a little nudging toward the 19th century.

Palin goes nuclear over government official's tongue in cheek happy birthday tweet to Iranian President Ahmadinejad.

Here is what the State Department’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley tweeted this morning:

THIS is how the Grizzled Mama lost her shit about it:

Happy B'day Ahmadinejad wish sent by US Govt. Mind boggling foreign policy: kowtow & coddle enemies; snub allies. Obama Doctrine is nonsense about 5 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

As many of you know Josh Fattal and Shane Bauer are the two young men who are currently being held in Iran right now.  Secretary Crowley is using a little thing called "diplomacy" in an attempt to convince Ahmadinejad to do something positive to celebrate his birthday, though probably a little sarcastically.  Sadly it appears that the queen of mean only knows how to use bullying tactics to get her way, and simply cannot understand why we would not simply launch a nuclear attack to free the Americans.  Well free whatever was left of them of course.

Americans awaken 2 bizarre natl security thinking of Obama Admn: Ahmadinejad b'day greeting after call 4 Israel's destruction speaks volumes about 4 hours ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

Okay it could be partly because her butt-boy is free falling in recent polls, it could be because she is afraid that Bristol will not be the only Palin to come up a loser on Tuesday,  but whatever it is there is no doubt that Sister Sarah desperately needs her meds adjusted.

She must be hell on ice to live with right now.