Damaged Goods

Damaged Goods (1999)

Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see...any method...at all, sir.
--Apocalypse Now

If you haven't yet read Seymour Hersh's chilling tale of BushCo's saber-rattling schemes to nuke Iran back to Persia in a recent New Yorker article, you owe it to yourself to let your Prozac start to work overtime. Bush, of course, calls nuke talk about Iran "wild speculation" but reassures Americans that "all options are on the table." I hope Home Depot has some duct tape left in stock.

Haven't we been down this catapulted propaganda before? From AlterNet:

Congress and the military allowed the Bush Administration to bamboozle the country with false information and scare talk prior to the Iraq War -- and they share responsibility for the resulting catastrophe. Now we're hearing again about a smoking gun that will be a mushroom cloud. It's up to Congress and the military to make it clear that the President does not assume monarchical power over questions of war and peace.

Of course, this time the mushroom cloud could well be one of our own making.

But, surely, with talk about something as serious (and unbelievable, really) as pre-emptive nuclear strikes on another nation, we can be sure that this time we've got solid intelligence. There's nothing cooked, stacked, twisted, or omitted. Right?

Well, um, no. From yesterday's Washington Post:

The United States doesn't have enough good intelligence to know whether or not Iran will be capable of producing nuclear weapons in the near future, top congressional intelligence committee members said on Sunday.

[...]

Asked on Fox News Sunday when Iran might be capable of producing nuclear weapons, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican, said: "I'd say we really don't know."

"We're getting lots of mixed messages," Hoekstra said.

"We've got a long way to go in rebuilding our intelligence community...We don't have all of the information we would like to have."

Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, concurred. "Our intelligence is thin," she told Fox News. "I don't think we have enough sources, I don't think our analysis is sharp enough."

Like any of that mattered last go around. Only now the NeoCons are talking nuclear shock and awe.

Under BushCo, the United States has become damaged goods. Once the symbol of freedom and liberty, our recent policies and actions have shown our country to be intolerant, divisive, even brutal. We ignore international treaties and torture prisoners whom we hold indefinitely without trial. We invade sovereign nations using phony, trumped-up evidence of wrongdoing. And now our president is contemplating using a first-strike nuclear attack based on intelligence that currently appears to be very speculative.

And were the objectives in Iraq achieved? Were we greeted as liberators? Is oil cheaper and more plentiful? Is democracy flourishing? Is the world safer from terrorism?

Now add a first-strike nuclear attack on another Muslim nation -- and then review the questions in the above paragraph.

What is Bush thinking?

This Colonel Codpiece guy? He's wacko, man! He's worse than crazy. He's evil.

And I don't see any method at all.