Iran, Iraq, Irat; Iranus, Iraqus, I Rant May 29, 2007January 6, 2017 Tomorrow (really) the Pinchot Retirement Plan.Today . . . CHENEY’S PLAN TO START WAR WITH IRAN Click here. (If he can’t persuade Bush to attack, he’ll persuade the Israelis to strike Iran – just hard enough to get Iran to retaliate against our forces nearby . . . so Bush will go to war. Or so it is alleged.) DID WE INVADE IRAQ FOR THE OIL? If it seems this way to a career officer, might it seem this way to those who distrust us? Retired Colonel Wright writes: No other nation in the Middle East has privatized its oil. . . . [Yet] the $12 billion dollar “Support the Troops” legislation passed by Congress [last week] requires Iraq . . . to privatize its oil resources and put them up for long term (20- to 30-year) contracts. What does this “Support the Troops” legislation mean for the United States military? Supporting our troops has nothing to do with this bill, other than keeping them there for another 30 years to protect US oil interests. . . Adding to such suspicion may be the agenda of the President’s first National Security Council meeting. It was just 11 days after the Inauguration, and already Iraq was the agenda. One good way to dispel this kind of cynicism, if it’s unjustified, would be for the Administration to open up the still secret guest list and still secret proceedings of the Cheney Energy Task Force that did its work months before the attacks of 9/11. WHY DOESN’T THE U.S. PRESS REPORT THIS? Greg Palast is continually coming up with amazing stories – about America – that the BBC airs but American journalists ignore. It makes me crazy, trying to figure out whether he’s crazy, or whether, instead, somehow we’ve lost a vigorous, independent press. (Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason argues persuasively that we have.) Here’s Palast’s latest – “the missing emails – and missing link – that could send Griffin and his boss, Rove, to the slammer for a long, long time.” Read it (please) and tell me: Is this old hat to you? Has it been discredited? Is there a reason Congress didn’t follow up? Can/should we GET Congress to? Have you read Palast’s Armed Madhouse? As I type this, it’s in the top 100 on Amazon – and #15 on the New York Times nonfiction paperback best-seller list . . . but with no link to a review. Has the Times never reviewed it? Why?