Q2N: Tidbits From The Pimps Table

Via The Fanonite this Esquire (!) article is an interview with the two ex Bush administration officials who originally leaked the information about the US turning down talks with Iran in ’03. It’s worth a read (excusing some of the conservative and MSM talking points) some excerpts-

Months before September 11, Mann had been negotiating with the Iranian diplomat at the UN. After the attacks, the meetings continued, sometimes alone and sometimes with their Russian counterpart sitting in.

at the old UN building in Geneva, they hammered out plans for Iranian help in the war against the Taliban. The Iranians agreed to provide assistance if any American was shot down near their territory, agreed to let the U.S. send food in through their border, and even agreed to restrain some “really bad Afghanis,” like a rabidly anti-American warlord named Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, quietly putting him under house arrest in Tehran. These were significant concessions.

“This is off the record,” she says. “This is going to have to be on background.” She’s not allowed to talk about confidential documents or intelligence matters, but the topic of her negotiations with the Iranians is especially touchy. “As far as they’re concerned, the whole idea that there were talks is something I shouldn’t even be talking about,” she says.All ranks and ranking are out. “They don’t want there to be anything about the level of the talks or who was involved.”

“They won’t even let us say something like ‘senior’ or ‘important,’ ‘high-ranking,’ or ‘high-level,'” Leverett says. But the important thing is that the Iranians agreed to talk unconditionally

The fax was from the Swiss ambassador to Iran, which wasn’t unusual — since the U.S. had no formal relationship with Iran, the Swiss ambassador represented American interests there and often faxed over updates on what he was doing. This time he’d met with Sadeq Kharrazi, a well-connected Iranian who was the nephew of the foreign minister and son-in-law to the supreme leader. Amazingly, Kharrazi had presented the ambassador with a detailed proposal for peace in the Middle East, approved at the highest levels in Tehran. A two-page summary was attached. Scanning it, Mann was startled by one dramatic concession after another — “decisive action” against all terrorists in Iran, an end of support for Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, a promise to cease its nuclear program, and also an agreement to recognize Israel.

This was huge. Mann sat down and drafted a quick memo to her boss, Richard Haass. It was important to send a swift and positive response. Then she heard that the White House had already made up its mind — it was going to ignore the offer. Its only response was to lodge a formal complaint with the Swiss government about their ambassador’s meddling.

“The reason I have to be so careful now is that I’m legally on notice and they will prosecute things that I say or do,”

Please read it, it is clear long term plans are operating to attack Iran, to think we could let this happen again after Iraq showed how they lie and how disastrous their plans in the real world are is just unconscionable. Iran wanted to talk, the Bush administration rejected them, they plan on attacking Iran, they must be stopped.

Norman Finkelstein More Taboo Than The BNP

To the Oxford Union that is, Prof. Finkelstein was invited to a debate but became ‘uninvited’ now the OU president Luke Tryl, who the Guardian describes as- chairman of the Halifax branch of Conservative Future, formerly known as the Young Conservatives– (imagine a decent northern place like Halifax and he runs the tory kids club, meh) are having Nick Griffin (& David Irving) turn up, like some kind of attention seeking, media career elevating pantomime for Tryl. But it also reveals the idiot Griffin gets an easier ride than Norman Finkelstein which is utterly outrageous, Griffin is a racist and a fascist, Finkelstein is a renowned academic whose only crime is pissing off fanatical numpties like Alan Dershowitz. But apparently it turns out real discussion of Israel & Palestine is forbidden but moronic boobs like Griffin get the floor. So all the protestations of free speech are bit weak because when it came to defending Norman Finkelstein’s free speech the OU folded like a cheap suit. So I think we come back to toryboy Tryl and his future ambitions and woohoo, he gets in the papers again and as a conservative, never hurts to defend a far right parties rights, sets out your credentials without having to be too explicit. Palestinians meanwhile are kept in the shadows, silenced unpeople, the taboo that exists in America infecting the UK.

Please *God* Make It Stop

I blame Blairwatch for leading me to this article-

The former prime minister’s comments came as he admitted for the first time that his faith was “hugely important” in influencing his decisions during his decade in power at Number 10, including going to war with Iraq in 2003. Mr Blair complained that he had been unable to follow the example of US politicians, such as President George W. Bush, in being open about his faith because people in Britain regarded religion with suspicion.

“It’s difficult if you talk about religious faith in our political system,” Mr Blair said. “If you are in the American political system or others then you can talk about religious faith and people say ‘yes, that’s fair enough’ and it is something they respond to quite naturally.

“You talk about it in our system and, frankly, people do think you’re a nutter. I mean … you may go off and sit in the corner and … commune with the man upstairs and then come back and say ‘right, I’ve been told the answer and that’s it’.”

Peter Mandelson, one of Mr Blair’s confidants, claimed that the former premier “takes a Bible with him wherever he goes” and habitually reads it last thing at night. 

“To do the prime minister’s job properly you need to be able to separate yourself from the magnitude of the consequences of the decisions you are taking the whole time. Which doesn’t mean to say … that you’re insensitive to the magnitude of those consequences or that you don’t feel them deeply.

“If you don’t have that strength it’s difficult to do the job, which is why the job is as much about character and temperament as it is about anything else. But for me having faith was an important part of being able to do that… Ultimately I think you’ve got to do what you think is right.”

Which bible was it? Because the one I have read and had to study came off as a tad disapproving of liars and warmongers but clearly that was the bad bible, no Tony had the good bible where geopolitical game playing and resource grabs are noble godly pursuits especially when you get to kill a million people. And so glad to see he can divorce himself from the magnitude of the consequences of his actions, it does rather prove that those with psychopathology’s either end up in jail or at the top of business or politics. Except I’m not so sure about Anthony, this sounds like an ad hoc assemblage of platitudes to fend off the screaming demons he sees closing in on him sometimes from the corner of his eye. This is a man grabbing at straws and happy American christianist dominionism passes him a big handful, but he’s on the run, he’s put thought into this defence which means he thinks he needs one, which means somewhere he knows he has done great wrong. Although it looks like his aim now is to hunt down that shred of conscience and waterboard the motherfucker to oblivion, which explains why he looks to Bush and his messianic sadism with such admiration.