Are we asking the right questions?

Dan Froomkin discusses the prospect of the US attacking Iran. He quotes another journalist:

Greg Sheridan, the foreign editor of the Australian, writes:
"There is, I would guess, somewhere between a 30 and 40 per cent chance that the
Bush administration will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of the year.
"This is, naturally, a personal judgment. It is based on two weeks of
intense conversations I have had with American national security figures. . . .
"People who know Vice-President Dick Cheney well believe he wants to strike
Iran, that he has made a sober judgment that time is running out. . . .
"Defence Secretary Robert Gates is strongly opposed. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice is also opposed.
"Some analysts believe that in the first
Bush administration Cheney won all such arguments, whereas in the second
administration Rice is dominant. They take this to mean Bush won't strike.
"I don't think it's that simple. It is true that Bush has ceded an enormous
amount of national security power to Rice. However, the Bush administration is
better seen as having two personalities, the psychology of which rose out of
Bush's peculiar historical circumstances.
"Bush understands that he is unpopular across the world and, as a result to some extent, so is the US. Therefore, on every issue where it's possible, from Africa to North Korea, he presents a kindly, moderate, multilateral face. And that face is Rice.
"However, Bush also knows that history will judge him on the outcome in
Iraq. So he does absolutely everything he can to win in Iraq. And this means
mostly following Cheney's advice. Remember that for all of Rice's undoubted
sway, she opposed the troop surge in Iraq, as did Gates. The surge went ahead
anyway, and was successful.
"So at this moment, in the second half of 2008, does the Rice side of Bush or the Cheney side win the argument on Iran?
"I think anyone who pronounces dogmatically on that question doesn't know what
they're talking about. For a start, if the Iranians are caught doing something
stupid, the calculations change dramatically."

Since I don't know what I am talking about, I am the perfect person to make a dogmatic pronunciation. When push comes to shove, I'd put my money on Cheney over Rice. Cheney has the greater motivation; he wants unfettered access to Middle Eastern oil. He is a completely focused and driven man, who is running a large organization he built to fulfill his goals. His time is running out, both as vice-president and as a man with enormous health problems.

Rice seems to be devoted just to her job as Bush's Secretary of State. She doesn't seem to have any grand ambitions beyond the job. And as far as I know she has a lot less power than Cheney. When the two clash, Cheney wins. Korea might be an exception, but Korea isn't sitting on a pool of oil.

Who is in charge? What is his goal? Does he have the resources and will to take what he wants? Can anyone block him? Those are the questions that might give us the answer.

Unless something unexpected happens, we're going to bomb Iran.

The state of the Snark.

It was graduation week here at the Snark, with assorted kids moving up from cabin boy to ensign and from ensign to whatever ensigns do next. But pirates never rest, so let's see what's up. Have we hit the housing bottom?

That second wave of adjustable-mortgage resets won’t even begin until next
year. And as you can see from the chart above, the quantity dwarfs the amount
that caused Wall Street, the Fed and Congress to vomit in unison already this
year. [We thank Agora Financial for sharing this with us http://www.agorafinancial.com/]The Prime Mortgages can include the
ARMs, and there were many, many ARMS originated between 2002 and 2006 that are
hanging on the edge of the "reset precipice". Then in the next 3 years the many
option ARMS and "Alt-A" ARMs (Alt-A loans are the no document "liar loans"
that were originated by the millions during the housing and mortgage bubble).
These resets and expired, low interest rate Alt-A ARMs will peak in 2012...oh my
God, 2012!
This indicates that we have at least 3 more years of the
mortgage meltdown and the housing wipeout to deal with and that is not a
promising indicator of the health of the US, British, and
Canadian economies in the the foreseeable future.

Ouch. Well, at least we don't have to worry about more wars.

Russian Col.-Gen. Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy of
Geopolitical Sciences, said last week the Pentagon was planning to deliver a
massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."I have
no doubt there will be an operation, or rather an aggressive action against
Iran," Ivashov said, commenting on media reports about U.S. planned operation
against Iran, codenamed Operation Bite.A new U.S. carrier battle group has been
dispatched to the Gulf. The USS John C. Stennis, with a crew of 3,200 and around
80 fixed-wing aircraft, including F/A-18 Hornet and Superhornet
fighter-bombers, eight support ships and four nuclear submarines are heading for
the Gulf, where a similar group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has been deployed since December
2006. The U.S. is also sending Patriot anti-missile systems to the region.

Aww, nuts. Better buy more toilet paper. And fill the car with gas.

For the last ten days in a row, pump prices set new records. And with
inventories of gas at a new five-year low, refiners are having trouble keeping
up with demand.

I remember the 1970s. They aren't worth revisting. Maybe I can go to the movies and forget my troubles. It'll be a relief to get away from Sex and the City reruns. I can't stand that self-delusional, self-indulgent airhead.

Aiiiiigh!

The Bush Administration is very gradually doing the same thing in the US that it is doing in Iraq. They replace civil servants with obedient partisans, deny basic government services to disrupt daily life, destroy the economy to replace it with one more favorable to themselves, run farcical elections, replace media with propaganda, pit ethnic, racial and social groups against each other to spread discord, and install unreasoning and overwhelming fear in every heart.

And they're doing it for the same reason.

Control.