Headlines for 01-23-08

Move to bring Iran nuclear issue back to UN 'illegal': Tehran


Iran snubbed US protest over ship incident: official Iran has not acknowledged Washington's protest over an incident between Iranian and US naval forces because it did not use the term "Persian Gulf", the state news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday.


The Paleocon Dilemma?


The Return of Dick Cheney by Philip Giraldi ** One would have thought that both Israel and the United States, not to mention Mahmoud Abbas, would have finally realized that there is no military solution to Hamas in Gaza, but the newer, more robust attitude is a product of the resurgence of Vice President Dick Cheney and the neocon hawks that surround him. Cheney and his friends are again planning to attack Iran before Bush leaves office.......The resurgence of Cheney and the instability arising from Bush's attempts to reinvigorate the faltering anti-Iran Arab coalition has alarmed several senior members of the American intelligence community who are now backing away from their optimistic assessment that the NIE on Iran ensured the US would not attack Iran.


Middle East: Region would prefer jaw, jaw to war, war While the US has nudged Israel back to the negotiating table, producing a comprehensive settlement that creates a viable Palestinian state would require the kind of American pressure on Israel that few expect of Mr Bush, who has gone farther than his predecessors in supporting Israeli policies.


Foreign Thought Police Target US Candidates Like her neoconservative soul-mates in America, Glick is focused like a laser on the issue of "respectability": it's important that she and her ideological confreres get to determine who's "legitimate," and who ? to put it in Bill Kristol's terms ? is "a crank." This latter category includes anyone who, like Paul, wants to abandon as futile the Bushian project of "transforming" the Middle East into nascent "democracies" while taking out Israel's enemies one by one.