He is, at minimum, accurate...a rare and laudable trait nowadays.

Let's summarize the key points of where we are:

1. As Hersh points out and has been obvious since it began, this latest effort at diplomacy directed by the U.S. is designed to fail. We are demanding that the Iranians concede the major point in dispute -- Iran's right to enrich uranium -- before the negotiations even begin. This isn't diplomacy. This is issuing an ultimatum: "You will do exactly as we say -- or else."

2. No one could legitimately expect this diplomacy to succeed, so what's the point? The point is precisely the same one achieved by the U.S.'s phony dance with the U.N. in the leadup to the Iraq invasion: to provide cover for a decision that has already been made. When the U.S. begins bombing Iran, Bush will say: "We tried diplomacy. No one wants war, which is always the last resort. But they refused to engage in diplomacy, so they left us no choice. After 9/11, we cannot permit threats to our country to grow unchecked. I will not allow the American people to be attacked again. An Iran with nuclear weapons was too great a danger, and it had to be stopped." At that point, as devastation begins to spread through the Middle East and Iraq explodes into even greater violence, no one will remember that we made it impossible for Iran to engage with us diplomatically, and that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons and won't have any for at least five to 10 years -- and our media will never remind us of what actually happened.

3. Consider the unreality of what's happening here. Iran is fully entitled to pursue the non-military enrichment of uranium under the terms of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty -- to which it is a signatory. We make exceptions and give enormously valuable aid to countries like India that are not signatories to the treaty -- while we demand that Iran give up rights it indisputably has under the same treaty. Given the stakes involved, it doesn't even begin to capture the madness involved in this approach to describe it as incoherent and self-contradictory. As we stand on the brink of a military catastrophe -- one that we will have begun for no reason at all -- this is simply insane.

4. The overall pattern at work here is exactly the same one utilized for Iraq: phony diplomacy, then U.N. action which will similarly make compliance by Iran impossible, then a few speeches accusing Iran of defying the will of the "civilized world" and of being too great a threat to be tolerated -- and then the bombing. And almost no one will be heard to say that the "crisis" was created out of thin air, and that in fact no crisis exists at all. As I have pointed out a number of times, all of this is calculated to reach its climax sometime in the fall -- precisely so that it will have the greatest possible impact on the coming elections.

5. Note this sentence in the news story: "Western powers suspect Tehran has a secret programme to build nuclear weapons." As the Hersh article makes clear in detail, no one has any intelligence about Iran's nuclear program at all. Suspicions are all we have -- and they are suspicions based on precisely nothing.

This is as perfect a demonstration as could be asked for on the point I recently emphasized once again: intelligence is entirely irrelevant to major policy decisions. In this case, that must be true for the reason that even we must concede: we have no relevant intelligence of any kind. This is a decision of policy, pure and simple.

Let us state the final conclusion boldly and unmistakably, so we may appreciate its full horror: the Bush administration has already decided, and probably decided some time ago, that it will attack Iran. They want a wider war. Everything that is now going on is simply the cover for the moment when the bombing begins, intended to provide what will be accepted as "justification" for the attack by the American public and the world.

And all of it is a lie from beginning to end.

We must note one additional critical point. Up to this moment, there is not one major public voice identifying this madness for what it is. No one will say that the crisis is a completely phony one. No one will say that an attack on Iran would be completely unjustified and unprovoked, and that it would be a blatant act of aggression by the United States.

There is not even one person offering significant opposition to the Bush administration. Not one. And so we proceed to our date with Armageddon.

He has since said that a racist-sounding laugh by a white member of the studio audience set him off. The sound of that too-hard laugh — at one of his own jokes — led him to conclude, in his own accounting, that he was paying too high a moral price for his success.

I can relate, though at a considerably lower fiscal impact. I could have stayed corporate...was offered entry into the inner circle, but at the cost of setting someone up to fail so I could replace him. Someone I really didn't like. But fool that I am, I found my need to see myself as honest was more important to me.

'Chappelle: The Lost Episodes' Shows Two Sides of the Comic Who Went AWOL
By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

"I don't think he's coming," says the first old bluesy guy.

"Oh," says the second. "Let's start the show."

With that, the curtain lifts on the four sketches that Comedy Central is halfheartedly trying to pass off as treasure on Sunday night: "Chappelle's Show: The Lost Episodes."

'Planning a Skinhead Infantry'

In the fall of 1999, the neo-Nazi National Alliance published in its Resistance magazine an article by one "Joachim Peiper," who was described as "a professional soldier, racialist and White separatist." In fact, Peiper was Steven Barry, a former Special Forces member who had just been named as the Alliance's "military unit coordinator." Barry, who had started his own extremist Special Forces Underground group while at Fort Bragg, N.C., used the article, headlined "Planning a Skinhead Infantry," to offer advice to white supremacists wanting to enlist in the armed forces to enhance their skills. Here are several excerpts:

Extremism and the military: A timeline

1953
Pedro del Valle, a highly decorated Marine Corps lieutenant general, forms the Defenders of the American Constitution, an anti-Semitic organization of retired, high-ranking U.S. military officers obsessed with exposing and combating a global Jewish conspiracy to establish a "One World Order."

1959
The American Nazi Party, the first post-war neo-Nazi group, is formed in Arlington, Va., by retired U.S. Naval Commander George Lincoln Rockwell. Rockwell, who will be assassinated by a follower in 1967, is an early popularizer of Holocaust denial and Christian Identity, a violently anti-Semitic theology.

Retired Army Lt. Col. William Potter Gale, who served on the staff of World War II Gen. Douglas McArthur, forms the California Rangers, a paramilitary arm of the Christian Defense League. Gale will go on to become the principal architect of the Posse Comitatus, a violent and anti-Semitic movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

A Few Bad Men
Ten years after a scandal over neo-Nazis in the armed forces, extremists are once again worming their way into a recruit-starved military.
by David Holthouse
July 7, 2006

Before the U.S. military made Matt Buschbacher a Navy SEAL, he made himself a soldier of the Fourth Reich.

Before Forrest Fogarty attended Military Police counter-insurgency training school, he attended Nazi skinhead festivals as lead singer for the hate rock band Attack.

And before Army engineer Jon Fain joined the invasion of Iraq to fight the War on Terror, the neo-Nazi National Alliance member fantasized about fighting a war on Jews.

"Ever since my youth -- when I watched WWII footage and saw how well-disciplined and sharply dressed the German forces were -- I have wanted to be a soldier," Fain said in a Winter 2004 interview with the National Alliance magazine Resistance. "Joining the American military was as close as I could get."

Ten years after Pentagon leaders toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel -- a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division -- large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world's best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.

Neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core," Department of Defense gang detective Scott Barfield told the Intelligence Report. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," he added. "That's a problem."

Racist extremists active in U.S. military
SPLC urges Rumsfeld to adopt zero-tolerance policy
July 7, 2006

Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces.

Department of Defense investigators estimate thousands of soldiers in the Army alone are involved in extremist or gang activity. "We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," said one investigator. "That's a problem."

Southern Poverty Law Center President Richard Cohen urged Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.

The report said that neo-Nazi groups like the National Alliance, whose founder, William Pierce, wrote "The Turner Diaries," the novel that was the inspiration and blueprint for Timothy J. McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, sought to enroll followers in the Army to get training for a race war.

The groups are being abetted, the report said, by pressure on recruiters, particularly for the Army, to meet quotas that are more difficult to reach because of the growing unpopularity of the war in Iraq.

The report quotes Scott Barfield, a Defense Department investigator, saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."

Hate Groups Are Infiltrating the Military, Group Asserts
By JOHN KIFNER

A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and right-wing militia groups, estimated that the numbers could run into the thousands, citing interviews with Defense Department investigators and reports and postings on racist Web sites and magazines.

Putin then lifted the boy's shirt and kissed him on his stomach. The Russian president then patted the boy on the head and walked off through a crowd of astonished tourists.

..."I tell you honestly, I just wanted to touch him like a kitten and that desire of mine ended in that act."

Putin kissed boy 'like a kitten'

MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Vladimir Putin's decision to stop a small boy as he walked through the Kremlin and kiss his stomach was prompted by a desire to "touch him like a kitten," the Russian president said on Thursday.

The five-year-old boy, identified as Nikita Konkin by the press, was clearly stunned by the kiss and speculation over Putin's motivation has run wild in the week since it happened.

from We need leaders, not managers

For the record, I agree with the title for the most part. The idea that there are a limited number of plot lines in politics rings true, though this is the first time I'm considering it. Digby goes on about it for a bit.

It's not that the Dems aren't trying. Our latest slogan is all Benevolent Community: Together, America Can Do Better. It's just that it sucks.

The leadership story today

What's the story that the new leaders will need to communicate? In broad outline, we know what it will be, both for Democrats and Republicans, since as Robert Reich has explained, there are only four stories in American politics:

He should have stepped down sooner. Oh, well... 

Indicted DeLay must stay on November ballot: Court
Thu Jul 6, 2006 04:24 PM ET
By Erwin Seba

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Indicted former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay must stay on the November congressional ballot despite withdrawing from the race, a federal court ruled on Thursday in a decision that could help Democrats win this key seat.

Texas Republicans quickly responded they would appeal the decision by the U.S. court in Austin, Texas, for the right to choose another Republican to run against Democrat Nick Lampson. The seat is crucial to Democratic hopes to pick up the 15 seats needed to regain control of the House of Representatives.

I was torn. Should this be the Quote of note:

Sure, everyone has ways of coping with other people's perceptions: Who acts the same at work as they do with their kids, or their high school friends?

But for black men, there's more at stake. If they don't carefully calculate how to handle everyday situations — in ways that usually go unnoticed — they can end up out of a job, in jail or dead.

"It's a stressful process," Borders says.

...or this?

"Most black men are able to shift from a sort of relaxed, authentically black pose into a respectable black man pose. Either they develop the dexterity to move back and forth or ultimately they flounder."

It's a lot like a game of chess, says 43-year-old Chester Williams, who owns Chester Electric in New Orleans. He has taught his three sons, ages 16, 14 and 11, to play.

"The rules of the game are universal: White moves first, then black moves," he said. "Black has to respond to the moves that the whites make. You take the advantage when it's available."

I couldn't decide.

Black men quietly combating stereotypes
By ERIN TEXEIRA, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jul 1, 5:43 PM ET