I am not sure what is more shocking about this video. The incompetence of American rebuilding efforts in Iraq or the profiteering that has been happening since the occupation started and the American companies started to roll up to the trough. Either way, the video is worth watching.
Operation Iraqi Freedom, it turns out, was never a war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. It was an invasion of the federal budget, and no occupying force in history has ever been this efficient. George W. Bush's war in the Mesopotamian desert was an experiment of sorts, a crude first take at his vision of a fully privatized American government. In Iraq the lines between essential government services and for-profit enterprises have been blurred to the point of absurdity -- to the point where wounded soldiers have to pay retail prices for fresh underwear, where modern-day chattel are imported from the Third World at slave wages to peel the potatoes we once assigned to grunts in KP, where private companies are guaranteed huge profits no matter how badly they f--- things up.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
An op-ed by Anne Murray fighting a wind farm near her cottage. I remember seeing a piece with Walter Cronkite fighting a wind farm near his cottage because it would interfere with sailing. It's the old we like alternative energy, as long as it isn't near me.
Seth Godin on sloppy naming and branding. We had a discussion on church and ministry names not that long ago on Resonate. This applies to churches as well. You Apple fans will want to check out this diagram on Apple naming throughout the ages.
The New York Times is calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq :: While I was never in favor of the war I generally subscribe to the belief that when you destroy a country, you need to fix it. This paragraph seems to sum up the editorial and the problem :: At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.
Rick Bennett on Dobson and global warming :: It has nothing to do with science, truth or theology. This crowd sees that a refocus on a different agenda will greatly affect their own bottom line. They will no longer be able to send out a scary letter about Liberal Agendas and how the family and nation are being destroyed knowing the dollars will fly in. They know that Evangelicals concerned with the environment and war are bad for business.
Cost of Iraq war? The 82nd Airborne is no longer operationally ready. Army officials concede that the unit is not capable of getting at least an initial force of several hundred to a war zone within 18 hours, a standard once considered inviolate. The declining readiness of the brigade is just one measure of the toll that four years in Iraq — and more than five years in Afghanistan — have taken on the United States military. Since President Bush ordered reinforcements to Iraq and Afghanistan in January, roughly half of the Army’s 43 active-duty combat brigades are now deployed overseas, Army officials said. A brigade has about 3,500 soldiers. Mapping the violence in Baghdad.
How does Zimbabwae stay afloat? :: The government estimates the annual inflation rate at 1,700%, but Western economists believe the real figure is closer to 3,500%, and rising fast. For the average citizen, that would mean that a can of coffee today would cost about four times the price paid last week. Today's morning bus ride to work might cost about double tomorrow — that's if the bus company can find enough gas to fill the tank, and the cash with which to buy it. Harare stores now post prices in U.S. dollars, to save their staff the hours of work involved in calculating prices in Zimbabwe dollars that change daily.
Why does home ownership cause unemployment? :: Wherever people seem particularly keen to own their own homes—as in the United Kingdom, Spain, and some U.S. states—employment suffers as a result. English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment. More conventional factors such as generous welfare benefits or high levels of unionization don't explain unemployment nearly as well as the tendency to own houses. Renting your home and staying flexible do wonders for your chances of always finding an interesting job to do.
Vive Le California? :: California to split from the United States of America? :: Governor Schwarzenegger is quite clear that California is not simply another state. “We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta,” he recently declared. “We have the economic strength, we have the population and the technological force of a nation-state.” In his inaugural address, Mr. Schwarzenegger proclaimed, “We are a good and global commonwealth.”via
Trouble for a University built on profitsvia :: The complaints have built through months of turmoil. The president resigned, as did the chief executive and other top officers at the Apollo Group, the university’s parent corporation. A federal court reinstated a lawsuit accusing the university of fraudulently obtaining hundreds of millions of dollars in financial aid. The university denies wrongdoing. Apollo stock fell so far that in November, CNBC featured it on a “Biggest Losers” segment. The stock has since gained back some ground. In November, the Intel Corporation excluded the university from its tuition reimbursement program, saying it lacked top-notch accreditation.
Cows can't eat grass! Hurry, tell that to the several million grass fed cattle that roam Saskatchewan
The real reason we love dogs :: They dance with joy when we come home, put their heads on our knees and stare longingly into our eyes. Ah, we think, at last, the love and loyalty we so richly deserve and so rarely receive. Over thousands of years of living with humans, dogs have become wily and transfixing sidekicks with the particularly appealing characteristic of being unable to speak. We are therefore free to fill in the blanks with what we need to hear. (What the dog may really be telling us, much of the time, is, "Feed me.")
Rwanda, haunted by genocide has a new problem, overpopulation :: Though Rwanda is predominantly Catholic, the church’s leaders here are not expected to oppose a campaign for population control. A number of priests, nuns and lay workers participated in the 1994 genocide, which weakened the church’s moral authority, and has led it to avoid politics.
Reading your own Stasi files :: Although the Stasi had little in their files about me, within days they had a relatively good idea of my activities and, at that point, I was charged with espionage. The order for my incarceration was issued two weeks after I was initially arrested--and about a week later than the East German law required such orders to be made. Such legal niceties, however, made little difference to the Stasi.
Most IED's are coming from IRAN according to USA Today and MSNBC. The question is after being lied to so many times, do we believe them?
Mark Cuban vs. Dwyne Wade :: I know Shaq appreciates your leadership as well. He called out your team a few weeks ago saying it was "embarassing'. Great leadership DWade. Your coach sat players for being fat. I guess you couldnt lead them away from the buffet.
jordoncooper.com now selling contextless link space
Interesting story about how political parties are buying headlines on Bourque News Watch (like the Drudge Report but with no real original reporting). I have read him for years and I am shocked that it took this long for people to realize this but whatever. The man links to news releases of sites that are advertising on him and calls it news. To help any of you out, here are ten headlines that if they appeared on my site, you might suspect that I am selling link space myself.
Why is Yahoo! backing away from RSS? :: It's weird. They are expanding their personal finance section coverage but no RSS feeds. I am out of step with this one. I never use MSN for anything but I have started following some of their personal finance columnists because they do offer RSS feeds.
How to pick out a good red wine :: Even a superficial inspection of wine bottles can help you narrow your selection. For example, make it a policy to avoid wine with any of the following on its label: Typos, particularly in the spelling of “wine”. Any cartoon likeness of a shark, monkey, Dracula wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses, or a drunk Frenchman urinating into a wooden barrel. Endorsements like “From the creators of Robocop”. Scratch-and-sniff technology. Instructions to “Shake Well” or “Keep Away From Eyes, Skin, and Magnets”. Claims such as “No Trans Fats” or “Contains 30% Real Wine”. A vintage date that is a year in the future.
John Robb on the "surge" :: Of course, the failure of these periodic efforts may be due to an inability to revisit a key assumption upon which the present US effort is based: that strong states tend to form naturally if provided the right minimalist conditions. I believe the opposite is true: that states, once broken, tend to remain hollow and in perpetual failure. The reason is that in the current environment minimalist conditions yield social disintegration (we see will this minimalist/disintegration paradigm repeated world-wide, even in the absence of war, as globalization continues to rapidly grow and spread -- which fatally undermines any argument that the success of globalization means that "we win," if "we" means the US and nation-states in general) and the ascendent military power (copiously documented on this weblog) is in the hands of those would disrupt the state rather than form it. If this revised assumption is correct, it is safe to conclude that building a stable Iraq would require a level of effort that is beyond our ability to provide (see the brief "Playing with War" for more).
1 out of 400 Americans is homeless :: In January 2005, an estimated 744,313 people experienced homelessness. 56 percent of homeless people counted were living in shelters and transitional housing and, shockingly, 44 percent were unsheltered. 59 percent of homeless people counted were single adults and 41 percent were persons living in families. 23 percent of homeless people were reported as chronically homeless, which, according to HUD’s definition, means that they are homeless for long periods or repeatedly and have a disability.
Bring back Saddam's Army? :: Today, Dr Hashimi said that bringing back old Iraqi units would "get rid of the sectarian discrimination" which, he says, exists at the moment as recruitment centres favour Shia Muslims and scrutinise applicants' ID documents. Dr Hashimi, who had two brothers and a sister murdered by Shia death squads last year, said he had confidence in UK and US military trainers, who were helping the Iraqis. But he argued that reinstated old Iraqi units could be ready to provide professional troops in "two to three months", in contrast to the longer time spans involved when creating units from scratch.
Warren Buffett on class warfare :: “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Who is the worst President in history? :: George W. Bush is in serious contention for the title of worst ever. In early 2004, an informal survey of 415 historians conducted by the nonpartisan History News Network found that eighty-one percent considered the Bush administration a "failure." Among those who called Bush a success, many gave the president high marks only for his ability to mobilize public support and get Congress to go along with what one historian called the administration's "pursuit of disastrous policies." In fact, roughly one in ten of those who called Bush a success was being facetious, rating him only as the best president since Bill Clinton -- a category in which Bush is the only contestant. Rolling Stone magazine saw this coming in 1999.
NBC is calling the Iraq conflict a civil war although with the amount of outside influences, it may just be an old fashioned war. An Op-Ed in the New York Times suggest that Americans should not say they are defeated too early. "Perceptions of success and failure can change the course of history. Reeling from the supposed disaster at Tet, the United States began to withdraw. Memories of “failure” in Somalia were a major reason — perhaps the major reason — that the United States did nothing to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. If Iraq is perceived as a failure, it is only a matter of time before America pulls out, leaving who-knows-what behind. With the stakes so high, Americans must be certain that their perception of failure in Iraq is not a mirage."
Rick Mercer's offer up a political endorsement :: Some people are uniters and some people are dividers; Dianne is a uniter. In fact “uniting majorities against minorities since 1996” was under consideration as a potential campaign slogan.
The death of Purpose Driven (as an organization) :: The Purpose Driven Life remains number two on the cba hardcover bestseller list. But Purpose Driven the organization is over. Created amid the unprecedented popularity of Rick Warren's book, Purpose Driven ministries has lost its CEO, seen its staff reduced by a third, and significantly drawn back its services. No longer a separate entity, it is being overseen by the staff of Saddleback Church, where Warren is senior pastor.
Army Times says it is time for Rumsfeld to go :: "Rumsfeld has lost credibility with the uniformed leadership, with the troops, with Congress and with the public at large," the editorial states. "His strategy has failed, and his ability to lead is compromised. And although the blame for our failures in Iraq rests with the secretary, it will be the troops who bear its brunt."
The World According to Mark Driscoll :: It's all the womens fault and men can't think for themselves. "It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either." (Note, Wendy, when you click on the link and want to smash Mark Driscoll , put down your notebook computer first. Thanks)
Are whites the forgotten underclass? :: The second problem is that unskilled whites tend to go into the wrong line of work. Many toil in factories: in 2001 white British men comprised 89% of the overall workforce but 93% of the manufacturing workforce. Unfortunately for them, the sector has been in long-term decline. Manufacturing now employs just 18% of all male workers, down from 30% two decades ago. Ford, which employed 30,000 workers at its Dagenham car factory in the early 1970s, now requires 4,000—and new recruits for its engine plant are expected to have three good GCSE s, in maths, English and a science.
The Starbucks Aesthetic :: Yet the chain is increasingly positioning itself as a purveyor of premium-blend culture. “We’re very excited, because despite how much we’ve grown, these are the early stages for development,” said Howard Schultz, the chairman of Starbucks. “At our core, we’re a coffee company, but the opportunity we have to extend the brand is beyond coffee; it’s entertainment.”
Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
The point of the Geneva Conventions banning torture is so that both sides won't do it. Now the United States (and I still remember Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld warning Iraq not to torture capture American troops) has said that they will torture when it is in their best interests which invites their opponents to do the same thing to Americans and its allies (including Canadian and troops who are paying the price in Afghanistan right now).
Last time Congress rubber-stamped a major terrorism-related law no one had bothered to read in the first place, we got the Patriot Act. [...] But that's not all. Congress doesn't want to know what it's bargaining away this week. In the Boston Globe this weekend, Rick Klein revealed that only "10 percent of the members of Congress have been told which interrogation techniques have been used in the past, and none of them know which ones would be permissible under proposed changes to the War Crimes Act." More troubling still, this congressional ignorance seems to be by choice. Klein quotes Sen. Jeff Sessions, the Alabama Republican, as saying, "I don't know what the CIA has been doing, nor should I know."
The question is would Jesus ask, "What doth it profit if you gain information from a tortured terrorist and lose your own soul?"
I came away from that discussion with a sense that many of us Evangelicals have given up our moral compasses and wandered into an ethical wasteland where we are not only losing our souls, but also losing our testimonies as good people. Checking around, I found very little condemnation of America's use of torture from those pundits of Christian Fundamentalism who usually can be counted on to speak out with righteous indignation whenever our government provides even the appearance of evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "Beware when you fight a dragon, lest you become a dragon," and I wonder if we are becoming as despicable as those evil terrorists who are our declared enemies.
The best and worst paying jobs :: Casino workers are among the lowest paid workers? That explains why people are flocking for Las Vegas for casino jobs...
U.S. Army stretched to the limit :: "I think, arguably, it's the worst readiness condition the U.S. Army has faced since the end of Vietnam," says NBC military analyst and retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey :: This is probably just interesting to me but I was listening to Meet the Press and one of the guests said that the reason that the United States Army won't increase troop strength in Iraq is that it can't increase it. He named the amount of regiments that were ready to be deployed and it wasn't a long list.
The good news is that if any other city had endured a five game sweep by the New York Yankees, the city would be devastated. Luckily Boston is used to having their hearts broken by the Yankees. The Blue Jays were there in 2002 and were swept in five games by the Red Sox.
Warren Kinsella has posted some strong anti-Isreali comments on his blog by top Liberal Party supporters :: "History will remember Hezbollah as an organization that stood up to the most vile 'nation' in human history." Like he said, I too feel uncomfortable with the left right now in Canada.
Some of my readers have tangled with hippos before. My first act as the leader on the War on Hippos is to invade Iceland. I know that makes no sense but invading Iraq had nothing to do with the War of Terror. I think the real lesson to learn from this is that either Mark or I get scared when watching nature shows. We need to find something about puppies playing nice with each other or something.
The Floyd Landis spin machine in action :: There is something so tragic at play here. Either professional blood doping is so corrupt or atheletes are so stupid. I am better on atheletes being stupid combined with trainers who have no ethics.
A house burned down a couple of blocks away from our house :: Not normally a story but it was in the middle of my migraine. Fire trucks. Sirens. Red pulsing lights. They might as well have just run me over as it would have hurt a lot less. Interesting tidbit. The Fire Department faxes out press releases about the fire but doesn't post any of it online.
I was chatting with Becky about abortion rights and this came up. Does anyone else see the disconnect between being against abortion but for capital punishment and also against programs that help the poor (who are most likely to have an abortion)? I was reading recently that former Clinton aide Paul Begala who is personally opposed to abortion and calls on fellow Catholics to be consistently pro-life — in opposition to not only abortion, but war, the death penalty and lack of health care. Isn't that a more consistent stance for pro-life holders yet is very different then many Christians hold. I am just thinking aloud.
Update: Rick Bennet has a post on a double standard with the stem cell veto and the killing of civilians in Iraq.
A couple of years ago I watched Crossfire on CNN with Sandy Berger and Lawrence Eagleburger on it. I can't remember what they were talking about although I assume it was Iraq but what struck me was how incredibly complicated foreign policy was and how big the consequences were when you really messed it up because often the mistakes resulted in deaths over decades.
Along the same lines I remember an ethics class where we were talking about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and all of the variables that came into play. At the end of the class, I walked out frustrated and bewildered at the amount of wrongs on various scales that were committed. Later on the failed peace efforts of 2000 happened where Arafatdidn't seem to want to make any consessions to make peace. Since then we have the Hamas who want to see Israel destroyed (Nick Denton has an interesting article on what would have happened if Isreal had been given land somewhere else) has taken over much of the Palestinian Authority and Hezbollah causing them problems on the Lebanonese front. Much is made of the tragic civilian deaths in Lebanon but there is also decades of civilians dying in cafes, school buses, and schools across Israel.
Despite the complexities, the press has done a remarkable job of reducing the conflict down the soundclips and political cliches. There are arguments to be made on both sides but it would great if the wider world would look at any serious issue in more than 20 seconds on CNN or FOX News . There is a lot of excellent writing from both sides in this dispute and I think some time reading up on it may be time well spent. For those of you looking online, CBC News has an indepth website that may be a good place to start.
Reporting from Iraq has become one of journalism’s most difficult and dangerous jobs. Foreign Policy spoke recently with Rod Nordland, who served as Newsweek’s Baghdad bureau chief for two years, about the challenge of getting out of the Green Zone to get the scoop.
Environmental disaster in Iraq :: An environmental disaster is brewing in the heartland of Iraq's northern Sunni-led insurgency, where Iraqi officials say that in a desperate move to dispose of millions of barrels of an oil refinery byproduct called "black oil," the government pumped it into open mountain valleys and leaky reservoirs next to the Tigris River and set it on fire.
Interesting article on Craigslist :: Mr. Buckmaster figures that Craigslist employs 21 people, and starts to count them on his fingers. It never brought in venture capitalists with their grand designs and exit strategies. "We didn't want to have those voices at the table," he says. So Craigslist has remained beholden to no one -- except, as Mr. Buckmaster constantly intones, its "users," who pay nothing for the privilege of posting or searching the millions of pages of apartment listings, moving sales and personal ads that make up the Craigslist ecosystem. "If it's not something that users are asking for," he says, "we don't consider it." The money that does come in comes from businesses posting in just two categories of classifieds in three cities -- job listings in San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles and, this week for the first time, brokered apartment rentals in New York. :: For those of you who might not know, even Saskatoon has a craigslist.
Work has started on a Doomsday vault in the Arctic :: Fenced in and guarded, with steel airlock doors, motion detectors and polar bears roaming outside - the concrete facility will, its backers say, be the most secure building of its type in the world.
Restoring fallen pastors to pastoral leadership :: "We were abandoned," Angie later said with tears. She was angry that the process robbed her of all her friends in the congregation. Then her friends in ministry disappeared. "When we needed help the most, nobody was there." "Basically, we were told that I would be out of ministry for two years," Russ said. "We would be required to move away from our former church, to attend a church in our denomination, and I would meet with the pastor of that church. But during that time I would be able to do no ministry. After two years the denomination would meet to reconsider my appointment. Beyond that, there was very little 'process.' My denominational supervisors apparently didn't want to hear from me until my two-year sentence was over. I was mostly on my own to figure it out." Russ's denomination, not a small one, still has little in the way of process. Russ and Angie were on their own to find counseling and a church whose pastor would agree to their presence while Russ waited. They were also on their own to find jobs and a rental house. There was no financial assistance beyond a couple months' severance offered by the Woodland church. Two dozen similar offenders still in hiding called Russ to confess, but other than rubberneckers, there was no contact from the ministry colleagues he had known for 20 years. "What I did was embarrassing to the denomination," Russ said. "We were being punished." "We were shunned," said Angie.
After Roe :: Jeffrey Rosen, the author of the June cover story, on what Roe v. Wade has done to the country, and what might happen without it :: If a national referendum were held the day after Roe fell, there’s little doubt that early-term abortions would be protected and that later-term abortions would be restricted. But the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide for government by referendum. Because of the intricacies of American federalism, and the polarization of American politics exacerbated by Roe itself, the moderate national consensus about abortion might not be reflected in law for years to come.
Rick Bennett has created a "Jordan" scale. He left out a category to judge players on their ability to be a souless marketing whore which Jordan was a 12 on a scale of 1-10
Al Gore to run in 2008? :: Mr. Gore, who turns 60 in 2008, could remain noncommittal and enter the presidential fray late, given his fame and fund-raising potential -- unlike lesser-known Democrats already stumping in the early-nominating states to be the Clinton alternative, such as former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, and Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh. If Mr. Gore ran -- or were drafted, as Ms. David suggests -- the longtime Washingtonian would run as an outsider, Democrats expect, helped along by his relationship with Internet-savvy MoveOn.org activists.
Signs, signs, everywhere the signs :: It was there that a 25-year-old serviceman, who said he could soon be headed for a tour in Iraq, excitedly asked Bonds to autograph the home run ball that the man caught after it bounced off the facade of the upper deck. Bonds turned his head dismissively and ignored him. Bonds later posed for a picture with the man and shook his hand, but refused to sign the ball. It was just more of Bonds spreading his good cheer.
Canadian military to abandon Canadianization :: We're abandoning, except in some exceptions, abandoning Canadianization," said O'Connor. "It wasn't good enough somebody had a rifle, somebody had a truck, somebody had a helmet, we had to go and Canadianize it. We had a particular head or we had a specific need for a rifle that somebody else didn't have." O'Connor said the military spent approximately $15 million trying to design a helmet for the "peculiar Canadian head."
I am going to make my millionth case I think against political partisanship so if you aren't interested, just move on.
I read a wide variety of news sources and all of them are covering the Iranian nuclear story with interest, including many that were very critical of the invasion of Iraq. Most if not all of them are saying something similar to what the BBC is writing here.
Mr Ahmadinejad said the pursuit of peaceful nuclear technology was Iran's "absolute right... our red line".
He was speaking after the UN's atomic watchdog said Iran had failed to meet a Security Council deadline to suspend its uranium enrichment programme.
A senior Iranian official meanwhile has said Iran will allow snap checks to resume if the council drops the case.
Mohammad Saeedi, deputy head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, said UN experts could conduct snap inspections of its nuclear facilities if the issue was returned to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
However the BBC's Frances Harrison in Tehran says this is unlikely to happen , so the offer seems rather academic.
Iran halted such inspections in February after the IAEA decided to report Iran to the Security Council.
When talking to friends on the left wing of the political spectrum I hear a lot of wag the dog talk as in that this is all another fantasy of Bush which strikes me as odd as while the EU and the world press was outspoken in it's skepticism of the Iraq WMD claims, it seems in agreement with Iranian nuclear plans. By doubting Bush because he is George W Bush makes for great lines by Jon Stewart but it is also is what many on the left accused the right of doing leading up to the Iraqi war and that is believing in Bush when the facts did not support the case. Now, when the facts do support what the White House is saying, then isn't it hypocritical to dismiss it just because Bush is President? I am on of the many that think that he is a horrible leader but I think on this issue, he is taking the right approach. Personally if we want to have a real debate on the issues, I think that we need to deal with the facts and not as much partisanship.
If you want to read more, as with most current events, Wikipedia has some excellent resources.
