What a tangled web we weave...

Bush's excellent adventure in Iraq continues to spread discord and conflict like a cancer.

Sy Hersh in the New Yorker reveals the clandestine efforts of the Bush administration to aid, along with the Saudis, Sunni militant groups opposed to the Iranian government.

Of course al Queda, the very group which attacked us and continues to regroup in Pakistan and elsewhere, is a Sunni militant group. But at this point, does it really come as a shock that Bush is now backing al Queda's side?

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The Hersh article also details that at Bush's orders, the military has undertaken extensive planning for strikes on Iran, and has been asked to be ready to attack within 24 hours on orders from Bush.

If you awoke one morning and turned on the TV to see Bush announcing that he's just attacked Iran, what would your reaction be?


And on a related note, this administration, the gang that couldn't shoot straight, showed it's calliber today when it's female spokeswoman stood in front of the White House to try to mount an effort to, as always, attack the messenger and smear Hersh, a veteran reporter who has broken and reported many important stories in the past decades and who enjoys a well-deserved reputation for being one of the top investigative reporters in the country.

But of course, the Bushies decide the thing to do is to simply say that Hersh, a pulitzer prize winning journalist who broke both the My Lai and Abu Ghraib stories among others, is a liar.

So here stands this attractive young spokesbot, and when it's her cue, she says, "Seymour Hersh has a wanton disregard for the truth."

OK. Short and sweet. Sure to be picked up and played by everyone who reports the story, even though she provided zero evidence to back up the smear and the assertion is patently false. With this gang, it would only be notable if they said something that wasn't.

But there was a problem that really galled me. The woman pronounced wanton as "juan-tawn", two distinct syllables, as in won-ton soup! "Seymour Hersh has a juan tawn disregard for the truth.", she said, evidently having previously only seen the word appear as the number 37 on a Chinese menu.

Good Lord! Not only did it reveal that someone had written the remark for her, but it showed that you don't have to be particularly literate or bright to be a White House spokesperson. (or president, for that matter.)

An incredibly trivial matter compared to Bush starting a war with Iran, but .....egads!