Norman Podhoretz believes that America needs to go to war soon with Iran. As far as he knows, Rudy Giuliani thinks the same thing.

‘I was asked to come in and give him a briefing on the war, World War IV,’ said Mr. Podhoretz, a founding father of neoconservatism and leading foreign policy adviser to Mr. Giuliani. ‘As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it.’

During a long interview this week in his bookcase-lined East 81st Street home, Mr. Podhoretz, 77, explained the very straightforward proposition he has been proposing to Mr. Giuliani from the start of the campaign: ‘The choice before us is either bomb those nuclear facilities or let them get the bomb.’

Full Story: The New York Observer.

More about Giuliani here.

More about the impending war with Iran:

The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn’t Want You to Know.

The Iran Plan.

On Tuesday Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell told the House Judiciary Committee things that, had a government official said them in the days, weeks, or months following 9/11. would have sparked public outrage-and may have significantly blunted the push for greater police and surveillance powers like the PATRIOT Act.

McConnell told lawmakers that “9/11 should have and could have been prevented.”

Full Story: Reason Magazine.

See also this piece by the same author:

It is now clear that senior FBI officials, Maltbie and Frasca, did know about Moussaoui’s arrest. They knew the case so well that they denied Samit’s request to seek a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to search Moussaoui’s computer and belongings. Because Samit never made the explicit link to Afghan terror camps, the FBI could not claim a ‘foreign power’ was directing Moussaoui, the test for an intelligence warrant from the court. But had the bureau taken Samit’s fears of mayhem seriously, it could have sought a plain vanilla criminal warrant on Moussaoui based on probable cause. Samit was told that pressing too hard to obtain a warrant would hurt his career.

This decision not to seek a warrant gave rise to the myth that the ‘wall’ between overseas intelligence and criminal investigations made the PATRIOT Act necessary. This myth is cherished among right-wing radio talkers and has now morphed into a clumsy justification for the White House’s warrantless wiretaps. It is pure fantasy. Samit cited ‘obstructionism, criminal negligence and careerism’ by top FBI officials-not domestic spying restrictions-as the factors that stopped his investigation.

(Emphasis mine).

Found this article yesterday while reading the print edition of The New York Times Magazine (link to article). Fortunately, it’s online (for the time being), but I’ll copy n paste it in its entirety for your reading pleasure:-

By TED WIDMER
Published: July 22, 2007

None of us can control our ancestors. Like our children, they have minds of their own and invariably refuse to do our bidding. Presidential ancestors are especially unruly – they are numerous and easily discovered, and they often act in ways unbecoming to the high station of their descendants.

Take George Bush. By whom I mean George Bush (1796-1859), first cousin of the president’s great-great-great-grandfather. It would be hard to find a more unlikely forebear. G.B. No. 1 was not exactly the black sheep of the family, to use a phrase the president likes to apply to himself. In fact, he was extremely distinguished, just not in ways that you might expect. Prof. George Bush was a bona fide New York intellectual: a dabbler in esoteric religions whose opinions were described as, yes, ‘liberal’; a journalist and an academic who was deeply conversant with the traditions of the Middle East. Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Cheney, then [assistant] White House Chief of Staff to President Ford…was the reason my family had travelled to Wyoming where I endured yet another form of brutality – his version of “A Most Dangerous Game,” or human hunting…. Dick Cheney had an apparent addiction to the “thrill of the sport.” He appeared obsessed with playing A Most Dangerous Game as a means of traumatizing mind control victims, as well as to satisfy his own perverse sexual kinks.

Full Story: Rigorous Intuition.

(via Robot Wisdom)

Thompson proves he’s still the hardest writer out there:

This year’s first presidential debate was such a disaster for George Bush that his handlers had to be crazy to let him get in the ring with John Kerry again. Yet Karl Rove let it happen, and we can only wonder why. But there is no doubt that the president has lost his nerve, and his career in the White House is finished. NO MAS.

[...]

Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous “trickle-down” theory of U.S. economic policy. If the Rich get Richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow “trickle down” to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to preindustrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.

Things haven’t changed all that much where George W. Bush comes from. Houston is a cruel and crazy town on a filthy river in East Texas with no zoning laws and a culture of sex, money and violence. It’s a shabby sprawling metropolis ruled by brazen women, crooked cops and super-rich pansexual cowboys who live by the code of the West — which can mean just about anything you need it to mean, in a pinch.

[...]

The question this year is not whether President Bush is acting more and more like the head of a fascist government but if the American people want it that way. That is what this election is all about. We are down to nut-cutting time, and millions of people are angry. They want a Regime Change.

[...]

Of course I will vote for John Kerry. I have known him for thirty years as a good man with a brave heart — which is more than even the president’s friends will tell you about George W. Bush, who is also an old acquaintance from the white-knuckle days of yesteryear. He is hated all over the world, including large parts of Texas, and he is taking us all down with him.