The rain is really pouring now. You can barely see out through the windshield, the traffic is heavy … keeping track of the cars and trucks barrelling along is getting harder and harder. Suddenly, in front of you, you see the big tanker semitrailer you’ve been following for miles fishtailing in front of you. Hemmed in by a SUV on your right, a sedan on your left, you watch in horror as the truck jackknifes. Nothing to do but hit the brakes, hope for the best, tell your loved ones you love them … but you forgot, the road is slick with rain and cast-off motor oil, particalized bits of rubber and plastic … you can feel the car lift up off the pavement, feel yourself cut loose from its tether to the Earth. All you can do is stare at the flammable placards on the side of the tanker as you hydroplane to a firey doom.
How does it feel to have given the keys to the Peterbuilt to a cranked-up psycho? Yes, yes, I know he was entertaining at the truck stop, regaling us with stories about his toughness, about how he wasn’t like those pansy drivers who follow the rules of the road. HE was going to get his cargo to it’s destination, and anybody who got in his way be damned. “Hell, this is great!” people thought. A REAL MAN. Give him the keys.
So you zipped right along, leaving chumps in your wake, drafting along behind this cowboy, heedless of speed limits and traffic conditions. It got a little dicey there, when he merged too quick and set off that chain reaction pile-up, but at least it wasn’t YOUR corpse burning in those wrecks. We had places to go, gasoline to deliver, miles to burn! At the next fill-up, he’d clapped you on the shoulder, bought you another beer and laughed when you admitted that he’d made you piss your pants a little. “What are you, some pussy latte drinker from Taxachussetts?” he’d mocked.
So you look out your windshield now, at the initial impacts, of the blooming fire mushrooming out of the spreading wreck you’re sliding inexorably towards, and you wonder …
… why won’t someone save me. After all, it’s not MY fault he’s crazy.
A wonderful way to chronicle our journey these past years.
And that Richard Clarke Op-Ed you linked to in the NY Times is all important to read.
I know the sound of truth when I hear that Iran is next on Bush’s schedule. I wonder if congress will actually save us, but then I realize that they haven’t even cared about the little things and surely the big thing will just be too much for their teeny tiny minds to comprehend. And I wonder what it will take to give us our country back? Is it too late? Is there anybody home there in DC or are they all at the hardware store buying duck tape and plastic?
The decision’s been made. It’s already started … I’m utterly convinced of it. I’ve suspected for months that we were going to bomb Iran, but kept letting myself hope …
but no, the die have been cast. I half think that the sudden orgy of talkative Generals is a last-gasp attempt to stop it.
Too little, too late, all of our institutions are broken and “leadership” positions held by spineless toadies who speak out to cover their own behinds, their own “legacies”.
We are the Germans now, and it will get worse over the next several years, and BOTH parties are FINE with it.
The next Presidential election will be fought between a demogogue on the right and, hopefully, a populist from the left (not that the Clintons/DLC/NDN/Biden et al will let THAT happen). A progressive populist is our only hope to even begin to fight back, to change course, to begin to make amends for OUR crimes.
Yup, the covert war has been going on for a while now.
Not that it will matter, but Kucinich wrote a letter to Bush demanding answers, as well as congressional approval for overt military action.
I’m also pimping an article in the New Yorker (Mar 6, 2006), “Exiles: How Iran’s Expatriates are Gaming the Nuclear Threat” by Connie Bruck that deserves greater attention. She gives a detailed account with great background material on the current activities of the Shah’s son, Reza Pahlavi, the people & politics of the MEK terrorist group that we’re currently running from Iraq into Iran, and a glimpse into the administration’s inner deliberations on Iran policy for the past 6 years in pursuit on regime change (which again like Iraq is the #1 priority, not nukes). A diary could easily be constructed out this article alone.
Here’s more from a diary that’s been on my hotlist since June 2005:
…I was skeptical of an attack on Iran. Not because I didn’t think our misleaders didn’t want to do so, but because I thought they were hampered by Iraq and growing discontent at home. But since then, I’ve been ever more convinced, which is why I wrote Nuke Iran Now! Kill a Million or Three in January.
Back then, a lot of people just looked at me askance. What could I possibly have been smoking? Three months later, out comes Seymour Hersh’s piece. Suddenly, there are many more believers.
Nice Diary, Madman.
I got my first worried glimmers when Scott Ritter started worrying about it last summer, and the Bushies ramped up talk of the new Nuclear Earth Penetrator.
I kept telling the scared screaming madman in my head that I was worrying over nothing, for all the same reasons you mentioned. Bogged down in Iraq, not enough troops …
I don’t think they care about any of that.
I agree, we’ll be bombing in the fall. As I’ve said, it’s for two reasons. Firstly, we’ve irredeemably lost in Iraq, and our loss is Iran’s gain. I think that Bush doesn’t care, and indeed hopes, to widen the conflict to draw others in.
Secondly, it’ll be another great attempt to change the discourse in this country prior to the election from his already failed policies, to a new one.
Nice imagery — we’ve been on a scary ride, and it’s about to get worse…
Thanks!