http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070515_irans_nukes_call_bushs_bluff/
Iran Nukes Call Bush's Bluff By Robert Scheer Truthdig: May 15th, 2007 On Sunday came news from the U.N. inspectors on the ground that Iran has made a breakthrough in the enrichment of uranium. It was previously thought that the Iranians were having trouble developing the tight engineering and high speeds needed to get their centrifuges to produce nuclear fuel. But inspectors, on a short-notice visit, came upon 1,300 centrifuges merrily spinning away and churning out the raw ingredient for massive carnage. "We believe they pretty much have the knowledge about how to enrich," said Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the U.N. agency that won the Nobel Prize after getting it right about Saddam Hussein's nonexistent WMD program. That makes his current alarm all the more credible when he warns about Iran's enrichment program breakthrough: "From now on, it is simply a question of perfecting that knowledge. People will not like to hear it, but that's a fact." Great. Tehran's religious fanatics have moved closer to the potential for nuclear conflagration, and what can bully-boy Bush do about it? Nothing. He shot his wad gambling on the invasion of Iraq, a nation that didn't pose a WMD threat, and now needs Iran-which the United Nations fears may pose a real threat-to bail us out in Baghdad. Now it is bluffing time, with the Bush administration making all the appropriate warning noises about Iran's nuclear program while cozying up to Tehran to help our puppet government in Baghdad pretend to be in power. That Bush is dependent on Iran's ruling ayatollahs to salvage a modicum of face-saving stability in Iraq also was made clear on Sunday when, despite new concerns about Iran's nuclear potential, the White House confirmed an upcoming Iran-U.S. meeting in Baghdad in the next few weeks to discuss Tehran taking a "productive role" in Iraq's security. "You could expect a meeting in the next few weeks with Ambassador [Chester] Crocker and Iranians," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe. His lame excuse for formal talks after a 25-year break in diplomatic relations with Iran: "The purpose is to try to make sure that the Iranians play a productive role in Iraq." A blunter assessment of the dark codependency motivating these talks was provided by Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari: "The U.S. is a major player and so is Iran, and there will be a room for some substantial discussions for the stability of Iraq." Sure there will, but it will be on Iran's terms, and soft-pedaling U.S. opposition to that country's nuclear program is a given. So is the acceptance of a version of Iran's theocratic model, exported to formerly secular Iraq. Talk about desperation. To bring peace to Iraq, Bush now turns to the very "rogue regime" he accuses of threatening the survival of the planet with its nuclear weapons program, not to mention support of worldwide terrorism. But what choice does he have? Many of the key players Bush installed in power in Iraq were trained during decades of exile in Iran, and key Shiite militias, according to U.S. military commanders, are increasingly supplied with deadly explosives from Tehran. The serious subtext here, rarely noticed by pundits, is that the United States created a vacuum for the vast expansion of Iranian influence throughout the Mideast. In the creation of a new hegemony, the fervid goal of the neoconservatives led by now-disgraced World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, our nation appears en route to becoming Tehran's junior partner. Although a military strike against Iran is certainly a continually examined possibility, such action would ignite an anti-American tidal wave in the region, beginning with Iraq. Of course one should never underestimate the ineptitude of the Bush administration. The big losers in all this are the ordinary citizens in Iraq and throughout the Mideast who were promised an infusion of democratic ideals in the wake of the invasion. Instead, they have been left with a widespread resurgence of religious fanaticism. Never have those fundamentalist forces, which produced 9/11, been more popular in the Mideast-particularly in Iraq, where al-Qaida was ruthlessly suppressed by Saddam Hussein. It was particularly odd, writing this on a day when a special World Bank committee issued its devastating report on Wolfowitz's corruption of bank standards, to read Vice President Dick Cheney's defense of his main henchman in engineering the Iraq invasion. Cheney described Wolfowitz, the leader in hyping regime change in Iraq as the avenue to democratization, as "one of the most able public servants I've ever known." Takes one to know one in that strange alchemy of Bush ideologues, where stunning success is the inevitable product of abysmal failure. *** http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/15/1198/ Published on Tuesday, May 15, 2007 by Agence France Presse US Health System Ranks Last Compared to Other Countries: Studies WASHINGTON - The US health care system ranks last among other major rich countries for quality, access and efficiency, according to two studies released Tuesday by a health care think tank. The studies by the Commonwealth Fund found that the United States, which has the most expensive health system in the world, underperforms consistently relative to other countries and differs most notably in the fact that Americans have no universal health insurance coverage. "The United States stands out as the only nation in these studies that does not ensure access to health care through universal coverage and promotion of a 'medical home' for patients," said Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis. "Our failure to ensure health insurance for all and encourage stable, long-term ties between physicians and patients shows in our poor performance on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and health outcomes." In "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care", the study focused on interviews with physicians and patients in Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and the United States who were asked to speak about their experiences and views on their health systems. The US ranked last in most areas, including access to health care, patient safety, timeliness of care, efficiency and equity. Americans were also last in terms of whether they had a regular physician. "The US spends twice what the average industrialized country spends on health care but we're clearly not getting value for the money," Davis told AFP. She also noted that 45 million Americans, or 15 percent of the US population, have no health insurance, which contributes to the country's medical woes. The United States is also far behind in adopting modern health information technology, which translates into spiralling costs and poor care. "We pride ourselves on being advanced on so many areas of technology but it's not the case on health information technology," Davis said. "Other countries have just moved ahead." Britain got the top score in overall ranking among the countries in the study, followed by Germany. New Zealand and Australia tied for third followed by Canada and the United States. The second study delves into why health costs in the United States are so much higher than in eight other countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand. The study, "Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data," found that even though the US spends the most on publicly and privately financed health insurance, its citizens had the most potential years of life lost due to circulatory and respiratory diseases as well as diabetes. "This study blows a lot of myths about the US health system," Davis said. "We spend three times what the average country spends on a day of hospital care and we also spend twice what the average country spends on prescription medication." Health care is likely to be a prominent issue in the 2008 US presidential elections with various candidates already promising to tackle rising costs and the burden placed on big business to provide health insurance. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse a.. Dr. Marvin Candle May 15th, 2007 11:56 am Just in time for Michael Moore's new documentary, SICKO! a.. macchendra May 15th, 2007 12:26 pm Imagine a system that gets nearly as much money per month as we pay in taxes, and pays our politicians nearly as much as the government does. That is what the insurance companies are today. Do not support the system advocated by Edwards, Obama, or Clinton, it is merely mandatory health insurance. Choose single payer! Choose Kucinich. a.. vinlander May 15th, 2007 1:22 pm Kucinich's plan alone is reason enough to back him. Here's a tedious but true fact. Americans spend 11-12 times what Costa Ricans spend on healthcare, but get the same life expectancy for it. Forget comparisons with developed economies, the American system is Third World (with apologies to my Costa Rican friends). ***. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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