Gregory Djerejian over at Belgarvia dispatch posts about Lieberman’s advice to President Bush a few weeks ago. That advice was, “Mr. President, I have two words for you…Be bold. “. Okaaaaay.

Naturally his comments quickly filled up with the usual “is he crazy” critiques. The crazy one is Bush, Cheney, Franken-Bush-Cheney-stein. I don’t mean crazy in a reckless way either. I mean insane, disconnected from reality, deep in the bunker, or as Joe Biden said about Cheney; “every single person out there that is of any consequence knows the vice president doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Biden went on to say:

I can’t be more blunt than that. He has yet to be right one single time on Iraq. Name me one single time he’s been correct.

It’s about time we stopped listening to that ideological rhetoric and that “bin Laden” and the rest. Bin Laden isn’t the issue here. Bin Laden will become the issue. The issue is there’s a civil war, Chris. I said way back in November last year, speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations, I said, “Does anyone support using American troops to fight a civil war? I don’t, and I don’t think the American people do. But if we fail to force a political consensus, that’s exactly what we will have.”

That’s what we have. That’s what the president has to deal with. And he’s doing it the exact wrong way. And he’s not listening to his military. He’s not listening to his old secretaries of state. He’s not listening to his old friends. He’s not listening to anybody but Cheney, and Cheney is dead-wrong.” source: Fox News Transcript

The truth is that it doesn’t matter if the whole world is against Franken-Bush-Cheney-stein, they are going to go about their insane business. And that business is Iran. The news this weekend in the NYT was that Iran was responisble for bombs being used against US troops. Strangely, there’s no breathless report about how US made bombs are responisble for US troops casualties. Juan Cole debunks and explains:

This NYT article depends on unnamed USG sources who alleged that 25 percent of US military deaths and woundings in Iraq in October-December of 2006 were from explosively formed penetrator bombs fashioned in Iran and given to Shiite militias:

‘ In the last three months of 2006, attacks using the weapons accounted for a significant portion of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq, though less than a quarter of the total, military officials say.’

This claim is one hundred percent wrong. Because 25 percent of US troops were not killed fighting Shiites in those three months. Day after day, the casualty reports specify al-Anbar Province or Diyala or Salahuddin or Babil, or Baghdad districts such as al-Dura, Ghaziliyah, Amiriyah, etc.–and the enemy fighting is clearly Sunni Arab guerrillas. And, Iran is not giving high tech weapons to Baathists and Salafi Shiite-killers. It is true that some casualties were in “East Baghdad” and that Baghdad is beginning to rival al-Anbar as a cemetery for US troops:

Haven’t we seen this before? Yet, the focus last week as on the Senate’s failure to vote on a toothless reprimand of the way in which Bush’s administration has conducted the occupation of Iraq. An all out effort to prevent any form of attack on Iran is the greater priority.