We momentarily interrupt our Election Meltdown '08 coverage to quickly point out that a total of five large undersea Internet cables, leading to various areas of the Middle East, have now reportedly been "cut." The Khaleej Times reports that "An estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected by the recent undersea cable damage," which, folks who worry about such things note, is in addition to millions of users in Iran.

We noticed the story when three cables were cut last week, but didn't have time to look into it. We still don't. Nor do we pretend to know what it all means.

But as BonnieNet --- who's done some good digging, and has put together a map of the locations of the reported cuts --- says, "3 was quite a few. 4 is pushing it. 5 starts to make you wonder."

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

In Bushworld, you can have it both ways.

Wednesday night, George Bush's spokesperson Dana Perino was forced to acknowledge in an email that Bush had been lying to the American people both about the status of Iran's nuclear capabilities and about when he was informed that Iran's nuclear program had been suspended.

Yesterday, however, when she asked if Bush was "candid" about what he knew and when he knew it, Perino answered, "Yes, he was." Then, as proof of his candor, she launched into this tortured peroration:

When challenged on the fact that her parsing did not square with what Bush actually said, Perino waved off the gap in credibility with this obviously scripted-in-advance bit of tripe:

The emphasis on "truthful" is hers. (And she will trot out the "he could have been more precise" nonsense twice more in the session.)

The White House press corps was refreshingly aggressive in putting Perino through her paces. As the session wore on, she sounded increasingly like her predecessor, Scott McClellan, in a skirt, deploying McClellan's usual tricks --- holding forth at length to answer a simple question and changing the subject whenever possible --- in order to avoid producing a sound bite. On the other hand, she couldn't entirely avoid that fact that Bush lied:

Meanwhile, in the real world, no one --- except increasingly desperate neo-cons and Bush-cult dead-enders --- believes Perino, Bush or Cheney on this matter. What little credibility Bush, and, by extension, the United States, had on Iran among our allies and other stakeholders in the Middle East has evaporated. And rightly so, why should any foreign government put stock in anything the Bush administration has to say now?

Our only hope is that no serious world crisis erupts until the United States changes leadership in 13 months, and, presumably --- hopefully --- a normal president and administration take charge at long last.

A transcript of part of the discussion at the White House press briefing about Bush's false statements on the Iranian intelligence follows:

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

The White House has quietly admitted that George Bush lied to reporters at a news conference on Tuesday when he said he was not informed by intelligence officials that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been suspended in 2003.

On Tuesday, Bush denied he knew the program had been disbanded when he warned the American people in October that Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons could unleash World War III. Now, as we reported last night at Pensito Review, Bush press flack Dana Perino confirmed off-camera to reporters that, in fact, Bush learned about the suspension of Iran's weapons program in August.

According to ABC News' Martha Raddatz...

Of course, Perino's latest version of who-knew-what-and-when may well be yet another lie. New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh said earlier yesterday that Dick Cheney knew about the Iranian program's suspension as late as last November, and that he had "kept his foot on the neck of that report" until last week.

The White House has apparently been successful in burying the news that Bush lied at the news conference on Tuesday about when he was informed about the suspension of the Iranian program --- and that, by extension both Bush and Cheney have been lying to the American public for months about the threat Iran poses to world peace.

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

Repercussions continue to shake out in the wake of the release this week of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that says Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

At a news conference yesterday, George Bush denied knowing that U.S. intelligence had learned the Iranian program had been suspended when he warned the American people last month that Iran was on the verge of launching World War III. He was not lying, Bush suggested, but rather his own incompetence and famous lack of curiosity led him to give the false warning. Bush said that when Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell told him in August that new information about the Iranian nuclear program had come to light, he simply did not bother to ask the DNI about the nature of the new developments.

If the muted response to this assertion, from reporters at the news conference, is a guide, journalists close to the White House appear to believe that while it may be unacceptable for Bush to lie to them, it is perfectly okay for him to issue false predictions about an impending apocalypse if the warnings are based entirely on his ineptitude as commander-in-chief and his personal lack of curiosity.

As if all of that isn't a sorry enough state of affairs, today we learn that Dick Cheney has known about --- and actively suppressed --- the intelligence community's finding for over a year. In particular, Cheney knew that Iran suspended its weapons program when he made this statement on Oct. 21, 2007, in an address to a Washington think tank...

Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.

In August, the U.S. government intelligence agencies sent word up the chain that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons programs back in 2003. And yet, about two months later, on Oct. 17, 2007, George W. Bush issued a dire warning about Iran's nukes to the American people:

At Bush's news conference today, amid his tired, cringe-inducing towel-snaps at the White House press corps, he denied knowing the Iranian program was suspended in October when he suggested that the apocalypse was nigh:

And:

Normal U.S. presidents don't generally suggest, especially off-handedly, that the planet is on the brink of World War III. Is it really possible that Bush could have been so woefully uninformed about his own government's intelligence findings that he could make such a world-class blunder?

Yes, she was covert until being outed by the White House.

Yes, she was monitoring nuclear weapons and other WMD going into and coming out of Iraq and Iran, as RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna correctly and originally and exclusively reported in February of 2006.

Yes, her outing led to a still-classified CIA damage assessment and "serious" consequences" to other members of her CIA intelligence network.

No, despite Bush's promise, no one has ever been held accountable for leaking her identity in the first such outing of a covert CIA operative by agents of the U.S. Government itself.

No, Bush "is not a man of his word," as Valerie Plame Wilson told 60 Minutes tonight in her first broadcast network interview. Here's the video in two parts...

Some of what Plame is still not allowed to say, including details about "being taken hostage and subjected to torture for two days," is covered by her former CIA colleague, Larry Johnson, right here...

And in another posting today, Johnson gives us some details from Plame's new book, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, in which it's disclosed that "In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were en route to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame."

So what did the White House do about it? Johnson tells us...

Amazing.

Guest Blogged by Joseph Cannon

Larisa Alexandrovna draws our attention to a piece by noted reactionary Michelle Malkin. In her blog, Malkin publishes some photos of Iranian police brutalizing four men, and adds these comments:

As we'll see in a moment, Malkin hasn't quite told the truth about those photos. But even if we were to take her assertions at face value, Malkin has ignored what we may call the "Matthew 7:4 factor."...

...And this one, unlike John McCain's version, is actually amusing. Even if both of them are creepy as hell...

Kudos to the creator of the video, Adam Kontras, for his prescience and sense of dark satire back in April of 2006 when it was originally released. Even as we curse him for having given McCain, the former "straight shooter"-turned-wingnut-loon, any bad ideas.

Kontras tells us he received "lots of death threats from angry Iranians not understanding it," when he first posted it, and that he still does. As we receive far too many love letters here at The BRAD BLOG, hopefully this will to serve to send a few of the irony-impaired Iranians our way for a while instead. Always happy to serve.

(Hat-tip to Justice Through Music, who's also had this on their radar for some time!)

And as our good friend, the legendary and mysterious Freeway Blogger, mentioned when he alerted us to the above, "Remember, it's not what you say, it's how many people read it."

Pass it on.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, who has been criticized for his behind the scenes role in helping the Bush administration's PR campaign in the run-up to the Iraq war, appears to have learned from his mistakes as far as Iran is concerned. In a week where Zakaria's own employer made escalating Iranian/US tensions its cover story, Zakaria douses the Bush administration's rhetoric about the Iranian threat with a dose of reality. While Zakaria would be the first to admit that the disastrous Iraq war has strengthened Iran - along with Vladimir Putin, the Saudi royals, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and the Syrian regime - he also recognizes that "at the end of the day, Iran is a poorly run, oil rich oligarchy, that the Mullahs are running into the ground."

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

If anyone had reason to suspect that representatives of the Bush administration would tell bald-faced lies in order to try to justify a war they had already decided to fight, we might have reason to take the following report from Reuters somewhat seriously. [my emphasis, here and below]

We've been here before, haven't we? And we know what happens next, too. Don't we?

Guest blogged by Robert C. Koehler | originally published at CommonWonders.Com

Nothing like a little intimidation to liven up my ongoing meditation on a just society. To be threatened with e-mail violence by a Marine Corps major (ret.) steeped in righteousness — wow, how deliciously personal and unfair. What a lovely mixture of bile and adrenaline it sets to bubbling. What a temptation it creates to respond in kind.

Instead, I’ve decided to make this conversation — about violence, ignorance, idealism — public. This is bigger than both of us, sir.

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

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Shuster attended the White House Correspondent's Dinner. He was able to get a short interview with Joe Wilson. Republican operatives have renewed their baseless claim that Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was not classified. For her part, Valerie Plame-Wilson stood silently by as her husband rejected the well used right-wing talking point.

More importantly, David Shuster reports that sources have told him how National Security was damaged when Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was leaked by the White House. His intel sources say that she worked with gathering intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The outing of her name specifically damaged our national ability to collect intelligence on Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Says Shuster...

UPDATE FROM BRAD: It should be noted that RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna broke the Plame/Iran/WMD connection several months ago. They've got the text transcript of Schuster's report now up as well.

Crooks & Liars has several other noteworthy details and thoughts...

Guest blogged by David Edwards of Veredictum.com

Here are two recent news broadcasts from the Middle East. The first is from the city of Al-Basra in Southern Iraq and the other from Israel. Both clips are evidence that the threat of war with Iran has already become a reality for those who are living on its' battlefield.

VIDEO - Iraqi Officials Pledge Suicide Bombers to Stop Attack on Iran

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Al-Basra City is located in the southern part of Iraq. The city has a seaport that is crucial for the export of Iraq's oil. Basra's location on Iran's southern border makes the city valuable strategically for the launch of a ground attack against Iran (map).

The City Council of Al-Basra has vowed that it will "do everything in their power" to prevent U.S. forces from launching an attack on Iran from Southern Iraq. The Council said that it wanted to maintain a good relationship with neighboring countries. The Council believes that Iran has a right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes.

The head of Basra's City Council stressed their resolve to stop any attack by saying, "I assure you when we talked about martyring that it wasn't a slip of the tongue. Iraqis are known for their willingness to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of their principals."

Iran claims that coalition forces are already conducting operations along the southern Iraq/Iran border.

VIDEO - Israeli Propaganda TV: Iranian Threat Worse Than Nazi Germany

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The Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) recently aired this segment of a new film, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West."

The film compares the threat of Radical Islam to the threat of Nazism. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the new Hitler.

Background music builds tension and suspense. Pictures of radical Islamists overlay film of soldiers marching in Nazi Germany. Hitler's followers cheer as he promises death to all Jews. Thousands of Iranians chant "Death to America". Writers and Historians speak with authoritative voices of dire warnings and predictions that this terrible history is repeating itself.

The film evokes feelings of helplessness along with the psychological terror of an impending nuclear Holocaust. It's emotional manipulation worthy of the most vile Bush/Cheney campaign advertisement.