Democracy in the Gulf: Bush Vindicated?

Democracy in the gulf - would that be Iran or Iraq?

The first great triumph of the Dulles CIA had been the over-throw of the elected government in Iran and the installation of the Shah as autocrat  (Operation Ajax - at which time Bush Sr. was only an occasional CIA "business" asset with regards to Mexico and Cuba), a victory leading us to deal with the fundamentalist revolution which ensued (Carter's failure there led to Reagan and then the Bush league.)

The last great triumph of the Tenet CIA was simply a failure to be heard as Cheney was confidently nudging the US into a war in Iraq ( although no Iraqi or Iraqi agent had attacked the USA and no Al Qaeda terrorists were based there.)

No need to mention the "outing" of Valerie Plame, which will just as likely be "vindicated" if the USA ever invades Nigeria.

Distance and Separation

Franz Baermann Steiner, "Gebet im Garten"

Franz Steiner and the Bushmen (whom he made known to Canetti, per Michael Hamburger)

Li Po, borne across centuries on the prose of Arthur Waley,
a near cousin of the anthropologist,
the Bushmen divided by language
separated by secret aspects
preserved in couplings
dictated by some successful hunt,
(the slow exhaustion of one terrified giraffe -
perhaps each spear, each dart, had an almost name)

Distance collapses, separation expands,
the past remains not quite compressed,
leaving a trail of glass beads,
not the dull, selenic powders of the unexploded moon,
these beads in strands, invisible, twined cosmic dust,
terminating in tiny layers of deadly buds.

Of what and who is other than us
[we, the people, we, the Dene]
singers are permitted to exaggerate.
No one will demand a polite tone
and a respectful story -
they were snakes and liars
only do not inflate their misdeeds
or we may look weak,
our elders foolish.

(My mother's uncle confided,
"Not all their women looked so,
or we had not kidnapped them -
or murdered their sons")