Join with me now and breathe a collective sigh of relief that Jane Harman is no longer in Congress. Because a bigger war-mongering Neocon-in-Democratic-clothing I do not think you could find.
Not content with just three declared fronts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya (and one stealth one in Pakistan) draining the country's resources, Jane Harman gets visibly excited at the thought of stopping all the evil Iran is supposedly doing in the Middle East. Gosh, it sounds like Harman is getting all her intel from Saudi and/or Israeli sources. because you know, they don't have any kind of agenda in dealing with Iran. That "playing" in Bahrain? Debunked. That "playing" in Lebanon? At the request of the Lebanese PM. Even the weapons with Iranian markings allegedly found in Gaza--how does that line up with all those American-made arms pointing at Palestinians? Funny how that goes unmentioned.
I'm sorry, but no American should be bemoaning the hegemony of any other country in the Middle East, unless we're just bound and determined to be the only purveyors of it. Note how quickly Harman glides into decrying Iran as the fount of all things bad in the Middle East to Yemen and conflating the country proper (no matter how unstable it is) with the American-born and officially Yemeni-convicted terrorist spiritual leader Anwar al-Awlaki, whom Harman has referred to as "Terrorist #1" (again ignoring the repeated acts of terrorism being committed in this country by all those "lone wolf" right wing nut jobs). The very fact that she holds up some magazine written by al Qaeda as proof of the threat because it featured an article on how to build a bomb in your kitchen, but ignores all that same information has been not only readily available on the internets (and hell, even in the library for us old-timers that still read books), but used by people like Tim McVeigh and Eric Rudolph.
But that Jane Harman, she loves her some military interventions in the Middle East...so much she's looking for more.
Transcripts below the fold
BORGER: Jane Harman, can we walk and chew gum at the same time, I guess is the question.
HARMAN: Well, let’s hope so, but the government of Iran is not sitting in Iran. They’re playing in all this. They’re playing in Bahrain, they’re playing in Lebanon, they’re playing in Gaza. Arms with Iranian markings were just picked up by the Israelis, fortunately, before they went into Gaza. They’re playing in Egypt. You know, we should assume that this may not come out to be an “Arab Spring” but an “Arab Winter” and that would happen if we take our eye off what I think is our central problem here, which is a (sic) expanding Iranian hegemony over the region. And finally, let me just mention Yemen. Yemen is the place where in the boonies we have the folks that are plotting to attack us, the “Christmas Bomber” was trained in Yemen, the parcel bomb plot was hatched in Yemen. Awlaki lives and is protected by a local tribe somewhere out there in Yemen and he called for active attacks by our…against our country and in our country and finally the fellow—whoever he is—who’s writing this English language magazine called “Inspire” which teaches you how to make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom is in Yemen. And so I worry about the threat to our home land being greatest in Yemen than from any other place.
