"Bush Authorizes New Covert Action Against Iran"

"The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert "black" operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com."

Full article: ABC News

Note that this story could very well be disinformation.

The last time we authorized "covert operations" in Iran, we overthrew a democratically elected man by the name of Dr. Mohammed Mossadeq, who was anti-communist and pro-western. Mossadeq hit bump, though, when he decided to nationalize the oil fields, which angered British Petroleum to no end. BP influenced the CIA and British Intelligence to take Mossadeq out. The CIA then installed the Shah, a brutal dictator. The Shah was later overthrow by the current Iranian government.

Thousands Protest Iraq War

Thousands of people gathered in Washington D.C. this week for an organized protest against President Bush's plan to send more soldiers to Iraq. Groups of people spanning all ethnic, age and social groups all made their voices heard as the Senate was discussing the proposal to send more soldiers overseas.

Some of the protesters were seasoned veterans of the Vietnam War era, but many were raw recruits to the anti-war effort. They all shared one thing in common, they do not want an escalation or increase of soldiers in Iraq.

Related Article: Washington Post

Not with 20,000, not with 100,000.

The idea that an increase in numbers will solve this Iraqi mess fails all tests of logic. An insurgency cannot be broken, it is tempered like steel and is part of the mindset of the people in the region. They see a foreign power come in and remove their government, they see thousands of people die, their electricity doesn't work, their homes are rubble, no water and lack of food; they look at this situation and blame it on the most obvious and immediate group, the occupying power. Regardless of our original intentions, we have severely screwed up the country of Iraq, our cowboy attitude and lack of foresight has left the Iraqi people worse off that they were half a decade ago. Yet our President, our leader thinks he can solve this by sending in more people with machine guns? Sure, maybe in a John Wayne move, but this is the real world and regional politics and mindsets do not change on a whim. They did not greet us as liberators at the start of the war, they will not welcome another surge.