"Tomorrow at 5 p.m Vali Asr Squere"

Resistance Is Not Futile

The pictures and video coming out of Iran are stunning. Go the Tehran Live Blog for more. Drop a comment in and let them know the whole world is watching.

Iranian Election Blogging: UPDATE (Video Added), UPDATE II, UPDATE III, UPDATE IV

Supporters of the Iranian pro-reform presidential candidate Mir Houssein Mousawi are prortesting in the streets. Andrew Sullivan is doing a good job of updating or you can follow here and here. It's difficult to get accurate information but those are the three best sites I've found so far. Sullivan links to the two sites i gave you so his place may be the best place to follow the action, as it were. There is no way to know if these street protests will actually amount to much but right now its important to let the people of Iran know we are with them.

UPDATE (Video added)

UPDATEII: Laura Rozen's blog has some updated information and links to other blogs and reports.

UPDATE III: The New York Times blog The Lede a comprehensive set of links, videos, and sources for information. What a fantastic job they are doing!

UPDATE IV: Nico Pittney is liveblogging at HuffPo. This entry caught my eye.

6:12 PM ET -- "Deafening." From a reader: "My next door neighbor is an Iranian immigrant who came here in 1977. He just received a SAT phone call from his brother in Tehran who reports that the rooftops of nighttime Tehran are filled with people shouting 'Allah O Akbar' in protest of the government and election results. The last time he remembers this happening is in 1979 during the Revolution. Says the sound of tens of thousands on the rooftops is deafening right now." It's almost four in the morning in Iran.

Abolish the Company

Hitch makes a rational case that the Company has been at the center of most major intelligence failures since it inception.

Despite a string of exposures going back all the way to the Church Commission, the CIA cannot rid itself of the impression that it has the right to subvert the democratic process both abroad and at home. Its criminality and arrogance could perhaps have been partially excused if it had ever got anything right, but, from predicting the indefinite survival of the Soviet Union to denying that Saddam Hussein was going to invade Kuwait, our spymasters have a Clouseau-like record, one that they have earned yet again with their exculpation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He also makes a judicious and convincing case for the abolition of the CIA.

It was after the grotesque estimate of continued Soviet health and prosperity that the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued that the CIA should be abolished. It is high time for his proposal to be revived. The system is worse than useless—it's a positive menace. We need to shut the whole thing down and start again.

I don't know what we would replace it with, but a complete rethinking of our civilian intelligence gathering operations is certainly in order.

Iran from the Bush

More disturbing words out of the former Cheerleader's mouth:

Bush's latest warning about Iran's nuclear ambitions came in a broad defense of his security policies at the National Defense University. He said intelligence estimates show that Iran could have the capability to strike the United States and many European allies by 2015.

"The need for missile defense in Europe is real, and I believe it's urgent," Bush said.