Today, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack stated that the United States’ position with respect to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is to deescalate the tensions:

We believe that finding a way to deescalate the tensions in the current crisis…is really the way forward to achieve that ultimate goal which everybody agrees upon.

But Joseph Cirincione explained this morning that deescalation works against the goals of neoconservatives. Those who argued strenuously for a preemptive war against Iraq are now clamoring for a deeper regional war against Iran and Syria.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey, who signed his name to a letter addressed to President Clinton in 1998 arguing for the Iraq war, appeared on Fox to make the case against Syria. “I think we ought to execute some air strikes against Syria,” adding, “The last thing we ought to do now is to start talking about cease-fires and the rest.” Watch it.

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President Bush is blocking stem cell research that “could lead to treatments that save millions of lives and improve the quality-of-life for millions more.” In 2001, Bush said of the research: “I laid out the policy I think is right for America. And I’m not going to change my mind.” Indeed, while the facts have changed, Bush’s mind has not.

Today Bush released a statement explaining why he will veto H.R. 810 — the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act — which the Senate will vote on tomorrow. ThinkProgress debunks Bush’s spin:

FACT: GOV’T STEM CELL LINES UNUSABLE: Bush originally justified his position by claiming there were “more than 60” stem cell lines for researchers to work with; now we know that “many if not all of the…lines are now contaminated and unusable” because they were developed using mouse cells.

FACT: PROPOSED ETHICS GUIDELINES STRICTER THAN BUSH’S: The White House statement says that H.R. 810 “advances the proposition that the Nation must choose between science and ethics.” But H.R. 810 actually advances ethical guidelines on stem cell research “tighter than those under the President’s policy, specifically when it comes to requiring the individuals seeking fertility treatment to provide written informed consent when donating their surplus embryos.”

FACT: NO ‘LIFE OR DEATH’ DECISION INVOLVED: Today’s statement claims H.R. 810 “would use Federal taxpayer dollars to support and encourage the destruction of human life for research.” This is wrong on two counts. One, there is already a federal ban on funding for the destruction of human embryos, and H.R. 810 maintains this ban. Two, the embryos funded by H.R. 810 were “created for the purposes of in vitro fertilization…which are spare or in excess of clinical need and in every single case are slated for medical waste.” In other words, the “life or death” decision has already been made — “the donors have decided to discard these embryos and they will be discarded.”

More than a dozen Members of Congress recently “took advantage of a light schedule at the Capitol” and headed to the firing range at the expense of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus. Hundreds of informal lawmaker clubs have sprung up recently, “affiliated with foundations that can raise unlimited amounts of money from special interests…without having to disclose expenses or donations.”

Tony Snow describing President Bush’s reaction upon learning that the microphone was on during his conversation with Tony Blair.

its false story about Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY). Write the Public Editor Byron Calame at public@nytimes.com.

“Federally funded pregnancy resource centers often mislead pregnant teens about the medical risks of abortion, telling investigators who posed as pregnant 17-year-olds that abortion leads to breast cancer, infertility, and mental illness,” a new report by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) shows. “87 percent of the centers reached by investigators provided false or misleading information about abortion.”

Last week President Bush nominated U.S. Army Gen. Bantz Craddock to be NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, the same position formerly held by Gen. Wesley Clark. Craddock currently oversees the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and was formerly chief military assistant to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

While overseeing Guantanamo, Craddock has fiercly defended the prison’s interrogation practices and has been criticized for failing to take action against the abuses there. Some highlights:

Craddock falsely insisted that a “significant number” of detainees at Guantanamo Bay were members of al-Qaeda. In Mar. 2005, Craddock said that a significant number of Guantanamo detainees “are highly trained, dangerous members of al-Qaida, its related terrorist networks, and the former Taliban regime.” In reality, only around eight percent of the detainees fought for al Qaeda and 16 percent for the Taliban.

Craddock refused to reprimand Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller for abuse and torture of detainee Mohammad al-Qahtan. Miller, who “commanded the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and later helped set up U.S. operations at Abu Ghraib, was accused of failing to properly supervise Qahtani’s interrogation plan and was recommended for reprimand by investigators.” Craddock refused to follow the investigators’ recommendation, justifying his decision by saying the interrogation “led to breaking al-Qahtani’s resistance and to solid intelligence gains.”

Craddock joked about the detainee hunger strike, saying the prisoners had “choices” in feeding tube color, flavor of lozenges. In Feb. 2006, Craddock “joked that at least hunger strikers got to choose the color of their feeding tube (yellow was a favorite), and the flavor of the lozenges used to soothe thoats irritated by the feeding tubes. ‘Look, they get choices,’ Craddock said at the time. ‘And that’s part of the problem.’”

The conservative media can’t decide.

In 1996, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser (all later senior officials in the Bush administration) had a plan for how to destroy Hezbollah: Invade Iraq. They wrote a report to the newly elected Likud government in Israel calling for “a clean break” with the policies of negotiating with the Palestinians and trading land for peace.

The problem could be solved “if Israel seized the strategic initiative along it northern borders by engaging Hizballah (sic), Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon.” The key, they said, was to “focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions.” They called for “reestablishing the principle of preemption.” They promised that the successes of these wars could be used to launch campaigns against Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, reshaping “the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly.”

Now, with the U.S. bogged down in Iraq, with Bush losing control of world events, and with the threats to national security growing worse, no one could possibly still believe this plan, could they? Think again. Read more

John McCain graces the cover of Playboy this month. In an interview with the magazine, McCain “admits to being a neocon. ‘In some way I am one, in some ways “” in that the U.S. is the greatest force for good in the world.’”