Iran Developments...

UPI is on target with a good summary on the War Rollout,

By DAVID ISENBERG
UPI Outside View Commentator
WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) -- White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card once famously said of the administration’s 2002 campaign to get support for the invasion of Iraq, ''From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.''

Now August is behind us, and -- right on schedule -- marketers both in the White House and among their supporters outside are rolling out their newest product, a public relations blitz urging a U.S. military adventure in Iran.

Michael Scheuer, Former head of the bin Laden unit at the CIA writes about the "threat" Iran poses:

And then there is Iran. How does one explain the U.S. governing elite's fear of Iran? Here we have a country that admittedly is led by one of the world's more histrionic politicians, but one that also is ringed by U.S. military bases and surrounded by an overwhelmingly more numerous Sunni world that hates Shi'ites far more than it hates Westerners. Iran‘s Islamic regime, moreover, is helplessly watching the final stages of the march of its energy resources toward oblivion, and preparing for the impoverishment and resulting internal political instability that event will usher in.

So where in this portrait is the threat to the United States? While Iran is a threat to Israel, there is surely no threat to America in Iran's less-than-impressive military forces, nuclear development program, or unattractive public diplomacy. No, the threat to the United States comes from two sources. First, the relentless "Iran is the new Nazi Germany" propaganda pushed by Israel and the American citizen Israel-firsters, and, second, the multi-decade failure of the U.S. Congress to seriously address the national-security issues of energy, borders, and immigration.

As in the case of Syria – although for fewer years because Iran's previous tyrant was on America's side until the Mullahs seized power in 1979 – most American adults have grown up with the idea that Iran is a dire threat to U.S. national security. Sparked mainly by memories of the U.S. embassy hostages held for 400-plus days while President Carter diddled, Americans have been ripe for the delusions induced by the periodic visits of Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, and their well-staged rants that equate the creaky, mostly foreign-purchased, and slightly more than tin-pot military machine of the Ayatollahs with Hitler's Wehrmacht, the product of an extremely modern industrial economy, a united populace ready for revenge against its conquerors, and the Germans' apparently genetic talent and taste for war. To say that Netanyahu, other Israeli politicians, and their American Israel-first supporters are being disingenuous in pushing the Iranian threat would be incorrect. They are consistently and blatantly lying.

No, the threat to the United States from Iran is not military, it is rather from America‘s most dangerous home-grown terrorists – the U.S. Congress. Iran threatens America economically because it has the capability to disrupt oil production in Saudi Arabia's Eastern province. Such an Iranian effort would be a casus belli for the United States only because the U.S. Congress has done nothing more substantial than advance Daylight Savings Time by three weeks since the Saudi-led embargoes of the 1970s. Thirty-five years of the Congress' utter failure to address energy security as a top priority national interest has made Iran a threat to America that it otherwise could not be.

MSNBC spewing more Propaganda,

Digby follows up on the Nuclear weapons story,

Shock and Awe:The Iran propaganda edition (updated)

via Raw Story, read more here,

A national security expert revealed to The London Times that the Pentagon has "drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days." Speaking at a meeting organized by the conservative foreign policy journal The National Interest, Alexis Debat -- director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center -- said the U.S. military had concluded: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same."

Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

continue reading original article...

If the Israelis attack, it will be viewed by the Iranians as well as the one billion Muslims of the world as in overt attack by United States (by proxy) on a third Muslim country, which did not attack it.

The consequences will be catastrophic.


UPDATE from Newshoggers,

The Iran-War Product Rollout Begins Abroad

By Cernig

The Bush administration and their neocon enablers aren't waiting until Labor Day to begin their full-court press for war with Iran. They've already begun the roll-out in the UK press, from where internet pundits can import the propaganda back to the U.S.

It's a tactic which has been used successfully by the Bush administration in the past and even one they can legally use military and intelligence agancy expertise in psyops to facillitate. There's no law against using federal agencies to craft and then help plant stories in the foreign media, and the borderless nature of blogs and websites ensures that the messaging is catapulted here in America in turn.

Tomorrow, both of the neocon-friendly UK broadsheets have articles based entirely on messaging from neocon think-tanks.

Must Read of the day

Ray McGovern on why it's happening again.

It is as though I'm back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be our own president.

So our former colleague, operations officer par excellence Robert Baer, reports (in this week's Time) that, according to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran, that Bush's plan to put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike, and that delusional "neoconservative" thinking that still guides White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and rise of a more friendly Iran.

Hold on, it gets even worse: Baer's sources tell him that administration officials are thinking that "as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities."

Prelude to an Attack on Iran

TIME mags Robert Baer, CIA,

Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to democratic and a friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.

And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this administration. There will be an attack on Iran."

Iran -- attack imminent?

I have compiled a collection of writings and research by those who know more than me and it persuades me to think that an attack on Iran has already been decided upon by this president. See and decide yourself.

• The long build up and a timeline.
  

• Think Progress links to an article in GQ where Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska states that in 2002, the original war resolution in Iraq was to cover the entire Middle East according to the wishes of the White House. Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative advocate of the Iraq war and person influential in this administration has "very little doubt" that the president would order "necessary" action.
  

• Seymour Hersh asks if Bush would attack Iran in order to prevent it from acquiring nuclear technology and weapons. In the early 2006 New Yorker article, he talks to military planners and White House insiders who shed light on the seriousness of the planning at that time. The use of low yield nuclear weapons is discussed.
  

• Glenn Greenwald discusses the legal justification of the President committing such an action. (be sure to check his other posts as well)

• The Prewar Build up. YOU WILL NOT SEE THIS ON CNN!
  

• Troops are authorized to kill Iranian agents in Iraq.

• Bush authorizes raid on Iranian consulate, technically sovereign land belonging to Iran.

• Other involved parties -- Syria, Israel, and a regional war?

• How the Iran war might begin from an interesting perspective... a Saudi journalist.

• Keith Olbermann on Familiar rhetoric from the pre-Iraq war build up.

• Lies trumpeted alleging Iranian involvement in the killing of US troops. (Does this sound familiar? Gulf of Tonkin incident?)
  

• More compelling commentary here and here and here and here and here.
  

If you feel like you need to do something you can contact your senator here. Anyone have other ideas how one can prevent this insanity?


UPDATE

Global banking firm ING issues report to their investors warning of strike against Iran.

ING's Robertson admitted that an attack on Iran was "high impact, if low probability," but explained some of the reasons why a strike might go forward. The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as "not prepared to accept the same doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that kept the peace during the Cold War. Israel is adamant that this is not an option for such a geographically small country....So if Israel is convinced Iran is aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, it must presumably act at some point."