war with iran, a christmas story

don via email:

If you haven't already seen this, in response to the Lanny Davis WSJ op-ed relying on comments cherry picked to paint Left Blogecticut raging-loonie-red, Kevin Drum introduced a law (a la Godwin's or Murphy's) in response to writers who have to trawl through comments to find grist for their arguments and requested possible names for those miserable souls who do so. The winning suggestion, and thus the term for the lowly creatures (announced here) is nutpicker. Initially "Kevin's Law" (which sounds, as suggested by a Balloon Juice commenter, "like it’s a response to an abducted toddler."), it has formally been declared Drum's Law:

“If you’re forced to rely on random blog commenters to make a point about the prevalence of some form or another of disagreeable behavior, you’ve pretty much made exactly the opposite point.”

Which I think just about says it all.

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and it's probably a useful (i'm kidding) segue into this comment by damien

Now for my main rant...Warning! Warning! Serious Tinfoil Alert!

Alex Jones has gone to the top in his terror call: "Today's [US] red level terror alert in symbiosis with escalation of conflict in the Middle East is the trial balloon for a massive staged false flag terror attack, blamed on Hezbollah or Al-Qaeda, that will light the blue touch paper for World War Three."

I AGREE COMPLETELY.

I will be very relieved to be proven wrong and called a fool on this, but Jones vigorously warned of the 9/11 attacks about a month before they actually occured - and named the Bush team as behind it. We have Larissa and Sy Hersh (also here) both pointing to an October attack against Iran. Scott Ritter agrees (he's spoken to Bolton’s speechwriter; the UN speech denouncing Iran has already been written).

There is the expanding Israeli action in Lebanon, with Condi defeated by GW on any peace deal with Lebanon (turned down by the same guy who didn't know there was a difference between shia and sunni when he invaded Iraq).

You don't move aircraft carriers to the Middle East unless you intend to use the.

We know a number of previous US terror alerts have been suspicious, some almost certainly faked. (link) (link)

So people have my full permission to rub it in my face and call me 'fool' every day in ten different ways if I'm wrong. And tell me to get back on my meds. But I'm buying every bit of the Alex Jones. Look for a new, and deadly, 'October Surprise'.

Follow these terror alerts closely, folks. And read back over those earlier ones.

I DON'T TRUST THESE CRIMINALS.

(Damien's un-main rant is here)

I agree with everything Damien has to say - and i dont need alex jones to tell me - nor sy hersh or larisa. the minute that israel hit lebanon i wrote:

* lebanon. jeebus.

syria next?

or take this post from dec o4 (when i had a much smaller audience and used shorthand they were all familiar with - so it wasnt as incoherent as it sounds today)

iran - my concerns about iran are well (or badly) documented. unfortunately iran looks like iraq redux - it is almost beyond belief that the ams are using the exact same script - i guess it worked sufficiently well last time - at least in getting 'us' *into* iraq, if nothing else. bolton and feith and leeden and pletka and these guys seem, extraordinarily, to have as much power as they did 12 months ago - and their plans are in plain view for all to see. c.powell is shamelessly whoring himself, even on the way out, quoting 'walk-in' intelligence and dodgy satellite pix and listening to terrorist orgs like the mek to garner support. meanwhile the ams have sold 500 'bunkerbusting' bombs (nukes) to the israelis, and are conducting iran-invasion war-games and such-like. the oft-touted plan is to conduct 'surgical' air strikes - blowing up the nuke plants and then leaving. one problem with that is that they might hurt a bunch of iranians along the way... the idea of a ground invasion seems logistically near impossible.

the logic basis for attacking iran seems to be that 'we cant let em have nuke weapons - cos then they'll atack us - therefore we need to strike pre-emptively' - the problem with that logic seems to be that the iranians dont really have any nuke weapon program, and even if they did its not obvious why they'd use it, and even if they had a nukeweapon program and it got blown up, it would only take 2-3 years to rebuild it anyway - so its not exactly obvious what would be achieved.

the jihadmin are at least trying to get some pretense of legal cover for the attack - which is why they hate the uk/fr/ger efforts to get a deal - bolton wants iran taken to the sec.council to get some sort of trigger, it seems they will then use whatever wording the SC comes up with and find a way to bend that so that 43 (Blinky) can then (pretend to) say 'we were enforcing the will of the UN' - remember the 'serious consequences' nonsense re iraq? remember the 1441 nonsense 'saddam refused to disarm' and saddams 12000 pg documentation of the disarming which the ams intercepted b4 the UN could see it, after it was heavily redacted?

meanwhile of course, the jihadmin are dual-tracking the process - looking for some pretense of UN cover while simultaneously underming the UN and the iaea - trashing kofi and elbaradei. they are spying on elbaradei, looking for snippets of any tapped phonecalls to the iranians to undermine him, one imagines that any comment taken outta context or whatever could provide them with the cover they think they need and use that as a trigger. and the third track is the israelis making noises about the irans hidden program, outside the purview of the program that the iaea is monitoring.

the cool thing about the wargaming wrt the iranians is that wargames were also conducted in advance of the iraqi invasion - except the egadmin ignored the fact that they 'lost' the wargames - and proceeded anyway. one imagines that the iranians are also conducting their own games - and they might not respond exactly the way they are 'sposed' to. and one expects they might get all extra-territorial in their response - and that could get messy.

the nice thing about the fact that it wouldnt make sense for the iranians to use a nuke other than in defense is the eternal canard that 'they might give weapons to terrorists' - which is of course difficult to counter - regardless of whether it makes any sense or not. the terrorists are coming. the terrorists are coming. the terrorists are coming. the terrorists are coming.

the good news for the iranians is that the oil price means that they are swimming in money which has meant that their ability to finance the military has gone thru the roof.

syria - the noise re syria hasnt quietened down any either. twas nice to see stoopid 43 (Blinky) suggesting that its unhelpful that syria and iran are meddling in iraq - what with it being a sovereign country and all. we also keep hearing this stupid noise about foreign insurgents in iraq coming across the border from syria and iran - and the safe haven nonsense - parently that means that syria/iran are guilty/complicit of all the bad things in iraq - and they should do more to close the borders and all these other impossible demands (and impossible to prove) - all providing a pretext for extra-sovereign actions, whenever such pretexts are required.

I share Damien's concerns (aka these people scare the bejeebus outta me) - i've been saying the same thing for years - well before the dec04 post i quote above.

i recently chided sidney blumethal for saying:

"By using NSA intelligence to set an invisible tripwire, the Bush administration is laying the condition for regional conflagration with untold consequences -- from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Israel. Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot"

as i said:

"blumenthal sounds like a complete loon. except everything he says is exactly as we know it to be (apart from his use of the word 'secret' in the penultimate sentence.)"

or as i said laconically last week:

" there sure is a whole lotta 'Clean Break' talk about these days. it's almost as though some crazy people actually think that the Lebanon invasion was part of a plan, and are scared of what else is in store."

larisa is right - there aren't many people who have been following this story apart from her and sy hersh - and emptywheel has also been telling the story in the background.

but the story has been obvious for years - you could go back through my 2003 (2002?) archives and 'know' this was going to happen.

i cant lay my hands on it at the moment - but i wrote about this at the time. my family has a tradition of 'hiding' coins in the christmas pudding - in 2002 or 2003 i decided to fuck with tradition and instead of putting coins in the pudding - we each got a 'chit' - each with a different country - iran, syria, venezuela - and the hope was that we could use the same chit again in subsequent years (i.e. that the country hadnt been nuked to the stoneages (and no, dont ever invite me over for xmas dinner))

as it turns out, Larisa had the same idea, as we discussed in the interview. the neocon war(s) were supposed to keep rolling after the iraq invasion - but for one reason or other, the neocons got stuck in iraq. larisa thinks that there was some double-crossing - and all of a sudden nobody knew whether chalabi was a friend or foe, and/or whether ghorbanifar/chalabi were iranian agents etc.

in any case, we are where we are today. i share the concerns of damien (and josh and billmon and others) about whether the london 'plot' is legitmate or not. and independently, i also share larisa's concern that 'we' already have a trigger for a new war with iran.

and as we say in australia, it scares the shit outta me.