September Surprise: Get ready for it...

by Justin Raimondo
www.antiwar.com

While the rest of the pundits opine about the meaning and implications of Sarah Palin's ascension from small town mayor to prospective vice president – and whether or not her daughter's private life is fair game for any media outlet other than the National Enquirer – those of us whose job it is to stand watch on the ramparts and report the real news are wondering when – not if – the War Party will pull a rabbit out of the proverbial hat. For months, I've been warning in this space that an American attack on Iran is imminent, and now I see that the Dutch have reason to agree with my assessment. Their intelligence service reportedly has pulled out of a covert operation inside Iran on the grounds that a U.S. strike is right around the corner – in "a matter of weeks," according to De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper.

As the story goes, the Dutch had infiltrated the purported Iranian weapons project and were firmly ensconced when they got word that the Americans are about to launch a missile attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. They wisely decided to close down the operation and pull out.

Remember, the Israelis have been threatening to strike on their own for months: what's changed is that now, apparently, the U.S. has caved in to what is a blatant case of blackmail and has agreed to do the job for them.

We haven't heard much about Iran lately, at least compared to the scare headlines of a few months ago, when rumors of war were swirling fast and furious. The Russian "threat" seems to have replaced the Iranian "threat" as the War Party's bogeyman of choice. What we didn't know, however, is that the two focal points are intimately related.

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punditman says...If you were wondering why the Israelis have been messing around in the Caucasus and why they had a thousand Israeli military advisers training Georgia's armed forces and why they were deeply involved in the Georgian army’s preparations to attack and capture the capital of South Ossetia, then this article explains why. And just when you thought the Iran issue was put safely on the back burner...

The Neocons Do Georgia

Humanity's Greatest Enemy?
www.counterpunch.org

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The success of the Bush Regime’s propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

We don’t know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime’s criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises “change” is too intimidated by the neocon’s success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed “Russian invasion” to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

Only this time, the rest of the world didn’t buy it. The many years of lies--9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, “the United States doesn’t torture,” the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated “terrorist plots,” the determined assault on civil liberties--have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

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punditman says...Paul Craig Roberts pulls no punches; he calls it as he sees it.

There's Something Happening Here

What it is, Is exactly clear

by Peacenik

Peacenik wonders whatever happened to the post cold war peace we were all supposed to enjoy. The world is more chaotic now than at any time for decades, with dangerous conflicts wherever one looks.

The conflict in Georgia raged on while George Bush played beach volleyball at the Olympics and Condoleezza Rice was on vacation and nowhere to be seen. Charitably, she was reported to have made some phone calls. Making phone calls is hard work. Heck of a job, George and Condi.

To help Peacenik try to make sense of what is happening, he read some sites that are noted below. The article from Globalresearch highlights an ominous buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf. It's hard to believe that this doesn't have some purpose other than burning tons of fuel while tooling around the Gulf.

The posts from Boomantribune, Slate and Dailykos all try to make sense of the Russia -Georgia conflict. There are lots of issues: an oil and gas pipeline to Europe, accusations of Georgian ethnic cleansing in the pro-Russian territory of Ossetia, Bush's empty promise to the Georgians that they would not stand alone on their path to freedom and democracy, Georgia's imminent joining of NATO and Russia's total lack of respect for, and fear of, the near toothless United States.

And in case we forget the origins of Bush's failed foreign policy, there is a new report out from the Rand Corporation that says the US is all wrong in its approach to fighting the war on terror. Read it all, then you and Peacenik will at least have an inkling as to why the world seems to be going to hell.

Oh yeah, and while you're reading, have CNN on in the background and listen to the warmongers and politicians try to outdo each other in demanding an escalation of the conflict. Peace seems to to be an alien concept in the testosterone driven world of what passes for public discourse. That much is clear.