@MrWebster Israel just needs to do what it's done successfully in the past -- start a war, be in danger of losing, and big brother America will rush in to save their bacon.

I have a feeling that the situation in the ME will slowly careen out of control given Trump's unpredictability, his advisers, his cabinet choices, and siding with Israeli right wingers. I was hoping he might actually follow up on some of his isolationist tendencies and just back off. The Israelis also want to take out Assad. Today Halley did a "Samantha Power" on the Russians at the UN accusing them of escalating the fighting in the Ukraine. But from the sources I read, it was apparent that Kiev is the once escalating which over time is very typical of them--with the western press going along with it as an evil Putin ploy.

@Pricknick

The US PTB's War Against The World will logically cause any countries having any leadership with the instinct of self-preservation to band together in self-defense against being invaded/attacked/economically captured/nuked one by one or several at a time - some of these delusional idiots apparently think they can leave North America to be vaporized in nuclear attacks against multiple countries and somehow themselves escape not only radiation but global dimming, perhaps On The Beach, in New Zealand. Others believe they can achieve immortality and somehow escape the hell they plan to create in Virtual Reality. At least as long as power supplies hold out...

I see no reason why the rest of us should let them go any further unopposed.

Hopefully the spread will continue of people protesting in whatever pacific manner they can, increasing boycotts and divestment, en masse - not supporting corporate abusers either tacitly or with purchase of any avoidable products or services. But it may yet come down to our own militaries having to come home to fight for their own people in their own home country against corporate mercenaries, corrupted civil forces and what currently passes for our own governments... I used to laugh at the right wing for such concerns and the irony lies heavy on my toes.

is how many are praying for the ultimate war so as to be lifted into their dogs loving arms.
I really wonder how long it's going to take for countries around the world to start isolating this country. Iran is smart to change their primary financial currency. The dollar could well be worth little in a short time if certain countries follow suit.
Thanks gjohn.

@Not Henry Kissinger

but oil and war profits I guess.

Maybe somebody should ask General Van Riper what he thinks about the risks:

Van Riper decided that as soon as a U.S. Navy carrier battle group steamed into the Gulf, he would “preempt the preemptors” and strike first. Once U.S. forces were within range, Van Riper’s forces unleashed a barrage of missiles from ground-based launchers, commercial ships, and planes flying low and without radio communications to reduce their radar signature. Simultaneously, swarms of speedboats loaded with explosives launched kamikaze attacks. The carrier battle group’s Aegis radar system — which tracks and attempts to intercept incoming missiles — was quickly overwhelmed, and 19 U.S. ships were sunk, including the carrier, several cruisers, and five amphibious ships. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes,” Van Riper said.

The red team had struck a devastating blow against the blue team. The impact of the OPFOR’s ability to render a U.S. carrier battle group — the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy — militarily worthless stunned most of the MC ’02 participants. Van Riper described the mood as “an eerie silence. Like people didn’t really know what to do next.” Blue team leader Bell admitted that the OPFOR had “sunk my damn navy,” and had inflicted “an extremely high rate of attrition, and a disaster, from which we all learned a great lesson.”

Luckily, that time it was only a war game.

@Not Henry Kissinger about our military's hubris and stacking the deck. When Iran participates as the real "Red Team", they will definitely not be compelled to follow the Pentagon's self-delusional script. To paraphrase a much later military thinker: "the first victim of war is sanity".

Maybe somebody should ask General Van Riper what he thinks about the risks:

Van Riper decided that as soon as a U.S. Navy carrier battle group steamed into the Gulf, he would “preempt the preemptors” and strike first. Once U.S. forces were within range, Van Riper’s forces unleashed a barrage of missiles from ground-based launchers, commercial ships, and planes flying low and without radio communications to reduce their radar signature. Simultaneously, swarms of speedboats loaded with explosives launched kamikaze attacks. The carrier battle group’s Aegis radar system — which tracks and attempts to intercept incoming missiles — was quickly overwhelmed, and 19 U.S. ships were sunk, including the carrier, several cruisers, and five amphibious ships. “The whole thing was over in five, maybe ten minutes,” Van Riper said.

The red team had struck a devastating blow against the blue team. The impact of the OPFOR’s ability to render a U.S. carrier battle group — the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy — militarily worthless stunned most of the MC ’02 participants. Van Riper described the mood as “an eerie silence. Like people didn’t really know what to do next.” Blue team leader Bell admitted that the OPFOR had “sunk my damn navy,” and had inflicted “an extremely high rate of attrition, and a disaster, from which we all learned a great lesson.”

Luckily, that time it was only a war game.

@ZimInSeattle
as he usually is. Trump seems to be setting mutually contradictory goals for his FP team. But he's such a blabbermouth and braggart that it's hard to take him at his word. How much of his shtick is bluff, and how much is actual threat? Attacking Iran would be an utter disaster - for all involved, including Trump himself. Could he really be that blindly stupid?

Add to that statement the upsurge of violence in eastern Ukraine, most probably intentionally provoked by Kiev, and a botched U.S. military operation in Yemen that killed a Navy Seal, 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki and “numerous” civilians, and one might conclude that the combination of events are just too much of a coincidence.

Paul Craig Roberts further suggests that “the military/security complex is using its puppets-on-a-string in the House and Senate to generate renewed conflict with Iran, and to continue threats against China” to put a spoke in Trump’s wheel:

“Trump cannot simultaneously make peace with Russia and make war on Iran and China. The Russian government is not stupid. It will not sell out China and Iran for a deal with the West. Iran is a buffer against jihadism spilling into Muslim populations in the Russian Federation. China is Russia’s most important military and economic strategic ally against a renewal of US hostility toward Russia by Trump’s successor, assuming Trump succeeds in reducing US/Russian tensions. The neoconservatives with their agenda of US world hegemony and their alliance with the military-security complex, will outlast the Trump administration” [… and Russia knows this].

~snip~

The question rather is whether Trump – in his choice of certain senior posts (i.e. that of General Flynn) – inadvertently, has laid himself open himself to manipulation by his Deep State enemies who are determined to torpedo détente with Russia.

Professor Walter Russell Mead in a recent Foreign Affairs article underlines just how deeply contrarian is Trump’s foreign policy. It runs directly counter to the two principal schools of U.S. policy thinking since WW2 (the Hamiltonians and the Wilsonians), who “both focused on achieving a stable international system with the United States as “the gyroscope of world order.” It is, as Walter Russell Mead describes it, a cultural legacy that is deeply embedded in the American psyche. It is doubtful whether Generals Mattis and Flynn, or others in the team, fully appreciate or endorse the full scope of Trump’s intended revolution. True belief, perhaps, is confined to a small circle around the President, led by Steve Bannon.

In any event, whether by external design or “inadvertent” happenstance, President Trump has two key members of his team, Flynn and Mattis, who are explicit belligerents towards Iran (see here on Mattis on Iran. It is however, less extreme, than the explicit manicheanism of Flynn).

Paul Craig Roberts says that “Trump cannot simultaneously make peace with Russia and make war on Iran and China.” That is true. But neither can Trump pursue his war on Islamic radicalism – the principal plank of his foreign policy platform – and in parallel, pursue a Flynn-esque antagonism towards Iran.

Trump will not co-opt Russia as an “aerial bombing” partner in such a regional war, while America is simultaneously attacking the only “boots-on-the-ground” security architecture that now exists in the Middle East capable of confronting Takfiri jihadism: the Syrian, Iranian, Hashad al-Shaabi and Hezbullah armed forces. There is none other.

More here: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/02/02/trump-veers-off-course-with-iran-threats/

@gjohnsit anonymous individuals have allegedly confirmed leaked information by highly placed sources that Yemeni troops landed in Alabama. They thus pose a clear and present danger to Amurikkka. We must protect out women and children and defend our national honor by slaughtering as many Yemenis as we can.

link

The Yemeni officials say that warships off the coast, believed to be American ships, fired a salvo of missiles at the al-Maraqisha Mountains, noting that the mountains are a key stronghold of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The Pentagon has been playing up their naval presence in the region lately, saying the US Navy is prepared to assist Saudi warships off the coast of Yemen in the ongoing civil war. This likely added to the assumption that the ships doing the firing were American ships, along with the fact that no one else in the area has much in the way of advanced ships capable of such strikes.

@CB Brookings Institute's plan and how it relates to the Iran "deal" for quite some time now. I've written about it a few times including during Trump's campaign when he used the Iran deal in his rants, saying we should have got a better deal, etc. That showed clearly he was going to follow the same imperialist/Zionist/neocon script on Iran because the Iran "deal" has always been a fake thing. Why Iran and Russia even played is a bit perplexing.
Yes, Trump and his regime are not going to bring peace on earth, the stuff about non-intervention, no regime changes, no meddling, etc., was just bullshit lies.

Trump's National Security Adviser Puts Iran "On Notice;" Foreshadowing Of War
...
Cartalucci writes, “Meanwhile, the political climate in the West has been so expertly manipulated that the public is either so distracted with identity politics that they are unaware and unconcerned with the prospect of war with Iran, or so hysterical over "Islam" that any nation perceived as being Muslim is seen as justifiably a target of US military aggression - regardless of how divergent any of these alternate realities are from actual reality.”

In the past, it was assumed that, with a Republican President, the American people get a new war and an anti-war movement but, with a Democrat, Americans just get a new war. While many in the real anti-war community have expected anti-war protesters to pop up out of the blue with the election of a Republican President, this time might be different. This time, American “leftist” protesters are so concerned with continuing abortions, sex changes, and racial identity that they are less likely to find the time to protest wars overseas, even if it is an attempt to be trendy as opposed to a real moral conviction. The right-wing, however, never seeing a war it didn’t like and already so radicalized against “Islam” and Iran, will be primed to support the war effort in full.

Flynn’s warning represents two possibilities. At best, Trump has no control over his own military. At worst, the Trump administration is nothing but a clear continuation of the Obama and Bush regime’s agenda of Anglo-American world hegemony. Judging by Trump’s appointments to cabinet positions, we are not hopeful. Unfortunately, judging by today’s threats, we are also not filled with hope in our desire for peace and reason to prevail.