I wonder how much the last bullet has to do with the all the others:

• The unending spy drama in Lebanon
• The farcical Hariri Tribunal 
• Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah's 7/16 and  7/22 speeches
• The Sayyed's upcoming 8/3 speech  (he is supposed to tell everyone everything they have found out about the spy ring?)
• Then, the day after the Sayyed's 7/22 speech, the Saudis announced they were flying to Lebanon
• Ahmadinejad was talking today about having proof that the U.S./Israel plan to attack two Middle Eastern countries in the next few months.

Iran and Lebanon or Iran and Gaza? Probably not Iran and Syria. Does everyone else feel pre-war uneasiness around here?  The news these past few weeks has been particularly grim, aside from the more macabre everyday stuff that Israel does to the Palestinians, there has also been a not so subtle undercurrent of impending war.  I wonder how big Israel will have to lose before they realize that they are never going to win against Hezbollah.

Unfortunately, too many Lebanese will die in the process of us finding out.  But, certainly Israel knows that since they last foolishly waged war on Lebanon, Hezbollah has been amassing more self-defense weapons and getting more training. I don't think Israel cares.  A victory to them doesn't have to mean anything more than a high civilian casualty rate.

Article from Mondoweiss read more here

TEHRAN - Iran expects the United States to launch a military strike on "at least two countries" in the Middle East in the next three months, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told state-run Press TV.

In an interview recorded on Monday, Ahmadinejad did not specify whether he thought Iran itself would be attacked nor did he say what intelligence led him to expect such a move.

The United States and Israel have refused to rule out military action against Iran's nuclear program which they fear could lead to it making a bomb, something Iran denies.

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This powerful and appalling account of some the consequences of Operation Iraqi Freedom hasn’t gotten much attention yet, but the facts it records belong on American news screens. The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn describes the Iraqi city of Fallujah six years after the Marine assault. US forces surrounded Fallujah and pounded it with artillery, much of it apparently uranium enriched explosives. Six years later, the health consequences are dramatic, comparable to Hiroshima, according to an international team of researchers which has compiled and studied the data. A dramatic rise in infant mortality, birth defects and childhood cancers, striking increases in leukemia and lymphoma. Operation Iraqi Freedom will apparently be a gift to the Iraqi people that keeps on giving.

Childhood cancers and birth defects evoke particularly strong emotions. In fact they were one of the “talking points” brought up by those who sold the Iraq war. In 2002, Jeffrey Goldberg, back from his volunteer stint in the Israeli Army, regaled Slate readers and CNN viewers with accounts of Saddam’s “weaponized aflatoxin” whose “only value is to cause liver cancer, primarily in children.” Goldberg was spinning of course—Saddam had developed no weaponized aflatoxin-- but he recognized that childhood cancer was a heart-wrenching way to goad Americans to back an invasion of Iraq. He got the invasion he wanted, and the Iraqis have their childhood cancers. If Goldberg has his way, we can only imagine what will be visited on Iranian children. 

Other Americans will read the reports from Fallujah and, as Jefferson said, tremble for their country when they reflect that God is just.

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Expressing support for the State of Israel's right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel.

Of course no such concern for the sovereign of Iran, or the protection of its civilians. The bill explicitly expresses support for an Israeli attack on Iran:

(4) expresses support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran, defend Israeli sovereignty, and protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within a reasonable time.

It was supported by 46 Congressmen, mostly Republicans I believe.

Meanwhile, there's also a bill supporting democracy in Egypt [link corrected], introduced by Russ Feingold and supported by John McCain. It makes general commitments to democracy and calls for greater democracy, free elections, repeal of the emergency law and other issues, but does not introduce any idea of conditionality in the relationship. In fact the only different thing it advocates from what is currently being practiced is:

(7) recalls that pursuant to the laws of the United States, organizations implementing United States assistance for democracy and governance activities, and the specific nature of that assistance, shall not be subject to the prior approval of the Government of Egypt.

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Remember all the folks who denied that there was any meaningful Israel agenda in the push for war with Iraq? Well here are Jim Lobe and Eli Clifton at lobelog covering the rollout of the neoconservative Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been getting so much mainstream media attention:

Some things are just too good to be true.

It seems that the new Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) is based out of the same office as the old Committee for the Liberation of Iraq (CLI), suggesting that, Yes, Virginia, the same people who led the march to war in Iraq are behind the new Emergency Committee, which, in its very brief existence to date, has attracted a lot of mostly critical attention in the blogosphere.

The link, Clifton shows, is to Randy Scheunemann, the man who schooled Sarah Palin in pro-Israel foreign policy as she was being rolled out two years ago. When will this network be exposed by the mainstream media? Before an attack on Iran, I pray.

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Important post from Eli Clifton on the neoconservative echo chamber pushing for war with Iran. Why isn't Chris Matthews or Rachel Maddow putting Clifton on air? Do we really want another disastrous American war in the Middle East? Excerpts:

No sooner did I write about the growth industry in astroturf groups promoting a U.S. or Israeli military attack on Iran than a new one sprung up on CNN. ..

The new group, The Emergency Committee for Israel, appears to have made its public debut on July 6 when Campbell Brown—who ironically is married to Dan Senor, who serves on the four-man board of the neoconservative The Foreign Policy Initiative—hosted Noah Pollak, its “executive director,” to discuss Obama’s recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the threat allegedly posed by Iran’s nuclear program.  A transcript of their discussion can be found here.

...Pollak, who writes for Commentary Magazine and has served as the assistant editor of the Jerusalem-based, Shalem Center’s Azure magazine,...repeated the talking points that the recent meeting  between Obama and Netanyahu represented the end of the White House’s “tough love” toward Israel and suggested that the Palestinian leadership’s “fractiousness and powerlessness [!]” made progress toward any kind of peace process unlikely.

On Iran, Pollak went straight for the recent money quote delivered last week by the UAE ambassador to the US:

BROWN: Noah, Netanyahu did seem pleased with the administration’s efforts to go after Iran’s nuclear program. In his words, he said these efforts have teeth, they bite. But are the U.S. and Israel really, in your view, on the same page when it comes to Iran?

POLLAK: I would suspect not, although this is one of those issues where there is a huge amount of private discussion that goes on, although it was very interesting to see today in a story that just came out the ambassador of to [sic] the UAE came out and openly advocated for military attacks on the Iranian nuclear program.

So, I think there is a developing consensus that something needs to be done and that it would be very, very bad if the Iranians went nuclear.

The UAE foreign minister has said that the ambassador’s comments were taken out of context and didn’t represent the views of his government, but that hasn’t stopped various foreign policy hawks from jumping on the remarks as a green light from the Arab world for a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It’s pretty clear that Pollak and Hoover, along with the people behind Keep Israel Safe and Stop Iran Now, are part of the extensive neoconservative echo chamber which seeks to create the appearance of a diverse coalition of grassroots groups calling on the US to prevent Iran from going nuclear by any means necessary.

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WASHINGTON - "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," explained then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card back in September 2002, in answer to queries about why the administration of George W. Bush had not launched its campaign to rally public opinion behind invading Iraq earlier in the summer.

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In Fadlallah, one had a spiritual leader for millions of Shias who was neither an ultra-conservative nor an apologist for autocracy. He was the only Shia figure with the authority not only to counter the Vilayet al-Faqih doctrine now dominant (and state-endorsed) in Iran, but also the political quietism and all-out conservatism of Iraq's Sistani. Yes, he was a political radical by the standards of of American hegemony in the region — he opposed occupations, backed armed action against occupiers include suicide bombings — but in some respects at least preferable to the alternative religious leaders in the region. He was not simply "Hizbullah's spirtual leader" as so many American journalists, and the American government, apparently continue to consider him as, despite the obvious fact that Hizbullah's leadership looks to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatolah Khameini.

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Does this sound familiar? Here's neoconservative Eli Lake, writing in the Washington Times:

The United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the benefits of bombing Iran's nuclear program outweigh the short-term costs such an attack would impose.

The UAE has denied that its ambassador made such a statement. Does it even matter? Here is Joe Lieberman in Israel, in Jerusalem Post:

The US will address the Iranian threat "through diplomatic efforts and economic sanctions if we can, but through military action if we must," said Lieberman.

Where are Judy Miller and Jeff Goldberg and the New Yorker and Brookings? Bill Keller of the Times? Your country needs you, Keller.

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After reading Glenn Greenwald's scathing rebuke several days ago, Jeffrey Goldberg composed himself enough to respond by inviting Greenwald to visit Iraqi Kurdistan, and let the rest of us know who is in his rolodex:

"As it happens, I was e-mailing yesterday with the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Barham Salih, and I mentioned Greenwald's critique."

Israel has systematically lost its friends at the periphery--Iran, Ethiopia and now Turkey. Its adventures and attempts at kingmaking in Lebanon ended with tens of thousands of civilians killed, the Maronites politically emasculated, a decades-long occupation and war which traumatized its army, the politicization and militarization of the Lebanese Shi'ite community and the emergence of Hizbullah. Very recent history has shown Israel's supporters in the US reacting against Turkey with the hurt and anger of a scorned lover: Goldberg himself stated with perverse glee

"I hope to be blogging more about Turkey's disgraceful treatment of its Kurdish citizens!"

Mark Arax, among others, has documented the shameful, transparently expedient, volte face that the Israel Lobby took on the issue of the Armenian Genocide post-Flotilla.

One wonders how long this Kurdish-Zionist connection will last. When it does collapse, will Goldberg suddenly look forward to blogging about the treatment of Christian minorities by Kurds in Turkey (which is not good)?  Or will other Zionist apologists suddenly discover that it was Kurds who did much of the actual killing on the ground in the Armenian Genocide and not Turks?  

One wonders.

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