War! The fear mongering is here, again!

Early on Friday, Iranian TV broadcast images of Ayatollah Khamenei casting his vote in the capital, Tehran. He said it was a "duty and a right'' for Iranians to vote."Because of the controversies over Iran and increased verbal threats the more people come to the polling stations the better for the country,'' the ayatollah said. "The vote always carries a message for our friends and our enemies.''

More than 48 million people are eligible to take part in the vote, which is taking place at about 47,000 polling stations.

But correspondents say even some of President Ahmadinejad's supporters are quietly calling for voters to stay away from the polls.

You're "nope" is never the right answer, it is always a denial of anything which contradicts your ideology. You place reactionary ideology over truth, and do so habitually.

Mr Obama re-iterated that "a military component" for dealing with Iran remained an option, as well as sanctions and diplomacy, but warned that a premature attack on Iran might be counterproductive.

"At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally [Syria] is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as a victim?"

When everything is kicking off over there it's reassuring
to have a level headed man in the White house.

You'd fear Israel if you were one of its neighbours.

While Saddam was lobbing Scud missiles at Israel during the first Gulf War,

The CIA and the Gulf War
by John Stockwell

...

Peeling back the layers of untruth in the rationales of this war, how many people have seen Ralph Schoenman's article, unfortunately published in an obscure paper in Berkeley [California] called The Socialist Action? This is a renowned intellectual who worked with Bertrand Russell at one time. And [there is] Charlie Reese, reporting in the Houston Post down there. And now we have the studies coming out with excellent documentation: how the United States and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia LURED Saddam Hussein and Iraq into this war.

First, we encouraged them to engage Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, beginning in 1980, for eight years. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia financed that war, encouraging Iraq in that war. They ran up an eighty- billion-dollar debt. After the war, the country [Iraq] [ was] in [a] very precarious economic condition. They [Kuwait] began calling in the money and they began driving down the oil prices so that Iraq had lost sixteen billion dollars in revenues, and they were faced with bankruptcy. There's also the factor that Saddam Hussein, with his massive testosterone problem, was building up his army again, instead of building up the infrastructure of the country.

Nevertheless, during that war, Kuwait had actually expanded its floating desert border by nine hundred square miles to reach over the Rumaila oil fields that belonged to Iraq, and they bought the Santa Fe Drilling Company of California, for 2.3 billion dollars, that specializes in slant oil drilling. And Saddam Hussein was protesting this formally to every public body: to Kuwait, to Saudi Arabia, saying: "This is economic warfare." And I submit to you: How long do you think it would take us to respond with the U.S. Marines if Mexico or Canada captured, took, nine hundred square miles of our land and began slant oil drilling into our oil fields? Like about twenty-four hours for them to get the tanks and the planes down there, bombing and strafing! We would be at war in a minute! This was a clear provocation to war!

So this past summer, Saddam Hussein called in the U.S. Ambassador, April Glaspie, and asked her what the U.S. position was on Kuwait — on the defense of Kuwait. She did not know that she was being tape-recorded, and she told him ten times in this conversation that we had no defense agreement with Kuwait. At one point, she said that the Secretary of State [James Baker] had ordered her to emphasize this instruction. She said she had conferred with the President about it. Congressman Lee Hamilton concluded, from hearings on this, that we had DELIBERATELY given Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Kuwait. Again, that's not my observation. That was the congressman who was running the committee to investigate this thing: "We gave him, Saddam Hussein, the green light to invade Kuwait."

Meanwhile, the Assistant Secretary of State was saying publicly, in hearings at the same time, that we had no defense agreement with Kuwait. So Hussein thought he was being permitted to go in and take Kuwait. And he did it. And he thought that we would not react.

http://www.serendipity.li/cia/stock2.html

Peeling back the layers of untruth in the rationales of this war, how many people have seen Ralph Schoenman's article, unfortunately published in an obscure paper in Berkeley [California] called The Socialist Action? This is a renowned intellectual who worked with Bertrand Russell at one time. And [there is] Charlie Reese, reporting in the Houston Post down there. And now we have the studies coming out with excellent documentation: how the United States and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia LURED Saddam Hussein and Iraq into this war.

“It was depressing because what it indicates is, the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh,” Will continued. “They want to bomb Iran, but they’re afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”
George Will

US President Barack Obama has warned a powerful pro-Israel lobby about the dangers of "loose talk of war" with Iran, but said he would not hesitate to use force to defend his country's interests.

Obama, addressing the annual American-Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) policy conference on Sunday, said Israel, which has been widely reported to be considering a preliminary strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, had the right to make its own decisions about its security needs.

But he said the US preferred to use diplomacy to resolve the standoff with Tehran, called on Israel to allow time for Western sanctions to take effect and warned of the dangers to world peace of further ratcheting up tensions with Iran.

Western powers accuse Iran of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, but Iran, which has yet to respond to Obama's comments, maintains that its nuclear programme is peaceful.

"Already, there is too much loose talk of war. Over the last few weeks, such talk has only benefited the Iranian government, by driving up the price of oil, which they depend on to fund their nuclear programme," Obama said.

"For the sake of Israel's security, America's security and the peace and security of the world, now is not the time for bluster.

Quoting former US president Theodore Roosevelt, Obama said he would "speak softly, but carry a big stick... And as we do, rest assured that the Iranian government will know our resolve and that our co-ordination with Israel will continue."

Obama's speech came one day before he meets at the White House with Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, who is also due to address AIPAC on Monday.

Personally I think Obama has fallen into the trap of having to be blindly pro-Israel; in fact he has since he became president. It is one of the things I don't like in his administration. I liked his recent speech but even there, he has said the accepted lines.

I mean, what has Iran done that has labelled it a terrorist state?

Other than a lot of talk, they don't seem to me to be worse than many other nations who already have nuclear weapons. Is it merely the statements?

Whatever Israel wants from the U.S. Israel gets. Because of the Jewish lobby.

But if Israel starts a war and Obama sends our young men over there to fight in order to allow the Isralie prime minister to continue stealing land from the palestinians I will vote republican for the rest of my life.

If I wanted a warmonger in the white house I would have voted for a republican.