Troubled Times Ahead.

I came across this trailer for a documentary called Why We Fight. Described as Farenheit 9-11 without the gimmicks, it takes a close look at the money trail within the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex in America. As Chalmers Johnson puts it, "When war becomes this profitable, you're going to see more of it."

Once you've seen the trailer, click on "Enter Site" and watch more extracts from the film, particularly the longer version of the video of President Eisenhower's final address to the nation in 1961. His warnings for the future are chilling in light of the path America is going down today.

If you combine the increasing financial need for war with the ever worsening peak oil crisis, it's not hard to see that US-led wars in the Middle East will not end anytime soon. We're being prepped for a war with Iran already. The article below might seem like internet conspiracy-theorizing, but I've read the same kinds of things in books by Noam Chomsky and Samuel P Huntingdon.

The US public sees the issue of Iran as backburner, and has little eagerness for an attack on the country at this time. A USA Today/CNN Gallup Poll from early February 2006 found that a full 86% of respondents favored either taking no action or using economic/diplomatic efforts towards Iran for now. Significantly, 69% said they were concerned "that the U.S. will be too quick to use military force in an attempt to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons."

And that begs the question: how can the US public be convinced to enter a potentially ugly and protracted war in Iran?

A domestic terrorist attack would do the trick. Just consider how long Congress went back and forth over reauthorizing Bush's Patriot Act, but how quickly opposing senators capitulated following last week's nerve-agent scare in a Senate building. The scare turned out to be a false alarm, but the Patriot Act got the support it needed.

Now consider the fact that former CIA Officer Philip Giraldi has said the Pentagon's plans to attack Iran were drawn up "to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States." Writing in The American Conservative in August 2005, Giraldi added, "As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States."

Chew on that one a minute. The Pentagon's plan should be used in response to a terrorist attack on the US, yet is not contingent upon Iran actually having been responsible. How outlandish is this scenario: another 9/11 hits the US, the administration says it has secret information implicating Iran, the US population demands retribution and bombs start dropping on Tehran.

That's the worst-case scenario, but even the best case doesn't look good. Let's say the Bush administration chooses the UN Security Council over military power in dealing with Iran. That still leaves the proposed oil bourse, along with the economic fallout that will occur if OPEC countries snub the greenback in favor of petro-euros. At the very least, the dollar will drop and inflation could soar, so you'd think the administration would be busy tightening the nation's collective belt. But no. The US trade deficit reached a record high of $725.8 billion in 2005, and Bush & Co.'s FY 2007 budget proposes increasing deficits by $192 billion over the next five years. The nation is hemorhaging roughly $7 billion a month on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and is expected to hit its debt ceiling of $8.184 trillion next month.

So the white-knuckle ride to war continues, with the administration's goals in Iran very clear. Recklessly naïve and impetuous perhaps, but clear: stop the petro-euro oil bourse, take over Khuzestan Province (which borders Iraq and has 90% of Iran's oil) and secure the Straits of Hormuz in the process.

I read that March is the time to worry about because the Iranians will finally have sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries in place, so the Israelis will want to strike at their nuclear facilities before then. Another reason being that as they start to enrich uranium again, one of the reactors will reach a state where if you bomb it it will spread radiation everywhere. And March is when the aforementioned oil bourse will take place. Fingers crossed that this is all just a bad dream.