Air raid

I try not to be an alarmist. This is my playpen, I post what I want here - but I genuinely try to post stuff that is sourced enough to be credible. If it's editorial, I'll just link to it.

Josh Marshall over at TalkingPointsMemo.com has posted something that is downright scary. Not "ooh, I have shivers" ghost-story crap - but honest-to-Jehovah scary:

Quite a bit has come out in the last week or so pointing to the conclusion that the Bush administration is making serious preparations for a major military strike on Iran. The tea leaves are always difficult to analyze because you have to weigh the fact that a strike is totally irrational against the fact that the administration is led by folks whose irrationality has been demonstrated again and again. The one piece of data that makes me think they're really going to try it, however, is the news that Don Rumsfeld has apparently put Abram Shulsky (head of what was once the 'Office of Special Plans' (OSP)) in charge of a new DOD outfit, modeled on the OSP, to stovepipe bogus Iran intel from the likes of Manucher Ghorbanifar straight to administration leaders.
That tells me that fundamentally Condi Rice is just window-dressing, like her predecessor Colin Powell, that the Cheney-Rumsfeld Axis remains in place and in charge and that we'll probably be at war with Iran before too long unless someone can stop them.

Now, there are always alarmists out there - and this is the internet for crying out loud - but there's more than Mr. Marshall's bad vibe.

Time magazine is reporting that the U.S. Navy is getting orders that look like something is up.

The first message was routine enough: a "Prepare to Deploy" order sent through naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1.
But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf.

Posturing is part of statecraft, we could be doing this to ratchet up the pressure on Iran (memo to the President: good luck with that), and as stupid and wasteful as that would be - I sure hope that's the case.

If we move on an Iranian Port for real - that is an act of war. We'll call "quarantine" or some safe for TV term, but it would be an act of war.

I don't believe in October surprises, not from this President. But I genuinely fear that he is so sure of himself (again) that he will (again) do grievous harm to America.