And among the most important items contained in [President George W] Bush's speeches since the events of the 11th [September 11, 2001] is that the Americans have no option but to continue the war. This tone is in fact an echoing of the words of neo-conservatives like [Vice President Dick] Cheney, [former defense secretary Donald] Rumsfeld and [former chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board] Richard Perle, the latter having said previously that the Americans have no choice in front of them other than to continue the war or face a holocaust.
- Osama bin Laden video, September 7.
PARIS - World public opinion has just been treated to the face-off of the year - as if orchestrated, with impeccable timing, in a John Woo movie.

©Asia Times

In vertical bars of blue, green, gray and red, a briefing chart prepared by the Defense Intelligence Agency says what Gen. David Petraeus won't.

©AP

Chart shows number of insurgent attacks against, Iraqi civilians, Iraqi security forces and U.S. troops

Insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians, their security forces and U.S. troops remain high, according to the document obtained by The Associated Press. It is a conclusion that the well-regarded Army officer who is the top U.S. commander in Iraq is expected to try to counter when he and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, testify before Congress on Monday and Tuesday.

More than four years into a conflict initially thought to be a cakewalk, the war has become a battle of statistics, graphs and conflicting assessments of progress in a country of more than 27 million people.

Panic struck on Wall Street, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged a thousand points between July and August, and commentators warned of a 1929-style crash. To prevent that dire result, the U.S. Federal Reserve, along with the central banks of Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan, stepped up to the plate and extended a 315 billion dollar lifeline to troubled banks and investment firms. The hemorrhage stopped, the markets turned around, and investors breathed a sigh of relief. All was well again in Stepfordville. Or was it? And if it was, at what cost? Three hundred billion dollars is about a third of the total paid by U.S. taxpayers in personal income taxes annually. A mere $188 billion would have been enough to repair all of the 74,000 U.S. bridges known to be defective, preventing another disaster like that seen in Minneapolis in July. But the central banks' $300 billion did not go for anything so socially useful as rebuilding infrastructure. Rather, it was poured into the black hole of rescuing the very banks and hedge funds that were blamed for precipitating the crisis, encouraging them to continue in their profligate ways.

PARIS - In 2002, in the runup to the war against Iraq, the George W Bush administration changed the subject from its failure to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

In 2007, in the run-up to the coming war against Iran, the administration has changed the subject from its abject failure in Iraq to Iran's also non-existent nuclear weapons. The manufacture-of-consent techniques are exactly the same - the apocalyptic 2007 Bush forecast of an Iranian-orchestrated "nuclear holocaust", echoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's apocalyptic 2002 prediction of a Saddam Hussein-orchestrated "mushroom cloud".

Though Colin Powell is still lying low about his role in palming off the Iraq War on a gullible American public, the retired Army general and former Secretary of State is back on the motivational speaking circuit, again raking in big bucks.

For a day-long "Get Motivated" seminar at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 6, Powell got star billing for a show also boasting names like Zig Ziglar, Steve Forbes, Robert Schuller and Sugar Ray Leonard. Admission price at the door was $225.

According to a full-page Washington Post ad, Powell was to address the audience about "Take-Charge Leadership," including advice on "how to remain focused in crisis" and "how to forge winning alliances," plus "keys to creating diplomatic solutions."

LAGOS - U.S. and other Western interests in Nigeria are at risk of "terrorist attack," the United States embassy in Africa's top oil producer said on Thursday.

The official warning, in a message for U.S. citizens in Nigeria, gave few details, but said potential targets included official and commercial installations in the capital Abuja and the commercial city of Lagos.

Several recent attempts to hack into British Government computer networks have been traced to China, Whitehall sources said today.

The attacks are part of a pattern in which China and Russia are switching from "old-fashioned espionage" techniques to electronic hacking into government computers to gain Britain's military secrets, the sources added.

In a dispatch posted on its website Saturday, Quds Press reported that the head of the Union of Tribes of Western Iraq in the area of the Upper Euphrates near the Syrian border had disclosed that the "Israeli" Mossad had increased its presence in those areas, beginning two months ago. He said that US forces are extending protection to the Mossad's cars and headquarters in the area.

Yesterday, Raw Story pointed out that former CIA operative Bob Baer told Fox News that the Bush administration will likely attack Iran in the coming months. "Iran policy is on close hold, but the feeling is we will hit the Islamic Revolutionary Guard corps sometime next six months or so," said Baer.

Today, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton appeared on Fox News and responded. He said that while he couldn't confirm Baer's statements, he "absolutely" hoped they were true:

HEMMER: One final step here, too, that I want to take with you. You told one of our producers earlier today that you don't know if it's true - and you've made that clear in our interview here, that you don't know what the odds are or are not against that - but you hope it's true. Why do you hope it's true?

BOLTON: Absolutely. I hope Iran understands that we are very serious, that we are determined they are not going to get a nuclear weapon capability, and unless they change the strategic decision they've been pursuing for close to 20 years, that that's something they better factor into their calculations.

We have already crossed the Rubicon. We are already in Hell. World War III in Eurasia is already ongoing. There was not an Iraq war; there is a continuing Iraq war. There was not an Afghanistan war; there is a continuing Afghanistan war. There's already an onset of a war with Iran, being run covertly, as a covert operation, from the United States, in Iran right now! You see it on the television screens here. That is not a spontaneous student movement. That is a U.S.-run destabilization of Iran, trying to set up the conditions for a war. The situation in Korth Korea; other situations I know of; we are now inside World War III. It is not something that we could prevent from happening. We're there.
- Address by Lyndon LaRouche in Istanbul, Turkey, June 14, 2003

Ledeen's ideas are quoted daily by such figures as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that characterized United States actions since September 11, 2001.... Now Ledeen is calling for 'regime change' beyond Iraq. In an address titled 'Time to Focus on Iran: The Mother of Modern Terrorism,' for the policy forum of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) on April 30, he declared: "The time for diplomacy is at the end; it is time for a free Iran, a free Syria and free Lebanon."
- William O. Beeman, "Michael Ledeen: Neoconservative Guru," in The Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon, May 9, 2003