The U.S. vs Iran; Some More Dots to be Connected

Large U.S. naval, air and marine forces are on their way to beef-up the Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf and Middle East. They include 2 nuclear aircraft carriers with assault troops on board.

A majority of the "beltway bozos" are betting against Bush risking a major new war in the short time remaining to him as the president and Dick Cheney as the co-president, especially in light of the upcoming November election.

But a strong minority believe that Bush will pull the trigger and order American armed forces to go forward.

According to DEBKAfile, a respected Israeli internet news site, a U.S. military source has advised them to keep a close eye on America's military movements in the region for clues, because a concentration this heavy must have a definate purpose.

The words of President Eisenhower, reported in the New York Times on April 17, 1953 are truer today than they were more than half a century ago:

A life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and the labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system or any other system to achieve the true abundance and happiness for the people of this earth.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity, hanging from a cross of iron.

Go ahead and connect the dots ... 'sure ain't a pretty picture!

Why have Russian Nuclear Engineers and Experts suddenly left Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Plant?

On October 1, the Khorramshar News Agency reported that the entire staff of Russian nuclear engineers and experts employed in building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr suddenly, and without warning, left the facility on September 28 to fly back to Russia.

Could it be that Moscow or Tehran have been tipped-off about an imminent attack by Israel or the US on the plant and so the Russians were taken out of harms way?

Or could it be that Moscow has learned about an imminent Iranian pre-emptive strike against Israel and/or US targets in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region?

At this point these two scenarios are only speculation on my part. But the fact that the entire Russian crew was whisked away so quickly, and without an apparent explanation, from the nuclear facility would strongly suggest that Moscow has assessed a potential danger to its people.

This one bears close watching!