Blinking Red on Iran?

As the administration looks to move the KSM somewhere rural, like Mayberry, the Middle East appears to be heating up again. Drudge is splashing a headline about Patriot missile deployments to Arab gulf states, which is always somewhat provocative.

The Iranians have lately been flaunting international law as if they were cats listening to human commands. They were busted late last year trying to receive a shipload of weapons from North Korea and lately they've been hanging 'dissidents' for speaking out about their phony elections.

But perhaps this signal means a little more than the others--in his testimony last week in the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war Tony Blair was steadfast:

His set text remains unchanged, his conviction unshakeable, and his conclusion ominous: not only was it right to invade Iraq, but we may have to do it again in Iran.

And he knows a lot more than the average bear. Matter of fact, what he knows probably dates back to the discussions with Bush over taking out Saddam, which has so many of the Brits (both left and right) in a tizzy.

Andrew Gilligan, the author of the linked piece in the preceding paragraph, was the guy heavily involved with the story about the late Iraqi UN arms inspector Dr. David Kelly. He's a hero to the international left, many of whom believe Kelly was about to relieve his conscience about Iraq but was rubbed out by dark actors while being tangentially involved in the Plame affair via Judy Miller. No doubt those dark actors were Cheney hit-squad goons and certainly not terrorists or members of rogue state intelligence organizations. The lies Mr. Gilligan lists that Blair acted on all center around a report saying the Iraqis could hook the bad stuff off to Scuds and launch within 45 minutes. Not so true.

But for sake of discussion let's say those weren't outright lies but rather exaggerations designed to get people behind the war and it's long-term goals, which could not be explained in full at the time. As we're seeing with Iran now, the threat (axis of evil) was actually real--no way a peacenik like Obama would send Patriots to the Gulf on a lark.

Didn't the IPCC climate folks just admit to 'sexing up' their 2007 dossiers to get people to act using bogus scientific data? How many official inquiries will the British government undertake on that account? Isn't "lying" to get people behind international socialism and wealth-spreading a bad thing, too?

True, people didn't die because the IPCC "lied" and the British people have every right to be angry at Blair if they think he somehow lost his mind and directed UK forces into Iraq for no good reason, thereby committing political suicide, just for oil. But imagine for a moment a Middle East with democratic governments in both Baghdad and Tehran, neither actively pursuing WMDs. Now imagine such a thing in the context of the 9/11 attacks. Wouldn't it make the service of those who died fighting in Iraq a bit more noble in the end?

At any rate, if Iran does have plans for strikes as Obama's move suggests then it's fair to wonder just how far and wide the Hizb'allah network of sleepers stretches. Hopefully the terrorist surveillance net hasn't been de-activated. Oops right, yes, that was one Bush anti-terror program Obama kept in place. Whew.

MORE 2/1/10

Is it any coincidence that A'jad is sabre rattling as the Senate passes another version of the Iran sanctions act? If one looks back over the history of these sanctions, dating back to 1995-96 under Clinton, terror attacks have occurred close to their passage. Maybe nothing, but I applaud Obama for quietly ramping up our defenses.