By Justin Podur - July 14, 2008

Most societies seem to combine both irrationality and hypocrisy in their drug policies. These serve those who profit from the drug war, the monies, the weapons, and the pretexts that it provides. They do not serve addicts, users, or farmers. An end to prohibition and an end to the drug war would take a powerful weapon away from the war on terror.

Veteran Israeli peace activist, journalist and author Uri Avnery weighs in on the debate over whether a U.S./Israel attack on Iran is imminent.

By Amos Harel - 08/07/2008

Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards have begun a military exercise with a warning that Israel and the U.S. naval force in the Persian Gulf would be prime targets if Iran is attacked...The report quotes guard official Ali Shirazi as saying Tel Aviv and American warships in the Gulf would be among the first targets if Iran comes under attack.

By PATRICK COCKBURN - July 5/6, 2008

Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq...The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran.

by Seymour M. Hersh - Sunday, June 29, 2008

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq...since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation (read torture - MW), and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran...have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials.

A House resolution effectively requiring a naval blockade on Iran seems fast tracked for passage, gaining co-sponsors at a remarkable speed, but experts say the measures called for in the resolutions amount to an act of war.

BBC News - 2008/06/08

Iraq will not allow its territory to be used to attack Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said during a visit to Tehran..."We will not allow Iraq to become a platform for harming the security of Iran and neighbours," Iranian state-run media quoted Mr Maliki as saying after late-night talks with [Iran's] Foreign Minister...

By CONN HALLINAN - June 7/8, 2008

...[O]ver the past several months, a number of moves by the White House strongly suggest that the Bush Administration will attack Iran sometime in the near future...There is a certain disconnect to all this, particularly given last December’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that Iran had abandoned its program to build a nuclear weapon. The NIE is the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence services...However, shortly after the intelligence estimate on Iran was released, the old “into Iraq gang” went to work undermining it.

by Dan Williams - June 7, 2008

An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies said on Friday...["]If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective," Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz [said]...

By Muhammad Cohen - Asia Times Online

The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently...The source...said last week that that the US plans an air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS - Counterpunch

It is 1939 all over again. The world waits helplessly for the next act of naked aggression by rogue states. Only this time the rogue states are not the Third Reich and Fascist Italy. They are the United States and Israel...The targeted victims are not Poland and France, but Iran, Syria, the remains of the Palestinian West Bank and southern Lebanon...The neoconservatives are ecstatic. Hegemony uber alles is back on track.

Led by Dick Cheney, Bush administration neocons want war on Iran. So does the Israeli Lobby, but it doesn't mean they'll get it.

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS

GENEVA (AP) — An Iranian envoy said Monday his government will not submit to extensive nuclear inspections while Israel stays outside the global treaty to curb the spread of atomic weapons.

By ANDREW COCKBURN - May 2, 2008

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that...[is] "unprecedented in its scope."...Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.

MARK MACKINNON | March 3, 2008 | The Globe and Mail

BAGHDAD -- It's a damning indication of how poorly things have gone for the United States during its five-year misadventure in Iraq that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can drive in broad daylight though this war-ravaged city and spend the night at the presidential palace, but George W. Bush can't.