enemy, Iran. Bush’s propaganda machine has steered away from the allegations that the U.S. must strike Iran because she is about to get an atomic bomb. However, since a good deal of information has emerged, in public, that Iran is at least five years away from getting a bomb, the focus has now shifted to attacking Iran because she is supplying IEDs to Iraqi resistance groups and that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards are fighting along side Iraqis in that country. In truth, the IEDs are being supplied by Saudi Arabia, a fact very well known to the Bush intelligence people and no identified Iranian military units have ever been identified inside Iraq. An aide-mémoire that ended up in Cheney’s office and was photocopied and circulated throughout Washington, lays out the general plan of attack. And of course there really is such a plan.

All of this breathless news is, as usual, pure propaganda crap. Yes, the Bush people would like to attack Iran. Bush and Cheney, egged on by Israel, have been talking about this for two years but they are not going to do it. Following their tired old pattern, ‘secret’ leaks were made to people like Hersh and the media was given reams of material to run that would support the attack theory. For example, the New York Times ran a story that ‘U.S. military casualties dropped in September.’ I have news for them, they did not. Anyone can check this out by looking at http://www.defenselink.mil/Releases/ to see that this statement is not true. The administration and the media gamble that most Americans are unaware of this site and they can make all kinds of allegations in complete safety. Also, the Washington Post did a story on IEDs and the government now claims that these are being made in Iran and smuggled into Iraq to kill Americans. Most of us here know this is completely false.

What is true, and never talked about for obvious reasons, is that these deadly bombs are being made in Iraq from parts shipped in from Saudi Arabia. Why don’t we threaten them with bombing? We buy oil from them in spite of the fact that they have been sniping at us for years. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, for example. Of course it is known there that their oil is running out and in spite of their coming unimportance in the oil world, the CIA is plotting to replace the Saudi-Royal family with a group considered more loyal to the U.S.

There is no doubt that while our Air Force can hit at Tehran and Iranian targets, the Iranians can easily cut off oil shipments, their own and others, from the Persian Gulf. It is known in the Pentagon that there are missiles in place in the Iranian mountains bordering the Gulf. It is also known that faked ‘hard’ positions have been, and are being, constructed to convince the American spy satellites where to target aerial attacks. It is believed here that there are other launching sites, very simple to set up and conceal, that are completely unknown to our intelligence people.

All it would take, a report I was reading this morning stated, would be for one or two supertankers to be severely damaged by a missile attack and the result would be that the insurers of said tankers would withdraw insurance from these immensely expensive vessels. With no insurance, the owners would not dare to venture into or out of the Persian Gulf, loaded with oil or empty.

As Bush went to war in Iraq for two reasons, and two reasons only, to accede to Israeli demands for the neutralization of her enemies and to get the Iraqi oil (Saudi oilfields are starting to run out), the interdiction of Gulf oil would be an economic disaster for the United States.

Que bono? The sole beneficiary of such a cessation of the flow of oil from the Gulf would be Russia.

Thanks to the actions of Putin, Russia has taken over control of her natural resources from exploitive foreign interests, and at this point in time, Russia is frantically developing oil production. She is, in point of fact, keeping most of Europe supplied with oil and gas and the potentials of immense reserves in the Arctic areas bids fair to make Russia the world’s main source of oil and not the volatile Gulf area. If there is a serious interdiction of Gulf oil, the industrial countries such as China and Japan will be forced to buy their oil from Russia and, as he has shown repeatedly in the past, Putin knows exactly how to use Russia’s oil and gas as political as well as economic weapons.

America may threaten and even attack Israel’s enemy, Iran, but they would never dare to attack Russia who could quickly and effectively respond in kind. No, there is Vladimir Putin sitting quietly in his office, smiling at the irrational actions of George Bush, actions that could eventually replace the United States with Russia as the world’s strongest economic power. And he won’t have to do anything more dangerous than to wait. Napoleon once said that one must never interrupt his enemy when he is making a mistake.

And if oil goes to two hundred dollars a barrel, whatever will happen to America’s winter’s supply of heating oil? Or the price of jet fuel for America’s airlines? Or gasoline for SUVs? Most of our heavy industry has atrophied in recent decades but that which is left inside the country will either close down or have to radically increase the prices of their goods.

All Putin has to do is to wait and then, like the old revivalist hymn, it will be ‘We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.’ Only in this case, it will not be wheat but oil money revenues pouring into his country. And the newly-rich Russian people will not be driving around in new Cadillac’s because they won’t be made any more. They will be driving new Mercedes instead.”