In this post-9/11 age, the idea of preemptive war against a terrorist-prone country supposedly went out of favor after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Yet Congress is now pushing President Obama toward steps that could easily be interpreted as an act of war against Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

The House and Senate are moving quickly on a bill to force US sanctions on the sale of gasoline to the Islamic Republic of Iran. In theory, the measure would only punish US and foreign companies that export refined oil products to Iran which, despite being a major exporter of petroleum, lacks sufficient oil refineries.

But there’s a big problem: The only way to really enforce such a crippling sanction against the Iranian economy would be through an American-led naval blockade which, by international law, is an act of war. (Read more from csmonitor.com)

“Diplomacy has failed,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., told AIPAC, “Iran is on the verge of becoming nuclear and we cannot afford that.”

“We have to contemplate the final option,” said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., “the use of force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.”

War is a “terrible thing,” said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., but “sometimes it is better to go to war than to allow the Holocaust to develop a second time.”

Graham then describes the war we Americans should fight:

“If military force is ever employed, it should be done in a decisive fashion. The Iran government’s ability to wage conventional war against its neighbors and our troops in the region should not exist. They should not have one plane that can fly or one ship that can float.”

Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, Neocon Central, writes, “The only questions remaining, one Washington politico tells me, are who starts it, and how it ends.”

As to who starts it, we know the answer. Teheran has not started a war in memory and is not going to launch a suicide attack on a superpower with thousands of nuclear weapons. As with Iraq in 2003, the war will be launched by the United States against a nation that did not attack us – to strip it of weapons it does not have. (Read more from lewrockwell.com)

The article, entitled “Iran Boasts of Capacity to Make Bomb Fuel,” intersperses a handful of allegations about the Iranian nuclear program with a healthy dose of unrelated claims about protests elsewhere in Tehran today. It centers itself around the translated quote “please pay attention and understand that the people of Iran are brave enough that if it wants to build a bomb it will clearly announce it and build it and not be afraid of you.”

However, it downplayed the rest of that sentence, which was “but we have no intention of making a bomb.” It also glossed over the bulk of the speech’s nuclear content, which was that they told the US and Russia they were ready to buy fuel for the Tehran research reactor. (Read more from campaigniran.org)

In a surprisingly swift move on Thursday night that could have wide-ranging implications, the U.S. Senate passed a bill containing broad unilateral sanctions to punish foreign companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand its domestic refinery capabilities.

The voice vote came at the eleventh hour before the chamber recessed so legislators could go home to campaign. The bill cannot come before the president to be signed into law until a conference procedure combines it with a similar House bill, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), passed in October.

The Senate move reveals an administration losing control of even its own party in foreign policy dealings, as U.S. President Barack Obama has tried to maintain engagement with Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear program, which the Islamic Republic insists is for peaceful purposes. (Read more from campaigniran.org)

This poor performance has caused an unprecedented collapse in the polls and the loss of three major by-elections, culminating two weeks ago in an astonishing senatorial defeat in Massachusetts. Obama’s attempts to “reset” his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players.

He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.

Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.

Read the response by true conservative, Pat Buchanan

Thanks, Mr. Charles “Rocket Scientists” Krauthammer. I’m sure you have a bright future at Fox “News”.

Swiss banking group Credit Suisse has agreed to pay a $536m (£329m) fine for violating US sanctions against Iran.

Settlement papers say Credit Suisse systematically hid the identity of its Iranian clients when moving millions of dollars on their behalf.

. . . .

In January, British bank Lloyds-TSB paid a fine of $350m to US authorities after prosecutors accused it of faking records so clients in Iran, Libya and Sudan could do business with US institutions.

The US government has the power to take proceedings against foreign financial institutions – even for actions involving other countries – if they do some of their business in America.

US government papers filed in the latest case said: “Credit Suisse’s internal communications showed a continuous dialogue about evading US sanctions spanning approximately a decade.” (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations. (Read more from online.wsj.com)

My bullshit meter just went off the charts.

See also:
Iraqi Drones May Target U.S. Cities
Monday, February 24, 2003