a marketing point of view

The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new products in August.''
- The New York Times, September 7, 2002, Elizabeth Bushmiller


We’ve decided to have another war.
Happy Labor Day. Don’t worry, keep shopping.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Post Labor Day Product Rollout: War with Iran
by Barnett R. Rubin
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/08/post-labor-day-product-rollout-war-with.html

[…]
But this apparently is just test marketing, like Cheney's 2002 speech. After all "from a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is "plenty."
[…]


August 29, 2007
War With Iran It's already started
by Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11521

For months we at Antiwar.com have been monitoring the situation between Iran and the United States, parsing the words of administration spokesmen for any hints of when and how hostilities between the two countries might begin. We've been running reports from insiders saying that the Cheney faction is pushing for an attack, that Bush is quite amenable but is biding his time, and that an assault on Tehran is imminent. Now the president has come out openly with his warlike intentions. In a speech delivered Tuesday, he reiterated recent charges by Washington that Iran is arming and training Iraqi Shi'ite groups who are launching attacks on American forces in Iraq, and he announced: "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities."

Translation: The bombing begins shortly…


Iran and Beyond: Total War is Still on the Horizon
by Glen Ford / July 14th, 2007
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/iran-and-beyond-total-war-is-still-on-the-horizon/

The mindset that launched the invasion of Iraq remains embedded in the mentality of the ruling circles of the United States — and compels them to lash out at Iran. Actually, Iran was supposed to have been vanquished, already, rolled up in the euphoria of America-Love that the delusional architects of the Iraq operation imagined existed among the people of the Middle East and the rest of the world. It didn’t turn out that way, because it could not. Americans are not loved, because they are not lovable. They kill, big time.

More than half a million deaths later, the same Americans imagine that they can resurrect the cemetery they have created, and make the corpses march under the Red, White, and Blue banner. But that is not possible. There are millions of grieving family members who know who the murderers are: the Americans. These sins will never be forgiven, and they are wounds to the entire Arab family. That’s a lot of folks.

When the Bush regime told the generals to cross the Kuwaiti border, and introduced the world to hi-tech “Shock and Awe,” they fully expected that the dominoes would fall in Tehran, Damascus and throughout the Arab/Persian/Turkik world. Such was their hubris, and their ignorance. They have not gotten any smarter, in defeat. They still savor taking Tehran, the capital of Iran, and are ramping up for an attack on that nation.

The Bush gang’s game plan remains the same: to somehow move beyond Iraq into Iran and Central Asia, to secure the geo-resource space that was the original goal of the Iraqi invasion - to change the world balance of power by military force. The Project for the New American Century was their blueprint for world conquest. It would have carried U.S. forces deep into places in Central Asia that most Americans had never heard of. The Americans planned to plant the flag among happy natives trodding atop vast oil and gas fields, and to effectively partition vast stretches of the planet from the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Europeans and anybody else. That was the plan. It failed, and they have no other plan.

So they go forward with the old plan, the only one they’ve got. Attack Iran…


Killing Time: Countdown Quickens for Bush War on Iran
Written by Chris Floyd
Monday, 02 July 2007
(UPDATED below)
http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/Killing_Time%3A_Countdown_Quickens_for_Bush_War_on_Iran/

Here we go…

U.S. Ties Iranians to Iraq Attack That Killed G.I.’s (NY Times)

The countdown to war with Iran has entered its final stages now. Citing testimony elicited – by one means or another – from two Iraqi Shiite captives and a Lebanese man who has been held in one of Bush's secret prisons, U.S. military officials are now formally charging that Iranian government officials directly planned operations that killed American soldiers in Iraq.

Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner said the evidence obtained from the captives proves that Iran's Qud Force – one of those deep cover, gloves-off, Special Ops kind of units so beloved of the Bushists and their bootlickers – are arming and training Shiite militia groups to attack American and Iraqi government forces. That would be the same Iraqi government that is controlled by, er, Iranian-armed and –trained militia groups who are also being armed and trained by the Bush Administration. This would also be the same Iraqi government whose leaders – installed via the American occupation and backed, with blood and treasure, by the Bush Administration – are frequently to be found in Tehran, praising the close and cooperative relationship they have with Iran. Why, just days before General Bergner leveled his charges, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was in Tehran, expressing his abiding appreciation of "the guidelines of Leader of the Islamic Revolution about Iraqi reconstruction and contribution of Iranian government to Iraqi nation's progress and welfare." (Alalam News, via Juan Cole)

So according to General Bergner, the Iranians are arming Shiite groups to overthrow the government made up of Shiite groups they previously armed, in order to…uh…install a government made up Shiite groups armed by Iran. Well, who knows? Maybe it's true. Maybe the Iranians are as stupid as the Bushists, who have been arming various violent, extremist factions in Iraq for years now, in what a cynical observer might be forgiven for thinking was a deliberate policy of setting Iraqis at each other's throats, the better to destroy the country and reduce it to a more easily dominated ruin (or grab-bag of rump states). But if so, it would be the first known instance of the Iranian regime arming groups to attack its own allies…