... this matters.

the original source? Israeli intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence, US or European ally?

Sorry Adam, trust but verify.

I definitely don’t trust Trump to handle this situation correctly.

I hope whoever is carrying the nuclear codes doesn't trust him either.

The really important issue isn't whether Iran was responsible, but if it was, what the US should do about it.

You know, the same gang of "Christian" fascists who invented their own fake Intel that WMD were still in Iraq and ready to be used against American interests (Jerusalem & Riyadh). The same group of conniving creeps who persuaded Colin Powell to lie to the UN.

No Dice. Schiff or anyone else who in good faith says IRAN did it hasn't heard the whole story, just the part that the Neo-cons have written.

We were warned by several European security agencies not to believe the hype leading us to war in 2003. The EU is now warning us again.

You would think that Schiff would know better since he was in office the last time. But what I read says most of the Congressional and Senate members who deal with these issues are being snowed on war with Iran and Iran's so-called provocative actions.

The US Unilaterally exiting the nuclear agreement was a grave blunder.

They aren’t going to invade Iran, though Saudi Arabia and Israel might want that, that isn’t going to happen, and our allies would not be supporting that action at all, and you can bet Russia and China won’t be standing with us on that insanity

For that reason you might notice the administration has toned down its rhetoric in the last couple days

There is very little that can be done that would be effective

Bolton and his crew will do more of this until they find something that sticks. I don't know if they can engineer a war. They are trying every trick in their Gulf War playbook. They never give up and go away, or sit on their hands when told to.

Congress needs to demand accountability on these and many other questions. We can't wait for another election to stop this shit. It needs to end NOW!

It would help if the DNC weren't trying to soft-peddle the truth as an election strategy. Voters need to hear that our political leaders actually understand just how bad things really are. They aren't going to vote for people who don't speak to the issues the voters are living in day-to-day. I include in this that Congress and especially Democrats in both houses need to call out the lies and pursue them in committee and in the press. We may not win on single issues but to remain silent about them enables the lies and allows the GOP and Trump to pretend Congress is irrelevant to leading the country.

will go anywhere, though Bolton and crew would want it, I do not believe the support is there. Not only with the American public as a whole, but even most of Congress.

I am talking through the military, I don't think it will happen.

If we are stupid enough to militarily attack Iran, we will unite Iran, and the Shia in Iraq, which are the majority population there against us. That will be just the beginning, because it will spread the wild fire throughout the middle east.

There is no military solution with this, and that is why I don't think it will fly

Would you have accepted a similar pronouncement by Devin Nunes without question if he were still chair off the Intelligence Committee?

And Jesus still ain't comin'!

Raises serious concerns for either Schiff's source or his motivation.

Why is everyone so eager to doubt Adam Schiff?

Remember Hillary making a big speech where she proclaimed, with absolute certainty, that Saddam had WMD's. Turns out she was mistaken.

The issue is what to do about it if it is conclusively established that they are, or, for that matter, what to do if it's somebody other than Iran. It is possible that Iran is being provocative intentionally in order to get other countries to negotiate for the lifting of sanctions. Adam Schiff was our hero for a while but now he's being accused of something nefarious because he isn't going along with the approved narrative? He could be right. The fact that Hillary was wrong about Saddam's WMDs isn't relevant to whether Schiff is wrong about Iran.

Schiff will just blame it on "faulty intelligence" like Hillary did after the WMDs claims turned out to be bogus

You think he is just because Hillary was wrong?

Never said he was wrong but I take any pronouncement like this with a tablespoon of salt. I'd rather not give Trump and Co bipartisan cover to launch Iraq War 2.0.

It should be Japan's issue, shouldn't it- even assuming that Iran is responsible. I hope at least nobody is seriously talking about going to war over this. Of course, Trump has all of the people in his WH whom are salivating over that prospect.

But blowing up other countries' ships is not an act of war for the United States.

I am not letting him off the hook just yet.

IF he and Trump and Pompeo and all the others saying thsi are right, we quickly launched into a downward spiral to war. IF Iran is now that untethered from geo-strategic reality that they are indeed going to escalate that theatre of conflict into an active fire zone, (and continue to do so) it bodes very ill for a peaceful resolution.

I will go further. IF the US and NATO do indeed end up in an active 'boots-on-the-ground' war in Iran, the blowback and spillover effects will eventually (due to millions of refugees flooding into the EU and elsewhere) upend multiple EU national governments and turn them full-blown RW, xenophobic, and virulently white nationalist and racist.

Just the Iraq and Syrian refugee situations (Libya was a far smaller amount due to it very small population, but even there it had a big effect on Italian politics and aided the resurgence of Liga Nord, etc) have had profound effects at electoral levels here (we are in the EU now for the summer) for years.

A full blown Iranian war will be a global shitshow. Also, along those lines, what will Russia do, as Iran is a very large strategic ally of theirs? What will China do? I do NOT ever want to find out.

angles at times) often dance to the same tune, even at the same moment in some cases. Libya and Syria were on us, not the Rethugs (although many of them played pure partisan games with that, pretending to be against them to score cheap political points, but then flipping as soon as the monster Rump became POTUS). Bush's murderous, spun-up, illegal Iraq war passed with vast Democratic support (granted based off clearly fake evidence, but the ones who were against it were screaming to be careful, the rationale is fake, cooked).

When you add in all of the war, security, and surveillance state, defence, etc etc etc budgets, we spend around 1.25 trillion USD on the war/surveillance state each year. That is more than what the entire rest of the world spent on defence/war budgets in 2016. When you subtract out our share, that means the rest of the world spent around $1.1 trillion.

War is the health of the state, to steal a line from the WWI-era progressive, Randolph Bourne.

Senate Passes $700 Billion Pentagon Bill, More Money Than Trump Sought

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/politics/senate-pentagon-spending-bill.html

WASHINGTON — In a rare act of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill, the Senate passed a $700 billion defense policy bill on Monday that sets forth a muscular vision of America as a global power, with a Pentagon budget that far exceeds what President Trump has asked for.

Senators voted 89-9 to approve the measure, known as the National Defense Authorization Act; the House has already adopted a similar version.

snip

US Sens. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) bucked the partisan establishment and voted no on the bill.

Only 4 Democrats (plus Bernie) voted against it.



MSU scholars find $21 trillion in unauthorised government spending; Defense Department to conduct first-ever audit

https://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-find-21-trillion-in-unauthorized-government-spending-defense-department-to-conduct/

Earlier this year, a Michigan State University economist, working with graduate students and a former government official, found $21 trillion in unauthorized spending in the departments of Defense and Housing and Urban Development for the years 1998-2015.

The work of Mark Skidmore and his team, which included digging into government websites and repeated queries to U.S. agencies that went unanswered, coincided with the Office of Inspector General, at one point, disabling the links to all key documents showing the unsupported spending. (Luckily, the researchers downloaded and stored the documents.)

Now, the Department of Defense has announced it will conduct the first department-wide, independent financial audit in its history (read the Dec. 7 announcement here).

The Defense Department did not say specifically what led to the audit. But the announcement came four days after Skidmore discussed his team’s findings on USAWatchdog, a news outlet run by former CNN and ABC News correspondent Greg Hunter.

snip

So excuse me if I take Schiff's statement with a grain of salt.

Just because a Dem is saying it doesn't make it so.

Also, This is an issue between Japan and Iran, not US.

Didn't she admit later she had made a mistake?

Like many of the cheerleaders for the Iraq War did years later after the war became unpopular.

The fact that Hillary was wrong about Iraq's WMDs has absolutely nothing to do with a determination as to whether Iran is taking shots at oil tankers. Why they are doing it - if they are - and what should be done about it is the issue. Bolton and some others obviously want a war, but acknowledging the possibility that Iran is the culprit is not anywhere near accepting the notion that we should retaliate against them. The attack, even if done by Iran, was not against American ships, therefore no act of war was committed against the U.S. We have no justification for attacking Iran even if they did it. THAT's the point.

Abe was in Tehran at the time. The product was Iranian. Why would Iran
Blow up their own product? It just seems suspicious as hell to me.
Let's start a war??

It's mostly about controlling the international Oil market along with leadership within the Islamic world. The Saudis don't like the electoral process in Iran (or Iraq) because it sets a different model of who has the right to govern. While the Mullahs have much to say about how things are done it is far more accessible than what the Saudi Royal family allows at home. Qatar, Bahrain and the UAE align with the Suadi Royals for much the same reasons or Oil and Regional Power.

All of these governments, along with the Israeli right wing, have proxy groups in the region who do nasty work for them or help keep the US in play by looking fierce at just the right moment. Some of them lit the fuses to kick-start the Syrian civil war and assisted the organization and rise to power of ISIS.

knows something I do not.... The truth is no longer available to me.

More than likely he's been told something that will not stand the light of day, which he's been also told is too secret to share or question.

Does it make any sense at all that Iran would have said something like

"Today we will explode two random oil tankers for no reason, right when the Americans are looking for an excuse to attack us" ??

I just don't get it and I am really confused about Schiff's take on this obvious (to many of us ) fake Bay of Trumpkin "incident".



This nightmare just keeps getting darker.

And in particular that the IRG is an independent actor, or contains this rogue faction that acts contrary to the policies of the state.

I don’t buy that either.

Iran is in the middle of negotiations with EU signatories to the nuclear agreement to mitigate the effect of the sanctions re-imposed by the US. I fail to see how undermining the US position and undoing the sanctions would be against the interests of any Iranian government faction.

The much simpler explanation is that John Bolton gave the green light to a Saudi operation to create this crisis. Bolton and the Saudis both want a war with Iran. No convoluted explanations are required.

...rather than the collective wisdom of the blogosphere.

2001.

It is exasperating.
Gulf of Tonkin
Grenada
Panama
Iraq war (2nd one)

But once again “trust us”.
Just a coincidence Bolton gets in and a war gets going.

There are competing forces within the government.

The Iranians are showing that they can cause trouble, too. The US has forced them into a corner.

Unkess he thought it was true. Plus, it's totally plausible Iran would do thais. Still, we need to be damn sure and not overplay our hand!