by Debra Sweet 

 I know I am not the only one to experience déjà vu over the Obama administration's assessment of threats by Iran to the US. James Clapper, Obama's top intelligence officer stated as fact yesterday, according to the New York Times, that:

“some Iranian officials — probably including supreme leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

Did you think "yellowcake uranium"?  "weapons of mass destruction?" "Irrefutable evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the attack on 9-11?"  All these were the Bush regime's lies justifying an aggressive war that killed one million, displaced 4.5 million, and destroyed Iraq, leaving it on the verge of civil war.

Who is going to write the threat assessment towards the people of Iran, now surrounded by U.S. bases? How would we assess the threat of US covert operations already going on inside the country; or of surveillance drones constantly flying over a sovereign country? 

by libbyliberal 

by Glenn Ford 

President Obama thinks killing people around the globe with drones is as cool as singing Al Green at the Apollo. In a live Web interview, Obama assured his audience that the U.S. unmanned drone force – now thought to number in the thousands and ranging from deadly Predators and Reapers to aircraft the size of small birds – was “kept on a very tight leash.”

So, here we have a secret weapons program that violates other countries’ airspace and kills their citizens at will – and even kills American citizens without charge or trial – and Obama thinks that all he is obligated to do is give assurances that the weapons are on a “tight leash.”

by Lyndsey White 

On 21st January 2009 the world’s eyes were turned to the White House. It was Obama’s first day in Office, and what a productive day it was. In a flurry of activity, a number of jobs were ticked off the Presidential list. Obama followed up on his campaign pledge to shut Guantánamo Bay, by signing an executive order to close the detention centre by January 2010.

And yet, three years on, it has become tragically clear that this celebrated signature deserved as much veneration as a two day old Willow stamp. On your forehead. Guantánamo Bay remains open, continuing to symbolise a decade of damage to human rights.

It Can’t Happen Here

By Tom Engelheart

Exclusive: New Iranian Commando Team Operating Near U.S.

(Tehran, FNA) The Fars News Agency has confirmed with the Republican Guard’s North American Operations Command that a new elite Iranian commando team is operating in the U.S.-Mexican border region. The primary day-to-day mission of the team, known as the Joint Special Operations Gulf of Mexico Task Force, or JSOG-MTF, is to mentor Mexican military units in the border areas in their war with the deadly drug cartels.  The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Amir Arastoo, a spokesman for Republican Guard special operations forces in North America, tells Fars, and “seeks to confront irregular threats...”

The unit began its existence in mid-2009 -- around the time that Washington rejected the Iranian leadership’s wish for a new diplomatic dialogue. But whatever the task force does about the United States -- or might do in the future -- is a sensitive subject with the Republican Guard.  “It would be inappropriate to discuss operational plans regarding any particular nation,” Arastoo says about the U.S.

Okay, so I made that up.  Sue me.  But first admit that, a line or two in, you knew it was fiction.  After all, despite the talk about American decline, we are still on a one-way imperial planet.