Revving Up that Rhetoric

Iran is back!  In case you hadn't noticed the media has been featuring a new round of Iran bugaboos for the past two weeks.

It started with reports that Achmedinejad was in somebody's doghouse. Sources weren't clear, but it was thought that he'd run afoul of a Mullah or, even worse, the dreaded Revolutionary Guard. The message that an 'Iranian summer' counld be expected at any moment faded off to be replaced by incipient developments on the anti-aircraft front.

 The Iranians were charged with developing and testing a new anti-aircraft missile system that, while it might not prevent any future tactical bombing of terror sites, would certainly make the risk of collision much greater for the jet jockeys deployed. It was even media-ized that the treacherous Russkis were being tempted to give them the S300 missile systems they'd bought, rather than a refund. No doubt the wily Mede is holding out for newer, improved S400's which are reputedly capable of knocking out 10 different targets only slightly larger than gnats at any speed and extreme range in less than a minute!

After the military managed to get the pepto-bismol into them, they started considering the "rapid" increase in Iran's marginal propensity to produce an atomic bomb. This mode of reasoning was triggered by the assassination of, apparently, the wrong Iranian atomic bomb expert. The survivors were said to be increasing the rate at which weapons grade plutonium was being enriched to a whopping 24%, up from the old 17%. And even a dummy knows that's a whopping seven percent closer to the stuff they'll need to get themselves targetted for an ICBM strike. When somebody pointed out that the ounces of material the Iranians had were slightly less than the pounds they were going to need to make a viable explosive, the ADHD department went looking for some other topic.

And they found it over at the CIA news desk. The incoming chief of the CIA General "Orange Julius" Petraeus, long an advocate of Iran being the 'real' boogeyman of the middle east, got over blaming them for arming the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan , only because he has now discovered his arch-nemesis, the foul commander of the notorious 'Al Quds Brigade' of the Iranian Republican Guard is, get this, the de facto 'Ruler" of Iraq. Great minds in America are wondering if Petraeus' reign is going to result in the militarization of the CIA - and especially what the uniforms are going to be like.

Expect the calls for something necessary 'needing to be done' to increase as summer dwindles. For it's going to take more than one Norwegian 'Woody' to upset the applecart of freedom.