Same Day. Different Rat.

Here are two articles that, read in conjunction, should scare the festering shit out of you:

"War Signals?":

As a strike group of six US naval vessels prepares to deploy to the Persian Gulf, wary critics of the Bush Administration and members of the military are raising flags that an "October surprise" attack on Iran may be imminent.

"The End Times Hits Primetime":

Karl Rove and Co. may be flirting with selling the public the same thing cult leaders throughout history have sold their followers: the afterlife.

The first article should be self-explanatory. The second claims that many in the current US administration are readers of a novel which claims that bombing the right places is the best way to trigger the Second Coming.

No, I don't know what to do about it. Protesting automatically makes you a member of the fringe and doesn't so much grant you the power of invisibility as force it upon you. Anyway, I'm sure many Democrats wouldn't protest the use of force in Iran because, well, they don't want to be known as the party that kept Jesus from coming back.

I find myself hoping that the nation's military will disobey the nation's commander-in-chief. This may be one of those times when the prospects of the many ride entirely on the whims of the few.

If you think I'm exaggerating: remember a couple months ago, when the main talking point that greeted Israel's invasion of Lebanon was "IT'S WORLD WAR THREE!"? And remember when moderate Condi claimed the Lebanese civilian casualties were the "birth pangs of the new Middle East"? Well, in my bedroom is a pamplet that someone left wedged in my door that shows an evil pregnant lady, captioned "BIRTH PANGS OF THE TRIBULATION HOUR". This is absolute proof that when people talk about birth pangs, the world's children should not be rejoicing.

Even if you subscribe to the doubtful theory that there are some things the current US administration is not willing to do to achieve its ends -- and God knows lately those ends have not included "making itself look good" -- you have to agree that the main wellspring of administration policy seems to be satirical cartoons. Every time cartoonists try to find a way to pointedly exaggerate what's going on, before long that IS what's going on.

You also have to agree that once the administration has convinced itself something is the case, no force on earth can change their minds. Why should they? They already have their one-act script:

Once there was a nation. This nation was called America. And then, one day, everybody hated America because it was free.

Except Jesus. He liked us.

THE END

-- and it's too good a script to change at this point in post-production. Even though it's not really the documentary it claims to be.

The idea of a script figures prominently in everything these guys do. A couple of years ago, I planned to write up the ways our war in Iraq resembled the French strategy in World War One. (And, yes, comparing America's leaders with the French is meant to be shocking). Iraq has many fewer dead than World War One (or World War Three), but in both wars three things figure prominently: a continuing conviction at the top that the enemy was being soundly defeated (even though, in France, the Germans were killing twice as many French as the French were killing Germans), the hysterical nationalistic chest-beating in the media, and the corresponding near-complete lack of press access to what was actually going on.

Not that the press minded. It served everybody's interests to claim that the Germans (or the insurgents) were about to be defeated, when real intelligence would have plainly laid out that this was not the case. Nor were the French (or us) interested in the enemy's real strategy, or the aims it was trying to achieve. No, the script clearly stated "The enemy is being defeated", and they were going to get it right if it took all night. Or all their young men.

Still, it's just possible that Iraq has the first insurgency driven by the fact that they hate the occupiers' freedom.

But this Iran thing. You should really think about what script is being followed, and what this administration thinks is going to happen to make THE END appear in big bright letters. And you should think about what to do about it.

And then you should tell me. Because I don't know.