Con Coughlin: Russia Prepares for a Fight with America

Confirmation that the US and its allies are studying their military options for helping the anti-Assad rebels in Syria is a worrying development on a number of levels, not least of which is the prospect of the West becoming embroiled in a direct confrontation with the Russians. As I have argued before, I think the West, and that includes Britain, needs to proceed with great caution before it gets too closely involved in the Syrian crisis. As with the Libya situation last year, we still have no clear idea who the rebels are in Syria, or what their ultimate objective might be. Homs, the center of the anti-Assad rebellion, is a known center for Islamic extremists, and if all Western intervention achieves is the replacement of the Assad regime with an Iranian-style Islamist dictatorship, then we will have scored a monumental own goal. Of deeper concern, though, is the possibility that the US could find itself involved in a direct military confrontation with Russia over the future of Syria's destiny. We have been here before, of course, during the 1980's when, at the height of the Cold War, Moscow and Washington fought a proxy war over the fate of neighboring Lebanon. Even though US President Ronald Reagan deployed thousands of US Marines to Beirut, the Americans were eventually sent packing. During that conflict, Russia backed the Syrians, who in turn used the Iranian-backed Hizbollah militia to carry out a series of devastating terrorist attacks against the Americans, ultimately forcing them to to withdraw their forces from Lebanon.   

The Excavator: Navy Seals Don't Want to be Sacrificial Lambs

Acclaimed actor, humanitarian, and American patriot Ed Asner provided further proof on the Alex Jones show on Monday, February 13, that the bad guys in Washington and Tel Aviv are planning to stage a new false flag attack and blame it on Iran to get World War III up and going. Kurt Nimmo writes: Appearing on the Alex Jones Show on Monday, Emmy Award winning actor Ed Asner said Navy Seals have told him military action against Iran is forthcoming, and will be preceded by a false flag attack. Asner told Alex and his nationally syndicated radio show audience that the Seals are attempting to alert the American people about the prospect of a "false flag" operation and"more foreign escapades" before the establishment media "starts brainwashing us." Asner gave few details about his sources, but his information confirms suspicions held by many in the global alternative media that Israel and Washington are engineering a new false flag to use as an excuse to totally isolate Iran from the international community and start a massive bombing campaign against its military, civilian, and nuclear installations. The plan is to bury Persia in the fires of hell and advance US-Israeli hegemony over the whole region. Tony Cartalucci reminded the world of the West's game plan against Iran in his article, "String of Global Bombings Blamed on Iran." Here is an excerpt: The problem ultimately is that the United States and Israel have put on paper a conspiracy to provoke a war with Iran by crushing it economically, attacking it covertly, surrounding it militarily, undermining it politically, and even going as far as funding, training, and arming terrorists to murder the Iranian people!

Sarah B. Boxer: CNN Cancels March 1 Debate!

CNN canceled its March 1 Republican presidential debate on Thursday after three of four candidates declined to participate, citing busy campaign schedules leading to Super Tuesday on March 6. "Mitt Romney and Ron Paul told the Georgia Republican Party, Ohio Republican Party, and CNN Thursday that they will not participate in the March 1 Republican presidential debate," CNN said in a statement. "Without full participation of all four candidates, CNN will not move forward with the Super Tuesday debate." Former US Senator Rick Santorum also said he would not participate, leaving only former House Speaker Newt Gingrich committed to attending. Still scheduled is a Feb.22 debate sponsored by CNN and the Arizona Republican Party in Mesa, Arizona. It will be moderated by CNN's John King. Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, said, "With eight other states voting on March 6, we will be campaigning in other parts of the country, and unable to schedule the CNN Georgia debate. We have participated in 20 debates, including eight from CNN."Santorum "has no plans of doing it right now," spokesman Hogan Gidley said of the March 1 debate. Gingrich, whose home state is Georgia, had plans to take part. "The Romney model is to go to Wall Street and raise huge amounts of money to run negative ads," he said. "And you can understand why having to defend that strategy is probably not something he's very happy with."  

Grace Wyler: Ron Paul Is Secretly Taking Over The GOP

Evidence is mounting that Mitt Romney's 194-vote victory over Ron Paul was prematurely announced, if not totally wrong. Washington County canceled their caucus on Saturday on account of three inches of snow, hardly a blizzardby Maine standards, and other towns that scheduled their caucuses for this week have been left out of the vote count. Now, it looks as though caucuses that did take place before Feb 11 have also been left out of the final tally. As the full extent of the chaos unfolds, sources close to the Paul campaign tell Business Insider that it is looking increasingly like Romney's team might have a hand in denying Paul votes, noting that Romney's team might have a hand in denying Paul votes, noting that Romney has some admirably ruthless operatives on his side, and a powerful incentive to avoid a fifth caucus loss this month. According to the Paul campaign, the Maine Republican Party is severely under-reporting Paul's results, and Romney isn't getting the same treatment. For example, nearly all the towns in Waldo County, a Ron Paul stronghold, held their caucuses on Feb 4, but the state GOP reported no results for those towns. In Waterville, a college town in Central Maine, results were reported but not included in the party vote count. Paul beat Romney 21-5 there, according to the Kennebec County GOP. "It's too common," senior adviser Doug Wead told Business Insider. "If it was chaos, we would expect strong Romney counties to be unreported, and that's not what's happening."

Brad Blog: Ron Paul Robbed by GOP in Maine

The Maine GOP committed massive Election Fraud in State Caucuses, outraging Paul supporters: The state GOP has stolen the state for Mitt Romney in Maine's 2012 Caucuses. Might Romney be the actual winner, once all votes are actually cast and counted? Perhaps, but the fact is, the Maine Republican Party has purposely blocked that from happening. Beside the voters of Maine, Congressman Ron Paul, according to the official results, reported by the state GOP lost to Romney by just 194 votes. Adding to the outrage, the election fraud was perpetrated by the Chairman of the state's Republican Party, Charly Webster. Readers of the BRAD BLOG may well remember Webster as the man who spent months attempting to wholesale disenfranchise thousands of legal student voters in the state of Maine, on the entirely fraudulent basis that they were committing "voter fraud" because they were out-of-state students who, living in Maine and going to school there most of the year, should be, nonetheless, barred from voting there. Federal law clearly states otherwise, allowing such students to vote in Maine, and even Republican Charles E Summers, Jr. who investigated Webster's "evidence" for his case, found it entirely baseless. While Webster was pretending that massive voter fraud was occurring in Maine, he has now, himself committed a massive case of election fraud by announcing the winner of lat week's Maine Caucuses as Mitt Romney despite the full knowledge that voters in at least three different counties have been entirely disenfranchised, with their votes not included in his "final" results.  

Douglas Birch: US Very Closely Watching Syrian Chemical Weapons

The US and its allies are closely monitoring Syria's stockpiles of chemical arms and portable anti-aircraft missiles, a State Department official says, amid concerns that the country's unconventional weapons could fall into the hands of terrorist or militant groups while the 11-month-old uprising continues. "Syria is a country of significant proliferation concern, so we monitor its chemical weapons activities very closely," the State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence-related matters. "We believe Syria's chemical weapons stockpile remains under Syrian government control, ad we will continue to work closely with like-minded countries to impede proliferation of Syria's chemical weapons program." The official added that the US is in discussion with its allies on ways to ensure that Syria's stockpile of portable anti-aircraft missiles, called Man-Portable Air Defense Systems , or MANPADS, aren't stolen or diverted. "We are consulting with allies and partners as we plan for a variety of contingencies," the official said. Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, have been critical of US efforts to secure Libya's chemical and unconventional arsenals, saying the Obama administration should have responded more quickly during that crisis, and now faces the task of trying to account for thousands of missing portable anti-aircraft missiles. "We got off to a slow start with Libya," Rep Edward Royce, R-Calif, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on terrorism, nonproliferation and trade, said in a recent interview.  

Joseph Fitsanakis: Israeli-Iranian Dirty War.

The ongoing intelligence war between Israel and Iran appears to be reaching unprecedented levels following the exposure earlier this week of a simultaneous bombing campaign against Israeli targets in Europe and Asia. The wife of Israel's Defense Attache in New Delhi, India, was among four people injured on Monday, after a magnetic bomb attached to her car exploded just 500 yards from the gates of the Israeli embassy. Three thousand miles away, in Tbilisi, Georgia, a sharp-eyed employee of the Israeli embassy there discovered a bomb attached to a diplomatic car. The device was eventually diffused by Georgian counter-terrorist authorities. A few hours later, the government of Thailand announced that two Iranian nationals had been detained following an explosion at a rented house in the capital Bangkok, which critically injured one of the arrestees. A second man was reportedly arrested in Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi International Airport while he was trying to board a flight to Malaysia. At least two other men, also Iranian nationals, remain at large, though Thai officials suspect they have already fled to Iran. Thai authorities have confirmed the bombers' targets were Israeli diplomats. Speaking anonymously to Bloomberg news agency, US intelligence officials said that operations directed at Israeli targets were also "disrupted" in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, as well as in Bulgaria. Observers have also noted that the attack that injured the wife of the Israeli diplomat was carried out in one of Israel's strongest allies in Asia, thus delivering a two-fold message to both Tel Aviv and New Delhi. India's Home Affairs Minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, told journalists yesterday that the attack in the Indian capital was conducted by a "well trained" motorcyclist, who attached "a magnetic device" to the car before speeding away.