Naviblog... scanning for war

* I'm very interested in this sudden outburst of activity by top war officials in the UK and US, blaming Iran for covert activity in Iraq. It is barely one week since pictures of UK tanks slamming into a Basra jail to "free" 2 UK servicemen held there were aired across the world. What were they doing there? Why were they being held and in plainclothes? Why can a couple of foreign tanks crash down some country' town jail to pull out a couple of their men as they like? The pictures of one flame-bombed UK tank really did it in the UK, and was even aired in Japan (of course 3 days after it really occurred, but they do that with almost every major world event so I guess it's policy).
* Now, yesterday UK Prime Minister Blair says in the FT, Reuters, the Scotsman, CBS and so on. "What is clear is that there have been new explosive devices . . . the particular nature of those devices leads us either Iranian elements or to Hizbollah." and adds that "If it is also the case that they are trying to make some point about the negotiations over the nuclear weapons issue in respect of Iran . . . weare not going to be intimidated on that". He reminds us that there is "no justification for Iran or any other country interfering in Iraq", oblivious to why then are there US/UK troops in Iraq anyway. On the same day US President Bush made a series of statements such as "America's enemies have endless ambitions of imperial domination", well, this does sound familiar. Huntington, here we go.
* Worryingly, this occurred on the same day that I heard this rumor about an imminent strike on Iran, but that may not materialise immediately. To see the rhetoric launched harder in Washington by Bush on the same day as Blair and spreading it through all the right press outlets (FT etc), and now directed at both Syria and Iran makes me wonder if we are looking at thunder before the storm.
* Or are they mainly trying to obfuscate the latest 27 dead in an American raid in Western Iraq, or the shambles of what is left of the myth of British security in Southern Iraq?
* While we debate all this 6,000 more NATO troops are to move to Afghanistan to do some more fighting on someone's behalf, according to an interview with the Secretary General of NATO in the French newspaper Le Monde yesterday.