War Looming?

Someone asked me if I was OK because I haven't been keeping up the blog lately. Sorry folks, school started August 30th, and I've been pretty fried by the end of the day, most days and the AM fresh hours are dedicated to proofreading and footnote chasing. The other spare minutes, when I could be blogging, I admit, have been spent frittering.
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But amidst all this relatively minor business, I keep hearing somewhere in the background, on the radio perhaps, or the CNN notices that pop up in my email (no wait, that was about Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston) that we are on the threshold of war.
For thoughtful reflections on the possibility I recommend the Daniel Ellsburg's recent "reporter's notebook" in the October issue of Harper's (sorry, they don't have it up on their site). However, you can find a reference to it at Editor and Publisher along with examples of the distortion of informaiton (ie, lying) going on in the Bush admin. Here's Ellsberg's call to action:

Indeed, Ellsberg had called for insiders, such as Clarke, to come forward before the Iraq invasion, in a January 2003 interview with E&P.

Assuming Hersh’s so-far anonymous sources mean what they say -- that this is, as one puts it, 'a juggernaut that has to be stopped' -- I believe it is time for one or more of them to go beyond fragmentary leaks unaccompanied by documents. That means doing what no other active official or consultant has ever done in a timely way: what neither Richard Clarke nor I nor anyone else thought of doing until we were no longer officials, no longer had access to current documents, after bombs had fallen and thousands had died, years into a war. It means going outside executive channels, as officials with contemporary access, to expose the president’s lies and oppose his war policy publicly before the war, with unequivocal evidence from inside.

Simply resigning in silence does not meet moral or political responsibilities of officials rightly 'appalled' by the thrust of secret policy. I hope that one or more such persons will make the sober decision -- accepting sacrifice of clearance and career, and risk of prison -- to disclose comprehensive files that convey, irrefutably, official, secret estimates of costs and prospects and dangers of the military plans being considered.

What needs disclosure is the full internal controversy, the secret critiques as well as the arguments and claims of advocates of war and nuclear 'options' -- the Pentagon Papers of the Middle East. ...

The personal risks of doing this are very great. Yet they are not as great as the risks of bodies and lives we are asking daily of over 130,000 young Americans -- with many yet to join them -- in an unjust war. Our country has urgent need for comparable courage, moral and civil courage, from its public servants. They owe us the truth before the next war begins.

For people who generally know something about "what the hell is really going on"....I am turning today to Consortium News.

It seems to me that the US is in no position to expand the so-called war on terror. However, an anon commenter alerted me to this alarming rumor at Matthew Yglesias' blog. It seems crazy, but I find myself wondering "will they stop at nothing?" After all, the Bush admin has not been known for its wise caution, foresight or morality so far.