A close friend of mine, a journalist and an implicitly trusted source, informs me that his military friends are telling him that there is lots of activity going down at the major U.S. military installations that comprise Naval Base Coronado in southern California.

What’s most disconcerting about this is that conversations abound about the impending deployment being sent to Iran (Iran with an “n,” not Iraq). Now anyone familiar with military history knows any and all such deployments are often rife with scuttlebutt and rumors. However, the timing of this is interesting, and there seems to be at the very least an appreciable effort underway in the stepping up of a military presence elsewhere abroad, Iran or not.

I don’t normally ever post based information which could be construed as speculative gossip, but something is clearly in motion right now, and it is not in the mode of “standard operating procedure.”

I pose this information publicly, as to inquire if anyone might have some insight on what these deployments are about, and what is engendering them at this time? Is this an effort to push for the ‘military options’ which have been such an integral part of the long-desired policies advocated by certain political and military elements? The timing is interesting, in that with a national election around the corner, it forces the hand of any political leadership which may be wary of pursuing more military ’solutions’ abroad?

To Obama: You want to stay president? Be on board with whatever we decide.
To Romney: You want to be president?  Be on board with whatever we decide.
Deviate from us, and you’ll be depicted as soft on terror, pro-Islam, and anti-American.

Conspiracy theory? Or simply a simple, straightforward description of the flow of power in a system that is so thoroughly and demonstrably dominated by what Eisenhower called “the military industrial complex”? One which has managed to politically engineer the interests of the Pentagon and its bloated corporate feeders at its never-ending trough, a process well-documented in Eugene Jarecki’s pointed expose’ Why We Fight.

If these deployments are part of enabling the long-standing neo-con wet dream of attacking Iran (after all, “Real Men Go To Tehran”), then its time to be beyond concerned. Today, Tehran can be found on that rocky road through Damascus, which seems one of the more obvious reasons for the dramatically increased focus on that region these days. Such an attack ranks as probably the second most frightening global scenario to me, next to the ever-increasing effects of climate change which seem to be well under way these days.

If a U.S./Israeli axis actually attacked Iran, it could very likely trigger a World War III, with China, Russia, most of the Middle East (and a good portion of the rest of the world), responding in a way that would likely coalesce into a major, concerted anti-American spasm of political, economic, and technological warfare, and even direct military intervention.

In such an event, oil prices will skyrocket, whole economies will implode. Global political instability will careen out of control. It will be the most absurd, ill-fated, and historically transformative military gamble since Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941.

- Andy Valeri, USTV Media