Their country's a four-letter word anyways

This stuff with British sailors held by Iran really smells funny. Besides all the worries about the sailors, the real problem is that it smells, well, of war, and big time.

Timing is perfect. Image is perfect. The moment you think about it all seems quite awkward.

So far, the main stated reason to bully Iran was its escalated enrichment program, but all this nuclear bullshit wasn't really clicking with the public. If they tried to use it as a cause for war, everyone would be reminding them of fishy evidence they used for trashing Iraq. Valerie Plum's scandal really nailed this one down - just weeks ago.

UN security council wasn't gonna buy it either. They once approved a borderline resolution for Iraq, and US didn't bother to ask the second time. Now the Council are all on their guards. No resolution regarding Iran will have a clause for any military action, not even if its limited to throwing satellite-guided cucumbers.

The cause with sailors is all different. These are real people, and they need real help, now. Their families are struggling, and the government is obliged to help. The British government itself is on its own, no one is really helping them out. United States seem uninvolved, just expressing due condolences. This is a perfect image, one you want to feel about.

There it went, a Security Council resolution resolution urging Iran to release the prisoners. It has to click really loud in everyone's head now. You see, many the greatest wars started with a claim of a small, local provocation, and were "just responses" to actions involving death of perhaps a few people.

Remember there are presidential elections zooming in in the US. Also Tony Blair really got to go, any day now. The faked evidence used to launch the pre-Iraq bullshit campaign was fabricated, then handed to British and then handed back as legit information from one of the allies, really a kind of money laundering but with information. These two governments are bound together, I wouldn't be surprised the chiefs got commemorative tattoos on their asses. "Never forget" kind of thingy.

With all this in place, things start to look really screwed up. If that's the scenario, then the sailors really got no chance, and that's sad. I just hope the public will slap the administration early enough so they don't even think of trying.