EUROPEUS

(By Alexander Cockburn / Source: Creators.com) There are limits to protest. Don't try to picket Bush or Cheney, even if you're in a wheelchair. Chances are the cops will Taser you and haul you off. But you can wear an anti-war T-shirt in pretty much every mall in America — though maybe not in the vicinity of Camp Lejeune, N.C. — and not even get spat on. We're not back in the difficult days of the early '60s when anti-war demonstrators faced brickbats and curses from the multitude. We're in the dawn of the 21st century when Main Street America has decisively turned against the war in Iraq, though only the merest handful of senators and U.S. representatives dare stand up and be counted. At the start of October — even after Gen. David Petraeus' suave performance on Capitol Hill, hyping his "surge" — only 27 percent of Americans wanted Congress to OK the $190 billion Bush requested for Iraq and Afghanistan. At the start of this week, the Washington Post summed up its latest poll, conducted with ABC TV, thus: "Most Americans do not believe Congress has gone far enough in opposing the war."

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(By Ken Silverstein / Source: Harper's Magazine - USA) Until recently, I thought the odds that the United States would attack Iran were less than fifty-fifty, but the chances of a military confrontation are clearly growing (as my colleague Scott Horton has been reporting on for some time). Earlier this year, I asked a former CIA official, who was stationed in the Persian Gulf during the first Gulf War and served in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, if he though the administration was planning a military strike. “I don’t think the administration is about to carry out military action,” he told me. “The military does not want to do this. We will lose planes if there is a massive air strike over Iran. We’ll have pilots killed and captured.” Yesterday, I called the official—who speaks with me only off the record—and he now believes a military strike is likely. Here are his comments, which I offer not as an endorseme:

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