No, I do not hear the fat lady singing.

If Netanyahu wins the 2/10 Israeli elections, as seems likely, we can expect him to aggressively push forward the current (psychopathic) Israeli strategy of putting Iran in the crosshairs while systematically murdering the Palestinians and stealing more and more of their land. Now the question is: Will that work?

A very good interview here with a "former" CIA operative, Robert Baer, indicates that an attack on Iran is not possible.

IPS: Is the possibility of a limited attack on Iran's nuclear facilities by Israel also out of question? Especially given what we learned in a recent New York Times article that last year, Israeli leaders asked President Bush to carry out such an attack, though the president did not accept.

RB: Totally out of the question. Even Bush understood this. The New York Times is right when it says that Bush vetoed an Israeli attack, simply because there is a balance of power in the Middle East between the U.S. and Iran, and it's a fairly even balance of power. I mean not in terms of aircraft tanks or submarines, but in a monopoly of violence, there is equality.

Lord Stirling has outlined with bitter clarity the meaning of a War on Iran, and you can read all about that here if you wish. You are forewarned. It appears, at least, that our US military commanders have 'seen the light.' But that does not mean Israel won't do something totally stupid, for as we can all surmise, the Israelis have gone off the rails. As a matter of fact, Kuwait and some other unnamed countries in the Middle East, Asia and Europe have ordered large supplies of potassium iodide (ie: nukepills). So it's not like we're out of the woods.

But there's a new twist (new to me anyway). Netanyahu and the Clintons don't get along, going way back to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which so happened to be under Netanyahu's Likud government. Here's the full text of a story from September, 1998 in The New Federalist: What Was the Mossad Role in the Lewinski Affair? by Edward Spannaus, captured at WhatReallyHappened:

According to a little-noticed passage in the Starr Report, during March 1997, President Clinton told Monica Lewinsky that he suspected a foreign embassy was tapping his telephone conversations.

Nothing more is said in the report about the incident, but according to information received by this news service, that reference could provide the key to the entire Lewinsky scandal and to the setting-up and entrapment of the President. Reportedly, the embassy involved was that of Israel, under the control of the right-wing Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

First, the time-frame of the Lewinsky affair should be taken into account. It is bounded by two events: (1) the assassination of President Clinton's partner in the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, on Nov. 4, 1995, which opens the path for Netanyahu becoming Prime Minister in May 1996; and (2) Netanyahu's visit to Washington in mid-January 1998--just as the Lewinsky affair was breaking in the U.S. news media. On this visit, Netanyahu publicly insulted the President by meeting with Bill Clinton's worst enemies, televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Netanyahu carried out this affront over the objections of both President Clinton and moderate Jewish leaders in the United States.

The question must be asked: Was the set-up of President Clinton part of the effort by the Likud fanatics in Israel, and their "Temple Mount" backers in London, to punish the President for his efforts to force through an implementation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords?

The Real Lewinsky Tapes British investigative journalist Kevin Dowling has released an article for publication to a variety of British and American news organizations, charging that the Israeli Mossad was bugging the Watergate apartment telephone of Monica Lewinsky, and was able to obtain material used to blackmail the Clinton administration into shutting down a probe of widespread Israeli espionage in Washington.

Dowling reports that well-placed sources in Tel Aviv say that full transcripts of more than 30 sexually explicit conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky are held by the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

The backdrop is as follows, Dowling reports, and it is backed up by published sources in the U.S., that the U.S. government was aware, from late 1995 on, that the Mossad was carrying out extensive espionage activity in the United States. When the Defense Investigative Service issued a warning to defense contractors about the Israeli spy program, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith went into an all-out mobilization to denounce the DIS memo as "anti-Semitic." Of course, just one year earlier, the ADL had been the subject of a lengthy espionage probe by the FBI and the San Francisco Police; and the ADL had earlier been deeply implicated in the Jonathan Pollard spy affair.

In May of 1997, the Washington Post and other media reported that the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted a phone conversation between a Mossad officer posted at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and Danny Yaton, the Mossad chief, in Tel Aviv, during January 1997. The Mossad agent was seeking clarification whether he should attempt to obtain a copy of private letter from then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yassir Arafat, via a Mossad mole high-up in the Clinton administration codenamed "Mega." [allegedly Rahm Emanual - ed.] The Mossad boss told the agent that under no circumstances should "Mega" be approached, as he/she was the top Israeli penetration agent inside the Clinton inner circle. An extensive FBI counterintelligence probe to determine the identity of the high-level Israeli mole in the U.S. government was triggered by the NSA intercept.

Comparisons to the Pollard spy affair were naturally raised; the deeper issue is that many observers believe that Pollard's controller (sometimes referred to as "Mr.. X," or the "X Committee") is still burrowed deep in a high-level position in a U.S. government agency.

According to the Tel Aviv sources cited by Dowling, there was an emergency meeting of top Israeli intelligence officials, as soon as the NSA intercept was discovered; a Mossad electronic-bugging team of yalohim was dispatched to Washington, and one of the targets of their operation was the home telephone of Monica Lewinsky.

According to the Dowling sources, the Mossad obtained wiretap tapes of at least 30 X-rated conversations between the President and Lewinsky. These tapes, according to the sources, were hand-carried back to Tel Aviv, and were then used to blackmail the Clinton administration into calling off the search for "Mega"; the threat was that if the search for "Mega" were not shut down, the Israelis would begin leaking material from the tapes.

According to Michael Isikoff, the reporter who first started investigating the Lewinsky story, he first learned about a story involving the President and "an intern" in March-April of 1997.

The Dowling story is consistent with many leads assembled by this news service over the past several years, suggesting that the Israelis were operating against the Clinton Presidency in underhanded ways, as well as in an overt policy was, to sabotage the Middle East peace process.

It should not be overlooked that the appellate attorney for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was Theodore Olson--Kenneth Starr's long-time colleague and close friend, and host of the "Get Clinton" salon. Olson was still Pollard's lawyer as late as 1993, when Olson was already launching the anti-Clinton "Arkansas Project" with the American Spectator magazine and Richard Mellon Scaife's money--out of which operation came the Whitewater investigation and the Paula Jones case.

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On 9/14/98, during a White House press conference, a reporter asked Mike McCurry , "Is it true that the White House is bugged by a foreign country?"

McCurry said he had no comment on that and moved on to other things.

It is known that Bill Clinton ordered the FBI to stop searching for a White House mole code-named "Mega".The prevailing story is that Clinton was being blackmailed by a recording of Bill having phone sex with Monica Lewinsky. It's now known that the Israeli owned companies providing billing and tapping sevices were well positioned to intercept any and all phone calls going into Monica's Watergate apartment, as well as all phone calls in and out of the secure White House communications system.

So all this brouhaha took place because Israel, under Netanyahu, wanted to sabotage the peace process, the same as today. And very strangely, it looks like we will have another confrontation coming up with many of the same players in a matter of weeks. Do Hillary and Bill, currently under extreme duress due to the financial corruption being exposed and liable to throw Bush Sr. et. al. under the bus to save their own skins, despise Netanyahu for setting them up? If that's true, the upcoming clash between Israel and the Obama Administration could have a very high popcorn factor. Hillary Clinton, in particular, would have ample motivation to go for Bibi's jugular. And should her courage fail her for some reason, the unraveling financial corruption scandal dangles the threat of jail over her head.

I must be imagining all of this. It's just too wild to contemplate how these planets are lining up. We are potentially looking at some of the most treacherous people in the world being pitted against each other.