The Big One Cometh

War with Iran is imminent – but will Antiwar.com be around when the shooting starts?

by , February 20, 2012

We are currently experiencing the worst fundraising drive we have ever conducted. I am frankly appalled at the dearth of contributions, because if we continue at the present rate we are going to have to start winding down Antiwar.com, and – yes – even close up shop.

It’s as simple as that.

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time. US officials are saying – off the record, of course – war with Iran is “likely.” Hardly a day goes by without Washington rattling its saber, in unison with the Israelis, and our politicians are clearly on the warpath.

This is going to be the Big One: a war that will make the invasion of Iraq look like a dress rehearsal for Armageddon, which is precisely what it was. The War Party has been building up to this for many years – ever since the early 1990s, when the neoconservatives (later organized around the Project for a New
American Century) launched a focused effort to convince the elites we had to “transform” the Middle East and make it into something more like the Middle West.

The result? Disaster in Iraq, quagmire in Afghanistan – and now we’re on the road to an even worse catastrophe as the War Party ratchets up the pressure to attack Iran.

Defense chief Leon Panetta says the Israelis will strike in the Spring: April or May. Others anticipate an “October surprise” – but it won’t be much of a surprise to regular readers of Antiwar.com.

For sixteen years, we’ve stood watch on the ramparts, keeping track of the War Party 24/7: we’ve given you the best foreign policy news and commentary available on the web, attracted an international audience of several hundred thousand per month, and we’ve done it all on a shoe-string. We stood almost alone, back in the dark days of the run-up to war with Iraq, debunking claims of Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction.” We accurately predicted how the Iraq war would end – in chaos, and having sown the seeds of the next war. We were the first to name Scooter Libby as the brains behind the conspiracy to “out” a CIA agent, the first to comprehensively debunk – and trace the origins of – the Niger uranium forgeries, the first to raise the warning in the shadow of 9/11 that the US was being provoked into making a fatal mistake.

We don’t have any billionaires paying our bills, nor do we have big foundations backing us up: we just have you. We just have thousands of readers of all political persuasions united in their desire for a peaceful, non-interventionist foreign policy.

We’ve turned to you over the years for the support we need to keep going, and now we’re turning to you once again – because the world needs Antiwar.com now more than ever. Every day the US government gets closer to attacking Iran and launching a major war in the Middle East. Israel is scheming to drag us in by starting a conflict they intend for us to finish, and the War Party here on the home front is in full hysteria mode: once again, we hear the war cries of “weapons of mass destruction,” the lies, the half-truths, the war propaganda that accompanies every “mainstream” newscast.

In short, it’s starting all over again, and we must put a stop to it – because the fate of this country hangs in the balance.

Another war would destroy the US economy, or what’s left of it, and spark a major international financial crisis. The “oil shock” alone could bring down already shaky markets, and plunge a badly ailing economy into a Second Great Depression – one that will make the depression of the 1930s look like a Sunday school picnic.

Yes, we can prevent another war, we don’t have to sit passively and watch the same liars peddle the same lies. Given the right information, as opposed to the war propaganda they’re routinely fed by the “mainstream” media, the American people will choose peace – and rebel against being lied into another disastrous Mideast war.

But we can’t do it without your support. We need your tax-deductible donation right now in order to lay out the facts – the real facts – to the American people. Those facts are simple and easily explained:

  • The Israel lobby, a powerful force in Washington, is determined to drag us into war with Iran, and they’re pulling out all the stops – including funding a massive propaganda campaign designed to convince us Iran is about to nuke its neighbors.

We have the facts on our side. The problem is that the American people aren’t told the facts: instead, they’re fed a constant diet of war propaganda, fake “intelligence,” and anonymous “leaks” by US government officials of “factoids” that don’t add up to hard evidence of anything.

The internet gives us access to the public discourse, and allows us to cut in between the mass media – which is controlled by the War Party – and the public. We can indeed provide a much-needed corrective to the misinformation they’re being fed, but there’s a catch – we don’t have a lot of time to do it.

The clock is ticking. The War Party is putting enormous pressure on Washington, and the Israelis are daily threatening to attack – confident in the knowledge that President Obama will intervene on their behalf once the shooting begins.

There isn’t much time, and we are stretching our resources to the max in order to keep up with the demand for our “services” – and, yes, we are providing a service to our readers, and a valuable one at that. We are giving you the undiluted truth about this administration’s war plans and the facts that refute the alleged “necessity” of attacking Iran. Once the American people learn the true facts, they’ll turn on the War Party with unprecedented fury: think of all the lives that have been sacrificed on the altar of our rulers’ mad ambitions! Not to mention the billions – nay, trillions! – of our tax dollars that have been wasted at a time when Americans are being driven out of their foreclosed homes, jobless and hopeless.

It’s an outrage, and the American people will be properly and implacably outraged if they ever get the chance to discover how they’ve been systematically deceived by their own government.

This is important, so please stop whatever you’re doing or thinking of doing – aside from reading this – and get out your charge card, your checkbook, or whatever. The Big One is coming – and when it does, we need to be here. Except, at the present rate of donations, we won’t be here – and we need you to fix that. We need your tax-deductible donation and we need it now.

Our average contribution is under $50 – so we need a lot of them. No matter how modest, every donation counts.

The War Party doesn’t have to worry about paying the bills. They have the whole US Treasury – and the Federal Reserve – at their disposal. We have – you. Help us level the playing field. Give as if your future and the future of the country depended on it – because, in fact, it does.

Read more by Justin Raimondo