The U.S. general staff is already preparing strikes against Iran.

Another U.S. aircraft carrier has just arrived in the Persian Gulf. The Kearsarge and its attack group, which includes missiles, helicopters, fighter bombers and amphibious units manned by Marines, is ready to intervene against any “threat,” but is also prepared to conduct “humanitarian missions” in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the captain of the Kearsarge, Robert Bougher. This piece of information comes from the Pentagon’s official organ, “Defend America.” But there is no doubt that this deployment of forces near the Iranian coast could be a cover for preparations to intervene against Iranian targets.

Last Sunday, the right-wing British newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, which has access to the Pentagon, published, with maps to back up its article, a plan listing intervention targets that the U.S. general staff has prepared. An anonymous official confirmed that the hypothesis of an intervention against Iran was spreading in the intelligence services. Bush is said to want to assure U.S. security by neutralizing Iran before the end of his presidential term. This news is not a revelation; it is merely confirmation of the Pentagon’s plans.

“Once again,” wrote the New York Times in an editorial following the President’s speech announcing a partial withdrawal from Iraq, “it is clear that Mr. Bush refuses to recognize the truth of his failure in Iraq and envisions a military commitment that has no end.”

There is a real danger of an escalation which would add to the barbarism of the combat and the occupation of Iraq, which, according to the medical journal The Lancet, has injured and killed nearly 600,000 Iraqis, who have fallen victim to military operations and to the resulting extreme poverty and devastation of the health care system. More than 3,780 young Americans have died fighting for the White House’s lies, and 27,800 have been wounded.

Bush and his team are devoting 10 billion dollar a month to this terrible waste of human life. In 2006, Nobel peace prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard researcher Katrina Kosek calculated that, if you include all of the war’s costs, they amount to 2 trillion dollars. Bush has just asked for another 50 billion dollars.