Pentagon Preparing “Show of Force” Against Iran; MoJo is All Over the Story

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The AP is reporting that the Pentagon is considering “a major buildup of U.S. Navy forces in the Gulf as a show of force against Iran.” While seemingly insane — Thanks for suggesting diplomacy with these folks, Iraq Study Group. Now get out of town. — this should come as no surprise to regular Mother Jones readers.

In July 2006, we published “Next We Take Tehran: The confrontation with Iran has very little to do with nukes—and a lot with the agenda of empire.”

Also in July 2006, we published “Three Days in Rome: In which a neoconservative jack-of-all-trades, a pair of Pentagon hawks, and an Iranian exile with a knack for tall tales try to outflank the CIA and conjure a coup in Tehran.”

In October 2006, we published “Meet the “Whack Iran” Lobby: Exiles peddling shaky intelligence, advocacy groups pressing for regime change, neocons bent on remaking the Middle East. Sound familiar?”

And also in October 2006, we published “Has Washington Found its Iranian Chalabi?: Introducing the talented Mr. Fakhravar.”

So get educated! (Oh, and in a recent issue of Vanity Fair, Frank Gaffney, assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and president of the hawkish Center for Security Policy, which has close ties to the top levels of the Pentagon, said, “I would say that the likelihood of military action against Iran is 100 percent.” So there you go.)

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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