Some cheery thoughts for your Monday morning:

Let us suppose, as certainly is quite possible (perhaps probable), that the Bush people are re-elected, legally or otherwise (legally, not legitimately!). Here is one scenario that may be in store, and that is certainly being discussed outside the mainstream media in the U.S., though not in sources for which I can find URLs. It is a scenario that may not even require a Bush victory, but is surely more probable to unfold in the form imagined under Bush. In any case, I offer it here for your horror.

Iran is already increasingly defiant in the face of international pressure about its nuclear capabilities. Being a founding member of the “Axis of Evil,” the Iranians have no doubt drawn the correct conclusion that their best protection against the American juggernaut is to acquire nuclear weapons. This story, in any event, is so far on the back burners in the mass media.

At some point (probably after November 2), Israel will strike the Iranian nuclear facilities, as it did with Iraq more than two decades ago. Since Iran, unlike Iraq, is not a decimated country with a third-rate army, the Iranians will retaliate against “the Zionists.” Assuming Israel does not, then, annihilate the Iranians with nuclear weapons, it will respond militarily in some other form, and the U.S. will come to Israel’s “defense.” With the pretext of an assault on a valued ally, the Bush war mongers will call for a new millitary draft, a proposal that will win the warm support of principled Democrats like Senator John Kerry, who also voted for the “Patriot [sic] Act” and the war in Iraq.

With a concerted “Zionist” assault upon an Islamic nation, there will, of course, be upheaval throughout the Islamic world, including the toppling of Bush’s man in Pakistan, who will be ousted by Islamic radicals in his own military. Assuming India does not then launch a preventive nuclear war against Pakistan, the Pakistanis will, no doubt, transfer some of their own nuclear capabilities to the beleagured Iranians. You can fill in the rest.

It goes without saying that there will also be all kinds of terrorist incidents in the United States as “retaliation.”

Let us hope my powers of prognosis are poor. But who would have dreamed in the summer of 2001 that it would be a matter of national urgency within a year to invade Iraq? Once burned, twice shy….

UPDATE: The mass media is taking notice.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And still more ominous signs noted in the mass media.