Missing from the discussion in nearly every US media report of the Russia-Georgia conflict is the fact that an important oil pipeline runs through Georgia, not far from South Ossetia, which is asserting its independence from Georgia.

It's sometimes hard to tell if the British government's handling of a radiation poisoning case is inept or just poorly reported, but it certainly could be improved. The difficulty of the UK's response to a  radiological attack on an individual demonstrates, on a much smaller scale, the kind of challenge Americans would face if terrorists used radioactive substances to inflict mass casualties in the United States.

By the time British government authorities publicly identified polonium-210 as the likely cause of Alexander Litvinenko's death, thousands of people had been exposed to cross-contamination as they passed through each of the places visited by the former Russian spy, and possibly his assassin, before he fell ill on November 1. It is unclear if doctors failed to quickly diagnose the cause, or if officials intentionally withheld the diagnosis for investigative purposes.

So far, though, investigators report finding traces of radiation at a dozen locations, among them Litvinenko's home, the Park Lane Hotel, the Millenium Hotel, a sushi restaurant, offices of fellow Russian Boris Berezovsky, and two currently grounded aircraft. British authorities say that only low levels of contamination have been discovered and the threat to public health is "minimal." But,  monitoring and sampling can only determine how much contamination remains. How much was there originally may never be known.

I had intended to write a piece on Cheney's speech in Vilnius yesterday and wrestled with the idea all afternoon and through the evening, at last too tired, too disinterested in the bastard to finish reading his painfully pompous and threatening remarks much less write about it I gave up.

Finally, I posted the whole sorry thing on my blog under the title "Cheney Lets Mouth Overload Ass, Full Text" and went to bed. To sleep, perchance to wake inspired.

Crossposted at Empire Burlesque

So now we know: Next time the fire will come in Iran. The blow will be delivered by proxy, but that will not spare the true perpetrator from the firestorm of blowback and unintended consequences that will follow. Even now, the gruesome deaths of many innocent people in many lands are growing in futurity's womb.

The Rubicon of the new war was crossed on Oct. 27. Oddly enough for this renewal of the ancient enmity between the heirs of Athens and Persia, the decisive event occurred on the edge of the Arctic Circle, at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome, where a Russian rocket lifted an Iranian spy satellite, the Sinah-1, into orbit. This launch, scarcely noticed at the time, has accelerated the inevitable strike on Iran's nuclear facilities: Israel is now readying an attack for no later than the end of March, The Sunday Times reports.

The order, from embattled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, puts Israel's special forces at the "highest stage of readiness" for the strike. While Iran's plan to begin enriching uranium -- which will give it the capability of building a nuclear bomb -- is the precipitating factor, the budding Iranian space program is a "point of no return" for Sharon, and that is what is driving the actual timing of the strike. The Sinah-1 is just the first of several Iranian satellites set for Russian launches in the coming months.