World War Three?

This is a phrase bandied around lately, often by people more conservative than me. I tend to think it a bit of hyperbole. wouldn't we have to have more countries involved to make it a world war? well maybe not. in the past, it only took a couple of nations to make a world war and we could pull that off. right?

The question is, do we want to do that? this article is worth reading. it outlines what has previously been chocked up to 'saber rattling'. Now it is a little different. this outlines "ORDERS to Deploy" that the US Navy has given for Oct. 1st (just in time for elections?). where are they going? The Strait of Hormuz, of course. This is the small strait through which most oil leaving the persian gulf must go. is moving out the ships one would need to blockade the strait. THIS is the sort of wrench we may be putting on Iran. we already boycott trade with Iran. this would effectively keep their trade out of OTHER nations' hands. This is the sort of thing that's lead to standoffs and war for centuries. we may be playing a tough hand now before they actually have WMD's. the problem with this sort of pressure is the effect on oil markets and the other nations around the globe that rely on Iran to provide their fuel.

this is scary stuff. a snippet from Time magazine below:

The first message was routine enough: A "Prepare to Deploy" order sent through naval communications channels to a submarine, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers and two mine hunters. The orders didn't actually command the ships out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf. The CNO had asked for a rundown on how a blockade of those strategic targets might work. When he didn't like the analysis he received, he ordered his troops to work the lash up once again.

What's going on? The two orders offered tantalizing clues. There are only a few places in the world where minesweepers top the list of U.S. naval requirements. And every sailor, petroleum engineer and hedge-fund manager knows the name of the most important: the Strait of Hormuz, the 20-mile-wide bottleneck in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 40% of the world's oil needs to pass each day. Coupled with the CNO's request for a blockade review, a deployment of minesweepers to the west coast of Iran would seem to suggest that a much discussed—but until now largely theoretical—prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.