Pressure is mounting from the Bush White House for a military strike against Iran. Covert operations have been going on in Iran for the last year or so. Is Bush crazy enough to launch an attack before he leaves office? I'm afraid so, but I hope I'm wrong.
According to Seymour Hirsch in the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine,
SecDef Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.”
the Bush Administration is on the warpath against Iran. Leadership in Congress is complicit in the happenings as well, though.Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.Fortunately, if there is fortune to be found in this sticky wicket, there is a great deal of controversy surrounding this escalation of offense against Iran.
...United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Military and civilian leaders in the Pentagon share the White House’s concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but there is disagreement about whether a military strike is the right solution. Some Pentagon officials believe, as they have let Congress and the media know, that bombing Iran is not a viable response to the nuclear-proliferation issue, and that more diplomacy is necessary.I completely agree, and I hope you do, too. Only someone with a daft "understanding" of history would not agree that US operations on Iranian soil is a heinously inappropriate offense towards the Iranian people. But hey, that's never stopped the World's Only Superpower before!
Hirsch talks of this interesting
It will be interesting to see if Bush and his Establishment puppeteers can finagle a "Persian Gulf Incident" to give the appearance of warrant for a full-scale attack against Iran before the elections.
conversation with an unnamed source (a representative from Secretary of Defense Gates later denied it.)A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.”Unfortunately, Democratic leadership in Congress seems to be in cahoots with the Bush Administration as much as they were on the ill-fated Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq.
...some members of the Democratic leadership—Congress has been under Democratic control since the 2006 elections—were willing, in secret, to go along with the Administration in expanding covert activities directed at Iran, while the Party’s presumptive candidate for President, Barack Obama, has said that he favors direct talks and diplomacy.It will be interesting to see if Bush and his Establishment puppeteers can finagle a "Gulf of Tonkin Incident" (perhaps at some future date to be referred to as the "Persian Gulf Incident") to give the appearance of warrant for a full-scale attack against Iran before the elections.
If McCain takes over from Bush, we all know what will happen. Nuclear conflagration and a bumper crop of terrorists around the world! If Obama takes over, will it be so bad? I'm thinking that based on all the recent backpedaling Obama has done (it's all about "change" isn't it?) that, yes, it will be as bad.
I fear that we are screwed.
Frank,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy your blog. To those who don't take the time to understand the background of what's going on, this is not about Iran's nuclear ambitions, any more than our invasion of Iraq was about WMD. It's about oil and those countries leaders' desire to sell their oil to other nations and being able to accept a currency other than the US Dollar. Expect them to go after Hugo Chafez in Venezuela next. He's not playing by the rules either.
Scott,
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing up the important point of historical context. For many it's as though history started when George W. Bush took office, and that the United States had never done anything to warrant hatred from anyone in the world.
What a blind view of history that is. Chavez may be crazy, but American policy has largely made him that way. If we'd leave the world alone, it would be a much better place.