posted by Damozel |
It's not only the Bush Administration; according to BBC News, the French foreign minister is now warning that "the world" must prepare for war against Iran.
We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio.
Mr Kouchner said negotiations with Iran should continue "right to the end", but an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose "a real danger for the whole world".
Iran has consistently denied it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons but intends to carry on enriching uranium. (BBC)
It's just that WMD-free Iraq is likely to be the reason that many---if not most---Americans may fail to recognize that Iran actually appears to be on the way to obtaining a weapon of mass destruction. There is clearly consternation in Europe and elsewhere about just what Iran is cooking up. But precisely because of Bush's previous hubris, I expect most of my compatriots will stick their fingers in their ears and sing, "LALALALALALALALALALA!" if Bush tries to talk to them about the threat from Iran. It's just all got so hopelessly mixed up with Iraq.
So maybe Bush won't talk to us about it. According to senior intelligence officials, he's got a plan. And that plan is to set things up so that war with Iran becomes inevitable.
Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.
Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.(Telegraph)
And the Pentagon and the CIA have resorted to speculating about the "carefully calibrated program[me] of escalation," (Telegraph) i.e.,the step by step plan to make a military intervention inevitable.
A "senior intelligence official" has sketched out the following "chilling scenario of how war might come." I like that phrase so much: as if the war were just going to happen.
[P]ublic denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.
A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured....
Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.
Senior officials believe Mr Bush's inner circle has decided he does not want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon.
The intelligence source said: "No one outside that tight circle knows what is going to happen." But he said that within the CIA "many if not most officials believe that diplomacy is failing" and that "top Pentagon brass believes the same".
He said: "A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the US will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq."(Telegraph)
Which isn't to say that Bush's people are never right, on the same principle that a stopped clock is sometimes right. You know, I don't want the Iranian government to have a nuclear weapon either. But that doesn't mean I think the U.S. needs to take on the job of Enforcer yet again. Our troops are exhausted; we're hemorrhaging what Republicans like to call "tax dollars," and nobody except people beyond the reach of reason, common sense, and cold hard truth still believes anything the Bush Administration says.
I don't doubt that Iran is a threat. But there are other ways of dealing with threats than through the use of U.S. military force. For example: if France is concerned about an Iran with nuclear weapons, let them have a go.
But never mind that. There is also this:
Miss Rice's bottom line is that if the administration is to go to war again it must build the case over a period of months and win sufficient support on Capitol Hill.
The Sunday Telegraph has been told that Mr Bush has privately promised her that he would consult "meaningfully" with Congressional leaders of both parties before any military action against Iran on the understanding that Miss Rice would resign if this did not happen (Telegraph; emphasis added).
"If?" Are we really at the point where the Secretary of State has to exact a "private" promise from Bush to consult Congress and threaten to resign if he doesn't because she's afraid that he really might not do that little thing first? No, no; I must be reading too much into it.
The New York Times reports on the struggle within the Administration between Rice (diplomacy) and Cheney (let God sort 'em out), a struggle which all indications suggest Rice has lost. The report is backed by examples of the Administration's escalating language concerning Iran.
Yes, yes, yes. But that still misses the point, which is this: I don't want George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice, or anyone who sails in them, to decide whether or not we go to war against Iran. The Bush Administration no longer has a scintilla of credibility with me. If it appears that someone must intervene in Iran, I don't want those people to decide who or how.
I am reassured (a little) by the forcefulness of Chuck Hagel concerning Congress's restraints on Bush and his plans for America's future; however I am old enough to remember Nixon and the secret bombings in Cambodia ("Operation Menu") and also Reagan and the Iran-contra scandal. I suppose I must take solace in the fact that he promised Condi. After all, what could she say if she resigned? "I'm going to spend more time with my family"? All the other staffers (including Rove) who have previously jumped ship have already used that one up, I think.
If Bush is determined to lead us further into the quagmire, would the portion of the public who still support him be prepared to follow him in? Even members of the military seem to be losing faith. At The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan states that military contributions to the Democrats are "skyrocketing," quoting from this study at the Center for Responsive Politics:
Since the start of the Iraq war in 2003, members of the U.S. military have dramatically increased their political contributions to Democrats, marching sharply away from the party they've long supported. In the 2002 election cycle, the last full cycle before the war began, Democrats received a mere 23 percent of military members' contributions. So far this year, 40 percent of military money has gone to Democrats for Congress and president, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Anti-war presidential candidates Barack Obama and Ron Paul are the top recipients of military money....
The drop in contributions to Republicans—which began nearly the second the war in Iraq did in early 2003—seems to suggest that there is a passionate group of people in the armed services who are looking for ways to express their opinion, said John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute. "This [data] suggests that among the military, the people who feel most intensely about the Bush administration and the war in Iraq are negative about it," Samples said. "It's a general discontentment over the way the administration has handled the war—or even that we're in a war."(Capital Eye)
There are other interpretations, of course,and the article discusses them, but this one might give pause to Republicans, right? If even the military are losing faith in the Bush Administration's military leadership....?
If the world needs a war to stop the Iranians----and I am not convinced this is so----let the world join together to intervene.
LINKS
- The Sunday Telegraph: Philip Sherwell & Tim Shipman, Bush Setting America Up for War with Iran (Telegraph)
- The New York Times: In Bush Speech, Signs of Split on Iran Policy (NYT)
- Capital Eye: The Other Iraq Surge (Capital Eye)
- Andrew Sullivan: Voting with Their Wallets (The Daily Dish)
- BBC News: France Warning of War with Iran (BBC)
BACKSTORY
- Chuck Hagel on Bill Maher & on CNN: Isn't this What a Real Republican Looks Like?
- Is War with Iran Next and Will a Draft Follow? (Sep. 2007)
- Two More ex-CIA Officers Say Bush Knew There Were No WMDs (Sep. 2007)
- Are we Inching Closer to War with Iran? (Aug. 2007)
- Journalists: Think of Iraq, Be Careful with Iran (Jun. 2007)
- Iran is the New Iraq, and Lieberman Wants to Bomb it (Jun. 2007)
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