It may be said with rough accuracy that there are three stages in the life of a strong people. First, it is a small power, and fights small powers. Then it is a great power, and fights great powers. Then it is a great power, and fights small powers, but pretends that they are great powers, in order to rekindle the ashes of its ancient emotion and vanity. After that, the next step is to become a small power itself.
This is in the context of the US making Iran a terrible, implacable foe, despite the fact that (as Greenwald points out) “it’s a country whose defense spending is less than 1% of our own, has never invaded another country, and could not possibly threaten us.”
Well, well—those weapons made in Iran and given to Iraqi insurgents? They weren’t made in Iran after all. Take a look:
In a sharp reversal of its longstanding accusations against Iran arming militants in Iraq , the US military has made an unprecedented albeit quiet confession: the weapons they had recently found in Iraq were not made in Iran at all.
According to a report by the LA Times correspondent Tina Susman in Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin. When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.”
Good piece, and thanks to Ray for pointing it out:
He’s said it many times, in many different venues, and perhaps the words change a bit over time, and the cadences, too, but the message is always the same:
“I think the pundits have it wrong. I think the American people have had enough of politicians who go out of their way to look tough, who say one thing in a caucus and another in a general election. When I am the nominee of our party, the choice will be clear. My Republican opponent won’t be able to say that we both supported this war in Iraq. He won’t be able to say that we really agree about using the war in Iraq to justify military action against Iran, or about the diplomacy of not talking and saber-rattling. He won’t be able to say that I haven’t been open and straight with the American people, or that I’ve changed my positions. And you know what? The American people want that choice. Because I believe that’s what we need in our next President.
“We’ve had enough of a misguided war in Iraq that never should have been fought – a war that needs to end.”
Barack Obama said that in a Des Moines speech back in October, but he’s been repeating it – with added emphasis – as his campaign has taken off. It’s that last line that always gets the loudest, most prolonged applause: the audience goes wild, people stand and cheer – as well they should. We are told that the ideological differences between Obama and the Clintons aren’t all that great, that in fact they barely exist, which I think is a highly dubious proposition, but, in any case, on this issue – the vital question of war and peace – the gulf between them could not be wider, or deeper.
She, after all, voted for the war, and she’s been saber-rattling over Iran – much to AIPAC’s delight. Obama, on the other hand, has taken a clear and consistent antiwar position on the Iraq war, as angular as one could hope for in a mainstream politician, while her insincere pandering to the antiwar instincts of the Democratic base has been absolutely shameless.
This is the real source of Obama’s streak of solid victories, aside from the hypnotic effects of his oratory: contra the conventional wisdom, it isn’t all about style with him, or “platitudes,” as John McCain puts it. It’s all about his opposition to the Iraq war. When Obama makes his appeal to Democrats, “and, yes, plenty of Republicans out there who are ready to turn the page on the broken politics and blustering foreign policy coming from Washington” – as he put it in his Des Moines speech – that is very far from mouthing bromides, as blusterer-in-chief McCain will soon discover if and when Obama wins the nomination.
Obama has emerged as the antiwar candidate, constantly driving home the point that he – unlike the Senator from New York – had the judgment to doubt the veracity of the President’s case for war from the get-go.
The Clintons are desperately trying to spin this away, with President Priapus denouncing Obama’s antiwar record as “a fairy tale” and The New Republic rather more subtly suggesting “Obama himself may understand that the issue is more complicated than his condemnations of Hillary Clinton’s judgment.” That’s the last line of a rather curious piece by Michael Crowley, whose microscopic examination of Obama’s public pronouncements on the war question might have been published by Antiwar.com – except for that last line.
Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran’s military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.
The initial press stories on the incident, all of which can be traced to a briefing by deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs in charge of media operations, Bryan Whitman, contained similar information that has since been repudiated by the navy itself.
Then the navy disseminated a short video into which was spliced the audio of a phone call warning that US warships would “explode” in “a few seconds”. Although it was ostensibly a navy production, Inter Press Service (IPS) has learned that the ultimate decision on its content was made by top officials of the Defense Department.
The encounter between five small and apparently unarmed speedboats, each carrying a crew of two to four men, and the three US warships occurred very early on Saturday January 6, Washington time. No information was released to the public about the incident for more than 24 hours, indicating that it was not viewed initially as being very urgent.
The reason for that absence of public information on the incident for more than a full day is that it was not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade. A Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified told IPS he had spoken with officers who had experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are “just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination”.
It looks very much as if President Bush learned of the findings in the new NIE report on Iran sometime between August 6 and August 9 of this year. Dan Froomkin summarizes a careful inspection of Bush’s statements and found that at that point he started being very careful to say nothing that explicitly contradicted the NIE report we have now, while still maintaining a sense of urgency to attack Iran.
Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service reports that Vice President Cheney has been thwarting the release of a long-overdue National Intelligence Estimate on Iran because it doesn’t deliver the casus belli for war:
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.
The current dispute over the Iran NIE bears striking resemblance to the controversies that played out over pre-war Iraq intelligence in at least two important ways:
1) Administration Stifling Dissent
NOW: According to IPS, the draft Iran NIE was reportedly completed a year ago, but the White House rejected it because it contained dissenting views. A former intelligence officer said, “They refused to come out with a version that had dissenting views in it.”
THEN: Prior to the Iraq war, the Air Force, Energy Department, and State Department all issued dissenting views on the state of Iraq’s progress towards a nuclear program. Those dissenting views later turned out to be correct, and in the process, greatly undermined the administration’s credibility. The lesson learned by the White House apparently is that this time they need to demolish dissent.
2) Administration Pressuring Analysts
NOW: Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi told IPS that “intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.” The draft Iran NIE, for example, did not conclude that there was confirming evidence that Iran was arming the Shiite insurgents in Iraq, according to Giraldi.
THEN: Prior to the Iraq war, Cheney and his chief of staff Scooter Libby visited the CIA headquarters approximately a dozen times to engage the CIA analysts directly on the issue of Iraq’s nuclear development, “creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration’s policy objectives.”
The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh has reported that, despite there being very little evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear bomb, the White House is “stovepiping” intelligence and hiding information from the CIA that makes a case for war.
In February, the intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that reported Iran was not “a major driver of violence” inside Iraq, disputing administration claims to the contrary. Former CIA officer Giraldi says the the White House is looking for “a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy.” Fortunately, not all analysts are willing to “fix the facts around the policy.”
CHRIS MATTHEWS: “Governor Romney, that raises the question, if you were president of the United States, would you need to go to Congress to get authorization to take military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities?”
ROMNEY: “You sit down with your attorneys and tell you want you have to do, but obviously the president of the United States has to do what’s in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat. The president did that as he was planning on moving into Iraq and received the authorization of Congress…”
MATTHEWS: “Did he need it?”
ROMNEY: “You know, we’re going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn’t need to do. But, certainly, what you want to do is to have the agreement of all the people — leadership of our government as well as our friends around the world where those circumstances are available.”
“The American air force is working with military leaders from the Gulf to train and prepare Arab air forces for a possible war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.”
UPDATE: “John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Tory delegates today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.”
Looking bad. Seymour Hersh has a long article in the upcoming New Yorker, which begins:
In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”
The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.
The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.
At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”
Jane Smiley blogs for Huffingtonpost.com: “Looking at the hysteria caused by the visit of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to New York and Columbia University, I would like to dare George Bush to reciprocate the visit. And I would like to dare the Iranians to let him. It doesn’t matter what Ahmadinejad actually says. What matters is that he is entering the territory of a president who has openly vowed to put him out of business, and has dared to speak, indeed, has dared to give what appears to be his honest opinions. And he has been confronted by protesters and by irate news commentators (such as Scott Pelley). Would Bush allow the same sorts of confrontations? I doubt it. He doesn’t even allow himself to confronted by Americans who disagree with him.”
You may have seen that a B-52 with nuclear weapons flew from Minot ND to Barksdale LA. The report says that this was an accident:
The US military said on Wednesday it was investigating an alarming security lapse when a B-52 bomber flew the length of the country last week loaded with six nuclear-armed cruise missiles.
The blunder was reported to President George W. Bush after the nuclear warheads were discovered when the aircraft landed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, a military official said on condition of anonymity.
An air force official, who also asked to remain unnamed, said the B-52, which originated at Minot Air Base in North Dakota, had six cruise missiles with nuclear warheads loaded on pylons under its wings.
The US Air Force has relieved the munition squadron commander at Minot Air Base in North Dakota of his duties, and launched an investigation into the August 30 incident, a Pentagon spokesman said.
… The Pentagon would not provide details, citing secrecy rules, but an expert said the incident was unprecedented, and pointed to a disturbing lapse in the air force’s command and control system.
“It seems so fantastic that so many points, checks can dysfunction,” said Hans Kristensen, an expert on US nuclear forces.
“We have so many points and checks specifically so we don’t have these kinds of incidents,” he said.
3,498: Number of Iranians the United States has accepted into the country in the past nine months. In contrast, the United States has admitted just 825 Iraqi refugees since 2003, “many of them backlogged applicants from the time Saddam Hussein was in power.”
Glenn Greenwald points out that the NY Times seems to have learned nothing from the Judy Miller/Iraq War debacle. They’re reprising the entire performance in the lead-up to the Iran war. Read it here. Are Bush and his cohorts stupid? or crazy? or both? And why can’t the NY Times learn from experience and start actually doing some skeptical journalism?
The consensus of pundits holds that Joe Lieberman is one of Washington’s true centrists, a real independent, someone who eschews the extremes in favor of sensible, non-ideological solutions. As but one example that I coincidentally included in a recent post, Mike Allen, in the aftermath of Lieberman’s defeat in the primary, warned in Time of the doom Democrats faced as a result of their “rejection of a sensible, moralistic centrist.”
In our political culture today, this is what passes for a serious, sober, foreign policy centrist:
Lieberman Favors Military Strike on Iran Sen. Joseph Lieberman said Sunday the United States should consider a military strike against Iran because of Tehran’s involvement in Iraq.
“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq,” Lieberman said. “And to me, that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”
“If they don’t play by the rules, we’ve got to use our force, and to me, that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they’re doing.”
Lieberman said much of the action could probably be done by air, although he would leave the strategy to the generals in charge.
The video of Lieberman issuing these “centrist” war cries is here. The very idea of starting a new war with Iran is so obscenely irrational — to say nothing of its morality — that it is difficult to put into words. A vast consensus of military experts across the ideological spectrum have all been warning for several years that no viable option exists for the military glory which the great and serious Churchillian warrior, Joe Lieberman, seeks. Just fathom how quickly and how completely whatever lingering shreds of moral credibility America has left would disappear if we commenced a military attack on that country.
Joe Lieberman cares about none of that — issues of American credibility and American security could not be any less important to Lieberman — and the same is true for his fellow band of warmongering ideologues who have long been hungry for war with Iran as the next step in their grand vision that brought us the invasion of Iraq. Over the last year, they have been gradually increasing the explicitness with which they urge a war with Iran, and yet they are treated with as great a respect as ever.
I reprint this analysis with permission, as it is not currently available on the web:
US-Iran Talks, 3 June 2007 by Gary Sick
On Monday [May 28], the United States and Iran sat down together in the office of the Iraqi prime minister in Baghdad to discuss mutual concerns about Iraqi security. It marked a turning point in the hostile but impersonal relations between the two countries that many had feared would turn to war. That has not happened. In case there was any doubt about it, Condoleezza Rice said on Friday that “The president of the United States has made it clear that we are on a course that is a diplomatic course,” and she refused to speculate on a military option. Skepticism is still in order, but it is evident that something is happening in US policy. Here is my own take in the form of a Q & A:
Q — Is this meeting really a big deal?
A — It is a big deal. Iran and the United States have not met face-to-face in a formally acknowledged bilateral meeting of substance (even in the presence of a mediator) since before the hostage crisis in November 1979.
The respective domestic policies and political sensitivities of both countries have conspired — the word is deliberate and accurate — to prevent such a meeting for nearly 28 years.
I deleted a snarky post about Condi Rice after Section 9 pointed out that it did nothing to advance the conversation, and in thinking about what she is currently doing, I have to admit that she’s working hard to get the notoriously stubborn and unreflective George Bush to engage in some meaningful diplomacy with Iran (instead of moving at once to bomb them, as Cheney and his cohorts seem to want) and is undoubtedly the force behind the meeting between Bush and Putin, though I’m dubious that this will have much effect. Still, she’s undoubtedly more effective in this job than when she was National Security Adviser (though that sets the bar flat on the ground), and for the direction she’s going she should be commended.
Glenn Greenwald makes the point that, before the US invaded Iraq, we were treated to a smörgåsbord of risks attendant upon not invading, but nowhere in sight (in the major media) was a display of risks if we did invade. Howard Dean was alone in making of point of looking at the risks that came with the invasion—and those risks have been realized.
And now we get long lists of risks of withdrawing from Iraq, and nothing at all about the risks of remaining in Iraq. Read his column.
There is a race currently underway between different flanks of the administration to determine the future course of US-Iran policy.
On one flank are the diplomats, and on the other is Vice President Cheney’s team and acolytes — who populate quite a wide swath throughout the American national security bureaucracy.
The Pentagon and the intelligence establishment are providing support to add muscle and nuance to the diplomatic effort led by Condi Rice, her deputy John Negroponte, Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns, and Legal Adviser John Bellinger. The support that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and CIA Director Michael Hayden are providing Rice’s efforts are a complete, 180 degree contrast to the dysfunction that characterized relations between these institutions before the recent reshuffle of top personnel.
However, the Department of Defense and national intelligence sector are also preparing for hot conflict. They believe that they need to in order to convince Iran’s various power centers that the military option does exist.
But this is worrisome. The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well — as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.
Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney’s national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush’s tack towards Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah called on Wednesday for an end to the international blockade on the Palestinian people and told a summit of Arab leaders that sectarian violence was driving Iraq toward civil war.
In his speech to Arab monarchs and presidents at a two-day meeting in his capital, the king called on Arabs to overcome their disputes and unify to face dangers threatening them in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.
“It has become necessary to end the unjust blockade imposed on the Palestinian people as soon as possible so that the peace process can move in an atmosphere far from oppression and force,” the king said.
Saudi Arabia last month brokered a unity government between the Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Islamist group Hamas in the hope the international community will end a crippling economic blockade.
Israel insists it will not ease its financial restrictions on Gaza and the West Bank but some countries have agreed to talk to non-Hamas members of the government and increase aid.
The two-day summit comes against a tense regional backdrop, with fears high among Arab leaders that a U.S.-led attack on non-Arab Iran, which has refused to comply with U.N. demands to halt atomic work, could further destabilize their region.
Riyadh, pressed by its ally Washington to show more leadership in the region, has called on Sunni Muslim states to overcome divisions, arguing a united front will help persuade Israel to address Palestinian grievances.
U.S.-allied Arab states, led by Saudi Arabia, see the hand of Tehran in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.
King Abdullah stressed that Sunni-Shi’ite violence in Iraq threatened the stability of the oil-producing Gulf region.
“In beloved Iraq, blood flows between brothers in the shadow of illegitimate foreign occupation and hateful sectarianism, threatening a civil war,” he added.
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