[NYTr] Beating the Drums for the Next War

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Harpers - Oct 1, 2007
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/10/hbc-90001319


Beating the Drums for the Next War

By Scott Horton

Last week brought heads of state and senior diplomats in number to New
York for the opening of the General Assembly of the United Nations. It
also brought President Bush and President Ahmadinejad to the podium.
For the larger audience in the world community, however, one of the
most important questions of the day remains whether the verbal blows
traded between these two pugnacious leaders will turn in the fullness
of time into bullets and bombs. And the sense of the best-informed was
clear: yes.

I spoke with a number of European diplomats who are keeping track of
the issue, and I found a near uniform analysis. These diplomats believe
that the United States will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will
occur within the next six to eight months. I am therefore moving the
hands of the Next War clock another minute closer to midnight and
putting the likelihood of conflict at 70%. It’s still not certain, and
it’s still avertable, but at this point it has to be seen as
conventional wisdom to say that America is headed for another war in
the Islamic world—it’s fourth since Bush became president, if we
include the proxy war in Lebanon. And this time it will be a war
against a nation with vastly greater military resources, as well as a
demonstrated ability to wield terrorism as a tactic—Iran.

Let’s take quick stock of the further indicators from the last week or
so.

Shifting Targets

On Sunday, Sy Hersh’s latest piece appeared, offering a good take on
the Bush Administration’s changing plans for a war on Iran. The
headline from the Hersh piece, called “Shifting Targets,” makes clear
that the Pentagon has been called upon to redraft its plans for a war
against Iran. These new plans are very close to those reported in the
London quality press a few weeks ago: an aerial war with a somewhat
narrower focus on specific units of the elite Republican Guard. Hersh’s
piece is full of color, and after reading it I immediately understood
why the European diplomats were so convinced that the decision to bomb
Iran was all-but-final. Here’s a key passage reflecting a series of
discussions which give some flavor of the war spirit in the White House:

    the President told [Crocker] 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.”

As we have noted before, the final order to proceed to hostilities has
not issued. In all likelihood this would only happen in the immediate
couple of days before bombing. However, the pace of preparations is
quickening and the focus is becoming more and more apparent:

    there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack
planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the
Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a
foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the
C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size
and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the
agency said, “The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the
relative size of its operational components.”)

    “They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired
C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and
ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months
before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the
most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the
Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event
of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the
Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

Hersh also finds a White House busily engaged in identifying the best
casus belli: what precipitating event will best serve the
Administration’s war effort? It’s been reported for some time that the
White House has slowly reached a realization that the approach taken in
the lead-up to the Iraq War will not work again. A National
Intelligence Estimate dealing with the Iranian nuclear program has been
all-but-final for some time; it has been held up. It would be
reasonable conjecture at this point to say that it does not serve the
interests of the war party. The alternative approach is simple: it is
to say that Iranian weaponry and Iranian-trained terrorists are
battling American soldiers in Iraq today. The death of some Americans
in an attack involving a bomb linked to the Iranians could easily be
taken as a pretext for war with Iran.

The testimony provided by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker seems
to have been laying further foundation for this effort. The same can be
said for the resolution proposed by Senators Lieberman and Kyle which
was a thinly veiled effort to authorize the use of military force
against Iran. The Democratic leadership succeeded in watering down this
measure to eliminate its use as legal authority for a new war against
Iran.

A major question is whether Europeans will join America in a war
against Iran. Comments from the Élysée Palace have suggested both that
France expects the war, and that France is moving towards a position
that is far more supportive of the Americans. That’s still far from a
promise that French bombers would join the Americans. The graver
speculation now focuses on Britain, and indeed, some Bush
Administration insiders are claiming that British forces will join in
the effort, notwithstanding Gordon Brown’s efforts to put some distance
between himself and Bush on security issues. Hersh reports that the
situation between the U.S. and U.K. remains testy, and he cites a very
revealing incident:

    Another recent incident, in Afghanistan, reflects the tension over
intelligence. In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared
to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130
Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British
commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one
containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border.
But there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the
C-130 had come from Iran—especially since SA-7s are available through
black-market arms dealers.

    Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked
closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: “The
Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the
incident—in fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran.”
The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.

    The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence
“was worried” about passing the information along. “The Brits don’t
trust the Iranians,” the retired general said, “but they also don’t
trust Bush and Cheney.”

Of course that describes the attitude of most Americans as well these
days.

“I Hate All Iranians”

Two key Bush Administration figures are busy grabbing headlines in
Britain this weekend. London’s Mail on Sunday reports:

    British MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America’s stance on
Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush’s senior
women officials: “I hate all Iranians.” And she also accused Britain of
“dismantling” the Anglo-US-led coalition in Iraq by pulling troops out
of Basra too soon. The all-party group of MPs say Debra Cagan, Deputy
Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defence Secretary Robert
Gates, made the comments this month.

And the Guardian reports on remarks delivered by John Bolton, Bush’s
former ambassador to the United Nations, at a group meeting held in
connection with the Tory conference:

    “I don’t think the use of military force is an attractive option,
but I would tell you I don’t know what the alternative is. Because life
is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military
force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their
nuclear facilities.”

    He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove
the “source of the problem”, Mr Ahmadinejad. “If we were to strike Iran
it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change … The US once
had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of
governments. I wish we could get it back.”

    The fact that intelligence about Iran’s nuclear activity was
partial should not be used as an excuse not to act, Mr Bolton insisted.
“Intelligence can be wrong in more than one direction.” He asked how
the British government would respond if terrorists exploded a nuclear
device at home. “‘It’s only Manchester?’ … Responding after they’re
used is unacceptable.”

This all reflects just the sort of mature and sober analysis that
Britons have come to expect from the key advisors of President Bush in
the course of the last few years.

NPod Strikes

In the last week The Politico reported that Norman Podhoretz, a titan
of the Neoconservative movement, had a secret, off-the-schedule meeting
with President Bush and Karl Rove at which he decried the
ridiculousness of diplomatic negotiations with Iran. The idea of
diplomatic talks with Iran, he said, brought Rove and Bush to laughter.

And today, Podhoretz announces that he thinks the decision has been
made in concept to bomb Iran before Bush and Cheney exit Washington. In
a CSPAN interview, Podhoretz states:

    I believe President Bush is going to order airstrikes [on Iran]
before he leaves office. Because he has several times said — at least
twice to my knowledge — that if we allow Iranians to acquire nuclear
capabilities, 50 years from now, people will look back at us the way we
look back at Munich and say ‘how could they have let this happen?’

Freedom Watch Gets New Marching Orders

Millions of right-wing dollars have been pumped into a mysterious new
overnight wonder organization called Freedom Watch. Former White House
press secretary Ari Fleisher plays a key role running it, though when
interviewed he didn’t even seem to know who the people in its very
slick advertising were. But today we learn that Freedom Watch’s
propaganda volleys are being retargeted. Previously they were
concentrated to support the Bush Administration’s arguments for an
extension of the Surge in Iraq. Now, it seems they’ll be advocating the
Next War. The New York Times reports:

    Although the group declined to identify the experts, several were
invited from the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research
group with close ties to the White House. Some institute scholars have
advocated a more confrontational policy to prevent Iran from acquiring
nuclear weapons, including keeping military action as an option. […]

    “If Hitler’s warnings were heeded when he wrote ‘Mein Kampf,’ he
could have been stopped,” said Bradley Blakeman, 49, the president of
Freedom’s Watch and a former deputy assistant to Mr. Bush. “Ahmadinejad
is giving all the same kind of warning signs to us, and the region — he
wants the destruction of the United States and the destruction of
Israel.”

The New Rollout

Back at the end of August, Barney Rubin told us of word he got from a
source suggesting that a week after Labor Day, the office of Vice
President Cheney would be pushing a new product roll-out. It would
involve the usual suspects and it would be a test-marketing of an air
war against Iran. We’re two weeks and a bit into that process. If you
go back and sift through your newspapers, you’ll find that Rubin’s
unnamed source clearly knew exactly what he was talking about. Indeed,
what I’ve summarized here is the tiniest fragment of the total rollout
effort (I didn’t even mention the Anti-Defamation League’s program, and
they actually even called it a “rollout”). Not only is it underway,
Cheney’s role as the coordinator has become increasingly transparent.
As psy ops projects go, this one isn’t terribly sophisticated. But no
matter: the American media is just as easily suckered by this project
as it was the last time. Just look at how the war party spun the
broadcast media during the Ahmadinejad visit last week. The old adage
is “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” America is
well into the process of being fooled twice.