War on Iran: Stop Bush Before He Starts

By Robert Parry, Consortium News. Posted February 3, 2007.

Bush is following the same course he chose in the run-up to war in Iraq: he insists that war is "a last resort" yet puts in motion the engines of war; he times the release of alarming intelligence reports for maximum political effect; he brushes aside doubts and warnings; he then presents war as unavoidable or a fait accompli.

Despite the painful lessons from the Iraq War disaster -- including more than 3,000 U.S. soldiers dead and Iraq torn apart by sectarian civil war -- the key institutions of Washington, particularly the Congress and the press, are playing similar roles, too.

The capital again is possessed of an air of unreality as the clock ticks down to a likely military showdown with Iran. Though the documentary record is now clear that Bush set his sights on war in Iraq a year or so before the actual invasion, the President is still believed when he insists now that he wants a diplomatic solution with Iran.

Democratic congressional leaders politely accepted Bush's new war council -- from Defense Secretary Robert Gates to the new regional commander Adm. William Fallon -- while the only harsh questioning came from pro-war Republican Sen. John McCain to the departing general for Iraq, George Casey, for not making Bush's Iraq scheme work.

Meanwhile, the Senate has tied itself up for more than three weeks quibbling about the wording of a non-binding resolution of disapproval about Bush's troop escalation in Iraq. The Senate is finally expected to begin debate next week on compromise language that limits criticism to the narrow issue of the Iraq troop "surge."

Washington's drift on the Iraq resolution rolls on with almost no one pointing at the gathering speed of Bush's confrontation with Iran.

Congress and the major U.S. news media appear to be taking Bush at his word that he is not planning to bomb Iran, although he has dispatched two aircraft carrier strike groups to the region, deployed Patriot anti-missile missile batteries, has British mine sweepers in place, and accuses Iranian agents of helping to kill American troops in Iraq.

This wishful disbelief around Washington that a wider war is looming remains steadfast even as Israeli officials call Iran's nuclear program an "existential threat" and reportedly train their pilots for bombing runs against Iran's heavily fortified nuclear facilities.

Yet, instead of front-page stories about the dangers of an expanded war in the Middle East or an examination of alternative strategies that might be tried, the major U.S. newspapers act as if nothing is happening.

Predictive War

The underlying problem appears to be a continued unwillingness to challenge Bush's five-year-old strategy of "preemptive" -- or one might say "predictive" -- war that he first enunciated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Bush has never budged from his claim that U.S. military intervention is justified anywhere in the world when a hostile state is developing the potential for weapons of mass destruction that conceivably could fall into the hands of a terrorist group that might use them against American targets.

That was the fundamental rationalization for invading Iraq, even though Bush and his aides found that to sell the idea to the American people they had to exaggerate Iraq's WMD capabilities and invent connections between the secular dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in al-Qaeda. [See Consortiumnews.com's "How Neocon Favorites Duped U.S."]

Bush has put together a similar sales package for Iran. By applying broad definitions of "terrorism" to Iranian-supported Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Bush has defined Iran as a state sponsor of "terrorism." Iran's development of nuclear technology has met the other requirement for a WMD scare.

So, the question about an attack on Iran shouldn't be as much if as when, at least if one follows the neoconservative logic of the Bush administration. Though Iran appears to be years away from having the capability to build a nuclear bomb and although neither Hezbollah nor Hamas has sponsored acts of terrorism inside the United States, Bush and his top aides want to counter this potential threat now.

And, despite Bush's slump in the polls and the Republican defeat in the November elections, the White House is encountering surprisingly few obstacles. Indeed, some leading Democrats and prominent TV pundits still try to talk as tough -- or even tougher than Bush -- about Iran.

For instance, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, supposedly one of the more liberal Democratic presidential candidates, spoke via satellite to a security conference in Herzliya, Israel, in January telling senior Israeli government officials that he shared their view that Iran was the world's preeminent threat. "At the top of these threats is Iran," Edwards said. "Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world. Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons. ... "We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate -- ALL options must remain on the table."

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Robert Parry's new book is Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq."

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