Bush is creeping towards confrontation with Iran

US rhetoric against Iran took a decidedly chilly turn yesterday when secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, said the US was not attempting to "goad" Iran into conflict but stated:

Mr. Gates said that the United States did not intend to engage in hot pursuit of the operatives into Iran.

“We believe that we can interrupt these networks that are providing support, through actions inside the territory of Iraq, that there is no need to attack targets in Iran itself,” Mr. Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I continue to believe what I told you at the confirmation hearing,” he added, referring to last month’s hearings on his nomination, “that any kind of military action inside Iran itself would be a very last resort.”

"A last resort"? So, for the first time, action inside Iran is spoken of as a real possibility. Even if that possibility is couched in "last resort" terms.

This is now beginning to resemble the farce that was played out before the invasion of Iraq, when Bush went through the motions of pretending that no military decision had been taken and that Saddam could have avoided invasion if he only handed over his WMD.

Tony Snow has decided to play the role of Ari Fleischer:

The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, warned reporters away from “an urban legend that’s going around” that Mr. Bush was “trying to prepare the way for war” with Iran or Syria.

You will remember that before the Iraq war Fleischer issued similar statements that nothing had yet been decided and that war was not inevitable; statements that were all later proven to be disingenuous at best and outright lies at worst.

Indeed, when asked whether or not he believed the President had the inherent power to attack Iran without authorisation from Congress, Snow became downright evasive.

MATTHEWS: Tony, will the president ask Congress‘ approval before any attack on Iran?

TONY SNOW, WHITE PRESS SECRETARY: You‘re getting way ahead of yourself, Chris. Nobody here is talking about attacks on Iran. . . .

MATTHEWS: Well, he did say we‘re going to disrupt the attacks on our forces, we will interrupt the flow of support from Iran. Does that mean stopping at the Iranian border or going into Iran?

SNOW: Well, again, I think what the president is talking about is the war in Iraq, Chris.

MATTHEWS: So he will seek congressional approval before any action against Iran?

SNOW: You are talking about something we‘re not even discussing...

MATTHEWS: Well, you are, Tony, because—look at this.

I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.”

Isn‘t that about Iran?

SNOW: It‘s about—yes, it is, in part. And what it is, is it‘s saying, “Look, we are going to make sure that anybody who tries to take aggressive action. But when Bill Clinton sent a carrier task force into the South China Sea after the North Koreans fired a missile over Japan, that was not as a prelude to war against North Korea. You know how it works. . . .

MATTHEWS: My concern is we‘re going to see a ginning-up situation whereby we follow in hot pursuit any efforts by the Iranians to interfere with Iraq. We take a couple shots at them, they react. Then we bomb the hell out of them and hit their nuclear installations without any action by Congress. That‘s the scenario I fear, an extra-constitutional war is what I‘m worried about.

SNOW: Well, you‘ve been watching too, too many old movies featuring your old friend Slim Pickens is what you‘re doing now, come on.

MATTHEWS: No, I‘ve been watching the war in Iraq is what I‘ve been watching. As long as you say to me before we leave tonight that the president has to get approval from Congress before making war on Iran.

SNOW: Let me put it this way. The president understands you‘ve got to have public support for whatever you do. The reason we‘re talking to the American public about the high stakes in Iraq and why it is absolutely vital to succeed is you‘ve got to have public support. And the president certainly, whenever he has taken major actions, he has gone before Congress.

You'll notice that at no point here does Snow actually offer any reassurance that the President needs to go to Congress to obtain permission to widen the war into Iran, he rather refers to the way things have been done in the past, hinting that this may be repeated but offering no guarantee that it will.

We must never forget that, although he is boxed into a terrible corner, Bush's way out has always been to expand conflict rather than to contain it. We witnessed this during the conflict between Israel and Lebanon when Bush was pushing for a wider Middle Eastern war involving both Syria and Iran.

Indeed, the neo-cons have never hidden their belief that this campaign was about reordering the entire Middle East with Iraq merely a starting point for wider regional change.

Bush is now obsessed with his legacy, a legacy that - at this particular moment - is a woeful one. What has he to lose from widening the war and passing the responsibility for clearing up his mess on to his successor?

We must never forget that we are dealing with ideologues here.

Like any group of permanent Washington revolutionaries fueled by visions of a righteous cause, the neocons long ago decided that criticism from the establishment isn't a reason for self-doubt but the surest sign that they're on the right track. But their confidence also comes from the curious fact that much of what could go awry with their plan will also serve to advance it. A full-scale confrontation between the United States and political Islam, they believe, is inevitable, so why not have it now, on our terms, rather than later, on theirs? Actually, there are plenty of good reasons not to purposely provoke a series of crises in the Middle East. But that's what the hawks are setting in motion, partly on the theory that the worse things get, the more their approach becomes the only plausible solution.

Bush was offered the chance for a withdrawal whilst claiming victory by the Baker Report and has rejected it.

He is now making threatening noises against Iran whilst his colleagues refuse to admit that he would need Congressional permission to expand the war, rather like the way Bush stated that he didn't "need a permission slip" to invade Iraq.

Indeed, Joe Biden has stated that the Bush administration that it does not have congressional authority to attack Iran.

"That will generate a constitutional confrontation in the Senate, I predict to you," Sen. Joseph Biden, D- Del., told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Thursday.

Biden is saying this because he can also see the writing on the wall.

Insane and self destructive it may be, but Bush is creeping towards confrontation with Iran.

As Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace recently pointed out, the administration seems to be following exactly the same script on Iran that it used on Iraq: "The vice president of the United States gives a major speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East. The U.S. secretary of state tells Congress that the same nation is our most serious global challenge. The secretary of defense calls that nation the leading supporter of global terrorism. The president blames it for attacks on U.S. troops."

We've been here before. Now, the fact that the Iraq war is going disastrously would make any sensible person rule out a US attack on a country that could cause it so much harm to the US and it's interests. However, Israel continues to call for a US attack on Iran and threatens to do so itself if the US does not step up to the plate.

Indeed, intelligence services are reporting that such a plan exists and will be implemented in early 2007.

The first two or three months of 2007 represent a dangerous opening for an escalation of war in the Middle East, as George W. Bush will be tempted to "double-down" his gamble in Iraq by joining with Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair to strike at Syria and Iran, intelligence sources say.

President Bush's goal would be to transcend the bloody quagmire bogging down U.S. forces in Iraq by achieving "regime change" in Syria and by destroying nuclear facilities in Iran, two blows intended to weaken Islamic militants in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

Both Bush and Blair have nothing left to lose. Both of their legacies are tied up in the quagmire that is Iraq. By expanding the conflict they can claim to be visionaries, seeing dangers that the rest of us are too Chamberlain-like to acknowledge.

It's insanity, but it's better than the legacy they have currently carved for themselves. As Blair put it last night, "to retreat would be a catastrophe".

In other words, "Onward Christian soldiers".

God help us all.

tag: Bush, Iraq war, Blair, War On Terror, Iran, surge and accelerate, Iraq Survey Group, The Baker Report