With no actual evidence of Iranian involvement, Bush ploughs ahead with war plans

As I recently wrote there is every indication, both from his troop movements and from the aggressive rhetoric that he has been spouting, that Bush intends to make some sort of strike against Iran.

Indeed, Richard Perle yesterday promised as much when he spoke about the matter in Israel and Netenyahu chipped in with the accusation that anyone who objects is almost a Holocaust denier.

Add to this heady mix the kidnapping of Iranian diplomats by American soldiers and it's clear to all that Bush is spoiling for a fight.

However, there is no proof whatsoever that Iran are involved in any activity against US forces in Iraq, despite Condi's recent claims:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters on her current Middle Eastern trip, "I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and that are endangering our troops, and that's going to be dealt with."

However, Rice failed to provide any evidence of official Iranian involvement.

Condi's failure to provide evidence of Iranian involvement in Iraq is standard procedure for this White House and is exactly the same way they manufactured the invasion of Iraq, where the President substituted strong rhetoric for actual evidence.

Recently there has been a notable and worrying escalation in Bush's rhetoric towards Iran that has left even seasoned news anchors worried.

Indeed, at a not-for-quotation pre-speech briefing on Jan. 10, George W. Bush and his top national security aides unnerved network anchors and other senior news executives with suggestions that a major confrontation with Iran is looming.

Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush’s nationwide address, NBC’s Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said “there’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue – in the country and the world – in a very acute way.

Russert and NBC anchor Brian Williams depicted this White House emphasis on Iran as the biggest surprise from the briefing as Bush stepped into the meeting to speak passionately about why he is determined to prevail in the Middle East.

“The President’s inference was this: that an entire region would blow up from the inside, the core being Iraq, from the inside out,” Williams said, paraphrasing Bush.

While avoiding any overt criticism of Bush’s comments about an imaginary Iraqi-Iranian arms race, Russert suggested that the news executives found the remarks perplexing.

“That’s the way he sees the world,” Russert explained. “His rationale, he believes, for going into Iraq still was one that was sound.”

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews then interjected, “And it could be the rationale for going into Iran at some point.”

What's striking about all of this is that Bush has yet to offer any rational evidence; indeed, he has yet to offer any evidence of any kind to support his theory that violence in Iraq is fuelled by the Iranians. One of the most startlingly obvious flaws in the Bush argument is why the Shia nation of Iran would be supplying weapons to a Sunni insurgency in order that they may kill Iraqi Shia's. It simply fails to stand up to even a moment's scrutiny.

Even Bush's old friend Blair has long given up attempting to put this square peg into this circular hole:

The Blair government soon dropped that propaganda line. The Independent reported on January 5, 2006, that [British] government officials acknowledged privately that there was no "reliable intelligence" connecting the Iranian government to the more powerful IEDs in the south.

But Bush is continuing to bang this drum and will possibly do so again this evening when he makes his State of the Union address.

However, evidence on the ground in Iraq is not supporting Bush's claims:

During a recent sweep through a stronghold of Sunni insurgents here, a single Iranian machine gun turned up among dozens of arms caches U.S. troops uncovered. British officials have similarly accused Iran of meddling in Iraqi affairs, but say they have not found Iranian-made weapons in areas they patrol.

People have wrote in the comments section that the idea of an American attack on Iran is insanity and I would have to concede that I agree. However, what is undeniable is that Bush is spoiling for a fight and that the Israelis are insisting that if the US don't attack Iraq then they will.

We should also never forget that the neo-cons have long harboured dreams of attacking Iraq, Iran and Syria. Who could forget William Kristol's plea that having attacked Iraq, the US should now join Israel in fighting Syria and Iran?

For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.

The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran.

Kristol, in a rare moment of honesty, let the cat out of the bag. Those who argued that the neo-cons were actually using the US army to fight Israel's wars were routinely labelled anti-Semites, the dreadful charge that the neo-cons have most often used to prevent any discussion of their motives. However, with Israel facing defeat at the hands of Hizbullah, Kristol decided to widen the argument and make Israel's wars indistinguishable from the US' wars. It was a bold move. However, having made such a move, no-one can now pretend that Kristol didn't say what he clearly said.

He sees Israel's enemies as the enemies of the US. Indeed, the neo-cons have never seen any essential difference between US interests and Israeli interests. To them they are both one and the same.

Nor have the neo-cons ever made any secret of who they wanted to tackle after Saddam had fallen: Iran and Syria.

In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea.

So, Bush's increased rhetoric against Iran is not actually based on any evidence. Nor, as we have witnessed from his foray into Iraq, would attacking Iran do anything to fight global terrorism. In fact:

The war in Iraq has become the primary recruitment vehicle for violent Islamic extremists, motivating a new generation of potential terrorists around the world whose numbers are increasing faster than the United States and its allies are eliminating the threat, U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded.

If attacking Iraq increased terrorist recruitment - and that is the conclusion of the US's own intelligence analysts - then it is safe to say that an attack on Iran would have the same effect.

However, the Bush administration decided as soon as it was re-elected that this is what it was going to do. Bear in mind that neo-con thinking and the mindset of the Likud Party in Israel are almost one and the same. That's the significance of Perle and Netanyahu's remarks the other day. The Israelis want regime change in Syria and Iran and, if there's any way they can pull it off, the Bush regime plan on delivering.

Nor are they going to go through the tedious motions of putting together some kind of case that we can all take apart:

Seymour Hersh:

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,’ ” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned—not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants.’ No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.

Hersh then quotes Rumsfeld shortly after Bush was re-elected:

Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

As Kristol has now admitted, the neo-cons see no difference between Israel's enemies and the enemies of the US. It is for this reason that the US will now seek confrontation with Iran.

Indeed, they will do all in their power to manufacture a reason to attack the Iranians. Nor do they care what the American public think about this:

American public opinion has turned strongly against the war in Iraq. After a strong anti-war vote in the November mid-term elections, politicians from both major parties are under pressure to oppose an aggressive foreign policy.

Yet, the world still stands on the brink. The United States and Israel may be about to start a wider war in the Middle East by attacking Iran, sparking more of the violence that CIA Director Michael Hayden called "almost satanic."

The CIA Director thinks the present level of violence is "almost satanic" and yet Bush and his cohorts are seriously thinking we need more violence, not less.

The UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said in November 2004, that an American strike against Iran was "inconceivable".

Pointing to talks with Tehran, Mr Straw said: "I don't see any circumstances in which military action would be justified against Iran, full stop."

Straw was soon fired after Rumsfeld made complaints to the British government.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, had taken exception to Mr Straw’s statement that it would be “nuts” to bomb Iran. The United States, it was said, had put pressure on Tony Blair to change his Foreign Secretary. Mr Straw had been fired at the request of the Bush Administration, particularly at the Pentagon.

In retrospect, we should have read the writing on the wall back then. It may be "inconceivable", it may be "nuts", but that is exactly what the neo-cons plan to do.

tag: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Israel, neo-cons, Perle, surge and accelerate, Iran