War with Iran?

There's a frightening article in the current New Yorker by Seymour Hersch, entitled "Preparing the Battlefield". It's getting a ton of attention in the national media. I heard an interview with Hersch today on NPR's Fresh Aire show, for example.

Hersch's thesis is that the Bush administration is running a clandestine military and CIA operation inside Iran right now, aimed at forcing the Iranians to stop their nuclear weapons program. If they don't get that, then they want regime change. Hersch contends that the Bush administration (primarily Cheney) is trying to run Special Operations missions from the White House while keeping the senior military commanders in the region out of the loop. This, he contends, is what forced Admiral Fallon out of his post as CENTCOM (the guy in overall charge of US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, the Persian Gulf, and so forth). (See my posts of March 11 and March 17 talking about this issue.) The CIA operations are covered under a Presidential Finding, which is extremely classified. The military operations are covered under Bush's constitutional authority as commander in chief. Both have been conflated into one operation that's being run outside of all the normal chains of command with all their hard-learned checks and balances.

The theme that ran through the input from all of Hersch's sources was that the Administration wants to attack Iran before Bush leaves office. Hersch said as much in his NPR interview today, citing specifically a fear of an "October surprise", or possibly something soon after the election.

You might remember that back in December, there was a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concluded that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons capability, and hasn't been since 2003. This, of course, is not the answer that Bush wanted to hear. Since then he has been consistently talking up the Iranian threat.

I, personally, have been ignoring him, figuring it's the last gurgles from a turd getting flushed down the drain. Hersch's article says that the turd is still looking to fire some missiles before he goes. And unfortunately, as the Commander in Chief, he still has the constitutional authority to do it.

There are only a few safeguards remaining. One is that Congress can cut off the funds. Not likely, but write your Senators and Congressmen anyway. Another is that more articles like Hersch's will keep the spotlight on Bush/Cheney and prevent them from causing much more damage. A third is that some brave military members will stand up to the President and refuse to carry out an attack, even if that means the end of their careers. I'm not comfortable with this last one. Admiral Fallon is one who was in position to stop Bush, but he was forced out, and replaced by General Petraeus. Now Petraeus is a great soldier, but he's a can-do guy, and not one who bothers to ask the "why" question.

An attack on Iran is the most incredibly stupid action this country could do right now. It's even more stupid than the Iraq invasion. IT MUST BE STOPPED.

At The Highest Levels Of Government ...

... people like Dick Cheney and Joe Lieberman continue to distinguish themselves.

The Dick has been in the news lately for some of his statements and actions. Not that that's anything new - I mean, we're talking about the man who said "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators" (March 16, 2003) and "I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency." (June 20, 2005). Yes, he has indeed proven to be prescient, hasn't he? Now, regarding global warming, he's denying that humans are responsible for the temperature rise over the past hundred years. (Rolling Stone has an excellent article on it here). And this past week it was revealed that Cheney's office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years. When challenged, he attempted to eliminate the Information Security Oversight Office entirely. The Dick contends that the Vice President is above the law. I think it's time to recall another Cheney quote: "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve." And our resolve is that Dick must go home!

The other star of the week is Senator "Smokin' Joe" Lieberman. I think the term must refer to the drugs he's ingesting. Lieberman is advocating air strikes on Iran in retaliation for their providing weapons and support to Iraqi insurgents. Has he been completely shielded from our recent ill-advised military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan? What in the world makes him think that air strikes on Iran will make them stop meddling in Iraq? Somehow I can't see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying "Oh, excuse me, I didn't realize this was so irritating to you. Please forgive me. I'll put a stop to it immediately". Hasn't Smokin' Joe learned that military action (especially in the middle east) begets an even bigger military action in response? The way to get Iran to cooperate is to TALK to them, not shoot them.

It's worthwhile to point out that neither the Dick nor Lieberman ever served in the military. As the Dick famously noted, "I had other priorities in the sixties than military service." (April 5, 1989). Is it a coincidence that the people most in favor of military action never served themselves? I think not.

PlameGate

The news from "Scooter" Libby's trial is disgusting. As of today, it's been confirmed that Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Richard Armitage, plus as-yet-unidentified others, were spreading the word in 2003 that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent. Since she was an undercover agent, that makes Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Armitage, plus the others, criminals. Where is the outrage?

The Fox-news-fans of the right try to excuse the action, saying that since she was not in a covert position at the time, she wasn't undercover. That's bull. Once undercover, ALWAYS undercover. Once her identity was in the press, it's known that governments who had anything to do with her, in any role, at any time, took a look at that time period and reviewed what she did, where she did it, and (most importantly), who she dealt with. The CIA won't comment on how many contacts have been rounded up, but I bet there were quite a few. And how many of those contacts lost their lives because of it?

So these a**holes in the highest level of the Bush administration deliberately compromised CIA assets, and probably got people killed, all in a vindictive effort to get back at somebody who was telling the truth.

Yeah, boy, that's some mighty fine leadership we have in the White House.