[NYTr] Cheney and Lieberman Conspire for War on Iran

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Huffington Pot - Aug 16, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-gareth-porter/cheney-lieberman-and_ira_b_60705.html

Cheney, Lieberman and Iran War Conspiracy

by Gareth Porter

I was never one of those who believed the Bush administration was
getting ready to attack Iran in 2006 or early 2007. But it is now clear
that at least Vice President Dick Cheney is conspiring to push through a
specific plan for war with Iran. And Senator Joe Lieberman is an active
part of that conspiracy.

We have known for a long time that Cheney wants a major air attack on
Iranian nuclear sites and other military and economic targets. But an
August 9 story published by McClatchy newspapers reveals that, instead
of waiting for a decision to go ahead with such a strategic attack
against Iran, Cheney now hopes to get Bush to approve an attack on camps
in Iran where Iraqi Shiite militiamen have allegedly been trained in
recent years.

The McClatchy story says Cheney proposed such a strike within the
administration "several weeks ago," citing "two U.S. officials who are
involved in Iran policy." The official sources say Cheney "argued for
military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in
supporting anti-American forces in Iraq." An example of such "hard new
evidence," according to one of the official sources of the report, would
be "catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from
Iran."

The story also indicates that the same officials say Condoleezza Rice
"opposes this idea" and suggest that Secretary of Defense Robert M.
Gates agrees with her position.

The Cheney proposal for an airstrike against three bases in Iran can
have only one purpose -- to provoke an Iranian retaliation that would
then make it possible to unleash a full-fledged strategic air attack
against Iran. The provocation strategy would be an obvious way around
the political obstacles in the way of an unprovoked attack.

This is not the first time that such a provocation strategy has been
attributed to the Bush administration. In February 2007, Hillary Mann,
the National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs
until 2004, told CNN that the Bush administration was "pushing a series
of increasing provocations against the Iranians in, I think,
anticipation that Iran will eventually retaliate, and that will give the
United States the ability to launch limited strikes against Iran, to
take out targets in Iran that we consider to be important."

The revelation of the Cheney attack proposal throws a new light on a
series of developments relating to Iraq since early June. The first
event that takes on new meaning is Joe Lieberman's public call on June
11 for exactly the same kind of attack on the alleged training bases in
Iran as Cheney was advocating inside the administration.

Lieberman, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, said, "I think we've got
to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians
to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would
include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence
that they have a base at which they are training these people coming
back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

Was that just a coincidence? Not a chance, says one Washington insider
who is very familiar with Lieberman and the inner workings of the whole
neoconservative demi-monde. "Lieberman is not the kind of guy who goes
off on his own to make a proposal like this," says the observer. "He's
very disciplined. He's a foot soldier, an integral part of the
neoconservative movement.

In other words, Lieberman was acting as a stalking horse for Cheney's
proposal, softening up public opinion for later war propaganda.

Then on July 2, the new spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad, Brig.
Gen. Kevin Bergner, presented a briefing for the press that dovetailed
perfectly with Cheney's strategy. One of his main themes was the
suggestion of an Iranian role in planning a January Shiite militia
attack in Karbala in which five Americans were killed. The other major
point that Bergner pushed was that Iran was using what he called
"Special Groups" of "rogue" Shiite militiamen to destabilize Iraq, in
part by training them in camps in Iran.

I have debunked these arguments here and here. And in another analysis
this week, I show that the rate of U.S. deaths in fighting with the
Mahdi Army is largely a function of the U.S. military's targeting of
those units and their leadership for military operations -- not of
Iranian policy.

But the Bergner briefing appears to have been a key move in the war
conspiracy, aimed at providing just the kind of "evidence" that could be
used to push Cheney's proposal both within the administration and
outside .

To translate the media impact of the Bergner briefing into political
support for the Cheney proposal, Senator Lieberman was ready with a
press release issued the same day as the briefing which cited it as
evidence that Iran was training Shiites in Iran who were killing
Americans. Lieberman used the occasion to repeat his call for a U.S.
attack on the camps in Iran. Lieberman then introduced an amendment
which stated, "The murder of members of the United States Armed Forces
by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility
against the United States."

That sounded like a declaration of war, even though language supporting
military force against Iran was deleted from the amendment, which passed
97-0.

It is not clear whether Bush has explicitly authorized Cheney to prepare
the ground for Cheney's new strategy of provocation. In the spring, Rice
succeeded in getting Bush to go along with direct diplomatic contacts
with Iran. Cheney then let it be known in Washington right-wing circles
that he was concerned that Bush would fail to support the military
option against Iran and that he, Cheney, was planning an "end-run
strategy" to ensure that it would not prevail. But at a White House
meeting of key policymakers on Iran in June, according to an article
last month in the Guardian, Bush sided with Cheney in an argument over
whether these diplomatic talks should be allowed to continue to January
2009.

Whether the Cheney's conspiring with Lieberman and the U.S. command is
part of an "end-run strategy" or are sanctioned by Bush, Cheney's
ability to manipulate Bush poses the chilling possibility that a hapless
president will commit the ultimate blunder of war with Iran.