[NYTr] Cheney & Iran: Here We Go Again?

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Many links on Cole's blog to related material (much already
distributed by NYTr) and to the full original Rubin post on the
new Global Affairs blog, which is here:
http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/08/post-labor-day-product-rollout-war-with.html

This is all totally unattributed for the record and is being sent around
by everyone from lunatic conspiracists to sensible people like Ed
Herman. But Barnett Rubin isn't part of the tinfoil hat crowd and if
Juan Cole takes it seriously it's not just another "there will be a
military exercise on November third with the black helicopters in North
Caroline and elections will be cancelled and a Canada-US-Mexico-UN-One
World military coup declared" story. -NYTr]


Informed Comment - Aug 30, 2007
http://www.juancole.com/2007/08/cheney-iran-here-we-go-again.html


Cheney & Iran: Here We Go Again?

by Juan Cole

Barnett Rubin relays a message from a well-connected friend in
Washington on the Cheney Administration's plans to roll out a military
confrontation with Iran in September. He writes at the Global Affairs
blog:

" My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading
neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

    They [the source's institution] have "instructions" (yes, that was
the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a
campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be
coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street
Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects.
It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock
public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained.
Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for
this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their
book is "plenty."

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces
of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former
U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the
Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for
reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that
the model was intended for Iran."

-----

Cole: there has been some recent similar reporting. For instance, just
on Tuesday Raw Story covered a paper by two British academics arguing
that the US has the capability and perhaps the intention of launching
an aerial assault on Iran's enrichment facilities.

Earlier, McClatchy reported on Aug. 9 that Cheney has been urging
bombing of Iranian trails to Iraq. This position struck me as eerily
reminiscent of Nixon-Kissinger's treatment of Cambodia (which is what
really caused the Khmer Rouge horrors, not, as Bush said the other day,
US withdrawal from Vietnam; we dropped enormous amounts of ordnance on
that country and severely disrupted it). [ more links here...]

If you want to see what I think of a war with Iran, see this golden
oldie:

Informed Comment - May 3, 2006
http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html

Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist

And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War!

[which is an interesting piece showing the side of Christopher Hitchens
many militant atheists who are also anti-imperialists would like to
ignore, and that is the "converted liberal Hitchens who's now a vicious
apologist for wars in Yugoslavia and beyond" like Iraq, for which he
was obscenely eager. The nasty bitchy side of Christopher Hitchens is
highly enjoyable when he's taking on Mother Teresa but when he uses
religion -- and his own distate for it, which many of us share -- as an
excuse for maniacal racist imperialistic running-doggedness, he's damned
hard to take. - NY Transfer]