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October 16, 2007
Unprepared in Iran, the Follow-Up to Unprepared in Iraq
By Jim Freeman
Yet in the face of this evidence (and with a Congress too cowed on terrorist issues to stop him), Dick Cheney, through his surrogate George Bush, plans to attack Iran before the remaining fifteen months of his administration have gasped their last.
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I wrote in 2002 (War With Iraq is Not the Problem) that the difficulties apparent in attacking Saddam Hussein had little to do with overcoming Iraq militarily and everything to do with aftermath. Essentially, we had for so long thirsted for the taste of rabbit that we hadn't bothered looking up any tasty recipes.(Seymour M. Hersh, New Yorker, Oct 8th) In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran.It’s easy to absolve Bush of everything but complicity. He squandered a wishful and fruitless life being bailed out of successive failures in business and it comes as no shock that he is the conduit of others in this presidency. Dick Cheney is and has been the man running the policy machinery within the administration. We are left holding the Cheney bag and paying the Cheney bill.
“Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”As it was in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, concerning Iran the thinnest veneer of cause is supported by the least credible and most narrowly interpreted circumstantial evidence. A jury of twelve could not possibly convict on the basis of evidence presented. And yet, so diligently as we protect the life of an individual by that requirement of ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ we prepare to abandon all proofs in an attack against millions. Much has been made about Iranian supply to Iraq of IED munitions.
Questions remain, however, about the provenance of weapons in Iraq, especially given the rampant black market in arms. David Kay, a former C.I.A. adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations, told me that his inspection team was astonished, in the aftermath of both Iraq wars, by “the huge amounts of arms” it found circulating among civilians and military personnel throughout the country. He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded American cluster bombs. Arms had also been supplied years ago by the Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq who had been persecuted by the Baath Party.In the face of such skinny evidence, it’s difficult to know how the administration could possibly frame the need for attacking Iran.
. . . A former high-level C.I.A. official said that the intelligence about who is doing what inside Iran “is so thin that nobody even wants his name on it. This is the problem.”
At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq.Taking us into another war while hatching a plan to fend off criticism. Amazing. An absolutely stunning strategy of lying once again to the American public.
. . . The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”Iran is the largest Muslim democracy in the world today, a nation of 70 million that has never attacked a neighbor, whose overwhelmingly young citizens (70% under thirty) are enthusiastic supporters of American culture.
“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”Limited direct experience--essentially, there is no plan for afterward. Having broken and demoralized our ground-fighting branches, the entire effort would depend upon a naval air attack against 2,000 targeted sites run from the decks of three aircraft carriers stationed in the Gulf. Because we lack ground capability, there are no options but to devastate and withdraw.
That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”And there is no possible excuse but the waning power of an ineffectual and incompetent administration showing off their one last swagger on the way out. We used to call that a cheap shot, a foul after the whistle. But that was a more innocent sports metaphor, where the outcome didn't wreck countries and ruin lives. After all, even when those guys high-sticked, they were heroes instead of draft-dodgers. They had class.
“Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes,” the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. “The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.” There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. “We’ve got to get a path in and a path out,” the former official said.Dick Cheney was going to get us fast in and fast out of Iraq as I remember.