Switching Focus From Iraq To Iran

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"Now we have another compelling reason to put the 'military option' on Iran right in the middle of the table -- and, finally, exercise that option. Or you can go down in history as a bunch of wimps."

The new compelling reason for war is that Iran's influence in the region has zoomed in this zero-sum game between "evil" Tehran and the Tel Aviv-Washington "axis of good." In the words of this Sunday's Post, "Iran will be handed a crucial strategic advantage," ironically, because of the disaster in Iraq.

So, there's no time to waste. To warn still-gullible Americans about the dangers of Iran's new strategic advantage, it's imperative to enlist the neocons in the U.S. news media, those running the foreign policy shops for the leading Republican candidates, and the neocon holdovers inside the Obama administration.

Time, also, to revive the specter of Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Let's see if neocon favorite CIA Director David Petraeus can twist enough arms of his subordinates to reverse the unanimous judgment of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran stopped work on a nuclear weapon in 2003.

Petraeus has always risen to the occasion when the neocons have wanted to accuse Iran of meddling in Iraq -- evidence or no evidence. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Petraeus's CIA Steers Obama on Policy."]

Let's have him issue warnings about the possibility that Iran will take potshots at U.S. troops as they leave.

And, oh yeah, let's get him to provide the kind of "intelligence" that will turn a cockamamie plot about Iran supporting an assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador from admittedly "implausible" status to that of plausible -- well, plausible enough for the neocons who dominate the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM). [See Consortiumnews.com's "Petraeus's CIA Fuels Iran Murder Plot."]

Chalabi Made Us Do It

Speaking of which: One of the Post's most prominent neocon columnists, David Ignatius, sought out the neocons' beloved charlatan Iraq War propagandist Ahmed Chalabi, whom Ignatius describes as "the most effective lobbyist in favor of the 2003 U.S. invasion."

"You will not be surprised," wrote Ignatius, "that Chalabi offered no apologies for a war that cost many thousands of American and Iraqi lives and more than a trillion dollars. Quite the contrary, he lauded the United States for its role in overthrowing Saddam Hussein," though he criticized the follow-through of the occupation.

Ignatius, too, raised the obligatory specter of Iran, asking Chalabi about reports that he has become "an overly enthusiastic supporter of Iran." The slippery Chalabi replied that he favored good relations with Iran and "wanted Iraq and Iran to be "a meeting ground rather than a battle ground.'"

Is Ignatius, at this late stage in the U.S. history with Chalabi, not yet aware that he tends to play both ends ... and then goes with the side that appears to be winning?

Ignatius wants us to believe that the mess in Iraq was pretty much all Chalabi's fault, ignoring the painful reality that Chalabi could have accomplished zilch if not for the neocon-dominated FCM that eagerly promoted his self-serving lies.

Many of the Iraqi "walk-ins" who lied to U.S. intelligence and the FCM about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD and alleged ties to al-Qaeda had been scripted beforehand by Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

Knowing Chalabi (all too well), Ignatius says it should come as no surprise that Chalabi remains adamantly unapologetic for the war on Iraq. But why should Chalabi be subjected to any accountability when almost none of his willing collaborators in the press have been?

Chalabi may have been, as Ignatius claims, "the secret instigator of the Iraq war." Even so, he would have accomplished little without a mountain of intentional gullibility at the Washington Post and other top U.S. news outlets, a pattern that continues to this day.

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