On May 11 Cheney warned Iran from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf that the United States will not permit Iran to develope nuclear weapons. "With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we're sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike."
Cheney-Bush and their friends are orchestrating a continual stream of revelations about Iran's role in arming and training Iraqi militias. Joe Lieberman says the war has already begun. "Iran has initiated a deadly military confrontation with us, from bases in Iran, which we ignore at our peril, and at the peril of our allies throughout the Middle East."
In another parallel to the run-up to invading Iraq, a NYTimes reporter has a "source" for Iran's evil-doing who is weirdly similar to their "source" for the mobile bio-war labs in Iraq.
Judith Miller had "Curveball." Michael Gordon has "Hamid the Mute."
In yet another flashback to 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is pleading for more time to negotiate and inspect facilities, and warning that an attack on Iran would be "an act of madness." It wouldn't be the first.
One big difference between then and now is that this time our army is already in place. Our aircraft carriers are floating around in the Persian Gulf, full of cruise missiles and nuclear warheads of all shapes and sizes. All our available boots on the ground are just across the border from Iran, in a hopeless and unpopular mess. Wouldn't it be lovely for Mr. Bush if they rushed into Iran under heavy air cover and enjoyed the same kind of initial success we had in Iraq?
Plausible revelations about imminent danger to the United States would flood the airwaves and comic rags like the NYTimes would run first-page stories based on information from Hamid the Mute, Rasheed the Unreliable, and Dick Cheney's deceased Aunt Betty, speaking through a medium in Yonkers. All of them would be described as "high-ranking Iranian defectors."
It wouldn't be quite so bad if "Operation Peace and Wonderfulness for Iran" was just another version of "Iraqi Freedom," but this time around it would almost certainly be nuclear. All sorts of "sources" are already whispering that Iranian nuclear facilities are too far underground to be destroyed by conventional bombs. Only nukes can save us!
Apart from their many other delightful features, nuclear bunker-busters would also produce an incredible amount of radioactive fall-out. Referring back to the diagram in the previous link, you can see that these things detonate only a few meters underground and destroy the bunker with a shock-wave. At this level, production of radioactive by-products is maximized and containment is minimized.
Other likely results of this strategy include the overthrow of every Islamic government friendly to the United States, although some of our current friends might save themselves by declaring war against us. Pipelines would shut down, supertankers would empty, and a barrel of oil would spike to previously unimaginable prices. $150? $200? Who knows? And... we would be permanently at war with a billion Muslims.
For Exxon and Halliburton, for Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, for Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, for the whole establishment of defense profiteers, this is a dream come true. For the rest of us, not so much.
You can't say they didn't warn us. They even followed a familiar recipe. They gave us Hamid the Mute!
What about nukes? Is there anybody in Washington except Kucinich, Feingold, and a few of their friends who hasn't said, "Nothing is off the table" in an interview about Iran? Nothing is off the table! What did you think they were talking about?
What can we do to stop it? I don't know, but I have a modest proposal that is likely to meet with universal contempt and derision.
I propose that we forget about every other issue until we find a way to prevent the Republican ghouls and lunatics from attacking Iran. As stupid as this may sound to people with issues like health care, if we blunder into another war there won't be any money left over for health care, or education, or the environment, or roads, or Social Security. Nothing but guns and oil! And that's before the new Islamic Republic of Pakistan finds a way to smuggle one of A.Q. Khan's nuclear weapons into New York Harbor.
There is quite simply no conceivable way to restrain Mr. Bush directly. His theory of the "unitary executive" allows this stupid little stooge to attack anyone anywhere anytime it conforms to his twisted idea of national defense. But indirect restraint may be possible.
For example, it might be possible for Congress to force the Joint Chiefs of Staff to refuse any order to attack Iran without direct and explicit authorization by both Houses of Congress. As bizarre and uncongenial as this idea may appear to the current Democratic leadership, it's exactly how the decision to go to war is supposed to be made, according to the Constitution of the United States. If the rest of us exert ourselves to the maximum of our power, we may be able to inspire Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to respect and enforce that great document before it's too late.