So we are safe from immediate Islamic attack. South Park did not run an image of the Prophet Mohamed in its latest episode. Unfortunately, like the show's cartoon characters, the rightwing Bush supporters still have their heads in the sand.
I fear the President of the United States means to upset the `balance of paranoia' between the U.S. and Iran by launching an attack on Iran. Perhaps for Bush this will rectify the war caused by the spelling mistake he made in March of 2003 - a q at the end of Ira instead of an n.
Maybe I'm the paranoid one. It's almost takes going to some kind of 20th level of science fiction - while on drugs - to believe the President of the United States will unilaterally launch an attack on Iran.
More below
We believe Bush is a delusional nut job who has cloaked himself in an air of hypocritical Christianity. Fundamentalists are 40% of the Republican Party and they know they are right because God tells them so. Therefore they or Bush can never be questioned. So if Bush attacks Iran its part of God's plan, and it also fits nicely into the End Times nonsense.
Sy Hersh has just reported that possessed by this righteous delusion that Bush is on the mission from God. But this is no Blues Brothers joke.
In recent weeks, the President has quietly initiated a series of talks on plans for Iran with a few key senators and members of Congress, including at least one Democrat. A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, who did not take part in the meetings but has discussed their content with his colleagues, told me that there had been "no formal briefings," because "they're reluctant to brief the minority. They're doing the Senate, somewhat selectively."
The House member said that no one in the meetings "is really objecting" to the talk of war. "The people they're briefing are the same ones who led the charge on Iraq. At most, questions are raised: How are you going to hit all the sites at once? How are you going to get deep enough?" (Iran is building facilities underground.) "There's no pressure from Congress" not to take military action, the House member added. "The only political pressure is from the guys who want to do it." Speaking of President Bush, the House member said, "The most worrisome thing is that this guy has a messianic vision."
And:
He (a consultant)said that the President believes that he must do "what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do," and "that saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
So Hersh suggest that with a grandiose, Napoleonic form of dementia, Bush is ready to initiate Armageddon if that is what it takes to keep Iran from getting the bomb.....ten years from now.
A couple of months ago I thought Bush would not attack Iran - at least this year anyway. I thought the smart political move was to crank up the fear and the war fever machine like Bush and Rove did in 02 with Iraq. Then force another resolution to attack Iran on the Congress, and pin the Democrats as the defense wimps if they voted against it. Indeed Rove announced that was the battle plan a couple of months ago.
Now Bush's substantial political weakness and the mountain of lies that have been and continue to be exposed about Bush's buildup to the Iraq War will I suspect prevent him from using that gambit.
I believe that at this time a resolution would not pass unless there was an extraordinary national emergency. And I do not put that past this immoral administration to try and cook such an event up.
So without a resolution, it is entirely possible that some day in the near future, we will see Bush make an unannounced speech from the Oval Office (probably when Congress is not in session) declaring that upon his authority as Commander in Chief in a time of war that he has launched an attack on Iran's nuclear and military facilities.
Yesterday Glenn Greenwald had an excellent analysis of the rational that will be used:
...one need only look to the September 25, 2001 Yoo Memorandum, still the official position of the entire executive branch. That memorandum is noted (at least here) most frequently for its concluding proclamation of generally unlimited presidential power, but the bulk of the memorandum is devoted to a discussion of the President's authority to order military force even in the absence of Congressional authorization. Here are some of its preliminary decrees:
Further, the President has the constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations. Finally, the President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11. . . .
We conclude that the Constitution vests the President with the plenary authority, as Commander in Chief and the sole organ of the Nation in its foreign relations, to use military force abroad - especially in response to grave national emergencies created by sudden, unforeseen attacks on the people and territory of the United States. . . .
These powers give the President broad constitutional authority to use military force in response to threats to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.
Glen gloomily concludes:
So we can have all the lofty and vigorous debates we want over whether a military offensive against Iran is desirable, prudent, disastrous, crazy, etc. But ultimately, nothing we think - or our representatives in Congress think - really matters, because these decisions, under this administration, are "for the President alone to make." We could refuse to authorize this military offensive, or even enact legislation banning it, and none of that would matter in the slightest. It's worth remembering that in our country today, the President is the "sole organ" in all such matters, and he has full, limitless, and un-limitable authority to do whatever he wants.
If the administration really resolves internally - whether for political reasons or bloodlust or some crazed Steyn-like beliefs or any combination of those or other motives - to attack Iran, is there any doubt that they will do that no matter how much opposition there is? One thing is clear - they believe they have the power and authority to do that unilaterally, and that they need no further authorization of any kind beyond the President's will.
These are some of the arguments Senator Feingold makes regarding the proposed legislation to legalize the illegal wiretaps. Why pass laws if the President claims the absolute power to set them aside.
Like the illegal wiretaps where a select few Congressmen were briefed on the program and told they were not authorized to reveal the program, it now appears as Hersh reported that the administration has briefed a few Congressmen on the plans to attack Iran. It seems this administration means to completely eliminate constitutional oversight by Congress.
I might add that who needs a Constitution when you are on a mission from God.
As for how fast an attack could be implemented, William Arkin wrote in his column in the Wa Po earlier this week:
The public needs to know first, that this planning includes preemptive plans that the President could approve and implement with 12 hours notice. Congress should take notice of the fact that there is a real war plan -- CONPLAN 8022 -- and it could be implemented tomorrow.
Second, the public needs to know that the train has left the station on bigger war planning, that a ground war -- despite the Post claim yesterday that a land invasion "is not contemplated" -- is also being prepared. It is a real war plan; I've heard CONPLAN 1025.
The drumbeats for war are intensifying perhaps best exemplified by that shameful article in Bloomberg titled, `Iran Could Produce Nuclear Bomb in 16 Days, U.S. Says'. It was where Stephen Rademaker, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation, misleading implied that Iran could have the bomb in that short of time, and Bloomberg bought it hook, line, and sinker.
No doubt the Iranian threat will be significantly amplified over the coming weeks and months by this administration. The unfortunate reality is that the demented and delusional leadership in Iran is helping the administration's bogus case.
What's most alarming to me is how isolated Bush has become. Iraq's failure should have thoroughly and completely crushed the NeoCONS, but I fear they have as much influence over Bush as they have ever had. They've lost power and positions at the Pentagon, at State, and in the White House, but their evil ideology seems to persist in Bush's foreign policy.
It must be a very small and crazy cabal planning a War on Iran. As others have noted, perhaps that is why the Generals are rising up and calling for Rummy's ouster. No doubt Rummy has to be up to his elbows planning this war. The retired Generals have connections to the military officers in the Pentagon, and those officers might be telling them what's coming down the pike. Bush might not know the difference between what winning and losing in Iraq is, but the Generals do, and they can probably understand how the worst case scenarios on Iran might turn out.
I suppose Bush will have to let the U.N. process play out. However, I don't think this administration will ever find anything the U.N. produces about Iran acceptable. After that, I suppose the timing of the attack is a matter of speculation.
My guess would be an October surprise. Perhaps there will be an attack two or three weeks before the election with the hope that it will give Bush and the RepublicSCUMS a bump in the polls before the con is revealed. Congress will be out campaigning, so it would be unlikely they would come back and wrestle with this criminal action against the Constitution.
It would be interesting to see how many Democrats would develop a spine and clearly and unequivocally condemn such an aggressive action - particularly if the attack used nukes. Not to rebuke Bush would play into his hands as far as the final days of the campaign would go - Bush and Republicans strong and the Democrats agree.
The final nail in the coffin (our coffin) would be another version of the forged Niger documents. But this time I suspect it would have to be much bigger then that fraud.
Reaganite and vicious Bush basher Paul Craig Roberts mentioned he had heard about one kind of a plan in a column he wrote last month title `Is Another 9-11 In The Works':
Readers, whose thinking runs ahead of that of most of us, tell me that another 9/11 event will prepare the ground for a nuclear attack on Iran. Some readers say that Bush, or Israel as in Israel's highly provocative attack on the Jericho jail and kidnapping of prisoners with American complicity, will provoke a second attack on the US. Others say that Bush or the neoconservatives working with some "black ops" group will orchestrate the attack.
One of the more extraordinary suggestions is that a low yield, perhaps tactical, nuclear weapon will be exploded some distance out from a US port. Death and destruction will be minimized, but fear and hysteria will be maximized. Americans will be told that the ship bearing the weapon was discovered and intercepted just in time, thanks to Bush's illegal spying program, and that Iran is to blame. A more powerful wave of fear and outrage will again bind the American people to Bush, and the US media will not report the rest of the world's doubts of the explanation.
Reads like a Michael Crichton plot, doesn't it?
Fantasy? Let's hope so.
A canary in this Iranian coal mine might be (as Hersh suggested) if we saw a rash of Pentagon Generals and other senior officers retiring or resigning over the next couple of months. It would be particularly significant if we saw a wave of Air Force officers resign. I am certain many of our officers would not want to end their careers by launching a nuclear war.
So on Iran I fear like the Poet said, `You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.'