Tag: Iran

Oh for crap’s sakes. I assume since it’s a day old, most everyone has seen this article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh but I’m just seeing it today.

Note: All emphasis below mine. All curse words (mine also) removed before publishing

It begins:

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. “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.”

I am too discouraged for words.

The new Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker has both good news and bad news, on the Bush Administration’s warmongering against Iran.

The good news?

I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued.

Furthermore, understanding that the American public isn’t buying his demonizing of Iran, Bush has realized that he can’t sell an all-out war. He also seems to understand that Iran really is at least five years from having nuclear weapons capabilities, so there is no imminent threat.

The bad news?

Bush realizes that Iran is the big winner of his Iraq disaster. So, he has to do something. As an average adolescent would, Bush seems to have decided that the best way to reverse the victory he handed Iran, by invading Iraq, is to bomb them.

(T)here has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group.

Three points:

From the Associated Press:

Iran’s parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army “terrorist organizations,” in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

“The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror,” said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The juvenility of our two national legislatures would be funny- if millions of people’s lives weren’t potentially threatened.

Spiegel Online has a powerful and terrifying interview with legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the man who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the story of the My Lai massacre and cover-up, and more recently broke the story about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison. The interview covers a lot of ground, so let’s just look at some key parts, and then you must go read it!

On Iran:

(I)t’s been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what (IAEA head Mohamed) ElBaradei and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA’s best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they’ve been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn’t enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

As Hersh explains- and I love this phrasing:

We have this wonderful capacity in America to Hitlerize people. We had Hitler, and since Hitler we’ve had about 20 of them.

Yes- Godwin is a staple of American political life. Hersh points to Kruschev, Mao, Stalin, and Gadhafi, and now Ahmadinejad. Of course, we’re now on friendly terms with the apparent ex-Hitler, Gadhafi- if a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, Bush need not worry, because he appears to have no mind at all. 

Hersh also points out that Ahmadinejad is not actually in control, in Iran, so whatever rhetorical blather he blithers is not necessarily related to actual Iranian policies.

And then, there are these comforting words, about the real intent, behind Bush’s warmongering:

Before we all lose it over the Senate’s asinine Iran resolution, I thought we should all take deep breaths and calm down! The Senate did not authorize military action against Iran! The most dangerous wording in the Lieberman-Kyl resolution was removed before the vote!

With a hat tip to the reality-based Talking Points Memo, the National Security Advisors blog explains it thusly:

According to a staffer in Senator Lieberman’s office, due to objections from some colleagues, Lieberman and Kyl removed these two quoted sections regarding use of military force.  The remaining items, which the Senate did approve today, are pretty tame by comparison (though Senate moderates Biden, Hagel, Lugar, and Webb voted against it.  The revised amendment implies that the U.S. military should plan a future force structure in Iraq to help contain Iran; states that it is a vital interest of the U.S. to prevent Iran from creating a Hezbollah-like proxy army in Iraq; and recommends that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards be put on the Executive branch’s list of specially designated global terrorists.

The quoted sections that were deleted from the resolution? The Carpetbagger Report explains:

To be sure, the revised version is preferable to the original. Two offending paragraphs, in particular, were omitted entirely, including the notion that “it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies.”

Indeed, the original resolution also included language that the Senate would “support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments,” as part of our drive to “combat” Iran’s “destabilizing influence.”

Was it still a terrible resolution? Of course. Did it indicate Congress now backs a war with Iran? Not only is the answer no, but the National Security Advisors blog makes the point that the Democrats had already, twice this year, acted in ways that could be considered as supporting the use of force against Iran. In other words, by forcing the removal of the most inflammatory language from this resolution, the Democrats could be read as now being less supportive of using force against Iran! Or maybe not. We’ve all been doing way too much tea-leave reading, and far too little focusing on the facts.

A misunderstanding is leading to a good argument, that the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment sucks, being argued with bad facts. In essence, the argument goes that this language:

that the United States should designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists…

triggers the September 18, 2001 AUMF. It does not. Let’s check the text:

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Nowhere is there a finding that Iran was involved in the 9/11 attacks. No one can credibly argue that they were (after all, Saddam was behind 9/11 . . .)

Nothing in the Iran Amendment passed today authorizes the use of force (nor would it even if it was NOT a nonbinding “sense of the Senate” resolution.)

But what are the effects of having the IRG declared “Specially Designated Global Terrorists?” Let’s consider that question on the flip.

My old friend, who is an ex-southern Baptist preacher and also who introduced me to Plato’s “Cave Allegory” as an undergraduate, told me of his new found philosophy of hell one day by relating a conversation he had with a woman. She was very upset after he asked her a question and answered it for her. His question to her was “Since Jesus said that the Kingdom of Heaven is within, where is hell?” “The Bible doesn’t say that,” she objected. He then told her the verse it came from  and answered his own question, “Since the Kingdom of Heaven is within, then hell is within.” She became angry at him in his story, and we both had a good laugh. He relished in telling the story, while I enjoyed it immensely. It speaks of how fundamentalist Christians ignore or care not to discover the very words their Master spoke when and if those liberating words do not suit them – fundamentalist Christians like John Hagee and his blind flock.

Wasting time, good will and attempting to wreak havoc, the original Lieberman-Kyl Amendment on Iran was tantamount to granting President Bush the power to wage war against Iran. Still wasting time and attempting to wreak havoc, the Lieberman-Kyl Amendment was gutted of its war authorizing provisions, but remained provocative, unnecessary and stupid. It should have been voted down. It was not. It passed. Among the Ays was Senator Hillary Clinton. Among the Nays were Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Biden. Absent was Senator Barack Obama. 

That’s the question one must ask concerning certain events and individuals when one considers past actions and statements.

In yet another fascinating interview, demographer Emmanuel Tood (best known for his prediction – based on demographic trends – of the Soviet Union collapse, and his more recent predictions of the “end of the US empire“) discusses Iran at length, and suggests that demographic trends in the Muslim world, and in particular in Iran, suggest a massive weakening of the influence of religion over their populations, rather than the opposite.

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