It was (and for many still is) difficult for most people to accept that our President ginned up one war (Iraq) on false pretenses. Most folks (outside the halls of the liberal blogosphere) don’t want to consider the possibility that he may be willing to do it all over again with Iran. Won’t happen, they say. Our forces are stretched too thin as it is. The consequences, at home and abroad, would be too great.

Who knows, maybe they’re right. But, if you, like me, accept as all too likely the proposition that Bush may very well commence another war in order to gain a political advantage in the upcoming elections, then keep reading. Because I have good reason to suspect that Halloween this year may become the biggest trick ever played on the American people by any President.

And I mean that literally. October 31st. Mark it in red pencil on your calendar now. And put on your tin foil hats, ladies and gentlemen, and follow me below the fold, if you dare.

(cont.)

Bush to the GOP: Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Even Republicans have been wondering why the hell George Bush is so preternaturally overconfident about the outcome of this Fall’s elections, especially in the face of what appears to be a looming landslide for Democrats:

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7–a concern aggravated by the president’s news conference this week.

“They aren’t even planning for if they lose,” says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing.

They aren’t even planning for if they lose? Well, this is an arrogant bunch, but I can’t believe their confidence is based on hubris, alone. Karl Rove as much as promised an October surprise, and I for one don’t think North Korea’s fizzled nuclear test was what he was talking about. So what’s available at this late stage in the game to turn around the GOP’s falling fortunes and keep them firmly in power come Election Day? There are really only two possibilities, and they’re not mutually exclusive.

One is election fraud. Suppressed turnout, stolen votes, and every other dirty trick in the Republican playbook. But by itself that may not be enough. Too many polls are in double digit range favoring Democratic challengers. The trend in almost all the polls is towards Democrats, and away from the GOP. Under those circumstances, election theft on the scale necessary to retain both the House and the Senate would have to be so large that even our compliant media would have to sit up and take notice. And that’s not what Karl Rove wants.

So what Bush and the Republicans need is some major event to change the trend line away from Democrats and towards Republicans in the days just before the election. Something which the media can latch onto as a plausible narrative to explain a remarkable comeback from electoral death by Republicans. At this point, the only possible event which can fulfill that goal would be one involving Iran.

The Stage: The Persian Gulf and the October 31st PSI Exercises

Most of you are already aware that additional US Naval Forces are already in route to the Persian Gulf. Both a task force associated with the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower sailing out of Virginia, and a separate task force, referred to as Expeditionary Strike Group 5 sailing out of San Diego, CA, are currently in route to the Middle East. And thanks to Time Magazine we also know that plans which include a blockade of Iran have already been drawn up:

The orders didn’t actually command the ships out of port; they just said to be ready to move by Oct. 1. But inside the Navy those messages generated more buzz than usual last week when a second request, from the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), asked for fresh eyes on long-standing U.S. plans to blockade two Iranian oil ports on the Persian Gulf. The CNO had asked for a rundown on how a blockade of those strategic targets might work. When he didn’t like the analysis he received, he ordered his troops to work the lash up once again.

What you may not know, because most media is ignoring it, are that the naval forces of several other countries are planning to join us in the Persian Gulf to conduct military exercises beginning on October 31st (Reuters via DefenseNews.com):

Naval Interdiction Exercise Said Planned for Persian Gulf

By REUTERS

Facing nuclear disputes with Iran and North Korea, the United States, Bahrain and other states will hold their first naval exercise in the Gulf this month to practice interdicting ships carrying weapons of mass destruction and missiles, U.S. officials said on Oct. 11.

The exercise is taking place as the United States and other major powers are considering sanctions including possible interdiction of ships on North Korea, following a reported nuclear test, and on Iran, which has defied a U.N. Security Council mandate to stop enriching uranium.

The exercise, set for Oct. 31, is the 25th to be organized under the U.S.-led 66-member Proliferation Security Initiative and the first to be based in the Gulf near Bahrain, across from Iran, the officials said.

A senior U.S. official insisted the exercise is not aimed specifically at Iran, although it reinforces a U.S. strategy aimed at strengthening America’s ties with states in the Gulf, where Tehran and Washington are competing for influence.

That’s right. Military exercises, involving the naval forces of the United States and several other countries, to practice interdicting ships smuggling WMD and/or missiles (the two things President Bush specifically warned North Korea about recently) will be conducted in the Persian Gulf, just across from Iran’s shores, on October 31st. Halloween. Indeed, this is the first such exercise of its kind in the Persian Gulf. In light of the current situation between Iran and the US, a highly provocative act to say the least. And it comes 8 days before the US elections. Coincidence? I think not.

A Digression: What is the Proliferation Security Initiative?

Probably more than a few of you are wondering at this point, what is this Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to which the Reuters’s report refers above, and who are these 66 countries. Well the PSI was originally conceived back in 2003 when John Bolton was then the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control. It’s the Bush administration’s principle contribution to the international community’s nonproliferation efforts, and considering the low regard in which Mr. Bolton holds the UN and the IAEA (the UN organization charged with inspecting the nuclear programs of nation states who are signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT), it should come as no surprise that the PSI is not treaty based, and its emphasis is on military action to interdict ships at sea suspected of carrying WMD and/or ballistic missile components.

President George W. Bush announced May 31, 2003 that the United States would lead a new effort, the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), to interdict shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and related goods to terrorists and countries of proliferation concern. The initiative’s aim would be “to keep the world’s most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies,” Bush declared. […]

Mission: The initiative aims to stop shipments of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, as well as missiles and goods that could be used to deliver or produce such weapons, to terrorists and countries suspected of trying to acquire WMD. Initiative participants intend to carry out cargo interdictions at sea, in the air, or on land. […]

Structure: PSI is an informal arrangement among countries. To date, there is no list of criteria by which interdictions are to be made (except that the cargo is destined for a recipient that might use it to harm the United States or other countries). There is also no secretariat or formal organization that serves as a coordinating body. Instead, participants aim to readily share information among one another as appropriate and to act when necessary to help seize or thwart dangerous trade.

In brief, the PSI is a non-treaty organization which is not binding on the United States. Much like the so-called Coalition of the Willing it is completely a creature of the Bush administration, in which other nations may participate, but which gives them no authority over American policy and no right to limit the use of US military forces. In effect, its a useful tool in which to wrap otherwise provocative American military actions in the thin cloak of international cooperation and mutual assistance.

Whether PSI has been an effective initiative to combat international terrorism and the proliferation of WMD is an open question. Other than a number of joint naval exercises by participants, it doesn’t appear that the Bush administration can point to any specific benefit which accrues solely from actions by PSI member states which wouldn’t have occurred anyway. After all, the interdiction of ships suspected of smuggling nuclear, biological or chemical weapons/technology has long been a practice of the US and other countries concerned with proliferation. And it certainly can’t make up for the Bush administration’s other failures and shortcomings with regard to nonproliferation efforts:

Before assessing the administration’s balance sheet, let’s look at recorded facts. The administration has rejected efforts to negotiate improved monitoring arrangements integral to multilateral treaties governing non-proliferation and disarmament. It has opposed the extension of deeply intrusive monitoring arrangements for bilateral arms reduction with Russia. It has insisted that the barest limits on U.S. strategic forces remain in effect for the briefest possible moment, eight years from now, after which they would lapse. It has opposed the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. It has reversed six decades of presidential leadership and rejected verification arrangements for the stoppage of fissile material production for weapons. It has opposed any constraints on the flight-testing and deployment of space weapons. It has reduced funding for cooperative threat reduction programs in Russia, where programming initiatives remain tied up in bureaucratic and legal red tape. It has been slow to extend these efforts outside the former Soviet Union.

On top of this, the Bush administration has fought a preventive war against Iraq to seize its weapons of mass destruction that have yet to be found and may not exist. Meanwhile, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs have proceeded apace, unimpeded by U.S. diplomacy or military options, which have shrunk greatly with the passage of time and as a consequence of the administration’s decision to focus on Iraq.

These facts are undeniable. This side of the Bush administration’s balance sheet weighs very heavily against America’s hopes for a safer world. Since the dawn of nuclear diplomacy, no U.S. President has compiled a more negative record, or done more to obstruct multilateral efforts to reduce and eliminate weapons of mass destruction than George W. Bush.

However, the PSI may serve the Bush administration’s purposes in other regards. Specifically, the upcoming PSI exercises, scheduled for October 31st, in the Persian Gulf may offer Bush his best opportunity to start and justify a war with Iran.

Iran: Potential for a False Flag Operation on Halloween

“False flag operations are …”

… covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own. […]

False flag attacks belong to a range of tactics of provocation used by strong powers to create a pretext for making war on or interfering with weaker ones, as in the Gleiwitz incident that mobilized German public opinion for a war on Poland; or, for tyrants to impose absolute power, as with the Reichstag fire.

There have been several US wars which may have been the result of false flag attacks. The sinking of the USS Maine, for example, which led to the Spanish-American War. Some historians have claimed that the Mexican-American War was also the result of a false flag operation (though, in any event, it was clearly provoked by the presence of US military forces in disputed territory along the Mexican/Texan border).

However, the most recent example in American history of a possible false flag attack was the Gulf of Tonkin Incident which led to a massive escalation of the Vietnam War by President Johnson as authorized by Congress in 1964:

President Johnson and top U.S. officials chose to believe that North Vietnam had just attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, even though the highly classified signals intercepts they cited to each other actually described a naval clash two days earlier (a battle prompted by covert U.S. attacks on North Vietnam), according to the declassified intercepts, Johnson White House tapes, and related documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

Indeed, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident is redolent with government deception and falsified intelligence, the aim of which was to provoke an attack by North Vietnamese forces on American naval forces operating in the Gulf sufficient to justify widening US involvement in the war:

The particulars of the incidents of early August 1964, as reported by the Johnson administration, were crucial to gaining the legislative authority President Johnson sought, which came in the form of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. At the time and for some years afterward, the United States government took the position that it had done nothing to provoke a naval engagement in the Tonkin Gulf between North Vietnamese and U.S. warships. The Johnson administration also maintained that it had acted with restraint, refusing to respond to an initial North Vietnamese attack on August 2, 1964, and reacting only after North Vietnam made a second naval attack two nights later. Both of these assertions turned out to be misleading.

In fact the United States at the time was carrying out a program of covert naval commando attacks against North Vietnam and had been engaged in this effort since its approval by Johnson in January 1964. (For documentation of this program, carried out under Operations Plan (OPLAN) 34-A, see the Tonkin Gulf subset of the National Security Archive’s microfiche collection, U.S. Policy in the Vietnam War, I: 1954-1968.) A fresh addition to the declassified record is the intelligence estimate included in this briefing book, Special National Intelligence Estimate 50-2-64. Published in May 1964, the estimate again demonstrates that the United States purposefully directed OPLAN 34-A to pressure North Vietnam, to the extent of attempting to anticipate Hanoi’s reaction. […]

The Johnson administration’s characterization of the specifics of the Tonkin Gulf incident has proven to be inaccurate. Administration officials contended that the U.S. warship simply happened to be cruising in the Gulf to exert a U.S. presence — engaged in “innocent passage” under international law. The naval battle between the destroyer USS Maddox and several North Vietnamese torpedo boats occurred on August 2, 1964, in the immediate aftermath of a series of 34-A maritime raids on North Vietnamese coastal targets. Among the targets were two offshore islands, Hon Me and Hon Ngu, which were closely approached by the Maddox prior to the August 2 engagement. The American destroyer was in international waters when the battle itself took place but the North Vietnamese made the logical connection that the 34-A raids and the destroyer’s appearance were related. In fact the mission of the Maddox was specifically to record North Vietnamese radar and other electronic emissions which could be expected to spike after a 34-A raid.

Senior administration officials were well aware of the connection between the 34-A raids and the destroyer’s intelligence cruise, called a “DeSoto Patrol.” Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in his very first telephone conversation with President Johnson about the battle, at 10:30 a.m. Washington time on August 3, raised the issue. LBJ wanted McNamara to hold a private briefing for congressional leaders on Capitol Hill. McNamara replied, “I think I should also, or we should also at that time, Mr. President, explain this OPLAN 34-A. There’s no question but what that had bearing on.” (Note 2) McNamara went on to describe the 34-A mission, including mention of the two islands, the number of attack boats participating, their ammunition expenditures, and other details.

Appearing before the legislators, Secretary McNamara did mention the 34-A raids but asserted they were South Vietnamese naval missions and had nothing to do with the United States. In fact the 34-A missions were unilaterally controlled by the U.S., using boats procured and maintained by the U.S. Navy, attacking targets selected by the CIA, in an operation paid for by the United States. The only South Vietnamese aspect of 34-A was the administrative responsibility borne by that government’s special forces for their nationals recruited as the commandos for the missions, commandos who were nevertheless led by Americans. Some accounts by Americans who participated in such missions actually maintain that Americans were present aboard the attack boats during the raids of August 2.

As the record makes clear, the Tonkin Gulf incident was deliberately provoked by US sponsored attacks on North Vietnamese forces. This may be precisely the same scenario which president Bush is hoping to create with the PSI indictment exercises in the Persian Gulf set to begin at the end of this month.

Possible Scenarios for Sparking a War with Iran

It wouldn’t necessarily require an actual false flag type attack, merely the provocation of an Iranian military response by placing American and other nation’s naval forces in harm’s way. Ships engaged in the PSI exercises may intrude on Iranian territorial waters, or interfere with Iranian shipping attempting to traverse Gulf waters. Anything that could be calculated to make Iranian forces respond with military force.

More sinister options for provoking a war also come to mind. We know that Pentagon sponsored terrorists associated with MEK (an organization dedicated to the overthrow of the current regime in Iran) have been employed as operatives inside Iran for many months, gathering intelligence and also engaged in terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and police. It certainly isn’t beyond the bounds of reason to suspect the possibility of MEK operatives inside Iran, in the guise of an Iranian military unit, assaulting US naval forces in the Gulf during these PSI exercises. Once the missiles fly, it would be impossible to separate fact from fiction regarding the true source of the attack.

Whatever US action operates to provoke an attack from Iran, the results would benefit Republican candidates on the eve of an election. Just as happened with the Tonkin Gulf incident, Congress and many Americans would rally around the flag, and around the President. No one would be able to discern the true facts about such an incident until long after the election was over.

Conclusion

Bush doesn’t need to win the election come November, he just has to make it look close enough on election day to the media to support Rove’s predetermined narrative regarding a “miracle comeback” by Republicans. An incident involving Iran would give them all they need to claim that voters committed to change, committed to voting for Democrats over republicans, had a “change of heart” when war (or the promise of war) with Iran suddenly broke out on Halloween.

Last night, I watched a C-SPAN recorded program on Camp Democracy at which former CIA analyst Ray McGovern was speaking, and in which he stated his opinion that war with Iran before the was still a 50-50 proposition in his mind. This was in mid-September. At one point he mentioned that October 31st was the most likely date for an attack according to his sources, but then he corrected himself. I meant October 21st, he said. Slip of the tongue, he said.

Ray, I think you might have been right the first time. Trick or treat everybody.