I know, Mr. Libby, he of the childish nickname and code of silence in order to protect his inferiors (for I have no doubt that Bush in the same situation would have cut Scooter off at the knees, and Cheney would have applied the coup de grace of kicking him in the nuts) is the outrage du jour among the intertubes this morning, as well he should be.
Yet there our worse outrages in the making, ones far more dangerous to this country and to the world. Outrages that make the Scooter Libby commutation pale in comparison. To remind you of one of them let me quote the immortal words of Bush’s “kissing cousin,” Senator Joe Lieberman, who said this yesterday:
“The fact is that the Iranian government has by its actions declared war on us,” said Lieberman, an independent who caucuses with Senate Democrats. As a result, he continued, “The United States government has a responsibility to use all instruments at its disposal to stop these terrorist attacks against our soldiers and allies in Iraq, including keeping open the possibility of using military force against the terrorist infrastructure inside Iran.” […]
“Iran’s purpose in sponsoring these attacks against our soldiers is clear,” he said. “The Iranian government wants to push the United States out of Iraq.
“For Congress to mandate a retreat from Iraq,” he said, “will give the Iranians exactly what they want most. A retreat would not only represent a catastrophic defeat for the United States, but an epic victory for Iran, Hezbollah and the forces of Islamist terrorism.”
You might think Mr. Lieberman is a lone voice in the wilderness, but let me assure you, he is acting in concert with the Bush adminsitration, which continues to push the claim that Iran is funding, arming and helping the Iraq insurgency even as it makes the contradictory claim that every Iraqi we kill is a member of Al Qaeda. Just recently, the New York Times ran this story by Michael Gordon, U.S. Ties Iran to Deadly Iraq Attack. As Glenn Greenwald points out Gordon’s article is almost a word for word recitation of what the Pentagon spokesperson, Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, who was Gordon’s only source for the report, told him:
(cont.)
BAGHDAD, July 2 — Iranian operatives helped plan a January raid in Karbala in which five American soldiers were killed, an American military spokesman in Iraq said today.
Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the military spokesman, also said that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has used operatives from the Lebanese militia group Hezbollah as a “proxy” to train and arm Shiite militants in Iraq.
American military officials have long asserted that the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, has trained and equipped Shiite militants in Iraq. The Americans have also cited extensive intelligence indicating that Iran has supplied Shiite militants with the most lethal type of roadside bomb in Iraq, a bomb called the explosively formed penetrator, which is capable of piercing an armored vehicle.
As you can see, Lieberman’s statements about Iran having declared war on the US track directly from the claims being made by the US military, many of which have previously been called into question. And it conveniently forgets to mention that if we are at war with Iran, it is we who fired the first shot long ago:
As their forces are increasingly bogged down in Iraq, George W. Bush and Tony Blair are laying the groundwork for their next military expansion, next door in Syria or Iran.
Their confrontation with Iran, in particular, has long been in the cards. Three years before the invasion of Iraq, the Project for the New American Century asserted that Iran “may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has.”
When the U.S. media reports on the growing confrontation with Iran, it invariably focuses on Tehran’s nuclear program, Iranian leaders’ verbal sparring with Israel, and how both outside challenges are strengthening the hand of Iranian “conservative” hardliners against “moderate” reformers.
Yet little attention has been paid to the potential role of ethnic minorities in the Iran crisis, particularly of the Iranian Arab minority, centered in the southwestern province of Khuzestan. Events in the oil-rich province bordering Iraq could serve as a harbinger of U.S.-British intentions in Iran, and expose Khuzestan as Iran’s Achilles Heel. Recently, a series of bombings and ethnic clashes has begun to show that something is rotten in Khuzestan, which could be an early warning of a coming war.
These are the bombings that I refereed to at the beginning of this diary. All occurred in Kuzestan, all supposedly set off by “Arab seperatists” and all alleged by the Iranian government to have been intigated/supported by the British government. As Grossman notes, they may have good reason to make such claims:
In 2005, the conflict between Iraqi Shi’ites and the occupation forces has grown more intense, particularly in the oil-rich British occupation zone around Basra. A violent series of events has oddly pointed toward neighboring Khuzestan as (once again) the best barometer of conflict along the Iran-Iraq border.
In Basra on September 19, British troops clashed with Iraqi police and Shi’ite militia, who had ironically welcomed the toppling of Saddam two years ago. The police had arrested two British undercover commandos who possessed suspicious bomb-making materials. British troops launched an armored raid on the jail to free their agents, fighting the same Iraqi police they had earlier trained. Iraqis had thought it strange that British agents would be caught with the types of bombs associated with insurgents attacking “Coalition” troops, and some assumed that the agents were trying to pit Iraqi religious groups against each other.
Yet at the same time, bombs were going off across the border in Khuzestan. In June, a series of car bombings in Ahvaz (75 miles from Basra) killed 6 people. In August, Iran arrested a group of Arab separatist rebels, and accused them of links to British intelligence in Basra. In September, explosions hit Khuzestani cities, halting crude oil transfers from onshore wells. On October 15, two major bomb explosions in an Ahvaz market killed 4 and injured 95. A November 3 analysis in Asia Times blames Iraqi Sunni insurgents for the bombings.
Iranian officials accused Britain of backing the attacks, and tied the rebel bombs to the British commando incident in Basra. The Daily Star of Beirut reported on October 17 that Iranian officials “point to Western collusion in the sudden spike this year in ethnic unrest in the strategic, oil-producing province of Khuzestan and describe it as proof of a shadowy war that is receiving far less coverage in the international press than events in Iraq. Since the beginning of 2005, riots and a bombing campaign timed to coincide with the June presidential elections rocked Khuzestan’s major cities.”
Others have reported about the Bush administration’s backing for the anti-Iranian terrorist organizations, such as MEK and Jundallah which have carried out terror attacks on Iranian territory, and (in the case of MEK) whose operatives have supplied the Pentagon with much of their intelligence about Iran’s alleged secret nuclear weapons program.
Bak in May it was reported that Bush gave the go ahead to a covert campaign of propaganda and disinformation directed against both Iran and the American public. In June they even started claiming that Iran was supporting the Taliban, its avowed enemy, despite denials from other US officials and the President of Afghanistan, himself. A disinformation campaign of which Michale Gordon’s article in the NY Times and Joe Lieberman’s statements about Iran having declared war on us are fully a part. Indeed, it’s not even the first time the Pentagon has alleged that Iran was killing US troops in Iraq. That began back in January of this year.
As for those who claim that Bush would never attack Iran because his own Generals oppose him, or the neocons are out of power, or his approval ratings are too low and the American people wouldn’t stand for it, let me remind you that he just essentially pardoned our dear Scooter despite only 19% of Americans who were in favor of letting Mr. Libby skip jail time for perjury and obstructing justice. And Bush could care less what his military commanders say, as he has proven over and over again in Iraq. As for public opinion? It’s been reported that Bush feels “liberated” not stymied by his low poll numbers, and fully expects to be vindicated by “history.”
All signs indicate Bush has not given up on his dream that part of that legacy will be a military strike against Iran. And that is far more frightening, dangerous and outrageous than any commutation for Scooter Libby. The saying goes that there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. A reasonable corollary of that adage could be that there is also noting more dangerous than a “liberated” lame duck president, especially when his name is George W. Bush.
