To reiterate: the claim now from "top Bush officials" is that
Iran has entered into an alliance with al Qaeda and is "committing
daily acts of war" against American forces. As a casus belli, this
beats the hell out of an "imminent threat" from undiscovered WMD, the
entirely specious charge used by the Bush Faction to gull the nation
into aggressive war with Iraq. In fact, at the time of that invasion,
no Iraqi had killed an American in the 12 years since the first Gulf
War; but here, we have the Bushists claiming that Iranians are killing
Americans right this very minute -- every single day.
The
clincher is the new charge that the Iranians are now actively allied
with al Qaeda. It is by now a well-worn modus operandi of the Bush
Terror Warriors simply to declare that anyone they don't like -- anyone
who is a candidate for what Bush calls "
the path of action" -- is an
ally of al Qaeda. This is what was done in the last Terror War "
regime
change" aggression, in Somalia. And of course, this is what was done in
the build-up to the Iraq invasion. At every turn, Bush explicitly
equated the conflict with Saddam with the "war on terror," i.e., the
fight against al Qaeda. "There is no difference," he said, over and
over. Dick Cheney made the connection even more plainly, citing
massaged intelligence and vaporous lies to tie Saddam to bin Laden. The
message got through to the soldiers; as late as 2006, a majority of
U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq
believed that Saddam was connected to
9/11, and considered the invasion as "payback."
So now we have
Iran being tied directly to al Qaeda -- in the middle of a shooting war
in which Americans are indeed being killed every day, in a land of
seething chaos and anarchy where the Iranians indeed have close and
well-armed allies (ironically, these are the same sectarian parties
which Bush himself has empowered and is now allied with), and where
groups calling themselves "al Qaeda" are indeed killing people. You
wouldn't need a "Curveball" or some forged Nigerian documents to gin up
a nominally plausible provocation for war in such a scenario; you could
do it any time you like. Many observers keep looking at the U.S. naval
build-up in the Persian Gulf as a likely flashpoint -- and it's obvious
that the Bushists are bellying around the Gulf like drunks at a bar,
spoiling for a fight -- but it's on the ground, in the murk and blood
and rape of Iraq, that the pretext is likely to arise.
Of
course, the charges that Shiite Iran has joined forces with its deadly
Sunni extremist foes, al Qaeda and the Taliban, are utterly ludicrous.
As
Juan Coles notes in his quick but effective demolition of "this
silly article by poor Simon Tisdall," the new U.S. scenario would mean
that the Iranians are now bombing their own allies who are in charge of
the Green Zone, much of Baghdad and much of Basra and the south as well:
[The
story] claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are shelling the
Green Zone. The parliament building that was hit today by such shelling
is dominated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its paramilitary,
the Badr Organization. Who trained Badr? The Iranian Revolutionary
Guards. And they are trying to hit their own guys -- why? By the way,
the US has 16,000 suspected insurgents in custody. Tisdall should ask
how many of them are Iranian. (Hint: close to none. What, do they just
run faster than the others?) The article even traffics in the
ridiculous assertion that Iran is backing hyper-Sunni, Shiite-killing
Taliban in Afghanistan. Why not just cut to the quick and openly say
that Supreme Jurisprudent Ali Khamenei is in reality . . . Satan! It
really is discouraging that Tisdall didn't report instead on what crazy
things the US military spokesmen in Iraq told him. US military
spokesmen have been trying to push implausible articles about Shiite
Iran supporting Sunni insurgents for a couple of years now, and with
virtually the sole exception of the New York Times, no one in the
journalistic community has taken these wild charges seriously. But The
Guardian?
Yes, the Guardian. Cole is rightly dismissive of
"this silly article," but its silliness, its credulous stupidity,
doesn't mean it can't have serious and sinister ramifications. Just as
the New York Times was used to "launder" the Bushists' warmongering
propaganda on Iraq into "straight news" -- from the leader of the
"liberal media," no less! -- so too the Guardian makes an ideal patsy
for fomenting war fever against Iran. On Iraq, Bush and Cheney solemnly
cited the scary stories their own minions had planted in the Times, now
they can refer to the stories in Guardian as proof of the reality of
Iran's "acts of war" against the United States. In fact, the Guardian's
reputation as a left-wing, even "socialist" paper makes it even more
effective in this regard. You can see Cheney now, sitting down with
that "useful" talking head, Tim Russert, and intoning gravely, "Look,
Tim, it's not just me, not just the Administration saying this. It's
even in radical, foreign papers like the Guardian -- which, as you
know, holds no love for this administration. Why, the Guardian reported
today that Iran has been...."
Looking at the story on-line --
as Cole did, presumably, and as will the vast majority of American
readers -- does not convey the lurid setting that the Guardian's print
edition gives to the story. From every newsstand in Britain, you can
see the large, double-decked banner headlines screaming of Iran's plans
for a summer offensive -- with no quote marks, no qualifications, just
a bald statement of fact. The headlines stream across the page
underneath a full-length picture of a smoldering Bradley armored car
that has just been destroyed by a roadside bomb. (Supplied -- or even
planted! -- by those dastardly Iranians, no doubt.) In terms of its
visuals, and the unsubtle message conveyed to passers-by and casual
readers by the headlines and photo, the Guardian piece is a far more
garish and effective piece of propaganda than any pre-Iraq War story
that appeared in the staid New York Times.
So we should not be
surprised to see the Guardian story blowing back across the water to be
milked by the Administration and its many outside agitators for another
act of aggression. But beyond its utility as a bloody shirt, the story
is also important for the insight it provides on how the Bushists are
laying the groundwork for the attack on Iran -- and how far along they
are in the warmongering campaign. If we have already gotten to the "al
Qaeda alliance" stage -- the hottest of hot buttons, and one that will
give ample cover to the many Democrats eager to show how bristlingly
butch they are despite their lukewarm opposition to the "mishandled"
Iraq war -- then the first laments of Iranian children being torn to
shreds by falling bombs cannot be too far off.
If you have any doubt that the Bush Administration is planning a military strike against Iran, then check out the lead story in 
