September 22, 2006

Blogometer Update

Politics of Terror: Iran So Far Away?

Setting The Stage

   Based on recent events, the keen eyes and ears of the blogosphere are perceiving glaringly subtle signs pointing to imminent war.

   Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sees the inevitable strike on Iran.  "The one piece of data that makes me think they're really going to try it ... is the news that Don Rumsfeld has apparently put Abram Shulsky in charge of a new DOD outfit ... to stovepipe bogus Iran intel."

   Matthew Yglesias adds to Marshall, claiming an anonymous source in the Defense Department tipped him to a sinister game plan afoot in VP Dick Cheney's office:

According to this person, the DOD has (naturally) been doing some analysis on airstrikes against Iran.  The upshot of the analysis was that conventional bombardment would degrade the Iranian nuclear program by about 50 percent.  By contrast, if the arsenal included small nuclear weapons, we could get up to about 80 percent destroying.  In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes -- in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so.  Detectable radiation in the area of the bombed sites would be attributed to the fact that they were, after all, nuclear facilities we'd just hit.

   Think Progress has more, having caught the CNN appearance on Monday of USAF Col. Sam Gardiner (Ret.) in which he starkly detailed "military operations inside Iran right now.  The evidence is overwhelming."  Ominously, Gardiner stated that "the plan has gone to the White House.  That's not normal planning.  When the plan goes to the White House, that means we've gone to a different state."

   And Fred Kaplan at Slate recalls Time's recent cover story: "A 'prepare to deploy' order has been sent out to U.S. Navy submarines, an Aegis-class cruiser, two minesweepers, and two mine-hunting ships.  The chief of naval operations, the nation's top admiral, has ordered a fresh look at contingency plans for blockading Iran's oil ports."

Future Echoes

   If it all sounds uncomfortably reminiscent of the buildup to Iraq, Ari Berman at The Nation feels your pain:

Intelligence experts and counter-terrorism officials say hawkish Republicans are exaggerating the state of Iran's nuclear program and support for terrorism.  The International Atomic Energy Agency, in particular, said a report by House Republicans contained "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information." ... And once again, President Bush is addressing the UN General Assembly, calling for sanctions.  "Iran must abandon its nuclear weapon ambitions," Bush said today.

   He additionally quotes Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott in a McClatchy Washington Bureau article: "'The [IAEA] dispute was a virtual rerun of the months before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq,'" and, "Once again, the offices of Cheney and Rumsfeld are 'receiving a stream of questionable information that originates with Iranian exiles.'"

   Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly bluntly surmises, "The administration's actions seem to have been carefully calculated at every step to leave no alternative to a military strike."

Payoff?

   Inevitably, thoughts turn to the political implications of these shadowy developments.  Reed Hundt at TPMCafe feels that "it's fairly clear that air strikes on Iran would stun most Democratic candidates into speechlessness."  Ben Adler at The American Prospect's Tapped observes, "This catches Democrats in quite a bind.  They want to keep the focus on Iraq for the midterms.  At the same time, as focus on Iran grows, they will be caught in a 2002 redux: to acquiesce to aggressive action or risk being painted as dovish."  Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) at Huffington Post urges a fierce focus on diplomacy to avoid Iraq II: Iranian Boogaloo: "The options are clear: We can use all of the economic and diplomatic power of the U.S. - including linkage - to stop Ahmadinejad's nuclear weapons program.  Or we can 'bow down and surrender.'"

   Whatever the denouement of this latest act in the theater of the Middle East, hopelessness is setting in.  Marshall at TPM: "[Events] tells me that fundamentally Condi Rice is just window-dressing, like her predecessor Colin Powell, that the Cheney-Rumsfeld Axis remains in place and in charge and that we'll probably be at war with Iran before too long unless someone can stop them."

   And Yglesias--with the horrifying thought of "an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran" in mind--rues, "It's a sobering reminder that we have genuine lunatics operating in the highest councils of government at the moment."

Posted by Conn Carroll at September 22, 2006 12:12 PM