The Iran War thread
Scott Alister McKinley
something I've been noticing and I wanted to start keeping track.
As far as I can tell, Bush and Cheney are laying the groundwork for an
attack on Iranian soil within the next six months. They tried to
convince the nation that Iran is a nuclear threat, but the nation
hasn't accepted that premise.
The new rationale is that Iran has effectively declared was on us by
supporting the insurgency in Iraq. In this scenario, we would launch
a "counterstrike" on "terrorist training camps" in Iran.
This thread will take time to develop, so please bear with me.
-- Scott
Exhibit A from CNN (featuring General Petraeus in the role of Colin Powell 2.0):
Petraeus: Iran still fueling war
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/07/petraeus.iran/index.html
FORWARD OPERATING BASE CALDWELL, Iraq (CNN) -- Although America's top
general in Iraq called al Qaeda "the wolf closest to the sled," he
said sectarian fighting among militias fueled by Iran could be the
biggest long-term challenge for Iraq.
Petraeus says Iran must prove it is no longer supplying weapons to
Iraq militias.
Gen. David Petraeus, in an interview with CNN's Jim Clancy near the
Iranian border in Diyala province, said, "Militias could potentially
be the long-term problem for Iraq, if you assume that we can continue
to make progress against al Qaeda," Petraeus said.
He said he is in a "show-me mode," waiting to see if Iran honors a
pledge to stop the flow of arms, money and training from Iran into
Iraq that has helped both Shiite and Sunni militants.
"Al Qaeda remains the wolf closest to the sled, if you will. The enemy
that is always bent on reigniting sectarian violence, causing the most
horrific casualties, damaging the infrastructure in the most difficult
way. So you cannot lose focus on al Qaeda."
But, Petraeus added, there was "no question" that Iranian arms were
ending up in the hands of the Iraqi militias and there was "no debate"
that six Iranians detained by the U.S. military in northern Iraq are
Iranian Quds force members, the Iranian unit accused by the United
States of training and arming insurgents.
"There's no question, absolutely no question that Iran is providing
advanced RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades], RPG 29s," Petraeus said.
"It has provided some shoulder-fired, Stinger-like air-defense
missiles. It has provided the explosively formed projectiles and it
has provided 244 mm rockets, in addition to mortars, mortar rounds and
other small-arms ammunition."
Petraeus also said the Iranians "are implicated in the assassination
of some governors in the southern provinces."
He said one indication the Quds force controls Iranian policy is that
Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazzem Qomi, is a member of the the
group. Qomi, who has diplomatic immunity, could not immediately be
reached for a reaction.
Gen. Petraeus said the Iranian ambassador has given his Iraqi
counterpart assurances Iran would stop the supplying and training of
insurgents.
"They had two sessions," he said. "Numerous Iraqi leaders have gone to
Tehran and asked that they stop very, very directly, stop the lethal
assistance. There have been sub-ambassadorial meetings as well. And
there have been assurances in return actually from Iran to Iraqi
leaders and we are waiting to see if those assurances bear fruit or
not frankly. We are very much in the show-me mode right now. We would
love to see that."
Petraeus reiterated that Iranians detained by the United State
recently in northern Iraq are Quds Force members. One of them was
arrested recently in Sulaimaniya and five others were arrested in
Irbil.
The U.S. military has intercepted caches of explosively formed
projectiles -- a more sophisticated and powerful type of roadside bomb
-- and other weapons from Iran in recent months, but Petraeus said
stopping the regular flow of arms to the militias is a challenge.
Brandon Downey
tied to whether he can 'neutralize' Iran's nuclear/terror capability.
There is definitely a highly orchestrated, big muscle PR campaign by
the neoconservative right [1] against Iran right now, and we're seeing
the evidence of it every day in the media. Witness the attempted
demonization of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his recent visit. Not someone
whose policies I agree with, but also someone who is nowhere near
Hitler (to which he was compared!). More importantly, _not actually in
charge of Iran_, but still presented as the face of terror in the
region by the conservative media.
*
It amazes me that large media outlets are so tightly joined to the
administration that they are unwilling to draw attention to a
transparent effort to manipulate coverage of Iran. Why is the most
independent news on TV still coming from Comedy Central?
[1] Hey, remember when the Bush administration _paid radio program
hosts in secret_ to push No Child Left behind? Makes you wonder what
sort of payola is going on here...
Scott Alister McKinley
I'm still interested in documenting the build-up to an attack within
Iran's borders. The only reason I'm bothering y'all with it, is that
I think it will happen by next March (which is the #1 reason I thought
it was important to impeach either Bush or Cheney).
The administration's initial attempt to convince the world that Iran
is an imminent nuclear threat failed. The new rationale is that
elements of Iran's government are terrorist sponsors, therefore giving
us (or Israel) the right to attack.
As before, to build credibility the administration uses people who are
presumed to be apolitical to make provocative claims of fact. In
reviewing the build-up to the Iraq War, each of these proxies was
shown to be duped in one way or another (think Colin Powell, George
Tenet, and Hillary Clinton). We must ask whether this is happening
again.
The military face this time is General Petraeus, the source in my last
post. The surprising civilian face in the following story is Henry
Paulson, Treasury Secretary.
Three details stand out to me in this story. First, because these
facts are detailed in a bureaucratic announcement about sanctions, the
entire set of claims is reported completely uncritically. Going into
it, the reporter feels as though the story is that the US is making
new sanctions. His guard is down. The story turns out to be that
there are new claims of fact. Surprised to see these new claims, the
reporter parrots to claims without doing any due diligence to see if
they're true.
Second, the allegation that Shiite Iran is supporting the Sunni
Taliban in Afghanistan strikes me completely new. To my knowledge,
the Sunni - Shiite divide is so deep that there are virtually no
incidences of alliances, much less military support, even to confront
the Russians or Americans. That a reporter would accept such a claim
without any proof and without any counterbalancing paragraph that,
hey, some of this may not be true, is just outrageous.
Third, the US is going out of its way to link Iran to Hezbollah (which
may well be true). The significance though is that Israel was
recently willing to strike facilities within Syria. The rhetorical
groundwork has been lain to justify an Israeli strike within Iran the
next time Gaza flairs up.
The story as it appears on cnn.com:
-- Scott
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
U.S. details Quds Force's 'lethal support' to Taliban
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/25/quds.force/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran's Islamic
Revolutionary Guard Corps, provides "lethal support" to the
Sunni-dominated Taliban for use against U.S. and NATO forces,
according to information in the new U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, with Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, announces the sanctions Thursday.
The Quds Force is the "Iranian regime's primary instrument for
providing lethal support to the Taliban," and it "provides weapons and
financial support to the Taliban to support anti-U.S. and
anti-coalition activity in Afghanistan," the Treasury Department
alleged Thursday in announcing economic sanctions against the Quds
Force and other Iranian military and financial entities.
Iran is a predominantly Shiite nation and is known to support Shiite
fighters in Iraq, where Shiite and Sunni Muslims have been at odds in
recent years, and in Lebanon.
In the past, the U.S. military has said the Quds Force also supports
the Taliban, the Sunni movement that once controlled Afghanistan and
still harbors the al Qaeda terror movement. The Treasury Department
statement, however, laid out specific details of that alleged support
to justify designating the Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism.
"Since at least 2006, Iran has arranged frequent shipments of small
arms and associated ammunition, rocket propelled grenades, mortar
rounds, 107 mm rockets, plastic explosives, and probably man-portable
defense systems to the Taliban," the statement said.
The Treasury statement also says the Quds Force "has had a long
history" of backing Hezbollah's "military, paramilitary, and terrorist
activities, providing it with guidance, funding, weapons,
intelligence, and logistical support."
The Lebanese Shiite group runs training camps in Lebanon's Bekaa
Valley and "has reportedly trained" more than 3,000 of the group's
fighters at Revolutionary Guard training facilities in Iran, the
Treasury Department alleged.
The statement further alleges that the Quds Force provides roughly
$100 million to $200 million in funding a year to Hezbollah and has
helped the group rearm after the war in Lebanon with Israeli forces.
The Treasury Department says the Quds Force provides "material
support" to two Palestinian groups -- Palestinian Islamic Jihad and
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.
The Quds Force is one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guard Corps. The others are Ground Forces, Air Force, Navy and Basij
militia.
The Revolutionary Guard Corps "runs prisons, and has numerous economic
interests involving defense production, construction, and the oil
industry" and "has been outspoken about its willingness to proliferate
ballistic missiles capable of carrying" weapons of mass destruction,
the Treasury Department says.
Louis Jeansonne
a stance, and our stances will be proven right or wrong. Either Bush will
invade Iran before his term is over, or he won't.
I am not convinced that an Iran invasion is going to happen, or that they
are planning it in the same way that they planned to invade Iraq. The Bush
administration's intention to invade Iraq before 9/11 is very
well-documented. People pretend like it's some newly-discovered thing, but
it was extensively detailed in one of Bob Woodward's books, I can't remember
which one, which came out before 9/11. They definitely wanted to attack
Iraq all along. The same documentation does not exist for Iran. I think
they're just trying to scare them.
I also don't buy the "media conspiracy/duping" argument. How do you know
the reporters aren't checking their facts? And how do you know the military
information is wrong?
Also, preventing a war you disagree with is not a reason to impeach someone.
I fear that people are going to call for the impeachment of every president
from now on. It's fine to just say that you disagree with someone.
vath...@umich.edu
I'll let Scott discuss his specific assertions about the need for
impeachment, but it is simply not the case that people are ONLY calling
for articles of impeachment against Bush and Cheney because of a simple
disagreement about the war. For an interesting discussion of the
subject, I'd recommend this Bill Moyers episode from the summer:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/profile.html
In particular, it is interesting to hear Bruce Fein's arguments for
impeachment given his background (Fein is a Conservative Legal scholar
who drafted the first articles of impeachment against Clinton for
perjury). One of his central arguments, for those uninterested in
watching the clip, is that the unprecedented assertion of power by the
Executive branch under Bush has raised real and troubling
constitutional questions about checks and balances. If these assertions
of power remained unchecked, as they have been, they will remain in
place for future presidencies. The notion that those future presidents
- Democrat or Republican - will freely surrender Executive power back
to the other branches is, in his mind, unlikely. And since the current
Legislative branch is unwilling or unable to reassert their own
Constitutional authority, it is critical that articles of impeachment
be brought to correct the balance. Note that this is an argument to
restore Constitutional checks and balances, as construed by Fein and
others. This is not a direct attack on Bush and Cheney over policy
disagreements.
Others, of course, ARE calling for impeachment over policy
disagreements. But I wanted to point out that these are not the only
calls for impeaching Bush (as your comment suggested).
I'd love to hear what the lawyers in the "room" have to say about this
issue because I know virtually nothing about the Constitution. I am,
after all, an average American.
-Rich
Tro...@aol.com
I like this thread because it's one of the few issues where we can all take
a stance, and our stances will be proven right or wrong. Either Bush will
invade Iran before his term is over, or he won't.
I am not convinced that an Iran invasion is going to happen, or that they
are planning it in the same way that they planned to invade Iraq. The Bush
administration's intention to invade Iraq before 9/11 is very
well-documented. People pretend like it's some newly-discovered thing, but
it was extensively detailed in one of Bob Woodward's books, I can't remember
which one, which came out before 9/11. They definitely wanted to attack
Iraq all along. The same documentation does not exist for Iran. I think
they're just trying to scare them.
I also don't buy the "media conspiracy/duping" argument. How do you know
the reporters aren't checking their facts? And how do you know the military
information is wrong?
Also, preventing a war you disagree with is not a reason to impeach someone.
I fear that people are going to call for the impeachment of every president
from now on. It's fine to just say that you disagree with someone.
Scott Alister McKinley
Lou, I don't know that the reporters aren't checking their facts or
that the military is wrong. However, it has been proven that four
years ago the reporters didn't check their facts and the military was
wrong. It's their job to convince me to trust them again; and not my
job to prove they're not trustworthy.
Every time a part of the Executive Branch makes a provocative claim of
fact, the reporter should immediately ask, "How is the evidence for
this claim better than the evidence for past claims about WMD in
Iraq?"
Does anybody have a subscription to the Wall Street Journal on-line?
I saw the first three paragraphs of the Iran sanctions story there,
and I thought the reporter did an excellent job. I'd love to share
that with the group, but don't have access to the WSJ archives.
ON IMPEACHMENT
Bush should be impeached because he has repeatedly ordered the
Executive Branch to perform illegal and unconstitutional actions.
(Warrantless wiretaps, suspension of habeas corpus, institution of
torture, unconstitutional signing statements and so on. At least some
of these acts rise to the level of impeachment worthiness.)
Some people say that if Democrats impeach Bush or Cheney, this will
unify a fractured Republican Party and the backlash will lead to a
Republican Presidential victory. My comment about impeachment was
directed at these people. To them, I say fifteen more months of
Bush/Cheney foreign policy is worse than some phantom risk of a
Democrat losing in '08.
Louis Jeansonne
Brandon Downey
> I understand the argument that some of Bush's executive orders violate
> Constitutional checks and balances, but I fail to see how impeachment will
> correct that any better than simply striking down those particular executive
> orders or actions. In my mind, this is no different than when Congress
> passes an unconstitutional law -- we don't remove them from office, the
> Supreme Court just strikes the law down.
>
> According to the Constitution, impeachment is for crime. When the
> legislative branch violates the Constitution, we don't consider it a crime,
> we just nullify the law or policy. Why should the executive branch be any
> different? You can't cherry pick the Constitution and use it as
> justification for impeachment, when the Constitution's own clauses on
> impeachment don't allow this!
It's worth pointing out that Congress can pass unconstitutional laws
-- there is literally no law against it. However, there' exists
judicial review and executive discretion in implementing those laws.
Meanwhile, ordering someone to be tortured actually _is_ a crime. So
is violating the Geneva Convention, which we clearly did (recall that
the Constitution mandates that treaties lawfully entered into have the
force of law). So are all the other things Scott mentioned, with the
exception of 'executive signing statements', which probably should be
in the purview of judicial review. (Or just ignored by the rest of
government.)
On a larger level, impeachment is the only remedy which may be left to
us: Bush has hand-picked Supreme Court justices who are loyal to him,
has an out of control executive branch, and appears to be preparing
for a disastrous war.
The only problemr I see is that I think impeachment is impractical --
there are too many Republicans in Congress to allow an impeachment
hearing to proceed. So, I would say that impeachment is a perfectly
acceptable Constitutional remedy, it's just not practical.
You could ask a theoretical quesiton: Suppose that Bush hadn't done
anything else, and just up and ordered an invasion of Iran. Whether or
not a baseless war constitutes a 'high crime or misdemeanor' is
something I'm not versed enough in the law to begin to answer. It sure
weights the calculus towards, 'get this madman out of the oval office'
though!
- Brandon
Louis Jeansonne
Tro...@aol.com
Brandon Downey
>
> I like this thread because it's one of the few issues where we can all take
> a stance, and our stances will be proven right or wrong. Either Bush will
> invade Iran before his term is over, or he won't.
I sincerely hope you are correct. However, I think that not only is
there a lot of evidence that some sort of military action Iran is
being planned (I happen to think it would come in the form of massive
air strikes rather than a ground invasion), I also think it fits the
'modus operandi' of the Bush administration.
>
> I am not convinced that an Iran invasion is going to happen, or that they
> are planning it in the same way that they planned to invade Iraq. The Bush
> administration's intention to invade Iraq before 9/11 is very
> well-documented. People pretend like it's some newly-discovered thing, but
> it was extensively detailed in one of Bob Woodward's books, I can't remember
> which one, which came out before 9/11. They definitely wanted to attack
> Iraq all along. The same documentation does not exist for Iran. I think
> they're just trying to scare them.
>
So, here's the thing: While Woodward's book is full of great
retrodictory evidence, he didn't publish a book *before* the invasion,
saying "We're going to war". A lot of people thought we might not end
up in war, and the buildup of troops and diplomatic agitation would
end before it got to that.
Now, we see the same thing. Troops on the ground in Iraq have
_increased_ since January, ostensibly in the name of the Surge -- in
practice, it means that we are now a greater threat to Iran militarily
than before.
We've also seen increased naval presence, and a succession of PR and
diplomatic efforts aimed at tarring Iran as being complicit in 9/11
(they weren't), supporters of a new holocaust (not really, as far as I
can tell), accusations of supporting terrorism in Iran (now an Iranian
military organization is a 'terrorist group'). More damningly, the
Republican-friendly media in the US has been writing articles about
how bad Iran is as well, with conviction and with great fervor. Is
this just sabre rattling, or is it another campaign to soften up the
US population for a military strike?
I understand there's a temptation to ascribe the worst to the Bush
administration, as they've screwed up on so many levels. We want to
believe they're up to the _next_ dumb thing, invading Iran. So,
there's an element of bias we need to divorce from the facts. But it
sure seems like something is going on, and I would be willing to bet
money that there is some form of military strike against Iran before
the end of the Bush administration.
> I also don't buy the "media conspiracy/duping" argument. How do you know
> the reporters aren't checking their facts? And how do you know the military
> information is wrong?
There are several mega-scale factors conspiring to make mainstream
media grossly ineffective at its job.
(1) The Bush administration has used its power to subvert media in
ways which I don't think we've seen since the 19th century-early 20th
century. It's not simply a matter of reporting false data to the media
(which we saw in Vietnam), we've seen the Bush administration do any
and all of the following:
- Plant classified information with media sources to damage their
political opponents
- Secretly paid off members of the media to come out in favor of laws
supported by the Bush administration(!)
- Threatened to withhold information from any media outlet that didn't
"play ball".
- Basically turned their relationships with the press into a circus
(2) We are seeing consolidation of media in a way we have not seen
since the time of Hearst
Owing to a number of fairly complicated factors -- competition from
the internet, lax anti-trust enforcement, and a general lack of growth
in 'traditional' media, all have resulted in most media practically
being in the hands of a very few corporate entities.
While this has been an economic survival tool for media (in a market
without growth, consolidation occurs to cut costs), it's also managed
to produce a market with both less competition for good news, which of
course ends up with less money being spent on things like real
research and real stories.
(3) There's a new (old) media business model:
Probably partly as a result of (2) and some of (1), it was discovered
that if you suck up to the party in power, you get the juiciest leads
and the best war stories. Hence: Fox News.
Ask yourself: How much of what you hear on Fox is really true, or
reported accurately and in the proper context. And while your answer
to this is, "Of course, the stuff I see on Fox is crap.", there are
millions of people who watch and believe what they see.
For the rest of the media conglomerates, this makes them that much
more desperate to get the favor of the administration. Their CEOs,
primarily Republicans, are therefore easily swayed by personal calls
from the White House asking them to control the flow and quality of
information outbound.
(4) There's no longer an audience for in-depth reporting:
Or: The Internet killed the Anchorman
This seems like a contradiction in terms -- we have the internet, we
have Google, we have YouTube videos of most everything politicians
have said. We have military blogs from the front line. We have former
intelligence officials blogging. How can we not have an audience fore
more accurate, more detailed, better coverage?
While most of the people on the list probably get their news from a
news aggregator (Google News, Yahoo News, or even social aggregators
like digg or reddit), niche cable shows (Comedy Central), or
relatively 'with it' old media like NPR or the BBC, this is still not
the case for Most People.
What these alternative outlets for media and information have done,
however, is steal the intellectual zeitgeist from traditional media.
Time was, newspapers, television, and radio served both the
intellectual and political elite along with the average person. You
could get away with publishing the Pentagon Papers and somebody would
read it. You could get away with Walter Kronkite or a hard hitting,
in-depth political debate on TV.
If you do that today, you don't have an audience. The people watching
the networks, CNN, and FOX news are generally not the people who are
interested in in-depth analysis and good reporting. What they get is a
compelling story, and an encompassing narrative.
The shift of this mass market to online media will open eyes, but it's
still years off -- I'd say about a decade. Until then, we're in a
transition phase where there are a lot of people out there who don't
have access to the level of detail in reporting that we do, and who
hear only what Fox and CNN want them to hear.
>
> Also, preventing a war you disagree with is not a reason to impeach someone.
> I fear that people are going to call for the impeachment of every president
> from now on. It's fine to just say that you disagree with someone.
We've discussed elsewhere how Bush does appear to be guilty of crimes
-- both violations of US, and (I would argue) crimes against humanity
for his shabby treatment of prisoners and the ruin and suffering he
has brought to the Iraqi people.
I can see that looking forward, the correct remedy is a structural one
-- we have stumbled into a series of cases where our system of checks
& balances is inadequate to prevent real damage to both ourselves and
the world.
Here are some of the problems:
- Our government responds recklessly to tragedy
- It's too easy to declare pre-emptive war
- It's *way* too hard to stop a war (no Congress will ever vote to
de-fund troops)
- The right to protection against unlawful search and seizures needs
to be extended to cover privacy of communication and not be diminished
by bad historical precedent
- When the president and both houses are controlled by the same party,
bad things happen
- We have two great historical examples of how the executive branch
picking the judiciary branch leads to constitutional scale abuse (FDR
and Bush's election).
- A poorly performing executive is too hard to dislodge; four years is
too long between elections in a world that changes in minutes.
There are larger, even deeper issues, like:
- Our electoral and governmental structures seem to inevitably lead to
a two-party system, which seldom, if ever, reflects the diversity of
opinion in the real world.
- The influence of national-scale corporations over government is
simply too great. Beware the military industrial complex!
But I regard these as so nearly intractable that we would likely need
a new country or disruptive government change to adequately address
them.
- Brandon