[Peace-discuss] Iran attack imminent?

[C. G. Estabrook]

[It doesn't seem to me that the USG is preparing to attack Iran, altho' it's 
clear that the war party would dearly love to, and the FP establishment 
certainly wants Iran around in the role of bete noire, to justify US military 
presence in the ME as a "deterrent" to Iran.  But Christ Floyd is an interesting 
(if somewhat erratic) journalist, and his piece today extends the evidence that 
Mort posted.  --CGE]

	Still Not Worried? Petraeus Blames Iran for Green Zone Attack
	Written by Chris Floyd
	Tuesday, 25 March 2008

Yesterday, we noted the story that the Saudi government is now preparing plans 
to deal with "any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards" that may arise from an 
attack on Iran's nuclear reactors. This was reported by a top Saudi newspaper, 
Okaz, and relayed by a leading German news service, dpa -- one day after Dick 
Cheney paid a visit to the kingdom. As we noted, no one knows exactly what was 
said at that confab of allied authoritarians -- but something sure lit a fire 
under the Saudis, and convinced them that urgent action is needed to brace for 
the lethal overspill from a strike on Iran.

Now today comes word that the sainted General David Petraeus, commander of U.S. 
forces in Iraq -- and recepient of perhaps the most copious bipartisan tongue 
bath ever given to a serving military officer by the U.S. Congress -- has blamed 
Iran for the multiple mortar attack on Baghdad's Green Zone on Sunday. As the 
BBC reports:

The most senior US general in Iraq has said he has evidence that Iran was behind 
Sunday's bombardment of Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone.

Gen David Petraeus told the BBC he thought Tehran had trained, equipped and 
funded insurgents who fired the barrage of mortars and rockets.

He said Iran was adding what he described as "lethal accelerants" to a very 
combustible mix.

That's not all. After praising himself for his brilliant "counterinsurgency" 
masterstroke of paying Sunni insurgents and violent religious extremists to kill 
other Iraqis instead of Americans for awhile -- while also arming, training and 
funding the Shiite extremists now in charge of the Iraqi army and security 
forces to kill and torture other Iraqis -- Petraeus went on to blame Iran for 
being the main cause of violence in Iraq. (For a true picture of what Petraeus 
and the vaunted "surge" has actually wrought in Iraq, see Michael Schwartz's 
detailed and devastating report,  "The Battle of Bagdhad."). From the BBC:

In an interview with BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, Gen Petraeus said 
violence in Iraq was being perpetuated by Iran's Quds Force, a branch of the 
Revolutionary Guards.

"The rockets that were launched at the Green Zone yesterday, for example... were 
Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets," he said, adding that the groups that 
fired them were funded and trained by the Quds Force.

"All of this in complete violation of promises made by President Ahmadinejad and 
the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."

The Iranians, of course, have deep, intricate and longstanding ties to the 
"Iraqi leaders" whom Petraeus is now helping maintain in "power" -- if that's 
the word for the operations of a gang of brutal kleptocrats whose residence in 
office is sustained wholly by the foreign military forces who invaded their 
country at the order of another gang of brutal kleptocrats in Washington. But 
Petraeus -- and the White House kleptos -- have continually pushed the line that 
Iran is attacking a government led by their ideological and religious allies, in 
order to....what, exactly? Replace them with,er, ideological and religious 
allies? Well, logic has never been the strong suit of the Crawford Caligula and 
his courtiers, who believe they can "create their own reality" by the assertion 
of imperial will -- and by the expenditure of human cannon fodder. (Petraeus' 
remarks came on the day that the American military death toll in Iraq reached 
4,000.)

Actually, of course, these charges aren't meant to make logical or geopolitical 
sense. They are simply being tossed out there, week after week, month after 
month, to "catapult the propaganda" for war with Iran "at the time, place, and 
in the manner of our choosing," to quote Bush's doctrine of preemptive war in 
the official "National Defense Strategy of the United States." Or as I noted 
here last year about an earlier round of charges:

[Petraeus] is asserting as unassailable fact accusations which have never been 
substantiated, not even by the Regime's own intelligence agencies -- whose bar 
for "confirming" provocative intelligence is, as we all know, preternaturally 
low. Petraeus doesn't intend for his words to be taken seriously -- that is, not 
in the real world, where military attacks by one nation on another lead to an 
immediate response. No, his words are intended for the media echo chamber, where 
they will bounce around in the midst of all the other mind-obliterating noise, 
with a few key scraps falling  into the mix: "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- 
"Qods" -- "Iran" -- "killing Americans" -- "Qods." That's all they want -- and 
that's all they need -- to get across. They certainly don't want anyone to pay 
close attention to the details of the patter they're putting out. They just want 
a few keywords to filter into the battered public consciousness, because these 
are the elements they will invoke when the time comes to launch their own 
unprovoked military agression against Iran: "Iran's Qods Force is killing 
Americans, and we must, reluctantly, retaliate. Therefore, tonight I have 
ordered a series of air raids on Qods Force bases in Iran...."

And hey: "Qods" sounds a lot like "al Qaeda," doesn't it? That gives you extra 
traction in the echo chamber -- more bang for the propaganda buck.

Let's be clear about this. This is an administration that claims the right to go 
to war on the merest suspicion that some evil foreign entity might attack 
Americans at some time in some way. This is an administration that has already 
acted on this deranged -- but oh-so-war-profitable -- "national defense 
strategy." This is an administration that specifically named Iran as a dire 
threat to the nation in the most recent version of this official strategy.

And now, we have Petraeus' j'accuse -- the culmination of more than a year of 
statements by U.S. officials accusing Iran of direct involvement in attacking 
and killing American personnel in Iraq. By the morally demented but consistent 
"principles" enunciated and acted upon by the Bush Administration (principles 
which of course include the use of manufactured evidence and knowing deception 
to launch wars in the name of "national security"), the White House has already 
established an iron-clad case for attacking Iran. Indeed, by their own lights, 
they have actually been criminally negligent and weak-kneed for not having 
attacked Iran long ago -- as the most vociferous wingnuts and con-jobs out there 
keep insisting.

As we said last week, the groundwork for the attack has already been laid. When 
and if a strike comes, it will almost certainly come quickly, without warning. 
There will be no new major PR campaign, just a "surge" in the same 
"mind-obliterating noise" of lies and accusations that has barraged us for so 
long. And no doubt we will see the redoubtable Petraeus take the lead in this 
surge against the American people -- with the same slickness and vigor with 
which he has perpetrated the murderous ethnic cleansing of Baghdad -- when he 
comes to Congress for another tongue-bath next month.

Note: Petraeus has been an eager dissembler for L'il Boots since the beginning, 
as Glenn Greenwald pointed out in this remarkable compendium of spin, waffle and 
flim-flam. For more on the saint's progress on the road to glory see: The 
Imperator Reports: Let the Blood Flow On; Killers and Extremists in the Pay of 
Petraeus; and Shotgun Wedding: The Saint, the Insurgents, and the Surge's 
"Success." [LINKS IN ORIGINAL]

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/

Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> The following story suggests another reason to be fearful that an attack 
> on Iran is planned. 
> 
> In addition there is the recent passage of a U. S. nuclear weapons 
> submarine passing through the Suez canal heading for the Persian gulf. 
>  Unwelcome news. --mkb
> 
>  *Worried Yet? Saudis Prepare for "Sudden Nuclear Hazards" After Cheney 
> Visit *   
> 
> Written by Chris Floyd   
> Sunday, 23 March 2008
> [...]
> For the rest of this article, see
> 
>  http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/option,com_frontpage/Itemid,1/