Eternal War Continued: Iran

If you haven't yet read Seymour Hersch's latest piece in The New Yorker, now's the time. Quote:

“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”

That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”

Hersh points out that the Bush-Cheny cabal is changing tactics in how they're pushing for an attack on Iran and framing the continued occupation of Iraq. Since they're not getting enough war fever going by pumping up the volume about the Iranian nuclear program, they're switching to the excuse that we have to attack Iran because of their alleged widespread action against us in Iraq -- essentially an undocumented claim. Hersh claims the targeting is moving from nuclear facilities to those connected with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard:

Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

Hersh explains that "President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran." Very convenient if you want to continue to build permanent bases in Iraq, try to hang onto Iraqi oil futures for your corporate oil pals, keep the occupation going until the next president takes office and make sure that president can't easily get American troops extricated from the region because you've brought Iran and maybe others into the war mix.

How cooperative of the Congressional Democrats to vote enmasse in both the Senate and for measures supporting the official branding of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists." (Sen. Jeff Bingaman voted no, but Rep. Tom Udall voted yes.) Could it be any easier for the neocons to get Dems to fall into line as they build another manufactured case for a preemptive military attack? Either the Dems haven't learned a thing about the nefarious tactics BushCo is willing to employ in trumping up military attacks, or that they do, in fact, concur with Bush's plans. Which is it?

Additional reading: Truth and Lies in the Middle East by Philip Giraldi in today's Salon. House roll call on Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007. Senate roll call on Lieberman-Kyl Amendment on Iran.