by Ray McGovern, Consortium News
http://www.alternet.org/story/88786/
Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need
be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well
under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and
awe and pox — in the form of air and missile attacks — begin.
This
time it will be largely the Air Force’s show, punctuated by missile and
air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been
reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and
pilots are working out the details.
Emerging from a 90-minute
White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:
“We
reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I
left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding
the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to
deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the
Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that
matter before the end of his term in the White House.”
Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff
and bluster?
A
member of Olmert’s delegation noted that same day that the two
countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and
that “the meetings focused on ‘operational matters’ pertaining to the
Iranian threat.” So bring ’em on!
A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to
attack the U.S. or Israel?
You
say you missed Olmert’s account of what Bush has undertaken to do? So
did I. We are indebted to intrepid journalist Chris Hedges for
including the quote in his article of June 8, “The
Iran Trap.”
We
can perhaps be excused for missing Olmert’s confident words about
“Israel’s best friend” that week. Your attention — like mine — may
have been riveted on the June 5 release of the findings of the Senate
Intelligence Committee regarding administration misrepresentations of
pre-Iraq-war intelligence — the so-called “Phase II” investigation
(also known, irreverently, as the “Waiting-for-Godot Study”).
Better late than never, I suppose.
Oversight?
Yet
I found myself thinking: It took them five years, and that is what
passes for oversight? Yes, the president and vice president and their
courtiers lied us into war. And now a bipartisan report could assert
that fact formally; and committee chair Jay Rockefeller could sum it up
succinctly:
“In making the case for war, the
administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in
reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As
a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from
Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
But
as I listened to Senator Rockefeller, I had this sinking feeling that
in five or six years time, those of us still around will be listening
to a very similar post mortem looking back on an even more disastrous
attack on Iran.
My colleagues and I in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity (VIPS) issued repeated warnings, before the invasion of
Iraq, about the warping of intelligence. And our memoranda met
considerable resonance in foreign media.
We could get no ink or airtime, however, in the Fawning
Corporate Media (FCM) in the U.S. Nor can we now.
In
a same-day critique of Colin Powell’s unfortunate speech to the U.N. on
Feb. 5, 2003, we warned the president to widen his circle of advisers
“beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling
reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely
to be catastrophic.”
It was a no-brainer for anyone who knew
anything about intelligence, the Middle East, and the brown noses
leading intelligence analysis at the CIA.
Former U.N. senior
weapons inspector and former Marine major, Scott Ritter, and many
others were saying the same thing. But none of us could get past the
president’s praetorian guard to drop a memo into his in-box, so to
speak. Nor can we now.
The “Iranian Threat”
However
much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there
is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break
through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the
president’s “bubble.”
By all indications, Vice President Dick Cheney and his huge
staff continue to control the flow of information to the president.
But, you say, the president cannot be unaware of the
far-reaching disaster an attack on Iran would bring?
Well,
this is a president who admits he does not read newspapers, but rather
depends on his staff to keep him informed. And the memos Cheney does
brief to Bush pooh-pooh the dangers.
This time no one is saying
we will be welcomed as liberators, since the planning does not include
— officially, at least — any U.S. boots on the ground.
Besides, even on important issues like the price of gasoline,
the performance of the president’s staff has been spotty.
Think
back on the White House press conference of Feb. 28, when Bush was
asked what advice he would give to Americans facing the prospect of
$4-a-gallon gasoline.
“Wait, what did you just say?” the
president interrupted. “You’re predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline? …
That’s interesting. I hadn’t heard that.”
A poll in January
showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans were expecting
$4-a-gallon gas. That forecast was widely reported in late February,
and discussed by the White House press secretary at the media briefing
the day before the president’s press conference.
Here’s the
alarming thing: Unlike Iraq, which was prostrate after the Gulf War and
a dozen years of sanctions, Iran can retaliate in a number of dangerous
ways, launching a war for which our forces are ill-prepared.
The
lethality, intensity and breadth of ensuing hostilities will make the
violence in Iraq look, in comparison, like a volleyball game between
St. Helena’s High School and Mount St. Ursula.
Cheney’s Brainchild
Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney’s brainchild, if
that is the correct word.
Cheney
proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary
Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who
insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a
senior State Department official at the time.
Chastened by the
unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials
reportedly are insisting on a “policy decision” regarding “what would
happen after the Iranians would go after our folks,” according to
Carpenter.
Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the
critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to
reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced
into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to
use, “mini-nukes.”
Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July
2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the
“fear of the military leadership” that Iran would have “escalation
dominance” in any conflict with the U.S.
Writing in the Washington Post
last July, Gerson indicated that “escalation dominance” means, “in a
broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and
the region more than we complicate theirs.”
The Joint Chiefs also
have opposed the option of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites, according to
former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann,
who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.
Mann confirmed
that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing
such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White
House, as well.
The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in
March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus
— apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his
penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney’s
bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for
example).
In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer
or early fall.
Controlled Media
The
experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled
media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and
Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in
monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.
Suffice
it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its
accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House
to indoctrinate Americans on the “threat” from Iran and prepare them
for the planned air and missile attacks.
At least this time we
are spared the “mushroom cloud” bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish
to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S.
intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped
nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last
year.
In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as
inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify
another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq
the administration made significant claims not supported by the
intelligence.
But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence
Committee report got meager exposure in the media.
So
far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us
from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal
encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal
ruled explicitly that “just-following-orders” is no defense when war
crimes are involved.
And still less when the “supreme international crime” — a war
of aggression — is involved.
Senior
officers trying to slow the juggernaut lumbering along toward an attack
on Iran have been scandalized watching what can only be described as
unconscionable dereliction of duty in the House of Representatives,
which the Constitution charges with the duty of impeaching a president,
vice president or other senior official charged with high crimes and
misdemeanors.
Where Are You, Conyers?
In 2005,
before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the
Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and
was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment
then. He replied:
“To
take away the excuse that we didn’t know. So that two, or four, or ten
years from now, if somebody should ask, ‘Where were you, Conyers, and
where was the U.S. Congress?’ when the Bush administration declared the
Constitution inoperative … none of the company here present can plead
ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that ‘somehow it escaped our
notice.'”
In the three years since then, the
train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has
become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has
shown no appetite for impeachment.
On July 23, 2007, Conyers told
Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218
votes in the House and they were not there.
A week ago, 251
members of the House voted to refer to Conyers’ committee the 35
Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.
Former
Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers
when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard
Nixon, spoke out immediately: “The House should commence an impeachment
inquiry forthwith.”
Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman
noted, Kucinich’s Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate
report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses —
arguably the most serious charge — go a long way toward jump-starting
any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.
And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by
Conyers himself, Constitution in Crisis, containing a wealth of
relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.
Conyers’ complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that
won’t hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.
How
can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks
Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.
Afraid of the media?
During
the meeting last July with Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Yearwood and me, and
during an interview in December on “Democracy Now,” Conyers was
surprisingly candid in expressing his fear of Fox News and how it could
paint Democrats as divisive if they pursued impeachment.
Ironically,
this time it is Fox and the rest of the FCM that is afraid — witness
their virtual silence on Kucinich’s very damning 35 Articles of
Impeachment.
The only way to encourage constructive media
attention would be for Conyers to act. The FCM could be expected to
fulminate against that, but they could not afford to ignore
impeachment, as they are able to ignore other unpleasant things — like
preparations for another “war of choice.”
I would argue that
perhaps the most effective way to prevent air and missile attacks on
Iran and a wider Middle East war is to proceed as Elizabeth Holtzman
urges — with impeachment “forthwith.”
Does Conyers not owe at
least that much encouragement to those courageous officers who have
stood up to Cheney in trying to prevent wider war and catastrophe in
the Middle East?
Scott McClellan has been quite clear in
reminding us that once the president decided to invade Iraq, he was not
going to let anything stop him. There is ample evidence that Bush has
taken a similar decision with respect to Iran — with Olmert as his
chief counsel, no less.
It is getting late, but this is due
largely to Conyers’ own dithering. Now, to his credit, Dennis Kucinich
has forced the issue with 35 well-drafted Articles of Impeachment.
What
the country needs is the young John Conyers back. Not the one now
surrounded by fancy lawyers and henpecked by the lady of the House.
In
October 1974, after he and the even younger Elizabeth Holtzman faced up
to their duty on House Judiciary and voted out three Articles of
Impeachment on President Richard Nixon, Conyers wrote this:
“This
inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which,
finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored …
Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what
must be done is the price of remaining free.”
Someone
needs to ask John Conyers if he still believes that; and, if he does,
he must summon the courage to “do what must be done.”
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity.