Could al Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran?

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/05/1688/

Could al Qaeda Attack Trigger War With Iran?
by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Following revelations of a George W. Bush administration policy to hold Iran responsible for any al Qaeda attack on the U.S. that could be portrayed as planned on Iranian soil, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi warned last week that Washington might use such an incident as a pretext to bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, the national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 through 1980 and the most senior Democratic Party figure on national security policy, told a private meeting sponsored by the non-partisan Committee for the Republic in Washington May 30 that an al Qaeda terrorist attack in the United States intended to provoke war between the U.S. and Iran was a possibility that must be taken seriously, and that the Bush administration might accuse Iran of responsibility for such an attack and use it to justify carrying out an attack on Iran.

snip//

In a briefing for reporters about the article, Reidel said al Qaeda officals have “openly talked about the advisability of getting their two great enemies to go to war with each other”, hoping that they would “take each other out”.

Reidel, now a senior fellow with the Saban Centre for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, was one of the leading specialists on al Qaeda and terrorism, having served in the 1990s as national intelligence officer, assistant secretary of defence and NSC specialist for Near East and South Asia up to January 2002.

Supporting the warnings by Brzezinski and Reidel about an al Qaeda “false flag” terrorist attack is a captured al Qaeda document found in a hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq in 2006. The document, translated and released by the Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafek al-Rubaie, said “the best solution in order to get out of this crisis is to involve the U.S. forces in waging a war against another country or any hostile groups”.

The document, the author of which was not specified, explained, “We mean specifically attempting to escalate tension between America and Iran, and America and the Shiite in Iraq.”

[liberal N proud]

1. It worked with Iraq

I am sure that the regime would try again.
Allow the attack, build the public outrage, slip Iran into the debate and you have the support of the people who listen to the talking heads.

[babylonsister]

2. Al Qaeda had nothing to do with Iraq, as I'm sure you know. That

was/is this admin's folly.

[liberal N proud]

3. That HUGE fact didn't stop the bu$h regime and the morons who still claim it

That wouldn't stop them from claiming the same to get a war started with Iran

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. And AQ has nothing to do with Iran, either.

AQ is Sunni, Iraq was secualr, Iran is Shi'ite. But that won't stop * from conflating them.

I'm only surprised it hasn't happened before now.

[CJCRANE]

5. Yep

build up a "public presumption" or "public myth" (as Philip Zelikow describes it).

Works everytime.