Okay, So War with Iran-From Josh Marshall (TPM)

[kpete]

Okay, So War with Iran
09.03.07 -- 11:30PMBy Josh Marshall

I've written before that there is a very real threat that the Bush administration could go for double or nothing and launch a major military campaign against Iran in the next 18 months. But I had largely discounted this weekend's rush of rumor and sketchy details about the possibility of an imminent attack. Among other reasons, I have a well-grounded skepticism about stories about US politics I read fully-formed and attributed in the British press before any American publications seems to have caught wind of it. But maybe I've dismissed this too quickly. Todd Gitlin and George Packer have more.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/052164.php

True? I don’t know. Plausible? Absolutely. It follows the pattern of the P.R. campaign that started around this time in 2002 and led to the Iraq war. The President’s rhetoric on Iran has been nothing short of bellicose lately, warning of “the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” And the Iranian government’s behavior—detaining British servicemen and arresting American passport holders, pushing ahead with uranium enrichment, and, by many reliable accounts, increasing its funding and training for anti-American militias in Iraq—seems intentionally provocative. Perhaps President Ahmedinejad and the mullahs feel that they win either way: they humiliate the superpower if it doesn’t take the bait, and they shore up their deeply unpopular regime at home if it does. Preëmptive war requires calculations (and, often, miscalculations) on two sides, not just one, as Saddam learned in 2003. When tensions are this high between two countries and powerful factions in both act as if hostilities are in their interest, war is likely to follow.

It’s one thing for the American Enterprise Institute, the Weekly Standard, et al to champion a war they support. It’s another to jump like circus animals at the crack of the White House whip. If the propaganda campaign predicted by Rubin’s friend is launched, less subservient news organizations should ask certain questions, and keep asking them: Does the Administration expect the Iranian regime to fall in the event of an attack? If yes, what will replace it? If no (and it will not), why would the Administration deliberately set about to strengthen the regime’s hold on power? What will the Administration do to protect highly vulnerable American lives and interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world against the Iranian reprisals that will follow? What if Iran strikes against Israel? What will be the strategy when the Iranian nuclear program, damaged but not destroyed, resumes? How will the Administration handle the international alarm and opprobrium that would be an attack’s inevitable fallout?

If this really is a return to the early fall of 2002 all over again, then I’m fairly sure that no one at the top of the Administration is worrying about the answers.

Postscript: Barnett Rubin just called me. His source spoke with a neocon think-tanker who corroborated the story of the propaganda campaign and had this to say about it: “I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I’m not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic.”

more at:
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2007/08/if-there-were-a.html

[TwilightGardener]

1. I read the National Review Online article by Victor Hanson, and yes, I

do think it's alarming that some neocon writers are warning against action against Iran--if the usual "true believers" think it's a bad idea, and think it's NECESSARY to try to dissuade the administration from doing it, then it must be in the works, and it's certainly a bad idea. Hanson, of course, was pumping up the glories of Iraq and the Surge, saying, hey, it's working! Why risk it? That's a big fat lie, but he has to speak the neocons' language of VICTORY to convince them that they don't need to go after Iran. Scary stuff.

[HereSince1628]

2. Unlike many other stories of coming war this one is to be quickly tested

The role out of the propaganda campaign is supposed to happen this week.

All we need to do is count ledes and compare their column inches of anti-Iran reportage from previous weeks to this one.