7 January, 2009
The U.S. has arrested more than 500 Iranians in Iraq and pursued others into Iran. Given the circumstances, such is not only an act of war, but such naked aggression against Iran and into the territory of Iran, constitutes a war crime and is illegal as the Congress has never authorized Bush to invade and attack Iran.
Another Cold War?
According to Seymour Hersh, U.S. military and special-operations teams "have escalated their activities in Iran to gather intelligence" and "have also crossed the border in pursuit of Iranian operatives from Iraq." So reports Hersh in an article in the March 5 issue of the New Yorker.
"The U.S. military also has arrested and interrogated hundreds or Iranians in Iraq," Hersh adds. Those arrested include humanitarian aid workers, though the later have been released after interrogation. Such interrogations are likely to include torture.
Hersh cites a former senior intelligence aide who explains the situation this way: "The word went out last August (2006) for the military to snatch as many Iranians in Iraq as they can. They had five hundred locked up at one time. We're working these guys and getting information from them."
The source added, "The White House goal is to build a case [to show] that the Iranians have been fomenting the insurgency and they've been doing it all along.” In a move typical of the double-speak Bush administration, the theory is that Iranians, who support the U.S.-installed Shia leaders, are some sort of terrorist invasion force of outside meddlers, while U.S. troops, who do not know Arabic, or the difference between Shia and Sunni Islam, are not foreign fighters and invaders. The rhetoric leads to the preposterous allegation that, horror of horrors, Iranians are indirectly or directly killing American troops and mercenaries – which is so appalling given that American troops are not directly or indirectly killing anyone in Iraq.
Hersh said that a Pentagon consultant (aka welfare king) confirmed the intelligence aide's statement that hundreds of Iranians have been captured by American forces in recent months. Though Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, stated on 2 February 2007 that, "We are not planning for a war with Iran," Hersh says that "the atmosphere of confrontation has deepened."
Hersh explains, "According to current and former American intelligence and military officials, secret operations in Lebanon have been accompanied by clandestine operations targeting Iran."
To contextualize the overt nature of the Bush administration plan to start a war with Iran, in his piece, Hersh also includes past remarks from Dick Cheney. Doing another Orwellian propaganda campaign, when speaking on Fox News on 14 January 2007, Cheney warned of the possibility, in a few years, "of a nuclear-armed Iran, astride the world's supply of oil, able to affect adversely the global economy, prepared to use terrorist organizations and/or their nuclear weapons to threaten their neighbors and others around the world."
U.S. military on 24 hour alert
In fact the plan to bomb if not invade Iran has moved from the wishful thinking stage to a concrete plan, ready for action. Hersh informs us that, sometime last fall, Bush directed the Pentagon to draw up plans to start the bombing of Iran, and identifying key strategic locations. According to one former intelligence official, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs, "charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within 24 hours."
Hersh insists that several sources told him that the planning group has been handed a new assignment recently: to identify targets in Iran that might be involved in supplying or aiding militants in Iraq. Additionally, Hersh alluded to the idea that we should watch what happens to two carriers currently positioned off the coast of Iran in the Arabian Sea. There are now two Navy aircraft carrier strike groups in the Arabian Sea, anchored by the Eisenhower and Stennis. The carriers are tentatively scheduled to be relieved this Spring, but they might be ordered to remain even after other carriers arrive.
Hersh adds that current U.S. contingency plans "allow for an attack order on Iran this spring," but senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House's not being "foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008." Hersh said that there has been a policy "redirection" or strategy shift, in the White House in the past few months that "has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims."
Now that the Bush administration has succeeded in obtaining help from the UN to suggest that Iran deserves sanction for its uranium enrichment program, it should be that much easier, without Congressional opposition or public outcry, for Bush to launch an all out assault.
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(Sherwood Ross is an American reporter and columnist who covers military and political topics. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com )
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