Now or Never
Do
We Have the Courage to Stop War with Iran?
By RAY McGOVERN
Former
CIA Analyst
Why do I feel like the proverbial skunk
at a Labor Day picnic? Sorry; but I thought you might want to
know that this time next year there will probably be more skunks
than we can handle. I fear our country is likely to be at war
with Iran-and with the thousands of real terrorists Iran can
field around the globe.
It is going to happen, folks,
unless we put our lawn chairs away on Tuesday, take part in some
serious grass-roots organizing, and take action to prevent a
wider war-while we still can.
President George W. Bush’s
speech Tuesday lays out the Bush/Cheney plan to attack Iran and
how the intelligence is being “fixed around the policy,”
as was the case before the attack on Iraq.
It’s not about putative Iranian
“weapons of mass destruction”-not even ostensibly.
It is about the requirement for a scapegoat for U.S. reverses
in Iraq, and the White House’s felt need to create a casus
belli by provoking Iran in such a way as to “justify”
armed retaliation-eventually including air strikes on its nuclear-related
facilities.
Bush’s Aug. 28 speech to the
American Legion comes five years after a very similar presentation
by Vice President Dick Cheney. Addressing the Veterans of Foreign
Wars on Aug. 26, 2002, Cheney set the meretricious terms of reference
for war on Iraq.
Sitting on the same stage that
evening was former CENTCOM commander Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni,
who was being honored at the VFW convention. Zinni later said
he was shocked to hear a depiction of intelligence (Iraq has
WMD and is amassing them to use against us) that did not square
with what he knew. Although Zinni had retired two years before,
his role as consultant had enabled him to stay up to date on
key intelligence findings.
“There was no solid proof
that Saddam had WMD…I heard a case being made to go to war,”
Zinni told Meet the Press three and a half years later.
(Zinni is a straight shooter
with considerable courage, and so the question lingers: why did
he not go public? It is all too familiar a conundrum at senior
levels; top officials can seldom find their voices. My hunch
is that Zinni regrets letting himself be guided by a misplaced
professional courtesy and/or slavish adherence to classification
restrictions, when he might have prevented our country from starting
the kind of war of aggression branded at Nuremberg the “supreme
international crime.”)
Cheney:
Dean of Preemption
Zinni was not the only one
taken aback by Cheney’s words. Then-CIA director George Tenet
says Cheney’s speech took him completely by surprise. In his
memoir Tenet wrote, “I had the impression that the president
wasn’t any more aware than we were of what his number-two was
going to say to the VFW until he said it.”
Yet, it could have been anticipated.
Just five weeks before, Tenet himself had told his British counterpart
that the president had decided to make war on Iraq for regime
change and that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed
around the policy.”
When Bush’s senior advisers
came back to town after Labor Day, 2002, the next five weeks
(and by now, the next five years) were devoted to selling a new
product-war on Iraq. The actual decision to attack Iraq, we
now know, was made several months earlier but, as then-White
House chief of staff Andy Card explained, no sensible salesperson
would launch a major new product during the month of August-Cheney’s
preemptive strike notwithstanding. Yes, that’s what Card called
the coming war; a “new product.”
After assuring themselves that
Tenet was a reliable salesman, Cheney and then-defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld dispatched him and the pliant Powell at State
to play supporting roles in the advertising campaign: bogus
yellowcake uranium from Niger, aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment,
and mobile trailers for manufacturing biological warfare agent-the
whole nine yards. The objective was to scare or intimidate Congress
into voting for war, and, thanks largely to a robust cheering
section in the corporate-controlled media, Congress did so on
October 10 and 11, 2002.
This past week saw the president
himself, with that same kind of support, pushing a new product-war
with Iran. And in the process, he made clear how intelligence
is being fixed to “justify” war this time around.
The case is too clever by half, but it will be hard for Americans
to understand that. Indeed, the Bush/Cheney team expects that
the product will sell easily-the more so, since the administration
has been able once again to enlist the usual cheerleaders in
the media to “catapult the propaganda,” as Bush once
put it.
Iran’s Nuclear
Plans
It has been like waiting for
Godot…the endless wait for the latest National Intelligence
Estimate on Iran’s nuclear plans. That NIE turns out to be the
quintessential dog that didn’t bark. The most recent published
NIE on the subject was issued two and a half years ago and concluded
that Iran could not have a nuclear weapon until “early-
to mid-next decade.” That estimate followed a string of
NIEs dating back to 1995, which kept predicting, with embarrassing
consistency, that Iran was “within five years” of having
a nuclear weapon.
The most recent NIE, published
in early 2005, extended the timeline and provided still more
margin for error. Basically, the timeline was moved 10 years
out to 2015 but, in a fit of caution, the drafters settled on
the words “early-to-mid next decade.” On Feb. 27,
2007 at his confirmation hearings to be Director of National
Intelligence, Michael McConnell repeated that formula verbatim.
A “final” draft of
the follow-up NIE mentioned above had been completed in Feb.
2007, and McConnell no doubt was briefed on its findings prior
to his testimony. The fact that this draft has been sent back
for revision every other month since February speaks volumes.
Judging from McConnell’s testimony, the conclusions of the NIE
draft of February are probably not alarmist enough for Vice President
Dick Cheney. (Shades of Iraq.)
According to one recent report,
the target date for publication has now slipped to late fall.
How these endless delays can be tolerated is testimony to the
fecklessness of the “watchdog” intelligence committees
in House and Senate.
As for Iran’s motivation if
it plans to go down the path of producing nuclear weapons, newly
appointed defense secretary Robert Gates was asked about that
at his confirmation hearing in December. Just called from the
wings to replace Donald Rumsfeld, Gates apparently had not yet
read the relevant memo from Cheney’s office. It is a safe bet
that the avuncular Cheney took Gates to the woodshed, after the
nominee suggested that Iran’s motivation could be, “in the
first instance,” deterrence:”
“While they [the Iranians]
are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for a nuclear capability,
I think they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent.
They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons-Pakistan
to the east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west,
and us in the Persian Gulf.”
Unwelcome
News (to the White House)
There they go again-those bureaucrats
at the International Atomic Energy Agency. On August 28, the
very day Bush was playing up the dangers from Iran, the IAEA
released a note of understanding between the IAEA and Iran on
the key issue of inspection. The IAEA announced:
“The agency has been
able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials
at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded
that it remains in peaceful use.”
The IAEA deputy director said
the plan just agreed to by the IAEA and Iran will enable the
two to reach closure by December on the nuclear issues that the
IAEA began investigating in 2003. Other IAEA officials now express
confidence that they will be able to detect any military diversion
or any uranium enrichment above a low grade, as long as the Iran-IAEA
safeguard agreement remains intact.
Shades of the preliminary findings
of the U.N. inspections-unprecedented in their intrusiveness-that
were conducted in Iraq in early 2003 before the U.S. abruptly
warned the U.N. in mid-March to pull out its inspectors, lest
they find themselves among those to be shocked-and-awed.
Vice President Cheney can claim,
as he did three days before the attack on Iraq, that the IAEA
is simply “wrong.” But Cheney’s credibility has sunk
to prehistoric levels; witness the fact that the president was
told that this time he would have to take the lead in playing
up various threats from Iran. And they gave him new words.
The President’s
New Formulation
As I watched the president
speak on Aug. 28, I was struck by the care he took in reading
the exact words of a new, subjunctive-mood formulation regarding
Iran’s nuclear intentions. He never looked up; this is what
he said:
“Iran’s active pursuit
of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to
put a region already known for instability and violence under
the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.”
The cautious wording suggests
to me that the White House finally has concluded that the “nuclear
threat” from Iran is “a dog that won’t hunt,”
as Lyndon Johnson would have put it. While, initial press reporting
focused on the “nuclear holocaust” rhetorical flourish,
the earlier part of the sentence is more significant, in my view.
It is quite different from earlier Bush rhetoric charging categorically
that Iran is “pursuing nuclear weapons,” including
the following (erroneous) comment at a joint press conference
with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in early August:
“This [Iran] is a government
that has proclaimed its desire to build a nuclear weapon.”
The latest news from the IAEA
is, for the White House, an unwelcome extra hurdle. And the
president’s advisers presumably were aware of it well before
Bush’s speech was finalized; it will be hard to spin. Administration
officials would also worry about the possibility that some patriotic
truth teller might make the press aware of the key judgments
of the languishing draft of the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear
capability-or that a courageous officer or official of Gen. Anthony
Zinni’s stature might feel conscience bound to try to head off
another unnecessary war, by providing a more accurate, less alarmist
assessment of the nuclear threat from Iran.
It is just too much of a stretch
to suggest that Iran could be a nuclear threat to the United
States within the next 17 months, and that’s all the time Bush
and Cheney have got to honor their open pledge to our “ally”
Israel to eliminate Iran’s nuclear potential. Besides, some
American Jewish groups have become increasingly concerned over
the likelihood of serious backlash if young Americans are seen
to be fighting and dying to eliminate perceived threats to Israel
(but not to the U.S.). Some of these groups have been quietly
urging the White House to back off the nuclear-threat rationale
for war on Iran.
The (Very)
Bad News
Bush and Cheney have clearly
decided to use alleged Iranian interference in Iraq as the preferred
casus belli. And the charges, whether they have merit or
not, have become much more bellicose. Thus, Bush on Aug. 28:
“Iran’s leaders…cannot
escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces…The
Iranian regime must halt these actions. And until it does, I
will take actions necessary to protect our troops. I have authorized
our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous
activities.”
How convenient: two birds
with one stone. Someone to blame for U.S. reverses in Iraq,
and “justification” to confront the ostensible source
of the problem-“deadeners” having been changed to Iran.
Vice President Cheney has reportedly been pushing for military
retaliation against Iran if the U.S. finds hard evidence of Iranian
complicity in supporting the “insurgents” in Iraq.
President Bush obliged on Aug.
28:
“Recently, coalition forces
seized 240-millimeter rockets that had been manufactured in Iran
this year and that had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups
by Iranian agents. The attacks on our bases and our troops by
Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months…”
QED
Recent U.S. actions, like arresting
Iranian officials in Iraq-eight were abruptly kidnapped and held
briefly in Baghdad on Aug. 28, the day Bush addressed the American
Legion-suggest an intention to provoke Iran into some kind of
action that would justify U.S. “retaliation.” The
evolving rhetoric suggests that the most likely immediate targets
at this point would be training facilities inside Iran-some twenty
targets that are within range of U.S. cruise missiles already
in place.
Iranian retaliation would be
inevitable, and escalation very likely. It strikes me as shamelessly
ironic that the likes of our current ambassador at the U.N.,
Zalmay Khalilizad, one of the architects of U.S. policy toward
the area, are now warning publicly that the current upheaval
in the Middle East could bring another world war.
The Public
Buildup
Col. Pat Lang (USA, ret.),
as usual, puts it succinctly:
“Careful attention to
the content of the chatter on the 24/7 news channels reveals
a willingness to accept the idea that it is not possible to resolve
differences with Iran through diplomacy. Network anchors are
increasingly accepting or voicing such views. Are we supposed
to believe that this is serendipitous?”
And not only that. It is as
if Scooter Libby were back writing lead editorials for the
Washington Post, the Pravda of this administration.
The Post’s lead editorial on Aug. 21 regurgitated the
allegations that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps is “supplying
the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers
in Iraq;” that it is “waging war against the United
States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible.”
Designating Iran a “specially designated global terrorist”
organization, said the Post, “seems to be the least
the United States should be doing, giving the soaring number
of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq.”
As for the news side of the
Post, which is widely perceived as a bit freer from White
House influence, its writers are hardly immune. For example,
they know how many times the draft National Intelligence Estimate
on Iran’s nuclear program has been sent back for redrafting…and
they know why. Have they been told not to write the story?
For good measure, the indomitable
arch-neocon James Woolsey has again entered the fray. He was
trotted out on August 14 to tell Lou Dobbs that the US may have
no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons
program. Woolsey, who has described himself as the “anchor
of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National
Security Affairs,” knows what will scare. To Dobbs: “I’m
afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years;
they [Iran] could have the bomb.”
As for what Bush is telling
his counterparts among our allies, reporting on his recent meeting
with French President Nicolas Sarkozy are disquieting, to say
the least. Reports circulating in European foreign ministries
indicate that Sarkozy came away convinced that Bush “is
serious about bombing Iran’s secret nuclear facilities,”
according to well-connected journalist Arnauld De Borchgrave.
It Is Up
To US
Air strikes on Iran seem inevitable,
unless grassroots America can arrange a backbone transplant
for Congress. The House needs to begin impeachment proceedings
without delay. Why? Well, there’s the Constitution of the United
States, for one thing. For another, the initiation of impeachment
proceedings might well give our senior military leaders pause.
Do they really want to precipitate a wider war and risk destroying
much of what is left of our armed forces for the likes of Bush
and Cheney? Is another star on the shoulder worth THAT?
The deterioration of the U.S.
position in Iraq; the perceived need for a scapegoat; the knee-jerk
deference given to Israel’s myopic and ultimately self-defeating
security policy; and the fact that time is running out for the
Bush/Cheney administration to end Iran’s nuclear program-together
make for a very volatile mix.
So, on Tuesday let’s put away
the lawn chairs and roll up our sleeves. Let’s remember all
that has already happened since Labor Day five years ago.
There is very little time to
exercise our rights as citizens and stop this madness. At a
similarly critical juncture, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was
typically direct. I find his words a challenge to us today:
“There is such a thing
as being too late…. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked,
and dejected with lost opportunity…. Over the bleached bones
of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: ‘Too
late.'”
Ray McGovern was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990
and Robert Gates’ branch chief in the early 1970s. McGovern now
serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS). He is a contributor to Imperial
Crusades, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.
He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
A shorter version of this article
appeared originally on Consortiumnews.com
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