[Mb-civic] How Crazy Are They?

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041106R.shtml
 How Crazy Are They?
    By William Rivers Pitt
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Tuesday 11 April 2006

    I had a debate with my boss last night about Sy Hersh's terrifying New
Yorker article describing Bush administration plans to attack Iran,
potentially with nuclear weapons. After reading the Hersh piece, my boss
was understandably worried, describing his reaction to the article in
road-to-Damascus-revelation terms. They're going to do this, he said.

    I told my boss that I couldn't believe it was possible the Bush
administration would do this. I ran through all the reasons why an attack
on Iran, especially with any kind of nuclear weaponry, would be the height
of folly.

    Iran, unlike Iraq, has a formidable military. They own the high ground
over the Persian Gulf and have deployed missile batteries all throughout
the mountains along the shore. Those missile batteries, I told him,
include the Sunburn missile, which can travel in excess of Mach 2 and can
spoof Aegis radar systems. Every American warship in the Gulf, including
the carrier group currently deployed there, would be ducks on the pond.

    The blowback in Iraq would be immediate and catastrophic, I reminded
him. The Shi'ite majority that enjoys an alliance with Iran would go
indiscriminately crazy and attack anyone and anything flying the stars and
stripes.

    Syria, which has inked a mutual defense pact with Iran and is believed
to have significant chemical and biological weapons capabilities, would
get into the game.

    China, which has recently established a multi-billion dollar petroleum
relationship with Iran, might step into the fray if it sees its new oil
source at risk.

    Russia, which has stapled itself to the idea that Iran's nuclear
ambitions are for peaceful purposes, would likewise get pulled in.

    Blair and Britain want nothing to do with an attack on Iran, Berlusconi
appears to have lost his job in Italy, and Spain's Aznar is already gone.
If the Bush administration does this, I told my boss, they'd instantly
find themselves in a cold and lonely place.

    The nuclear option, I told my boss, brings even more nightmarish
possibilities. The reaction to an attack on Iran with conventional weapons
would be bad enough. If we drop a nuke, that reaction will be worse by
orders of magnitude and puts on the table the ultimate nightmare scenario:
a region-wide conflagration that would reach all the way to Pakistan,
where Pervez Musharraf is fending off the fundamentalists with both hands.
If the US drops a nuke on Iran, it is possible that the Taliban-allied
fundamentalists in Pakistan would rise up and overthrow Musharraf, thus
gaining control of Pakistan's own arsenal of nuclear weapons. All of a
sudden, those nukes would be loose, and India would lose its collective
mind.

    It was a cogent argument I made, filled with common sense. My boss
seemed mollified, and we bid each other goodnight. Ten minutes later, I
had an email from my boss in my Inbox. He'd sent me Paul Krugman's latest
editorial from the New York Times, titled "Yes He Would." Krugman's piece
opens this way:

"But he wouldn't do that." That sentiment is what made it possible for
President Bush to stampede America into the Iraq war and to fend off hard
questions about the reasons for that war until after the 2004 election.
Many people just didn't want to believe that an American president would
deliberately mislead the nation on matters of war and peace. "But he
wouldn't do that," say people who think they're being sensible. Given what
we now know about the origins of the Iraq war, however, discounting the
possibility that Mr. Bush will start another ill-conceived and unnecessary
war isn't sensible. It's wishful thinking.

    Great.

    Things have come to a pretty pass in the United States of America when
the first question you have to ask yourself on matters of war and death
is, "Just how crazy are these people?" Every cogent estimate sees Iran's
nuclear capabilities not becoming any kind of reality for another ten
years, leaving open a dozen diplomatic and economic options for dealing
with the situation. There is no good reason for attacking that country,
but there are a few bad reasons to be found.

    The worst of the bad reasons, of course, is that an attack on Iran would
change the conversation in Washington as the 2006 midterm elections loom.
Bush and his congressional allies are about as popular as scabies right
now, according to every available poll. If the current trend is not
altered or disrupted, January 2007 may come with Democratic Rep. John
Conyers Jr. sitting as Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee with
subpoena powers in hand.

    "As Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
recently pointed out," continued Krugman in his editorial, "the
administration seems to be following exactly the same script on Iran that
it used on Iraq: 'The vice president of the United States gives a major
speech focused on the threat from an oil-rich nation in the Middle East.
The US secretary of state tells Congress that the same nation is our most
serious global challenge. The secretary of defense calls that nation the
leading supporter of global terrorism. The president blames it for attacks
on US troops.'"

    For the moment, one significant departure from the Iraq script has been
the Bush administration vehemently denying that an attack on Iran,
particularly with nuclear weapons, is an option being considered at this
time. Bush himself called the Hersh article "wild speculation," and White
House Press Secretary Scott McClellan bluntly stated that the US is
committed to diplomacy. Gary Sick, an Iran expert quoted by columnist Jim
Lobe in a recent article, seems to think the reputation for irrational and
dangerous actions enjoyed by the Bush administration is being used as a
psychological lever. "That is their record," said Sick, "so they have no
need to invent it. If they can use that reputation to keep Iran - and
everybody else - off balance, so much the better."

    Then why this cold feeling in the pit of my stomach? Julian Borger,
writing for the UK Guardian, has some added insight. "Vincent
Cannistraro," writes Borger, "a former CIA counter-terrorism operations
chief, said Mr. Bush had not yet made up his mind about the use of direct
military action against Iran. 'There is a battle for Bush's soul over
that,' he said, adding that Karl Rove, the president's chief political
adviser is adamantly opposed to a war. However, Mr. Cannistraro said
covert military action, in the form of special forces troops identifying
targets and aiding dissident groups, is already under way. 'It's been
authorized, and it's going on to the extent that there is some lethality
to it. Some people have been killed.'"

    A battle for Bush's soul? Some people have been killed? It's a wild day
here in Bizarro World when I find myself in total agreement with Karl
Rove. It is the uncertainty in all this that makes the situation truly
terrifying. No sane person would undertake an action so fraught with
peril, but if we have learned anything in the last few years, it is that
sanity takes a back seat in this administration's hayride.

    I bought a coffee this morning at the excellent café, around the  corner,
which is run by a wonderful Iranian woman. I asked her point-blank what
would happen in her home country if we did attack. She dismissed the
possibility out of hand. "I read that Krugman article," she said, "but
there's no way they would do this. They'd have to be crazy."

    Indeed. Too bad that hasn't stopped them yet.


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    William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally  bestselling
author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know
and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.


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"A war of aggression is the supreme international crime." -- Robert Jackson,
 former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor

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