Though it’s certainly important to note another piece of pig news (pork arson?), there are yet bigger doings in the world that need addressing.
Steven Clemons’ blog The Washington Note features some insider confirmation of the president’s obsession with throwing down the gauntlet with Iran. Clemons spoke to former CIA and current National Security Council guy Flynt Leverett, who, with his wife Hillary, recently made big news for the op-ed they published in the New York Times which was heavily redacted by the Bush administration. Here’s Leverett on the Bush speech:
"The most important things that President Bush said last night dealt with Iran, not Iraq:
According to the President, the Iranians are providing "material support" to attacks on U.S. forces. That is a casus belli. It fits in with the administration’s escalating campaign — encompassing rhetoric and detentions of Iranian officials in Iraq — to blame Iran for a strategically significant part of the ongoing instability and violence in Iraq.
In the context of describing the deployment of additional U.S. forces to Iraq, the President also noted the importance of securing Iraq’s borders. I suspect that at least some of the additional U.S. soldiers going to Iraq will end up on the border with Iran.
Moreover, the President strongly implied that the U.S. military would start going after targets in countries neighboring Iraq to disrupt supply networks for insurgents and militias.
The deployment of a second carrier strike group to the theater — confirmed in the speech — is clearly directed against Iran. Since, in contrast to previous U.S. air campaigns in the Gulf, military planners developing contingencies for striking target sets in Iran must assume that the United States would not be able to use land-based air assets in theater (because of political opposition in the region), they are surely positing a force posture of at least two, and possible three carrier strike groups to provide the necessary numbers and variety of tactical aircraft.
Similarly, the President’s announcement that additional Patriot batteries would go to the Gulf is clearly directed against Iran. We have previously deployed Patriot batteries to the region to deal with the Iraqi SCUD threat. Today, the only missile threat in the region for the Patriot to address is posed, at least theoretically, by Iran’s Shihab-3.
In sum, the administration is laying the rhetorical and operational foundations for implementing a presidential decision to initiate military operations against Iran. No wonder the White House wants Hillary* and me to shut up.
(*Hillary is Hillary Mann Leverett, a former State Department official who also served on President George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. She is married to Flynt Leverett)"
More and more insiders are talking about the escalation of Iraq being more like an esacalation into war with Iran or even Iran and Syria. Can Bush really think that starting another war with a military he’s nearly hobbled with his Iraq adventure can be good for America? And what of the other war we’ve forgotten about and now nearly lost, Afghanistan?
If ever there was a crisis in our country it is now. Will our president ignore the will of the people, the Congress, and even the limits of his constitutionally mandated job and plunge us into a yet more terrible struggle? What new powers will he then claim? When is impeachment necessary for the survival of our hard-won republic?
