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SAME NEO-CONMEN WHO BROUGHT US
IRAQ
Public relations blitz
A September
rollout for Iran war By DAVID ISENBERG WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (UPI) — White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card once famously said of the administration’s 2002 campaign to get support for the invasion of Iraq, ''From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.'' Now August is behind us, and — right on schedule — marketers both in the White House and among their supporters outside are rolling out their newest product, a public relations blitz urging a U.S. military adventure in Iran. Consider the recent
speech by President Bush to the American Legion. In it 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.
“We will confront this danger before it is too
late,” he concluded.
But however distorted their relationship to reality, Bush’s words have impact. "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities," he said. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. military in Iraq arrested and detained eight Iranian energy experts meeting in Baghdad with the Iraqi government, handcuffing, blindfolding and interrogating them. They were only released when the Iraqi government protested.
On Sept. 10 the American Enterprise Institute, a sort of neoconservative administration-in-waiting, will debut the newest book by its “Freedom Scholar” Michael Ledeen, one of the foremost proponents of the military adventure in Iraq. Titled The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction,it is a rehash of neocon arguments for “regime change” — by military force, if necessary — in Tehran. Although he calls for supporting and funding the regime’s domestic opposition, Ledeen concludes that this “administration or the next will likely face a terrible choice: appease a nuclear Iran, or bomb it before their atomic weapons are ready to go.” Jim Lobe, the Washington bureau chief of the Inter Press Service renowned for his coverage of the neoconservative influence in the Bush administration, notes that the rollout of Ledeen’s book comes just four days after AEI will launch its Sept. 6 “All or Nothing” campaign to “save the surge” in Iraq. He wrote: “The chronological
juxtaposition of the Surge panel Sept. 6 and the rollout of Ledeen’s
book Sept. 10 underlines the balance that AEI and other hawks (including
the vice president’s office) are trying to achieve between their
two top priorities at the moment — sustaining the surge well
into next year and rallying Congress and the public behind an attack
on Iran before the end of Bush’s term, if by then “diplomacy”
does not achieve the desired results of 1) freezing its nuclear program
and/or 2) halting Tehran’s support for its Shia allies (including
the al-Maliki government) in Iraq.” Meanwhile, Kimberly Kagan, who directs the Institute for the Study of War, has written a lengthy report titled "Iran's Proxy War Against the United States and the Iraqi Government" that was posted on the Web site of [William Kristol's] neoconservative organ the Weekly Standard. Kagan is the wife of Frederick Kagan, an AEI scholar and one of the intellectual architects of the Iraq surge. She is also listed as one of the participants in her husband's research team that came up with the idea for the surge in the first place. Of course, there are also exceptions to the “don’t do rollouts until after Labor Day” strategy. One was at the
end of July, when the State Department unveiled a series of arms sales
in the region to contain Iran. In her July 30 announcement of the
potential sale of $20 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and the other
five members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice said the arms will "support a broader strategy to counter
the negative influences of al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran."
The other was in August when the Senate unanimously passed a resolution sponsored by Sen. Lieberman, I-Conn., accusing Iran of acts of war against the United States — a resolution with no purpose other than to strengthen the case for war against Tehran. A third was the White House decision to designate at least elements of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization, using the president’s authority under a September 2001 executive order. Robert Baer, a former high-ranking CIA field officer in the Middle East, wrote recently in Time Magazine that: “Reports that the Bush administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: It's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months.”
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