Bush Closer To Bombing Iran
By Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive - UK
3-30-8
The odds of Bush bombing Iran have gone up dramatically this week.
There's just no other way to rationally interpret the resignation of
Admiral William Fallon as head of Centcom.
Fallon resigned, and more likely was pushed out, after Esquire
published an article on him entitled "The Man Between War and Peace."
It said he was the one standing in the way of Bush bombing Iran.
He's not standing in the way any longer.
Actually, his rival, General David Petraeus, is now more powerful than
ever. And as the Esquire article noted, Petraeus has said: "You
cannot win in Iraq solely in Iraq."
Fallon seemed to understand the risk he was taking when he took the
job as head of Centcom. He told Esquire: "Career capping? How about
career detonating?"
Fallon's fate as a weathervane for war with Iran has been clear since
the time of his confirmation, when he told a source that an attack on
Iran "will not happen on my watch." His watch just stopped.
He also said at the time, "There are several of us trying to put the
crazies back in the box."
But the crazies are still bounding around outside the box, and none
crazier than Dick Cheney, who is off on a Mideast trip, ostensibly to
deal with Israel and Palestine and also with high oil prices.
But there are other purposes, as well. Cheney is visiting Oman, "a key
military ally and logistics hub for military operations in the
Persian Gulf," notes U.S. News & World Report. What's more, according
to U.S. News, "two U.S. warships took up positions off Lebanon
earlier this month." The Pentagon "would want its warships in the
eastern Mediterranean in the event of military action against Iran to
keep Iranian ally Syria in check and to help provide air cover to
Israel against Iranian missile reprisals," the story said. "One of
the newly deployed ships, the USS Ross, is an Aegis guised missile
destroyer, a top system for defense against air attacks."
U.S. News cited three other signs why war is more likely now: Israel's
airstrike on Syria, Israel's war with Hezbollah, and Shimon Peres's
disavowal of unilateral action.
Here's one more: The director of national intelligence, Mike
McConnell, testified to the Senate on February 5 that maybe in last
fall's NIE he overstressed the fact that Iran had halted its nuclear
weapons work. And maybe he overplayed the fact that Iran doesn't know
how to design a nuclear weapon just yet.
And maybe he should have highlighted the fact that Iran was still
enriching uranium. And maybe he should have emphasized that,
therefore, Iran still poses a potential nuclear threat.
"In retrospect," McConnell said, "I would do some things differently."
Like give Bush and Cheney exactly what they ask for.
Something Admiral Fallon, to his credit, was not prepared to do.
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