Robert Dreyfuss: Bush's Trash Talk About Iran

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/01/bushs_trash_talk_about_iran.php
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Since President Bush’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, the White House has manufactured a crisis that pits the United States against Iran. In what looks like the military and diplomatic equivalent of a full court press, Washington has unleashed a barrage of threats, maneuvers and limited military actions that seem calculated to set the United States on a collision course with Iran in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. All in all, it is an exceedingly risky and dangerous gambit.

By now, the elements of Washington’s brinkmanship in the Gulf are well known: Bush’s pledge to use U.S. military and intelligence capabilities against alleged Iranian activity in Iraq; the dispatch of a second U.S. aircraft carrier task force to the Gulf; the shipment of Patriot missile batteries to defend American-allied Arab Gulf sheikhdoms; the seizure of several teams of Iranian diplomats and personnel in Baghdad and Irbil; and the report that the White House had issued “kill or capture” orders to U.S. forces in Iraq who encounter Iranian operatives.

Meanwhile, the United States has stepped up pressure on U.S. allies and Western banks to stop doing business as usual with Iran’s economic institutions and pushed for sanctions against Iran over its alleged plan to acquire nuclear weapons. It has also dropped hints about orchestrating an oil war against Iran by colluding with Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices downward. At the same time, the administration has issued a series of wildly inflated charges that Iran is involved in masterminding the Iraqi insurgency, is providing weapons and IED explosive devices that are killing U.S. troops and, most recently, was behind a well-coordinated raid in Karbala, in which a fleet of SUVs disguised as carrying American forces kidnapped and executed four U.S. soldiers.

According to Robert Gates, the new secretary of defense, “We are trying to uproot these networks that are planting IEDs that are causing 70 percent of our casualties.”

The Bush administration’s charges against Iran are, for the most part, scare talk and nothing more. Iran has virtually nothing to do with the Iraqi resistance movement, which is commanded and staffed by Sunni Arab military officers and Baathists. They consider Iran to be a deadly foe and call Iraq’s Shiite leaders “Persians.” The vast majority of U.S. casualties in Iraq are victims of this well-organized, mass-based insurgency – but it is certain that none of their weapons, IEDs or training comes from Iran. Similarly, there is so far not a shred of credible intelligence to show that the Karbala raid was organized by Iran, and there is no record of Iranian involvement in any attacks on U.S. forces since the March, 2003 invasion.

What a great country we are....

This is a very good piece, spells it all out very precisely. I hope more DUers take a look.

sw