Sunday, September 02, 2007

Rolling Out the Iran War

In 2002, Andrew Card, then Bush’s Chief of Staff, told the New York Times why the drumbeat for war against Iraq started in September: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.”

It’s September again, this year’s product is war against Iran and the sales pitches have started.

“Iran’s pursuit of...nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” President Bush told war veterans last week. Promising to apply diplomatic pressures first (sound familiar?), he nonetheless vowed, “We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

In the U.K. Telegraph, a story is planted about war-gaming a blockade of Iran: “"The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes."

Ever-faithful John Bolton, our unconfirmable former ambassador to the U.N. is telling Israelis via video hookup that President Bush “has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable."

Even Gen. Petraeus is not too busy surging in Iraq to observe the “malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, pointing out that the “Fox propaganda machine” is at work again on the Iran campaign, urges “the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies."

In five years, it is clear the Bush-Cheney Administration has learned nothing. Have the American people and their media?

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