Let's Hope This Is False

Steve Clemons has a heck of a tale to tell over it has blog. Roughly speaking, Clemons says Dick Cheney fears that George W. Bush is disinclined to start a war with Iran, and that he's going to let Condoleezza Rice and her staff continue with a diplomatic approach that Cheney thinks is doomed to failure, but that has the support of Robert Gates, Mike McConnell, and Michael Hayden.

Cheney and his allies, the story goes, are trying to tell the Israeli government that they should find "some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles)." That done, the political context in the United States will change, and Cheney believes it will set the stage for an abandonment of the diplomatic approach and the deployment of American military options.

Comments

Yeah, and I've been told dogs bark. Next.

Posted by steve duncan | May 24, 2007 7:07 PM

Wow - *extreme* slydexia.

Posted by sherifffruitfly | May 24, 2007 7:17 PM

The Democrats, and the media separately, should be hounded about this start, well, yesterday. Besides the fact that it will prevent a war that won't be worthwhile, not to mention legal, it'll show where they stand right now in regards to war, not four years ago.

Posted by Brian | May 24, 2007 7:25 PM

I've been worrying about an Iran war for about 14 months now. It's really the only way Bush can save his presidency by now, because in a crisis either people rally around or they take to the streets, and the best guess is that they'll rally around. (Bush also has awarded himself lots of emergency powers: "state of exception" etc.)

The Democrats still seem to be sleepwalking and presumably will be blindsided if the war happens. The concept of anticipating events and preparing public opinion seem alien to those guys.

Posted by John Emerson | May 24, 2007 7:37 PM

The neocons and AIPAC have already set the stage for this adventurism. And the pressure is mounting everyday from stories planted in the media about the supposed imminence of an Iranian nuclear threat, among other efforts to paint the Iranian government as the demon stirring up all the uproar in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Déjà vu all over again!!

Posted by Justin | May 24, 2007 7:38 PM

Clemons has a much more evocative description than is included in the quote: The Vice President is preparing an "end run" around the President. Good thing he's on our side, or that would be considered treason.

Posted by RSA | May 24, 2007 8:07 PM

Clemons has been pushing this narrative of a "civil war" within the White House, with the "Cheney cabal" subverting the decent or ineffective or credulous GWB for years. Wilkerson for instance, however long ago.

I don't buy it at all. We now have pretty good information that Bush was directly involved in the torture, for instance.

I won't deal with Clemons' motivations, which are probably fairly benign, but having been thru "if only the Czar knew" or wasn't subverted with Nixon & Reagan, I consider the interpretation actually dangerous for the nation. Clemons thinks he has moderate friends and sources in the depths of the administration, but twenty years from today they will be Rumsfeld and Abrams.

But many people think my idea that all Republicans are evil and must be kept from power wrong.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 24, 2007 8:17 PM

I've been worrying about an Iran war for about 14 months now. It's really the only way Bush can save his presidency by now, because in a crisis either people rally around or they take to the streets, and the best guess is that they'll rally around.

Most Americans feel entitled to trust their government and live their lives without having to pay attention to politics. But the Bush government has been so spectacularly bad, everyone has had to pay attention. Hardly anyone knew that Bush wanted to invade Iraq all along. Everyone knows he wants to attack Iran. Everyone expects him to lie again. Only the lunatic one-third would rally. The rest wouldn't take to the streets; but they would vote a ton of Republicans out in 2008.

Posted by Gary Sugar | May 24, 2007 8:26 PM

"Only the lunatic one-third would rally. The rest wouldn't take to the streets; but they would vote a ton of Republicans out in 2008."

Neither of us has any idea what the world, and the political situation, would look like after an attack on Iran. It could be no big deal; it could be so bad as to make a military dictatorship impossible to stop.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 24, 2007 8:36 PM

Incidentally, while you are at Clemons, who I read & respect, check out his previous post about Paulsen & the Chinese delegation.

Rage & rudeness? Why now? Paranoids like me worry that part of the behind-closed-door acrimony concerned currency issues in case of an oil price spike.

Posted by bob mcmanus | May 24, 2007 9:19 PM

Clemons is attributing this tale to the anonymous source of his anonymous source, which merits a fair amount of skepticism . . .

Posted by rea | May 24, 2007 9:29 PM

Steve Clemons is living in the land of make believe . . . right behind the grassy knoll.

Posted by Aaron | May 24, 2007 9:44 PM

The weirdos over at windsofchange.net have been predicting an Israeli attack on Iran for over a year now. Their timing was off, but their irresponsible ambition seems unsated.

Posted by Joel | May 24, 2007 9:44 PM

One can hope that the idea of killing Arabs and Persians for fun and profit, may be found to have an aspect of moral ambiguity.

If "they" were over "here" the people would be killing "them."

Since some of the people are over "there" killing "them," "they" kill those people.

The reasons to stay in Iraq are many, but the reasons to leave are greater. Making enemies out of the rest of the world, is one of them. It is not a U.S. territory, is another. Killing "them" because "they" believe that they are defending their country from an invader makes them patriots not terrorists. Arabs who join with the U.S. are thought of as traitors. Arabs do not like traitors any more than Americans do, and both types of citizens kill them.

Then there are the warlords. Some warlords attack everybody they believe have something to steal. Other warlords want the U.S. to stay so they do not have to fight foreign terrorist inside their country. Unfortunately, none of the current warlords command universal respect, because they are too preoccupied with murder, rape, torture, and theft.

A fantasy:
Somewhere rising out of the ashes of a nearly destroyed Iraq will come a strong man with the support of the Ba'ath Party, that miraculously are inclined to support the U.S., because it appears to be a better deal than the alternatives. Iraq needs a person similar to Saddam, but without the bitterness and cynicism that comes from doing business with the U.S.

Posted by gc_wall | May 24, 2007 9:59 PM

While it is true that many Americans have faith that, at the very least, the professionals in government do not seek to cause harm to America or its citizens, I hold no such faith.

Posted by gc_wall | May 24, 2007 10:08 PM

Why does it matter that it's cruise missiles and not ballistic missiles?

Posted by lemuel pitkin | May 24, 2007 11:00 PM

What worries me most about the prospects of a war with Iran is that I really have no idea whether the federal government intends to start a war with Iran, why it would start one, and whether by "war" we mean some bombing, like we did with Iraq in the 90s, or a full scale invasion.

This is in the background of an invasion of Iraq for still unexplained justifications, after a campaign to build public support that really only showed up on the radar screen about six months prior. This invasion also involved some bizarre strategic decisions, or at least they seem bizarre since we still really don't know what the invasion was supposed to accomplish.

This stuff affects me, and I really don't want to have to resort to Kreminology to keep informed about what my own government is doing.

Posted by Ed | May 24, 2007 11:07 PM

Steve Clemons has a heck of a tale to tell over it has blog.

I love you, but come on, dude.

Posted by Jeff | May 24, 2007 11:18 PM

What's even more frightening about this story is that, if true, it demonstrates the incredible stupidity of Cheney, et al. After his show of total incompetence in Lebanon last summer, how could anyone in his right mind bet the ranch on a frail reed such as Olmert to oversee a successful military operation?

Posted by SLC | May 25, 2007 8:54 AM

Yeah it's going to be really good for Israel if they they drag us into a quagmire. You can all be skeptical, and given the source it can't entirely be blamed. But this sounds like Dick Cheney to me, and it sounds like something the Israeli's would do.

Posted by soullite | May 25, 2007 8:58 AM

They don't need a successful military operation from Israel. Just a pretext.

Posted by John Emerson | May 25, 2007 9:38 AM

Ha ha, someone wants to tag Steve Clemmons as a "grassy knoll" theorist...just as we're learning that the "grassy knoll theory" isn't quite as disproved as the single-gunman theorists would like it to be.

Well, whatever. Just don't expect George Bush to be stopping any invasions.

Posted by serial catowner | May 25, 2007 1:33 PM