This morning the Washington Post tells us that the U.S. might " designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the country's 125,000-strong elite military branch, as a "'specially designated global terrorist' ..." Apparently this is one of new bureaucratic legal categories of official enemies -- does it mean that Iran's army are all "unlawful enemy combatants"?
I think we are in a period of test marketing. Cheney, the Neocons, various imperialists and Likidniks (I am not trying here to decode their various motivations) want the U.S. to attack Iran.
They ran out the imminent mushroom clouds for a while, but the Europeans and general fatigue with WMD threats seems to have momentarily stalled that.
They claimed Iran is arming the Iraqi insurgency -- except the sectarian situation in Iraq makes that un-credible (besides, it turns out they are arming the insurgency with those all those missing U.S. rifles.)
So now they claim Iran is exporting terrorism through an elite army unit.
While the Bush regime crumbles at home, should we expect the attack on Iran this fall or will it be winter? Whatever these guys are, they are gamblers.
6 comments:
Is this akin to fiddling while Rome burns?
I think winter. The second carrier won't be there until November. It should be settled in and ready to go by Thanksgiving, so from then through January is the time of maximum danger.
And there'll be barely a peep out of Congress unless something big changes.
Test marketing an attack with Iran is the accurate term for what's happening here. I'm pleased to see that you read Juan Cole's Informed Comment. He sheds light on the many lies that the Bush maladministration hands out concerning Iran.
The attack on Iran might even be launched without involving the Congress, on the basis of "emergency self-defense".
Grandmere Mimi, no 'might be' about it. One of the consequences of declaring the Revolutionary Guards a global terrorist organization is that (in our ruling regime's view) it brings them under the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress in 2001.
Read Will Bunch, as well as the link in my post above, for elaboration.
Congress must act or be complicit in the increasingly likely U.S. military attack on Iran:
They must repeal the 2001 and 2002 authorization of force resolutions (which needs doing anyway, in order to get us out of Iraq and to end the blank-check character of the 2001 resolution).
They must pass the Webb bill and its House analogue to require an authorization of force.
And they must impeach Dick Cheney.
They will probably not do any of these things, but we have to try.
I'm with Nell: "we have to try." This effort is what keeps us human in these bleak times.
Just realized that Nell's link doesn't work. I think it was supposed to go to this article.
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