Hersh: Cheney Office Considered Manufacturing Provocation to Start War with Iran
Think Progress has an exclusive report on New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh's discovery that Cheney's office considered, then rejected, getting up a provocation against Iran as a pretext for going to war.
The discussion in Cheney's office was provoked by the Iranian speedboat incident in January, 2008, in which the Bush administration alleged that five small unarmed Iranian speedboats accosted a US naval vessel.
One thing Hersh, Think Progress and others have not mentioned is that the original incident was itself almost certainly a GOP provocation, since unarmed speedboats do not actually pose a danger to US destroyers, and funny business went on with artificial matching of videotape to an audio transmission in English of undetermined origin. When I gave the Iranian video and audio at my site at the time, wingnuts attacked me for allowing the other side to get a hearing. One of the techniques of the Right is to make sure only one voice can be heard, their own, and all other voices are condemned and marginalized as traitorous. It is so much easier to march people to war when there is only one public narrative available about its rights and wrongs. The chief use of "patriotism" by the Right is for the sake of the Big Lie.
You wonder whether one of the side effects of the revelation of Operation Northwoods, when in 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon signed off on a plot to kill innocent Americans on US soil and make it look as though Cubans in the employ of Castro had done it, was to remind Cheney and Bush of all the low techniques whereby war could be gotten up.
Certainly, we know that Bush and Blair considered trying to get Iraq to shoot at UN surveillance planes as a casus belli. (Hat tip: Kevin Drum.
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/04/2008 12:25:00 AM
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10 Comments:
When the incident with the speedboats occurred I recall thinking that it seemed fishy. Next to a US man-o-war they are really well ... sort of like pesky mosquitoes ... very little in the way of a threat.
The GOP angle makes complete sense. I wouldn't put anything past Cheney.
That little flurry aside, a US attack on Iran under the watch of the current administration is becoming increasingly unlikely. It would be an extremely dumb move. Ahmadinejad is doubtless correct when he described the prospect of a US attack as "a joke."
I wouldn't take it as "a joke." Same S. Hersh, in his 1991 book "The Samson Option" , discusses Israel's suicidal position, dragging along the USA as if the USA was a dog on a leash.
The speedboat incident is extraordinarily reminiscent of the Gulf of Tonkin incident that was used to justify US escalation in Vietnam, and later proven to be practically baseless.
In the drive to rid ourselves of the Vietnam hangover, nearly every aspect and mistake of that war is being recreated. Not always as farce.
I'm about to violate Godwin's Law, but what the hell.
The archetypal incident occurred in 1939. The Nazis murdered a few convicts and dressed tem in Polish Army uniforms, then claimed an attack by the Poles on a German radio station near the border, using the "Polish" bodies as "evidence". Th phony attack served as a casus belli for the invasion of Poland which satrted WWII in Europe.
Of course the term and concept "Big Lie" comes straight out of Mein Kampf, and was practiced to perfection by "Little Joe" Goebbels.
At the time the 2006 Israel attack on Hezbollah seemed to me likely to have been encouraged if not initiated in Washington in an attempt to draw Iran into the conflict and justify an attack on Iran. How coordinated are such war plans between Washington and Israel?
Why should this be surprising? Manufacturing pretexts for war is standard practice in history. According to John Barry and Roger Charles of Newseek, the "Vincennes incident" where the US Navy shot down an Iranian civilian airliner inside Iranian airspace (while the USS Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters too) was also one of these manufactured events which went awry.
Similarly, the "second attack" in the Gulf of Tonkin was false, and while the sinking of the Maine in Havanna harbor may have been accidental, it was also used as a pretext.
Actually an attack on Iran is a very real and very scary possibility. The military industrial complex has a ravenous apatite, and an attack on Iran would be the perfect way for the GOP to keep the beast nice and plump with cash.
Of course Cheeney and co. don't need to stage any real events. They can just make up a bunch of lies about Iran posing a threat to the US or about Iran being in league with Al Queda and the corporate media will buy in hook line and sinker. And as the corporate media goes, so go the uneducated masses.
Let's not forget about Hearst's War- also started because of a fictitious naval incident. Also the Mexican American War where the penny press reported that the Mexicans had invaded and attacked US soldiers- but they hadn't. They had just crossed the border because a US spy Slidell told the government that Taylor's forces were going to invade- which they weren't.
Avast ye. The pirates are still in control.
Thanks for the great post. Months ago when I saw the straight of Hormuz speedboat "incident", I immediately thought it could've have been another Gulf Tonkin false flag used as a pretext for war with Iran. I'm glad the Navy commander had enough sense not to attack.
I appreciate Seymour Hersh talking about this openly, but in the video he mentions that he sources indicted that there were 12 different ideas to get us into war. Seymour Hersh discovered one, but do the other 11 entail?
In defense of the U.S. Navy, or any professional naval force, that situation could have been legitimately viewed as a potential threat. I do believe the incident was later embellished and overblown by the Navy and the Establishment media. However, sailors observing a fast approach by unidentified craft could plausibly consider themselves the target of a possible kamikaze-style attack that may even involve ramming. It would be difficult for the destroyer crew to determine and be absolutely sure that the approaching boats are not carrying ordnance. After viewing video of the incident I think the destroyer crew would have been out of line to open fire but I would expect them to man their guns. To suggest the captain and crew completely ignore the developing situation would have been dereliction of duty in my opinion.
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