Drumbeat of Iran war
Mar 7, 2007
Dear Friend,
"We are not planning for a war with Iran,” announced Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month, echoing the repeated denials of numerous Bush Administration officials. Yet evidence is increasingly pointing in the opposite direction.
Fortunately, there is a bipartisan effort in Congress to block the attack. Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) and Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) have introduced legislation that would prohibit an attack on Iran without prior congressional approval. This legislation could be voted on within a matter of days.
The drumbeat to war with Iran has been quiet but consistent.
When he announced his plan to escalate the Iraq war on January 10, President Bush claimed that Iran and Syria “are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”
Military leaders soon “one-uped” Bush, saying that "the highest levels of Tehran's government" were, in fact, responsible for shipments of lethal weapons to Iraq for use against U.S. troops.
When later pressed for evidence for this claim, President Bush was forced to concede that no evidence actually existed, saying “We don't know ... whether the head leaders of Iran ordered" the alleged shipments of weapons. In typical Bush fashion, he explained, "But here's my point, either they knew or didn't know, and what matters is, is that [the weapons are] there."
President Bush subsequently announced the deployment of advanced Patriot air defense systems to Iraq, despite the obvious fact that Iraqi insurgents aren’t attacking U.S. troops with sophisticated rockets and missiles. The Patriots are clearly intended as a defense against a potential attack from Iran. Iran has responded by buying air defense systems from Russia and placing them around their nuclear facilities.
In the same January 10 speech, President Bush also announced that he had ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group into the Persian Gulf region. In the last 15 years every time additional carriers have been deployed to the Gulf, a military strike has followed: Gulf War I (1991), Operation Desert Strike (1996), Operation Desert Fox (1998), and Gulf War II (2003). While a second aircraft carrier strike group does not guarantee a strike against Iran, it is certainly not a good sign.
The BBC reported on February 20 that the U.S. has developed a contingency plan for air strikes on Iran that includes not only nuclear sites, but also most of the country’s military infrastructure. The U.S. would launch the strikes, according to the BBC, if one of two “triggers” occurred: confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon or a high-casualty attack on US forces that could be traced directly back to Tehran.
While estimates from the U.S. government itself put Iran five to ten years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon, concerns are that the Bush Administration is laying the foundation for claims that Tehran is responsible for attacking U.S. troops in Iraq and that this will be used as a rationale for an attack.
Please sign our petition supporting the effort to prohibit President Bush from attacking Iran.
Sincerely,
John Isaacs and Guy Stevens
P.S. Help spread the word! Please forward this email on to five friends and tell them to also sign the petition!
