Are You Tonkin To Me?

It’s getting so I want to turn off all the radio and tv and cut the internet connection: there is no escape from this feeling of sick inevitability that the US will launch a nuclear strike against Iran.

Any idiot with half a brain can see that the US is concocting a trumped up case for war, no matter how much they deny it and attempt to dissemble:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates insisted again Friday that, despite persistent reports to the contrary circulating in Washington and around the world, the United States is not planning military action against Iran.

“I don’t know how many times the president, Secretary Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran,” an exasperated Gates told reporters at a NATO meeting in Spain. In fact, he said, the administration has consciously tried to “tone down” its rhetoric on the subject.

Does this rhetoric sound very toned down to you?

“Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us.”

Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs

Or this?

Gulf Daily News, two weeks ago:

THE US is beefing up its naval strength in the Gulf, putting two aircraft carriers in the region for the first time since 2003, when allied forces went into Iraq, a top official declared in Bahrain yesterday.

[…]

The nuclear-powered USS John C Stennis is on its way to the Gulf, to provide “rapid response” support to forces already patrolling the waters.

Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D Eisenhower entered the Gulf in December last year in direct support of troops participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and maritime security operations.

[…]

Stennis, which left its Bremerton, Washington homeport on January 16, spent one day in the port on-loading the air wing and departed San Diego with the guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and guided missle destroyer USS Preble.

[…]

“Just the fact there are going to be two carrier strike groups operating in that region could deter any state or non-state sponsored organisations from doing something we wouldn’t want them to do. [My emphasis]

[…]

For god’s sake, do they think we’re stupid? The US government take an openly aggressive and deliberately provocative public posture against Iran , park huge armaments all over the busiest waterway in the world at the gateway to the world’s oil supplies, just outside Iranian territorial waters – and they expect us to believe they’ve no plans to attack?

Next it’ll be “Not me, guv, I was nowhere near it, and besides he hit me first.” Oops, an accidental war..

Accidental my ass. Do they think we’d forget what they’ve actually said they’d do to Iran, and more than once? Seymour Hersh, two years ago:

In interviews with past and present intelligence and military officials, I was told that the agenda had been determined before the Presidential election, and much of it would be Rumsfeld’s responsibility. The war on terrorism would be expanded, and effectively placed under the Pentagon’s control. The President has signed a series of findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as ten nations in the Middle East and South Asia. [My emphasis]

The President’s decision enables Rumsfeld to run the operations ‘off the books’ free from legal restrictions imposed on the C.I.A. Under current law, all C.I.A. covert activities overseas must be authorized by a Presidential finding and reported to the Senate and House intelligence committees. (The laws were enacted after a series of scandals in the nineteen-seventies involving C.I.A. domestic spying and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders.)

“The Pentagon doesn’t feel obligated to report any of this to Congress,” the former high-level intelligence official said. “They don’t even call it ‘covert ops’; it’s too close to the C.I.A. phrase. In their view, it’s ‘black reconnaissance.’ They’re not even going to tell the cincs, the regional American military commanders-in-chief.” (The Defense Department and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)

In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. “Everyone is saying, ‘You can’t be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,'” the former intelligence official told me. “But they say, ‘We’ve got some lessons learned; not militarily, but how we did it politically. We’re not going to rely on agency pissants. No loose ends, and that’s why the C.I.A. is out of there.’ “

‘No loose ends’. Whatever can that mean?

I think it means nukes: they certainly leave no loose ends. Why nukes? The US is physically unabble to invade Iran: their troops are bogged down in Iraq, have done multiple tours of duty already and are running out of materiel. Where would these theoretical troops come from exactly?

That’s why the navy has been sent in: these ships are not troop carriers, they’re water-borne weapons platforms. Who needs invasion troops anyway, with the capability of bombardment from a distance and all those handy little special forces boats zipping about in those busy shipping lanes ? There’s just bound to be a convenient ‘misunderstanding’, prompting an equally convenient retaliation.

It’s happened before – why change a winning formula?

The particulars of the incidents of early August 1964, as reported by the Johnson administration, were crucial to gaining the legislative authority President Johnson sought, which came in the form of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. At the time and for some years afterward, the United States government took the position that it had done nothing to provoke a naval engagement in the Tonkin Gulf between North Vietnamese and U.S. warships. The Johnson administration also maintained that it had acted with restraint, refusing to respond to an initial North Vietnamese attack on August 2, 1964, and reacting only after North Vietnam made a second naval attack two nights later. Both of these assertions turned out to be misleading.

In fact the United States at the time was carrying out a program of covert naval commando attacks against North Vietnam and had been engaged in this effort since its approval by Johnson in January 1964. [My emphasis]

[…]

The Johnson administration’s characterization of the specifics of the Tonkin Gulf incident has proven to be inaccurate. Administration officials contended that the U.S. warship simply happened to be cruising in the Gulf to exert a U.S. presence — engaged in “innocent passage” under international law.
[…]

But apparently even the Tonkin/’Oops accidental war’ strategy isn’t working fast enough for Cheney & Chimpy so they’re ratcheting up the pressure with a new dodgy weapons dossier:

Pentagon blames Iran for 170 US deaths
By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent

Last Updated: 2:32am GMT 12/02/2007

nuj: America today blamed Iran for the deaths of 170 US troops inside Iraq, accusing Teheran of supplying insurgents with increasingly sophisticated bombs.

Senior defence officials in Baghdad said that Iranian-supplied “explosively formed projectiles” were frequently being used against coalition forces.

They said the “highest levels” of Iran’s regime were responsible for giving them to Shia militias in Iraq.

Anyone who thinks the US government is not contemplating the use of a nuclear first strike is indulging in false hope. What else do people think ‘all options are on the table” means in this context, exactly?

the Bush administration has enshrined pre-emptive nuclear strikes as the jewel of its long term strategic defence policy as far back as 1992 Although the US can’t invade Iran – they no longer have the wherewithal – they can harass, provoke and accuse, tactics which, if successful, give them just the excuse they need to launch the nuclear first strike they’ve always wanted.

I am finding it (as I expect many others are too) increasingly difficult to maintain faith in an American population and opposition that is just letting this happen. They prefer to speculate on the death of a goldigger, the latest Grammy award, or whether a presidential candidate is Black enough, rather than take the necessary constitutionally-provided remedial action to stop this insanity.

I just don’t know what will happen to the world if the US does nuke Iran; at the moment it’s difficult to see beyond the next week. One thing is for sure – whatever the result is, it won’t be good for any of us, Iranian or otherwise.