If you haven’t yet read Seymour Hersch’s new article, you need to do that now.
Hersch wrote about US military incursions into Iran last year, and this is the latest update. He is a seriously connected, established journalist who consistently breaks very important stories. This is no exception:
A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.”
Despite the objections of top officials including the Secretary of Defense, Bush and Cheney are going to try their best to stage an attack on Iran before they leave office. It’s our job to make sure that doesn’t happen.
There are already bills moving through the House and Senate which need to be defeated. These both call for ratcheting up the drive to war with Iran – by suggesting the President impose a naval blockade on the country. Write to your representatives in government now to voice your opposition to this step towards war.
The most disappointing part of all this is the Democrats’ complicity in the whole thing. Elected to end the war in Iraq, they have done nothing but dawdle, delay, and outright abet the Republicans’ dirty little war. And now, with Bush trying to attack another country, top Dems have signed off on expanding covert operations inside Iran, aimed at destabilizing the regime. This means passing money and arms to dissident groups in Iran and maybe even helping them plan and execute terrorist actions. Sound familiar? It does to Iranians. And Nicaraguans. And Cubans, Afghanis, Vietnamese…