PREDICTIONS ON BUSH/CHENEY CAMPAIGN TO ATTACK IRAN

Barnett Rubin tells of hearing from Washington insider friends about a roll-out of a campaign after Labor Day to sell an attack against Iran. The Office of the Vice President is directing the campaign. As Rubin points out, it sounds much like the Bush campaign in Fall 2002 to sell the war against Iraq.

Rubin quotes Elizabeth Bumiller in The New York Times from September 7, 2002:

"White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.The rollout of the strategy this week, they said, was planned long before President Bush's vacation in Texas last month. It was not hastily concocted, they insisted, after some prominent Republicans began to raise doubts about moving against Mr. Hussein and administration officials made contradictory statements about the need for weapons inspectors in Iraq.

"The White House decided, they said, that even with the appearance of disarray it was still more advantageous to wait until after Labor Day to kick off their plan.

"''From a marketing point of view,'' said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, ''you don't introduce new products in August.''

"A centerpiece of the strategy, White House officials said, is to use Mr. Bush's speech on Sept. 11 to help move Americans toward support of action against Iraq, which could come early next year. "

Bush and Cheney seem determined to strike Iran. Even though there is no evidence that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, and even though there is no evidence that the government of Iran is supplying IEDs and other sophisticated explosive devices, Bush/Cheney will take any hearsay or innuendo however without basis to mount a campaign against a Muslim nation that took U.S. embassy workers captive some 30 years ago.

This would be a disastrous act of military aggression, even more catastrophic than the Bush adventure in Iraq, something hard to imagine. The Middle East would be roiled for the next 500 years. An attack would exacerbate the already-existing animosity between Sunnis and Shiites, animosity which the world now observers in the dislike between Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan (Sunni and Arab) and Iran (Shiite and Persian).

The United States under Bush/Cheney is heading for a precipice that poses infinite dangers for Americans and the rule of law. Responsible statesmen and concerned citizens must not allow Bush/Cheney to attack Iran.