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Tomgram: Michael Klare, Talking Points for the Next War
At 10:16 PM on March 19, 2003, after copious military preparations in the Persian Gulf region and beyond, after months of diplomatic maneuvers at the United Nations, after a drumbeat of leaked intelligence warnings and hair-raising statements by top U.S. officials and the President about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and how close Saddam Hussein might be to developing a nuclear weapon, after declaring Saddam's regime a major threat to Americans, after countless insinuations that it was somehow connected to the 9/11 attacks on our country, after endless denials that war with Iraq was necessarily on the administration's agenda, President George W. Bush addressed the nation from the Oval Office. "My fellow citizens," he began, "at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger…"
Almost four years later, all the above elements are again in place, this time in relation to Iran -- with Iranian responsibility for the deaths of Americans in Iraq replacing Iraqi responsibility for the deaths of Americans in New York and Washington. On a careful reading of our President's latest speeches and statements, Michael Klare has noted that an actual list of charges against Iran, a case for war, has already essentially been drawn up, making it easy enough to imagine that at 10:16 PM on some night not so very distant from this one, from that same desk in the Oval Office, the President of the United States might again begin, "My fellow citizens, at this hour…" But read on for yourself. Tom
Bush's Future Iran War Speech
By Michael T. Klare
Sometime this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, President Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered American ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran. We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur -- let it be so! -- but I am convinced that Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies. The proof of this, I believe, lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide a casus belli, or formal list of justifications, for going to war.
Three of his statements, in particular, contained the essence of this justification: his January 10 televised speech on his plan for a troop "surge" in Iraq, his State of the Union Address of January 23, and his first televised press conference of the year on February 14. None of these was primarily focused on Iran, but the President used each of them to warn of the extraordinary dangers that country poses to the United States and to hint at severe U.S. reprisals if the Iranians did not desist from "harming U.S. troops." In each, moreover, he laid out various parts of the overall argument he will certainly use to justify an attack on Iran. String these together in one place and you can almost anticipate what Bush's speechwriters will concoct before he addresses the American people from the Oval Office sometime later this year. Think of them as talking points for the next war.
The first of these revealing statements was Bush's January 10th televised address on Iraq. This speech was supposedly intended to rally public and Congressional support behind his plan to send 21,500 additional U.S. troops into the Iraqi capital and al-Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency. But his presentation that night was so uninspired, so lacking in conviction, that -- according to media commentary and polling data -- few, if any, Americans were persuaded by his arguments. Only once that evening did Bush visibly come alive: When he spoke about the threat to Iraq supposedly posed by Iran.
"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges," he declared, which meant, he assured his audience, addressing the problem of Iran. That country, he asserted, "is providing material support for attacks on American troops." (This support was later identified as advanced improvised explosive devices -- IEDs or roadside bombs -- given to anti-American Shiite militias.) Then followed an unambiguous warning: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces... And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
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