This has (for the most part) been an interesting thread. Whenever I checked out one of the numerous linked articles suggesting that, behind the scenes, the US is preparing to attack Iran, I found it initially plausible. And chilling.
With a bit of distance, though, I keep coming back to the objection that Bush just doesn't have the clout to get this done - he may want to, and US forces may be preparing for it,
But an appeal to the credibility of such faux "objections" is precisely how contemporary ideology works. Exactly the same disavowing "objections" were everywhere presented in previous illegal invasions and brutal colonial adventures, to be rapidly replaced by appropriate rationalisations by the mainstream following the invasions themselves.
A few (obvious) points: the Bush admin (and/or Israel)
do have such "clout", they
do want to invade, and US forces
are (actively) preparing for it. Furthermore,
*The heaviest concentration of U.S. naval strike forces since the 2003 war against Iraq is concentrating off Iran.
* CIA drones and U.S. Air Force recon aircraft -- along with U.S. and British Special Forces -- are overflying Iran and probing its nuclear and military installations. CIA and Britain's MI6 are stirring unrest among Iran's Kurds and Azerbaijanis, and arming Iranian royalist exiles.
* A belligerent President George Bush has ordered U.S. forces in Iraq to "kill" Iranian agents or diplomats who appear threatening. Just one simple and obvious example: :
A prize-winning Iranian nuclear scientist has recently died in mysterious circumstances, apparently assassinated by Mossad, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.
* U.S. troops in northern Iraq broke into an Iranian liaison office and arrested its military staff. Bush unblushingly warns Iran, not to "meddle" in neighbouring Iraq. Pentagon sources accused Iran of smuggling weapons and explosives to "Iraqi insurgents;" though the "insurgents" are in fact Shia militiamen allied to the U.S.-installed Baghdad regime.
* At least half of the 21,000 additional U.S. troops headed to Iraq are being positioned to cover the Iranian border and block an Iranian threat to the main U.S. -Kuwait-Baghdad supply line.
* New contingents of U.S. Air Force personnel and warplanes are arriving at key forward air bases in Bulgaria and Romania that link the U.S. to the Mideast and Central Asia. U.S. bases in Britain, Germany, Diego Garcia, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and Pakistan are reported on heightened alert. Turkey is being pressed to allow U.S. and Israeli strike aircraft to use its air space to attack northern Iran.
* The Pentagon's latest strike plan against Iran includes more than 2,300 "high value" targets such as its dispersed nuclear infrastructure and, worryingly, operating reactors, air and naval bases, ports, telecommunications, air defences, military factories, energy networks and government buildings. Iran's water and sewage systems, bridges, food storage, and bomb shelters could also be targeted, as were Iraq's in 2001.
* In the economic realm, the U.S. Treasury has mounted a highly effective campaign to strangle Iran financially, seriously hurting its foreign banking connections, retarding industrial growth and energy production, and impeding foreign investment.
* And finally, the Bush administration and close ally Israel have sharply intensified their hysterical propaganda war of words against Iran, claiming, implausibly, it poses a nuclear threat to the entire world.
... but he's also a phenomenally unpopular president, whose judgement has been demonstrably disastrous, and who is facing increased opposition from within his own party after they took a drubbing at the mid-terms for supporting his last war. And, of course, the Senate and Congress are both now in Democrat hands.
So, for me, the debate comes down to this - does Bush have the authority to order an attack on Iran?
He doesn't, apparently
Bush was never a "popular" president, not even being elected first time round, but such has never prevented the pursuit of an agenda.
Again, you're retreating into the fanciful notion that parliamentory democracy, parliamentory procedure and jurisprudential rhetoric [BTW, the Democrats for the most part passively support criminal action against Iran. And Hillary Clinton, who voted for the illegal invasion of sovereign Iraq, cynically knows
that she must end the Iraq war in order to launch another - a war on sovereign Iran] has a definitive bearing on long-term US foreign policy. The US Administration is its own "authority" and orchestrates events accordingly. Of course their actions are un-constitutional, of course they are illegal, of course they are war crimes, but that's not how political spin works, because such trifle illegalities have never stopped them: the US as we know abandoned the Republic, its constitutional republican status as far back as the late 19th century when it began its foreign colonial exploits - invading the Phillipines and central America. It has been doing so ever since, all ILLEGAL and without authority ("The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter" ---former UN Chief Kofi Annan). Just taking the period from 1945 to 1999,
the US carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations.
The problem is that the US Administration needs no "approval" to criminally invade any other country of its choosing. [Indeed, if this was not the case, then why was a resolution recently introduced in the US House of Representatives calling on the President to first seek approval from Congress before using militay force against Iran? "
The bill, introduced by longtime Iraq war critic Walter Jones, a Republican, and five other US lawmakers calls on the president to first obtain authorization for an attack on Iran, unless the United States or US interests are attacked first."
