Cheney's New War Plans

Getting Ready

Writing in the just-out issue of Newsweek, Dan Ephron and Mark Hosenball bring us a good deal more information on the strange recent events surrounding the Israeli air strike and overflights in Syria. The speculation for the last week has focused on this being connected with plans for an Israeli air assault on Iran, supposedly as an element in a plan that Vice President Cheney is cooking up for an aerial war against Tehran.
Still, Newsweek sees the plans for an aerial war against Iran as far from likely to be executed. Steven Clemons, writing in a column for Salon, concludes that in the end cooler heads will prevail and the drive for an air war will be averted.
The notion that Israel would be used as a U.S. proxy in the launch of an air war against Iran is hardly far-fetched. Security experts in Israel now regularly state off-the-record that last year’s disastrously misplanned Lebanese campaign was timed and stage-managed by the White House, and that the impetus for it came from Vice President Cheney with the involvement of Elliott Abrams and David Wurmser. So the tactical notion of using Israel as the “tip of the spear,” which is frequently labeled by Middle East experts as lunatic, has a well established provenance. The real question, of course, is whether Cheney is the author of the president’s policy on Iran. If he is, then another war is on the horizon, no matter what the generals think.

Involve Israel or have an action (here or in Iraq) that can easily be blamed on Iran. Fabricate. Set up. Lie. Misguide. Instill fear in the hearts of Americans. Blame Iran for 911.

These tactics were successful before...