Onward To Iran

The two big stories today are:

(1) GOP Senators and Congresscritters are running for the door on Iraq policy, with dozens voicing their concern over the McCain Doctrine strategy of escalation, including a few I mentioned earlier. They can't understand how a policy which will surely cause more American deaths, which is supposed to put Iraqis in the lead, to put the lives of Americans at the mercy of a shaky and unstable military force, to put too few forces in to impact the increasingly bloody scene while too many to risk to certain death and dismemberment, for no other reason than to save a President's ego, with no suggestion of whether or not it will work other than the idea that it has to work, is foolish to the extreme. This is no longer a partisan issue, but as Barack Obama said last night, an issue between realists and fantasists. And the realists in the GOP (as well as those Senators up for re-election in 2008 who don't want to go down with the ship) are running as far away from the President as possible.

(2) Everyone has unequivocally seen the implicit danger in the speech, of presaging a coming war with Iran (and to a lesser extent, Syria), to be achieved in an off-the-books, extra-Constitutional way. Already, even before the speech ended, this happened in Irbil:

U.S. forces in Iraq raided Iran's consulate in the northern city of Arbil and detained five staff members, a state-run Iranian news service said.

The U.S. soldiers disarmed guards and broke open the consulate's gate before seizing documents and computers during the operation, which took place today at about 5 a.m. local time, the Islamic Republic News Agency said. There was no immediate information on whether any of those detained are diplomats.

The raid follows a warning yesterday to Iran and Syria from President George W. Bush in his address to the American people on a new strategy for Iraq. Bush accused Iran and Syria of aiding the movement of "terrorists and insurgents'' in and out of Iraq and said the U.S. will "seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies.''

NOBODY missed this today. It is extremely clear that the Bush Administration is doubling down on Iraq by threatening Iran. Already we've seen the movement of carrier groups and Patriot missiles into the region, where they'll have no effect on anyone but Iran. The idea may be to instigate Iran, through placement of weapons, through events like today's in Irbil, into actually attacking US troops somewhere, at which point the President can counterattack without a declaration of war. This was one aspect to the prewar Iraq strategy: remember when Bush wanted to paint a US plane in UN colors to try and provoke Saddam into striking it?

Most important, the Democrats in Congress didn't miss this rhetoric. Biden warned Condi Rice in hearings today in the Foreign Relations Committee that any attempt to expand the war across the borders of Iraq will be met with a "Constitutional confrontation." The media was similiarly clear-eyed on this obvious provocation.

MATTHEWS: Well, he did say we’re gonna disrupt the attacks on our forces. “We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran.” Does that mean stopping at the Iranian border or going into Iran?

SNOW: Well, again, I think what the president’s talking about is the war in Iraq, Chris.

MATTHEWS: So he will seek congressional approval before any action against Iran?

SNOW: You are talking about something we are not even discussing.

MATTHEWS: Yeah, but you are, Tony, because look at this. “I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.” Isn’t that about Iran?

SNOW: It, it — yeah, it is, in part, and what it is is it’s saying, look, we are going to make sure that anybody who tries to take aggressive action — but when Bill Clinton sent a carrier task force into the South China Sea after the North Koreans fired a missile over Japan, that was not as a prelude to war against North Korea. You know how it works [...]

MATTHEWS: My concern is we’re gonna see a ginning up situation whereby we fall in hot pursuit any effort by the Iranians to interfere with Iraq. We take a couple shots at them, they react, then we bomb the hell out of them and hit their nuclear installations without any without any action by Congress. That’s the scenario I fear, an extra-constitutional war is what I’m worried about.

SNOW: Well, you have been watching too many old movies —

MATTHEWS: No, I’ve been watching the war in Iraq, is what I’ve been watching. As long as you say to me before we leave tonight that the president has to get approval from Congress before making war on Iran.

SNOW: Let me put it this way. The president understands you got to have public support for whatever you do. The reason we are talking to the American public about the high takes in Iraq and why it is absolutely vital to succeed is you’ve got to have public support, and the president certainly, whenever he’s taken major actions, he has gone before Congress.

And the President is so concerned about winning public support that he just sent 21,500 troops to Iraq against the wishes of 88% of the American public. And he may have done this:

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country [...]

Some are suggesting that the Consulate raid may have been designed to try and prompt a military response from Iran -- to generate a casus belli for further American action.

If this is the case, the debate about adding four brigades to Iraq is pathetic. The situation will get even hotter than it now is, worsening the American position and exposing the fact that to fight Iran both within the borders of Iraq and into Iranian territory, there are not enough troops in the theatre.

Bush may really have pushed the escalation pedal more than any of us realize.

Just as a note, Steve Clemons, the author of that piece, is extremely connected, not a bomb-thrower or far-left figure, and someone who has lots of information. If he's hearing this, you have to believe it's at least plausible.

This is a really scary moment. There's no doubt that a significant wing in the White House is urging for another war, and they probably have been for months, if not years. That the threat would be this explicit and this defined, within a speech about how to salvage a failed war in a neighboring country, is very interesting. Everyone knows how the case was built for Iraq, one war drum at a time. This is no different.