Lieberman Calls For War

Joe Lieberman just asked David Petraeus if it was time to pursue Iranian forces inside Iran to stop them from "intervening" in Iraq. Even Petraeus is sane enough to knock this down.

But he's been fanning these flames for two days now. His opening statement had plenty of information about how Iran was definitely supplying EFP's, a debatable point. He responded to the news that the Pentagon is building a base near the Iran-Iraq border by claiming that we already have a base there (wonder if that base is covert or not). He consented to a dreadfully propagandistic one-hour interview on Fox News called a "Briefing for America," where host Brit Hume glided the discussion toward belligerent statements toward Iran.

it wasn't until after the second commercial break (and by now we were halfway through the hour) that Hume got ready to ask his first truly penetrating question.

"Gentlemen, in both your testimony today, you indicated that there had been this bottom-up reconciliation which was sort of unpredicted and much welcomed, but it seemed to be mostly in Sunni areas. And the situation with the Shia seem -- and the possible misbehavior, difficulty, problems with Shia militias, and so on," Hume began.

And when, with the end of Hume's question still hanging, the camera panned to the faces of Crocker and Petraeus, both looked to be bracing themselves for the blow surely coming. Would Hume ask whether the Sunni reconciliation had come solely because of fear of the majority Shiites? Or whether Shiite partisans dominate the Iraqi army and police force, turning them into sectarian militias and leading to the conclusions of the Jones report, which said that the national Iraqi police force should be disbanded altogether?

Not quite.

Instead, Hume wanted to talk about the new boogeyman of the right and Fox News: Iran. He blamed the Iranians for the aforementioned Shiite "misbehavior" and problems with Shiite militias, saying, "With Iranian influence [that's] always something you worry about when it comes to the Shiites," then going on to ask,

"You indicated that Iran would be a big winner, in its own eyes at least, if this all went badly in Iraq. Why should we not believe that as progress is made with the Sunni, that progress is made militarily, that Iran could simply rachet up its interference in Iraq to the point where it would in the end spoil whatever progress is being made?"

So how could Petraeus possibly be surprised that the hyperactive Holy Joe Lieberman is asking that the new greatest generation go fight a new war in Tehran? Petraeus and the MNF-I under his leadership has done as much to hype the Iranian threat as anybody.

We have heard rumors that the Fourthbranch Administration would launch its marketing plan for war with Iran in the second week of September. We've had two days of briefings with Iran continually mentioned, particularly by GOP shills like Duncan Hunter, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, James Inhofe and Joe Lieberman. We've had an hourlong Fox News appearance that made the case for bombing Iran almost explicitly. The turn appears to be that the reason for failure in Iraq is Iran, and thus our only exit strategy goes through Tehran.

UPDATE: One of the recent pieces that raised the most concern about an impending attack on Iran relied on Alex Debat as a source, whose credibility has now been questioned. That's good, but the fact that this is slowly becoming the Petraeus IRAN report is unquestioned.