Here's my guess as to what I think may be going on--

The Neo-cons who have always wanted a war with Iran are now increasingly worried that Bushco will be out of power by next January. So how to get the war independent of who wins that little election in November? Get the war policy on the railway tracks early, and pack it with so much momentum, forward deployment of troops and material, stacked up diplomatic pressure, massive media/psyops attack on public opinion in the so-called Western democracies .... that it doesnt matter if Ralph Nader gets elected ... the boys will be all dressed up and ready to go .. pick a fight and get a conflict going before the handover of power to Kerry and hey-presto we've got a situation from which the weak Democrats in America (juiced along by the Israeli lobby) can't retreat from

"The Neo-cons who have always wanted a war with Iran"

Where did that come from ? there is no evidence for anyone wanting a war with Iran. Please stick to facts (an increasingly rare event on indymedia these days)

Let me remind you of what the Neocons have said out loud, in public.

On Sept. 12, Bill Bennett told CNN that we were in "a struggle between good and evil," that the Congress must declare war on "militant Islam," and that "overwhelming force" must be used. Bennett cited Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and China as targets for attack.

On Sept. 15, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, "Paul Wolfowitz put forth military arguments to justify a U.S. attack on Iraq rather than Afghanistan." Why Iraq? Because, Wolfowitz argued in the War Cabinet, while "attacking Afghanistan would be uncertain … Iraq was a brittle oppressive regime that might break easily. It was doable."

On Sept. 20, forty neoconservatives sent an open letter to the White House instructing President Bush on how the war on terror must be conducted. Signed by Bennett, Podhoretz, Kirkpatrick, Perle, Kristol, and Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, the letter was an ultimatum. To retain the signers’ support, the president was told, he must target Hezbollah for destruction, retaliate against Syria and Iran if they refuse to sever ties to Hezbollah, and overthrow Saddam. Any failure to attack Iraq, the signers warned Bush, "will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism."

The Neocons in the White House were effectively telling the Commander-in-Chief, nine days after an attack on America, that if he did not follow their war plans he would be charged with surrendering to terror. Yet, Hezbollah had nothing to do with 9/11.

Benjamin Netanyahu went onto US television, calling for them to crush the "Empire of Terror." The "Empire," it turns out, consisted of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, and "the Palestinian enclave."

Jonah Goldberg endorsed "the Ledeen Doctrine" of ex-Pentagon official Michael Ledeen, which Goldberg described thus: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business."

Ledeen, however, is less frivolous. In "The War Against the Terror Masters", he identifies the exact regimes America must destroy:

"First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. … Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. …We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. … Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize."

Rejecting stability as "an unworthy American mission," Ledeen goes on to define America’s authentic "historic mission":

"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … [W]e must destroy them to advance our historic mission."

The Neocon "Weekly Standard" newspaper thought Ledeen’s enemies list was too restrictive. We must not only declare war on terror networks and states that harbor terrorists, said the Standard, we should launch wars on "any group or government inclined to support or sustain others like them in the future." Inclined!

Robert Kagan and William Kristol were excited at the prospect of Armageddon. The coming war "is going to spread and engulf a number of countries. … It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. … [I]t is possible that the demise of some 'moderate' Arab regimes may be just round the corner."

Norman Podhoretz in "Commentary" even outdid Kristol’s Standard, saying that we should embrace a war of civilizations, as it is George W. Bush’s mission "to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam." By his count, the regimes that deserve to be overthrown are not confined to the three singled-out members of the "axis of evil" (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as '"friends" of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority. Bush must reject the "timorous counsels" of the "incorrigibly cautious Colin Powell," wrote Podhoretz, and "find the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated" Islamic world. As the war against al-Qaeda required that we destroy the Taliban, Podhoretz wrote:

"We may willy-nilly find ourselves forced … to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority). I can even [imagine] the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place. … I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else."

Podhoretz credits Eliot Cohen with the phrase "World War IV." Bush was shortly thereafter seen carrying about a gift copy of Cohen's book that celebrates civilian mastery of the military in times of war, as exhibited by such leaders as Winston Churchill and David Ben Gurion.

A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regard as targets for destruction thus includes Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and "militant Islam."

And yes, the Pope is still a Catholic, and bears still do shit in the woods.

Attack Iran, US chief ordered British
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 30/06/2004)


America's military commander in Iraq ordered British troops to prepare a full-scale ground offensive against Iranian forces that had crossed the border and grabbed disputed territory, a senior officer has disclosed.

An attack would almost certainly have provoked open conflict with Iran. But the British chose instead to resolve the matter through diplomatic channels.


Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez
"If we had attacked the Iranian positions, all hell would have broken loose," a defence source said yesterday.

"We would have had the Iranians to our front and the Iraqi insurgents picking us off at the rear."

The incident was disclosed by a senior British officer at a conference in London last week and is reported in today's edition of Defence Analysis. The identity of the officer is not given.

"Some Iranian border and observation posts were re-positioned over the border, broadly a kilometre into Iraq," a Ministry of Defence spokesman said.

The incident began last July when Revolutionary Guards pushed about a kilometre into Iraq to the north and east of Basra in an apparent attempt to reoccupy territory which they claimed belonged to Iran.

Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez then ordered the British to prepare to send in several thousand troops to attack the Revolutionary Guard positions.

The Revolutionary Guard Corps has 125,000 soldiers, making it 25 per cent larger than the entire British Army, and is equipped with 500 tanks, 600 armoured personnel carriers and 360 artillery weapons.

The incident is reminiscent of the exchange during the Kosovo conflict between the American general, Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander Europe, and Gen Sir Mike Jackson, the British commander.

When Gen Clark told Gen Jackson to send British troops into Pristina airport to prevent Russian troops from taking control Gen Jackson refused. He was reported to have said: "I am not going to start World War Three for you."

The Iran-Iraq incident lasted around a week and was resolved by a telephone conversation between Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, and Kamal Kharrazi, his Iranian counterpart, British officials said.

"It did look rather nasty at the time," one official said. "But we were always confident it was a mistake and could be resolved by diplomatic means. We got in touch with Baghdad and said, 'Don't do anything silly; we are talking to the Iranians.' "

While Mr Straw was trying to resolve the issue peacefully, British military commanders on the ground were calming their Iranian counterparts, the ministry said.

The Revolutionary Guard was believed to be behind the seizure of eight Royal Navy and Royal Marines personnel last week after they strayed across the disputed border between Iraq and Iran.

The eight men, who were delivering patrol boats to the Iraqi riverine patrol service, were released - but not before they were paraded blindfolded on Iranian television.
 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/06/30/wiran30.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/06/30/ixportal.html

The neocons might talk and say fine words about how evil Iran is and how they must attack/pressure it, but the reality is that they were the most enthusiastic supporters of action in Bosnia, which involved working with Iran and Islamist terrorists to attack the Serbs, and Kosovo, where the terrorists were Islamists and trained by Iran (before Germany and America even got in on the act). Many of them are also incredibly anti-Russia, and support the Chechen Islamist terrorists, even though they are (or have been) trained and directed by Islamist Pakistan, Iran and Al Qaeda. They also knew, but covered up, the fact that Iran had been agitating for war on Iraq for years, and this got rid of the obstacle to an extension of Iranian power.

I'm sceptical that any action will be taken against Iran. Even if they wanted too, the US army is overstreched as it is.

The US Congress has quietly put in place legislation from last year to this, laying the groundwork for a re-instatement of the draft. This includes an agreement negotiated with Canada about new rules for asylum seekers there: Canada will no longer be an option for anyone fleeing the draft. Neither will university.

It can be up and running as early as next June, as far as I'm aware.

I can see the Neocons allowing another "unforseeable terrorist attack" on US soil this summer. A couple of major incidents in US cities, and most of the US public, egged on by the corporate media, will be begging for a police state. The draft and a much enlarged standing army will follow. This will allow the Iran invasion to go ahead.

How this ties in with an election is another story.

Regime change in Iran was a stated goal of the Neo-cons PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY from its inception

in February 2004 -- a memo to "opinion leaders" restated the goal

 http://www.newamericancentury.org/iran-20040224.htm