The Make-It-Up Stage

There I was, all set to post about the latest chapter in the mendacious marketing of Target Iran. Then I saw that someone had already taken care of it nicely, so I'll just link to him here.

Indisputable fact: the last two major wars the U.S. has fought---Vietnam (Tonkin) and Iraq (WMD's)---have been based on faulty, cherry-picked, or flat-out fabricated intelligence. (I'm not including Operation Desert Storm as a "major war.") If our senior military leaders had gotten their way during the early 1960's, there would have been another such war in Cuba (link here).

Americans fancy themselves as virtuous and benevolent. And in many ways that's indeed the case. But many Americans---particularly conservatives---also idealize the U.S. as a reluctant warrior. How does that self-image comport with reality and history?

There's a good reason why the Bush administration has never cited specific intelligence to indicate the proximity of Iran's nuclear capability: our intelligence community is on record with an estimate that such capability is about a decade away. And just a few days ago, former IDF Chief of Staff and ultra-hawk Moshe Ya'alon conceded that Iran is at least three to five years from the ability to build a bomb. Since the intelligence is inconvenient, the administration has marketed Target Iran via hints, intimations, and imminent-mushroom-cloud-redux dark warnings. And if that doesn't work, they'll simply make stuff up. With the Bush/Rumsfeld statements about Iran's purported connection to Iraqi IED's, we just got a glimpse of that.

There are some very good reasons why the Mullahs should be prevented from getting the bomb. But that makes it no less understandable why Iran and other nations--nervously eyeing our proven ability and rogue-like eagerness to invade others based on false pretenses---might want to protect themselves with the ultimate deterrent.