SO?:

Setting Up War With Iran (Gary Leupp, CounterPunch)

One day the headlined fact of significance was that the 9-11 Commission found no Iraq/al-Qaeda link. This was a blow to the Bush administration, especially its neoconservative contingent, which must realize that it has diminishing credibility, even as it struggles to stay in power and doggedly implement its Southwest Asia regime change agenda. The next day the headlined fact was that the same commission found that eight of the 9-11 hijackers had passed between Afghanistan and Iran between October 2000 and February 2001, with Iranian border guards’ knowledge, and official orders to those guards not to stamp their passports. In other words, the report says: there’s been no al-Qaeda link to Iraq (now occupied by U.S. troops), but there has been one to Iran (not occupied by U.S. troops). Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean has said specifically that this passage of Saudis through Iran raises the possibility that Iran and al-Qaeda had an operating relationship, There must be a lot of folks thinking (as some very much want them to think); “The CIA screwed up on the intelligence, so we didn’t attack the right country. Turns out Iran’s a much more serious enemy.”

The CIA, which understands how facts can be used and abused, immediately emphasized that there’s no evidence for any operational link between Teheran and the 9-11 attacks. (The CIA has itself, by the way, been abused by the Commission’s report that faults it--- for “intelligence failures,” rather than the Office of Special Plans---for collecting and disseminating pro-war disinformation.) Iranian officials predictably again denied any Iran/al-Qaeda connections, emphasized the difficulty of policing such a long border, and expressed willingness to improve relations with the U.S. The Iraqi “ambassador” to Washington (interestingly, an American citizen) told the press that Iran has actually cooperated with the present “handover” government, and has detained Afghan fighters, some of whom might have been headed to Iraq. (The new “government” of Iyad Allawi is probably not inclined to contribute to the Iran vilification campaign; Allawi is widely known as a long-term CIA operative, but he may have reasons to oppose U.S. plans for neighboring Shiite Iran.)

But this fact about these eight men, three or four years ago crossing the Afghan-Iranian border, is a potentially powerful piece of information, the sort that the neocons can be expected to maximally exploit. Regime change in Iran is, after all, a major neocon objective (although not official U.S. policy). A government official told Jenifer Johnston of the Sunday Herald that “there will be much more intervention in the internal affairs of Iran” in a second term. The neocons know that if Bush is reelected, they may be able to carry out their plans .

Cool.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 19, 2004 7:01 PM