Former Bush Officials Accuse White House of Trying to Provoke Iran
By Deniz Yeter
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 21 February 2007

Warn public that Bush is looking for a pretext to justify a broader, regional conflict.

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In April, 2006, Seymour Hersh, a writer for The New Yorker, detailed the Bush administration's covert actions inside Iran stating: "The Bush administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups." (3)

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner also appeared in April, 2006 on CNN in defense of Seymour Hersh's claims, saying he thinks that "the decision has been made and military operations are under way." He also stated, "The Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, [and] have been saying it for almost a year."

"I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. "And I said, ‘Hey, I hear you're accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.' He said, quite frankly, ‘Yes, we know they are. We've captured some of the units, and they've confessed to working with the Americans.'" (4)

Jim Webb, the freshman Senator from Virginia, whose Election Day victory in 2006 tipped the power in the Senate to the Democrats favor, appeared on "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on February 7, echoing the same warning given by Leverett. He said, "If you look at the framers of the Constitution, they wanted to give the president, as commander in chief, the authority to repel sudden attacks. That is totally different than conducting a preemptive war."

"And you know one thing," Webb continued, "if you look at where we are in the Persian Gulf right now, when I was secretary of the Navy and until very recently, we never operated aircraft carriers inside the Persian Gulf because, number one, the turning radius is pretty close, and number two, the chance of accidentally bumping into something that would start a diplomatic situation was pretty high. "We now have been doing that, and with the tensions as high as they are, I'm very worried that we might accidentally set something off in there. And we need, as a Congress, to get ahead of the ball game here."(5)...

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