Our Path to Persia

Let me walk you through our approach to war with Iran. I've talked about it briefly in the past on this site before. News on Iran has really been spreading out over the last week or so. Stories in Newsweek, Vanity Fair, and new Naval deployments seem to be pointing to an ominous picture.

Al-Qaeda works with Iran...right?

The Post has reported an interesting kink in the road to Iran. The Bush administration and their surrogates have for a while now played upon our limited understanding of the Middle East. It's easy to think of them as 'good' moderate Muslims and and 'bad' radical Muslims. It's easy and its wrong. it isn't as if the bad ones all just live in the places we don't care for (Iran, Syria, etc) and as if they conveniently match Sunni or Shiite in their 'home country'. Oh, and never mind where Al-Qaeda fit in all this. lets just make them pals with the Iranians or Iraqis or whomever is convenient to target.

This Al-Qaeda-Iran tie has been bubbling out more and more by the Bush administration lately. some of us have been keeping one eyebrow cocked and wondering where this is heading. The Post report describes how the CIA was rushing reports of the Iranian government arresting Al-Qaeda operatives as they were tying to enter Iraq. This came as at a time when Bush was preparing to publicly link Iranian leadership and Al-Qaeda before the UN in order to get the sanctions he seeks. This is a well worn path for us. Why make the point on its merits when we can just fabricate the facts to fit our plans?

It's a willingness to confuse getting what you want with getting what we need.