http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_dave_lin_080114_things_have_g...

January 14, 2008 at 16:58:30

Things Have Gotten So Crazy Now a Prankster Could Start World War III!

by Dave Lindorff =C2=A0 =C2=A0 Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com

By Dave Lindorff

President Bush, a lame-duck loose cannon, is traipsing around the
Middle East calling Iran a state sponsor of terror and condemning what
he calls Iran's "provocative" acts in the Strait of Hormuz at the
choke point between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.

Everyone knows the president and his viceroy, Vice President *****
Cheney, are just itching to launch American bombers and cruise
missiles against Iran before the end of this second nightmarish term
of office, and now we hear that the so-called "provocative" incident,
which we were told was replete with threats to blow up a destroyer in
"15 seconds" was actually the work of a "prankster" who was making
threats on the air using English with a faked (badly) Iranian accent.

So has this brush with disaster, which would have surely ensued had
the US Navy fired on Iranian speedboats in their vicinity, led the
president to pull back from his bellicosity?

No. On the contrary, he's upping the ante, calling Iran a terrorist
state, thus implicitly giving himself permission to "take them out."

Luckily for us and for the longsuffering people of Iran, the US Navy
is run by officers who are not crazy, who don't want another war, and
who especially don't want a war that includes having a fleet of
American ships stuck like sitting ducks in the confined space of the
Persian Gulf in the sights of hundreds of Iranian shore-to-ship
missiles. (They were all sunk in minutes with a loss of a whole
aircraft carrier battle group and 20,000 crewmembers in a Pentagon war
game played in 2002 and then hushed up.)

As long as the admirals in Washington, and the captains on those ships
in harm's way, keep their cool, and don't let themselves be provoked
by the hotheads in the White House and in Tehran who see political
benefits in provoking hostilities, Bush's wet dream of a third war in
the Middle East against Iran won't come true.

The same can't be said for the US media, which for the most part have
been trumpeting all the president's scariest and most threatening
lines, while burying the news that the provocation in the Gulf was
faked.

A real news organization worthy of the name would be trying to find
out who's behind the fakery. It shouldn't be hard--a military that can
use satellite technology to send a cruise missile or a Predator drone-
fired missile crashing down onto the holder of a cell phone, should
have no trouble locating the source of a fake ship-to-ship
communication. =C2=A0(Unless of course it turns out that the message was
the work not of a prankster, but of someone working for the Bush
gang.)

Let's be clear here. The naval armada that Bush has assembled in the
Gulf has no function other than to threaten Iran. The US military has
adequate air bases on land in and around Iraq to handle all the needs
of US troops in that country, and the ships in the gulf are of no use
whatsoever in the conflict in landlocked Afghanistan, because they
can't send planes there without overflying Iran.

Their role is simply to provoke. =C2=A0To provoke what? Why a war, of
course.

Congress needs to pull the plug on this madness before one of the many
scams and schemes of the Bush/Cheney gang succeeds in the president's
goal of getting a hot war going between the US and Iran.

A really amateurish effort--prank or black-op--to make a routine cat-and-
mouse game by Iranian speedboats and a US battle group into a live-
fire incident with dead bodies in the water--could have succeeded.

There must be no next time. It's time to move forward, with dispatch,
on Dennis Kucinich's bill of impeachment against Cheney, which
features the administration's aggressive efforts to foment a war
against Iran in violation of the UN Charter.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is "The Case for
Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and now available in paperback
edition). His work is available atwww.thiscantbehappening.net

----
Dave Lindorff, a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several
recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration
of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the
Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored
with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal
Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St.
Martin's Press, May 2006). His writing is available athttp://www.thiscantb=