Dangerous campaign saber rattling

Am I the only one confused about this whole Iran-Israel thing? In the February 26 edition of the St. Louis Post Dispatch there was an article titled “U.S. doubts Iran is actively trying to build a bomb.” The writer is Ken Dilanian of the Tribune Washington Bureau.

Dilanian refers to the conclusions in two U.S. intelligence estimates that said Iran stopped pursuing construction of a nuclear warhead in 2003. The most recent estimate involved data from 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. (Who knew we had that many cloak and dagger working groups?)

At a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on February 16, James Clapper Jr., director of National Intelligence, said that our military and civilian intelligence agencies do not see evidence of a bomb making program in Iran although they cannot totally rule that out. Iran is enriching uranium below 20 percent purity while 90 percent purity is necessary for weapons. This coincides with the contention of Iranian leaders that they are working on nuclear power for generation of electricity. U.S. spy agencies also have not seen the kind of decision-making structure necessary for a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

This is not to say Iran is not hoping someday to have a nuclear bomb, but there is not a lot of evidence that they are making one now. So here we are in the same position we were with Iraq ten years ago. The Bush administration was hell bent on war with Iraq and pounded misinformation into our heads until our Congress gave him carte blanche to do whatever his neo-con friends decided to do.

I have a theory about why the Iran/bomb thing is front page news right now, but it’s a tad cynical. (Who was it who said, “No matter how cynical you get, it’s hard to keep up.”?

I think the Israelis would really like to replace President Obama with a Republican for many reasons. Republicans, generally, are war hawks. Republicans have a lot of fundamentalist Christians in their midst who truly believe that Jesus is coming back to the Holy Land which translates into overwhelming support for Israel. Republicans love the military-industrial complex and need something to justify increasing its budget in tight money times. And there are no Republican leaders criticizing Israel for its treatment of Palestinians in the “occupied” territories. Keep in mind, we Americans never want to be seen as “occupiers.” But it’s been a fact of life for Palestinians for decades. Former President Jimmy Carter was roundly criticized for his book depicting the separation of Israel and Palestine as a system of “apartheid.”

From the point of view of the Republicans who would love to “make Obama a one term president,” this saber rattling about Iran gives them one more “crisis” to bludgeon the American voters with. The GOP has nothing to offer the majority of Americans as far as a vision for their future, so all they can do is terrify us with imagined catastrophes. They will keep up the hype on a “nuclear Iran” long enough to cast President Obama as weak on foreign policy and hope the American voters don’t do their homework on the President’s actual achievements in our relations with other countries and cultures.

It’s all smoke and mirrors intended to hypnotize American voters into electing a Republican president.

If that’s a “conspiracy theory,” so be it.