Not Again!
Seymour Hersh has consistently uncovered more startling stories about U.S, foreign policy in the past 20 years than any other reporter. Now he is reporting that Bush is actively making plans to send air strikes against Iran's nuclear capacity, and, writes Hersh in this week's New Yorker, perhaps even invade the country with the familiar aim of regime change.
Were it not for what we now know - and frankly what we either did or should have known at the time - about our war against Iraq, we might think this is either improbable or perhaps the administration floating the idea as a kind of warning to iran.
But we would be nuts not to take it seriously.
Hersh told a TV audience yesterday that he thinks Bush may have some sort of messianic sense of himself. And now that he no longer can seek reelection he feels he has been divinely appointed to do what no Republican or Democrat will be able to do after the next election.
I have a ggod friend who was an insider in the Nixon administration and he has told me there was serious consideration being given during the run up to the 1972 election to Nixon saying the nation was in too much turmoil to hold an election and declaring martial law. My friend said he had a conversation with a senior military man in the Pentagon who told him generals were holding quiet off-the-record meetings to discuss what they would do if Nixon asked the military to take over the reins of government. Or to attack another nation in a wag-the-dog effort.
My friend said they had a plan to go to congressional leaders and ask them to begin immediate impeachment proceedings that would give the military the authority to disregard or disobey orders from the president.
If George Bush ordered an air strike on Iran now - there have even been reports he might use tactical nuclear weapons - is there a way in which the military, in conjunction with leaders of congress, could refuse?
The scariest possibility is that Bush may believe God is leading him in all this. In any other setting this would be the stuff of a hackneyed novel.
Were it not for what we now know - and frankly what we either did or should have known at the time - about our war against Iraq, we might think this is either improbable or perhaps the administration floating the idea as a kind of warning to iran.
But we would be nuts not to take it seriously.
Hersh told a TV audience yesterday that he thinks Bush may have some sort of messianic sense of himself. And now that he no longer can seek reelection he feels he has been divinely appointed to do what no Republican or Democrat will be able to do after the next election.
I have a ggod friend who was an insider in the Nixon administration and he has told me there was serious consideration being given during the run up to the 1972 election to Nixon saying the nation was in too much turmoil to hold an election and declaring martial law. My friend said he had a conversation with a senior military man in the Pentagon who told him generals were holding quiet off-the-record meetings to discuss what they would do if Nixon asked the military to take over the reins of government. Or to attack another nation in a wag-the-dog effort.
My friend said they had a plan to go to congressional leaders and ask them to begin immediate impeachment proceedings that would give the military the authority to disregard or disobey orders from the president.
If George Bush ordered an air strike on Iran now - there have even been reports he might use tactical nuclear weapons - is there a way in which the military, in conjunction with leaders of congress, could refuse?
The scariest possibility is that Bush may believe God is leading him in all this. In any other setting this would be the stuff of a hackneyed novel.
posted by Blayney at 3:45 PM
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