Why Didn't Bush/Cheney Attack Iran and Can Obama Make and Sell a Deal? - Gareth Porter

[Jefferson23]

Mr. Porter tells Paul Jay that the American security state was and is against war with Iran, but if Obama doesn't break with the false narrative about Iran's nuclear program, he may not be able to sell a deal - March 18, 2014


GARETH PORTER, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Thank you very much, Paul.

JAY: So Gareth is a historian. He's an investigative journalist. He covers U.S. foreign and military policy. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

So we're going to pick up where we left off. And essentially at the end of the last segment I was asking the question, if, as it seems true, that Dick Cheney, vice president, and President Bush were fairly intent on attacking Iran—and in earlier segments we talked about a document called Project for the New American Century, written and signed by many neocons who made up the Bush administration, and it clearly laid out it's time to assert American power—Iraq, Syria, and with the real prize being regime change in Iran and the need for a manufactured narrative to rationalize all of this, get American people on board, especially after a failed Iraq War—how do you get people ready for another one? Well, I guess you need a mushroom scare.

Gareth, I guess that more or less says it, does it?

So why didn't they get their war?

PORTER: They didn't get their war, because there was very strong built-in resistance on the part of the national security state in the United States, particularly the military and the Pentagon, to getting into a war with Iran. And I think this reflects the reality that Iran really is capable of doing damage to U.S. military assets in the region.

U.S. bases in the Middle East are extremely vulnerable to an attack by the Iranians. Particularly, U.S. naval vessels in this narrow gulf that they have to go through are vulnerable to—.

JAY: And, at the time, tens of thousands of American troops in Iraq.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11619

[Submariner]

1. So why didn't they get their war? Simple answer.

Those 4 people in that photo proved to be individually and collectively the MOST INCOMPETENT national security team ever devised in the United States.

They don't come any dumber. Condi was a Russia expert but the Cold War was over and she did not know crap about the Mid-East. And president shit-for-brains with 2 unearned legacy degrees from Yale and Harvard proved he did not know shit from shin-ola either.

Poor planning, poor strategy, poor tactics, bottom drawer everything. No f'ing way Iran was doable by the 4 Maggots of the Apocalypse.

[Jefferson23]

2. Yep..and in that case, the powers of the state did the right thing to stop them.

It would have been an insane act.

There are Senators as we speak who are pressuring Obama to be hard on Iran, deeply concerning.
It will be a huge mistake, and hopefully he will take a very different path.

[bemildred]

3. Interesting, thanks. nt