British Basra withdrawal, Bush comment about troop draw down, linked to Iran attack

[HamdenRice]

Barnett R. Rubin is Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University. He is also the blogger who broke the story last week, that Dick Cheney had "instructed" Fox News, right wing think tanks, like the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and Commentary to roll out a post Labor Day pro-Iran-war propoganda offensive.

Sure as clockwork, on Labor Day in Newsweek, Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute wrote that an Iran "War may come, but not because negotiations break down. The likely trigger is an Iranian provocation." Other propogandists seem also to be carrying out their marching orders.

Mr. Rubin's latest blog entry is even more chilling. He was contacted, presumably in response to his first story, by an "information" "professional" who in turn had spoken to a person who seems to be a Bush administration insider. The insider provided information that Bush's recent statements that he is open to the withdrawal of some troops from Iraq wasn't, as many progressives assumed, empty rhetoric; it was part of a plan to withdraw American troops to areas where they will be safe from Iranian counter-attack in the event of an American attack on Iran. Moreover, Rubin writes, the British skedaddled their buts out of Basra in order to get their troops somewhere safe from expected Iranian reprisals in the event of an American attack on Iran:

http://icga.blogspot.com/

I posted the first blog on Wednesday, August 29. On the morning of Thursday, August 30, someone who is a professional in handling information called me to recount a conversation from the previous Thursday or Friday (August 23 or 24). In this conversation, someone whose proximity to knowledge of such things is so great that I cannot identify him in any other way, told my interlocutor that President Bush would be inclined to accept suggestions for withdrawing some troops from Iraq and moving as many as possible into more secure bases, as a safeguard against reprisals in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.

In today's reports from Iraq (see for example the New York Times and the Washington Post) President Bush is quoted as saying, "If the kind of success we are now seeing here continues it will be possible to maintain the same level of security with fewer American forces." The president made a point of visiting and lauding the progress in predominantly Sunni Anbar province, where the U.S. would be more secure from reprisals by Shi'a militias sympathetic to Iran. Anyone who follows political thinking in the Middle East will realize that throughout the region this will be interpreted as confirming a shift in U.S. strategy toward allying with Sunnis to encircle Iran. The British withdrawal from Basra is also said have been accelerated to avoid reprisals on their highly exposed position there.

[TwilightGardener]

1. Interesting. The Brits got out to a more secure base while the gettin' was good.

Watch and see if we start building up that isolated air base Chimpy visited--the one that is surrounded by Sunnis, no Shiite presence. Hmmm.

[HamdenRice]

2. While the gettin' was good

I would like to :rofl: but the whole situation is so tragic. But it does seem like the pieces are being moved around in anticipation of the attack.