Taki Magazine

Eureka! I think I know why the administration is so eager to wage war with Iran. Forget about the nukes the mullahs haven’t got. Forget about the neocons working for Israel. It’s all about ego, old boy, as the great Sherlock told the good doctor. The real reason for American rage against Iran - I wish Seymour Hersh would learn to correctly pronounce that dreary place, it’s not Eyran, but Eran, not a verb but a country, for God’s sake - is the knowledge that the Shiites have made complete fools of them. Shiite exiles like the conman Ahmad Chalabi not only took Yankee gold, but sold them snake oil no five-year-old would buy. They then conned Uncle Sam in removing Iran’s most ferocious opponent in the region, making the mullahs the dominant power of the area. And to top the con off, they got the Americans to back a government whose power depends on Shiite militias and whose ministries are controlled by Shiite militants like Moqtada-al-Sadr. As they say, you couldn’t make it up. No wonder Cheney and the neocons want war. If someone had conned me out of my money, taken my wife to boot, and then sued for alimony, I, too, would go to extremes. Murdoch and Time should hire Chalabi and a few Iranians. Kristol, Podhoretz, Frum and the rest of the bums have been had, by conmen of the old school.