Justin Raimondo

August 05, 2008

Over at ThinkProgress, we get a report of a talk by Seymour Hersh in which he describes a meeting of top level Bush administration officials, held in Dick Cheney’s office. Subject: how to provoke war with Iran:

“There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don?t we build ? we in our shipyard ? build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can?t have Americans killing Americans. That?s the kind of ? that?s the level of stuff we?re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.”

And to think that I hesitated, for a moment or two, before I wrote the following in my July 30 antiwar.com column:

“I have to say, at this point, that the War Party isn’t above engineering just such a provocation: the phrase “War Party” is short-hand for a variegated bunch, including US neoconservatives, the arms industry, Joe Lieberman, and at least one foreign nation ? Israel. The Israelis have been urging Washington to attack Iran for months, if not years, and anyone who thinks they wouldn’t dare undertake a false flag operation doesn’t know the story of the Lavon Affair.”

Never understimate the evil of the neocons: whatever perfidy you can imagine, they’ll live up to your worst expectations every time.