Jim Lobe suggests that Bush's current sales effort on the Iraq War looks to be Forum Over Substance Inter Press Service 03/13/06.
He points out that the group before which Bush appeared Monday is a hardline "neoconservative" organization:
The staunchly neo-conservative Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), one of the most hawkish groups on the "war on terror" since it was created two days after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon, has often taken strident positions against Arab and European allies whose cooperation has been sought by the administration itself.
Part of an interlocking network of neo-conservative-dominated groups that include the American Enterprise Institute, the Centre for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Committee on the Present Danger which it founded, FDD has also tried to build support here for "regime change" in Syria and Iran.
As Lobe says, if the choice of this group as the opening audience for his latest push for public support on his war policies is meant to be symbolic, it doesn't promise good prospects for improvement of the American position in the Middle East. To illustrate, he explains:
Among its board of advisers are Centre for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, who has attacked Bush for supporting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan; Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol; former CIA director James Woolsey, one of the most ubiquitous advocates of the notion that Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks in the run-up to the Iraq war; and American Enterprise Institute's Richard Perle, the former ultra-hawkish chairman of the Defence Policy Board who reportedly suggested in a debate at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (that was also addressed by Cheney) that 12 B-2 bombers could solve the ongoing crisis with Iran over its nuclear programme.
Lobe's piece gives a good sketch of how this particular neocon organization worked to influence US foreign policy the last few years, including generating support for the Iraq War.
The FDD is also hot on the idea of making war against Iran, it seems:
In his most recent web posting just last week, [FDD director Clifford] May quoted another Perle protégé, American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, as identifying Iran as the terrorist puppet master that "now exercises effective control over groups ranging from Hezbollah, Ansar al-Islam, al Qaeda, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Jaish-e-Mahdi, and Jaish-e-Huti (Yemen) to the Joint Shi'ite Army of Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and part of Saudi Arabia, as well as Islamic movements in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia".
At another FDD/CPD forum in the Capitol building last month, Centre for Security Policy's Gaffney warned that Iran's missile programme was designed to detonate a nuclear weapon "in space high above the United States, unleashing an immensely powerful electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) (that) could reduce the United States to a pre-industrial society in the blink of an eye".
Lobe does not report whether the group pushes for the massive increase in US troop strength that expanding the war to Iran would demand, even if "only" air strikes are involved, and the large-scale draft we would have to have to build it up. Because once we bomb Iran, Iran escalates the war against US troops in Iraq.
One of the Iraqi leaders who has publicly announced he would back Iran against the US in case of an attack is Moqtada al-Sadr. Juan Cole quotes him today as saying, in reference to Rummy recent statement that the US troops in Iraq would not intervene to prevent violence if civil war breaks out (and by most accounts it's in the early stages already):
' "May God damn you," Sadr said of Rumsfeld. "You said in the past that civil war would break out if you were to withdraw, and now you say that in case of civil war you won't interfere." '
Widening this war to Iran is a very risky proposition.
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