Who will be responsible if the Bush Administration attacks Iran?

On Wednesday I posted What could stop the Bush administration from attacking Iran?, linking to Glenn Greenwald’s post, The president's escalating war rhetoric on Iran. Greenwald’s concludes that there is nothing to stop the administration from starting a war with Iran.

Yesterday, Juan Cole posted Cheney & Iran: Here We Go Again? According to Cole, it appears that Cheney “…plans to roll out a military confrontation with Iran in September.” Cole encourages his readers to check out Post Labor Day Product Rollout - War with Iran, posted at the new group blog, Informed Comment Global Affairs.

Barnett Rubin, author of Post Labor Day Product Rollout, compares Bush’s August 28, 2007 speech making the case for an attack on Iran to Cheney’s August 26, 2002 speech making the case for attacking Iraq: Rubin continues, “Today I received a message from a friend who has excellent connections in Washington and whose information has often been prescient. According to this report, as in 2002, the rollout will start after Labor Day, with a big kickoff on September 11. My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

"'They [the source's institution] have ‘instructions’ (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don't think they'll ever get majority support for this--they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is ‘plenty.’'"

In his post, Cole provides several links to recent similar reporting.

So do I wait until after Labor Day to see if Rubin is right? No. I act now.

I still harbor a hope that the American people will wake up. They did in the 1970’s when they collectively declared “Enough is enough” and put pressure on a Democratically controlled Congress to impeach Nixon when it wasn’t on the table.

On January 11, 2006, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who was on the House Judiciary Committee when Nixon was President, wrote The Impeachment of George W. Bush. Comparing Bush’s actions the Nixon’s, she states, “In 1973 impeachment was 'not on the table’ for many months while President Nixon's cover-up unraveled, even though Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But when Nixon fired the special prosecutor to avoid making his White House tapes public, the American people were outraged and put impeachment on the table, demanding that Congress act. That can happen again.” [bolding mine]

I think “That can happen again” should happen now. The runup to an attack on Iran should create as much outrage as Nixon's firing of the special prosecutor.

House Resolution 333, sponsored by Representative Dennis Kucinich and co-sponsored by numerous Congressional representatives, calls for impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney.

I’ve called my Congressional representative, Mike Thompson, to find out his position on attacking Iran and impeaching Cheney. His aide told me that Thompson’s position on these issues is “complicated” and that he will get back to me. Thompson will be hearing from me again.

The bottom line for me is that if we citizens are not outraged by the possibility of an attack on Iran and are unwilling to press Congress to put impeachment of Cheney and/or Bush and Cheney on the table, we are responsible for an attack on Iran.

(Drawing: Xiandos.info)