I wonder if I might get a little help from my friends about who has predicted war with Iran

[seemslikeadream]

So far I have

Scott Ritter

James Bamford

Sy Hersch

Paul Craig Roberts

Dave Lindorff

Chris Floyd

Arthur Silber

Gary Hart

Chris Hedges

Ray McGovern

Dan Plesch

Fred Halliday

Col. Sam Gardiner, USAF retired.

Robert Parry

Bob Baer

Dr Dan Plesch

Martin Butcher.

Dennis Kucinich

Cheney :rofl:

Michael Ledeen :rofl:

Joe Lieberman :rofl:

[acmavm]

1. This is why Chimpy isn't worried about his legacy or about getting caught

in all his criminal activity. He knows how bad he and Dickie are gonna make it for everybody soon.

edit: The idiots aren't taking into consideration the fact that Russia and China just might take umbrage to the US bombing the country that they've been signing energy cooperation pacts with. Or the country that they've recently sent missles for self defense. No, this just might not be as easy as it was to demolish Iraq.

[stillcool]

2. every newspaper on the planet?....

you tell me.

[seemslikeadream]

4. I know but I need names apparently a couple people here think

I am the only one!! :cry:

[stillcool]

6. some articles....

in no way representative of the plethora dating back to 2004, and exclusive of earlier ones, particularly those from Scott Ritter, and Seymour Hirsh.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/stillcool47/45

[Hippo_Tron]

3. Sy Hersch made his prediction over two years ago

And frankly I agreed with his assessment then. IMO, things have changed and the administration has just lost too much of that "political capital" that Bush claimed. I think if they were going to do it they would've done it by now.

My bigger fear is that another GOP President will invade Iran.

[davhill]

5. There are also a couple Democratic

Presidential contenders who have not ruled it out.

[Hippo_Tron]

15. Look at the difference between the rhetoric between the Democrats and the Republicans

You are correct that the Dems aren't ruling it out but they're emphasizing very heavily that it's a last resort and that they are very eager for diplomacy.

Compare that to Rudy McRomney who Edwards accurately described as "George Bush on steroids".

[Faygo Kid]

7. Not a tough prediction to make. Count me in.

I don't think there was ever any doubt that we will attack Iran, at least since the election of 2004. There's no way that W. will leave office (if he leaves) without starting another war.

What he will not do is focus on bin Laden. He's already proven that.

[Fire Walk With Me]

8. I thought we'd be in Iran years ago.

I hate waiting.

[scarletwoman]

9. Lots of people are WARNING of the likely possibility -- is that "predicting"?

Of those who have been sounding the alarm you can include Glenn Greenwald and Gregory Djerejian. Also Barnett Rubin of the Informed Comment (Juan Cole) group blog. Not to mention probably dozens of lefty blogs like Tiny Revolution, Dennis Perrin and Driftglass.

And me, of course. :D

sw

[hfojvt]

10. some of these people ought to be losing credibility

Here's McGovern, quoted by Lindorff in October 2006

"McGovern, who had first told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, DC, during an ongoing action called "Camp Democracy," about his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned, "We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening." "

Well, the seven weeks are up, so it looks like we did it! :woohoo: Lindorff didn't really predict a war in that article, although he leaned that way:

"But all these war skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all, it must be recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions the whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq, and the current situation is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United States, according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special forces operating in Iran, and now major ship movements are looking ominous."

And Lindorff, IIRC, is one who thought we should get all up in arms about the executive order allowing assets to be frozen :eyes:

How many times can a person yell 'fire!' or claim that a huge fire is imminent before they lose their cred as a prophet? Just because a drunken chimp is playing with matches in a basement where gasoline is stored does not mean the building is about to blow up.

Okay, maybe it does, but 6 years and 8 months into the reign of the chimp and the people who have predicted that it would not happen have been proven correct - so far. Bush's imminent threat of war with Iran has been no more real than Saddam's imminent threat of war with America. We can respond to Bush's war mongering with peace mongering, we do not need to resort to a bunch of dire predicitions about a future which may or may not come to pass.

[seemslikeadream]

11. some, shouldn't you have said one?

but Hersch did it for me without anyone else

[seemslikeadream]

12. and just how long was that before we invaded Iraq?

[proud2BlibKansan]

13. Let me know how that plan works for you!

:hi:

[dog_lovin_dem]

14. General Wesley Clark. nt.

[Tom Rinaldo]

20. Seeing as how Clark started a web site: StopIranWar.com and

seeing as how Clark has been warning us that current U.S. policy has had the U.S. on a collision course for war with Iran for nearly four years, yup General Clark should be high on this list.


This isn't one of Clark's earliest comments on the subject, he made it February 14 2006, but it is a good one:

Iraq: The Way Forward—A Conversation with General Wesley Clark

Council on Foreign Relations
Washington, DC
February 14, 2006

QUESTIONER: Reuben Brigety from George Mason University. General, thank you for coming.

Senator McCain has said that the only thing worse than a military strike on Iran is a nuclear-armed Iran. I wonder if you agree with that statement, and if you could offer your thoughts on viable options to prevent Iran from being nuclear armed.

CLARK: Well, the official policy of the United States for a long time has been that Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. And if you just connect the dots and you say, well, they have an implacable determination to get an nuclear weapon, and you say but under no circumstances can they have one, then there's only one possible outcome -- (chuckles) -- and it's a very unpleasant outcome.

I think that, first of all, we've had a lot of mistakes in dealing with Iran. What the administration's grand strategy actually resulted in was that if you believed in late 2001 that there was a significant proliferation problem -- risk -- and that your three greatest risks for proliferation were Iraq, Iran and North Korea, then the administration put all of its effort into the least significant problem, which has then caused us to defer and be distracted from necessary attention to the two greater problems of North Korea and Iran.

When I testified in front of Congress in 2002 and wrote articles -- I kept talking about Iran being a greater long-term threat because they clearly were embarked on a program then. And in 2001-2002, we were saying five to eight years for their nuclear weapons to come to -- now we -- I don't know what the intelligence says. And they're probably -- if we're honest, there's probably a lot of disputes in the intelligence community, whether it's now another five to eight years or till 2010 or maybe it's only a year. We don't know. But we've lost critical time in dealing with Iran.

I would encourage the United States leadership right now, this week, before March, before it goes to the United Nations Security Council, immediately to talk to the Iranian government. Iran has been a -- it's a great nation. It's 60, 70 million people with a tremendous heritage, and we've got a wonderful Iranian-American community. And the policy that we've pursued toward Iran for the last five to 10 years, no matter what the historical antecedents were or our anger at 1979 and the hostages, still, it's a policy that hasn't served American interests.

We should be doing business -- we should have been a long time ago doing business with the Iranian business community. We should have worked with them. We worked with East Europe when it was under communist domination, and it was one of the key factors that helped East Europe throw off an outmoded set of ideas. We need to be working in the Middle East to help their business communities move past old ideas.

So right now what we need to be doing is talking to Iran -- right now, this week.

http://securingamerica.com/node/607

The above statement is the last of many by Clark that I listed on a much longer post I made at DU quite a while ago. I was pointing out that Wes Clark at the time was the only leading Democrat pushing for face to face negotiations with Iran and how often he had called for it. Here is a link to that much longer list:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2565189&mesg_id=2566506

[INDIA]

16. Wait, I thought we were supposed to invade Iran before the 2004 elections...

And then about a dozen times after that.


It ain't gonna happen folks. I remember the ramp up to the Iraq war was FAR different than this imagined escalation.

[Octafish]

17. Larry Johnson

For the glory and good of the Chimpire.

[mmonk]

18. Iran has been on the table in some form or another.

Those who don't think so are deluding themselves. The current problem with it is a weakened military.

[SidDithers]

19. Can you please put the anticipated start date for the war...

next to each of these names. I mean, if these people are making predictions, then surely they've got some idea when it will start, right? How can we evaluate whether they're blowing paranoid smoke unless we've got some way to evaluate how accurate their predictions are? The date that these people made the predictions would be helpful too. You've used a "prediction" based on a 6 year-old quote in another one of your threads. What's the expiry date on an open-ended prediction, anyway?

I'll be the first to eat a big plate of crow if an attack on Iran ever does happen (though nobody will care, because the world will have much greater problems if Iran gets attacked). But, as I posted in another one of these chicken little threads, the breathless drum-beating around here is getting ridiculous.

Sid

[Tom Rinaldo]

21. You miss much of the point with your focus on date predictions

When Wes Clark has warned about the increasing liklihood of war with Iran that is how he frames it, as an increasing liklihood. Prior to the 2006 Mid term Elections Clark warned Democratic voters that he thought the chances of an attack on Iran by Spring of 2007 were at 60% IF Democrats did not manage to win control of at least one House of Congress during the mid-terms. Without a sound repudiation by voters and without any countervailing power in Washington or any meaningful congressional oversight Clark thought the Bush Administration would make a move. Clark warned that Cheney had been pushing hard for an attack on Iran while Rice had been the voice inside the Bush Administartion that had not yet signed off on the plan.

Wes Clark also had long documented the neocon plans for reshaping the entire Middle East by forcibly changing governments there, he discussed that in his 2002 book and warned some leading Democrats about that prior to the IWR vote. Saddam Hussein was long on the neocon hit list after the first Gulf War didn't take him out. The question was when would they get the opening they needed to attack Iraq, their intent was clear the timing wasn't. Wes Clark also points out that it is clear stated U.S. policy not to allow Iran to acquire nuclear technology that would allow them to build nuclear weapons. Since that is U.S. policy then we now are on that collision course. It is Clark's contention that the Bush Administration has set up diplomacy for failure by refusing to seriously pursue regional discussions inclusive of Iran. With the so called "failure of diplomacy", as with the Iraq invasion, the path is cleared for military action.

International speculation has centered on the debate being waged inside the Bush Administration by Cheney claiming that no future U.S. President can be counted on to have the resolve to do what needs to be done in the Middle East. The window of danger extends into late 2007 for Bush to pull the trigger.

[Tom Rinaldo]

23. The bottom line: Before Bush leaves office. More data...

Neoconservatives continue to work hard at laying the psychological groundwork with the American public justifying an attack on Iran. Here is one neocon commentary on ust that from last fall. Of course now we hear reports of how FOX news is about to be used toward this end:


"Operation Comeback

By Joshua Muravchik
Posted: Wednesday, November 1, 2006

TO: My Fellow Neoconservatives
FROM: Joshua Muravchik
RE: How to Save the Neocons

..."Prepare to Bomb Iran. Make no mistake, President Bush will need to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before leaving office. It is all but inconceivable that Iran will accept any peaceful inducements to abandon its drive for the bomb. Its rulers are religio-ideological fanatics who will not trade what they believe is their birthright to great power status for a mess of pottage. Even if things in Iraq get better, a nuclear-armed Iran will negate any progress there. Nothing will embolden terrorists and jihadists more than a nuclear-armed Iran.

The global thunder against Bush when he pulls the trigger will be deafening, and it will have many echoes at home. It will be an injection of steroids for organizations such as MoveOn.org. We need to pave the way intellectually now and be prepared to defend the action when it comes. In particular, we need to help people envision what the world would look like with a nuclear-armed Iran. Apart from the dangers of a direct attack on Israel or a suitcase bomb in Washington, it would mean the end of the global nonproliferation regime and the beginning of Iranian dominance in the Middle East."

Then there was this in the August 31, 2007 issue of the New Yorker:

August 31, 2007
Test Marketing
If there were a threat level on the possibility of war with Iran, it might have just gone up to orange. Barnett Rubin, the highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University, has written an account of a conversation with a friend who has connections to someone at a neoconservative institution in Washington. Rubin can’t confirm his friend’s story; neither can I. But it’s worth a heads-up:

They 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."
True? I don’t know. Plausible? Absolutely. It follows the pattern of the P.R. campaign that started around this time in 2002 and led to the Iraq war. The President’s rhetoric on Iran has been nothing short of bellicose lately, warning of "the shadow of a nuclear holocaust." And the Iranian government’s behavior—detaining British servicemen and arresting American passport holders, pushing ahead with uranium enrichment, and, by many reliable accounts, increasing its funding and training for anti-American militias in Iraq—seems intentionally provocative. Perhaps President Ahmedinejad and the mullahs feel that they win either way: they humiliate the superpower if it doesn’t take the bait, and they shore up their deeply unpopular regime at home if it does. Preëmptive war requires calculations (and, often, miscalculations) on two sides, not just one, as Saddam learned in 2003. When tensions are this high between two countries and powerful factions in both act as if hostilities are in their interest, war is likely to follow...

Postscript: Barnett Rubin just called me. His source spoke with a neocon think-tanker who corroborated the story of the propaganda campaign and had this to say about it: "I am a Republican. I am a conservative. But I’m not a raging lunatic. This is lunatic."

I urge folks to read the whole piece:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/georgepacker/2007/08/if-there-were-a.html

[SidDithers]

24. Perhaps if the OP had framed her post as a list of ...

those who beileve in an "increasing liklihood" of an attack on Iran, then I could agree with you. However, she didn't. She has explicitly listed these individuals as having made predictions of an attack on Iran (on more than a few occasions). I'm simply asking her to supply more information. My contention is that these predictions are useless unless they can be validated or invalidated. And since none of them can be invalidated, there's no point in posting them as predictions.

If the OP wants to subscribe to the Dionne Warwick school of foreign policy forecasting, bully for her.

Sid

[Tom Rinaldo]

25. I think I get your point and I think you get mine

That makes for a good resting point to our discussion. Thank you for clarifying.

[SidDithers]

27. Agreed.

:toast:

Sid

[Tom Rinaldo]

22. This was Wes Clark's most chilling warning

I heard and recorded him saying this while he was campaigning for Democrats in New Hampshire in October 2006. Clark was streesing the need for Democrats to retake Congress to reduce the chances of us waking up one day in the following spring to this scenario. So please note that Clark's comments were made prior to Democratic victories in November. This threat was countered but it has not been eliminated:

"I think that we're in a very dangerous position because not only is the clock ticking in North Korea, but the clock is ticking in Iran. The President has basically lined up his statements so that he can not live with the possibility of an Iranian nuclear weapon, and he has made a half hearted effort at diplomacy. We're not talking with Iran directly. He's made a half hearted effort at diplomacy, I believe, so that diplomacy will fail. And then, his plan is, sometime in the Spring of 2007, which is not so far away, he's going to come on Television, he's going to say:

'My fellow Americans. For 5 years we've watched the evil empire of Iran struggle to prepare nuclear weapons. Although our intelligence is not perfect, we have enough information to assure us that they're making progress.

As I told, and promised you, we will not allow the worst weapons to fall into the hands of the worst people. Iran is a state that supports Terrorists. For the good of humanity they can not be permitted to have nuclear weapons. We've asked our Allies to help, we've gone to the United Nations, we've asked the Iranians to forbear, nothing has worked. There is no option remaining, but to use America's military superiority to address this growing and gathering threat.

As I speak to you tonight, the first bombers are over Tehran. We will not falter, we will not fail, we will not be denied, and America will prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons.

Thank You my fellow Americans'

[leftchick]

26. Jim Lobe

he has been connecting these giants dots for us .....

http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=58

AEI to Roll Out “The Iranian Time Bomb” Sep 10

Just four days after the American Enterprise Institute will launch its September 6 “All or Nothing” campaign to save the Surge, it will debut “Freedom Scholar” Michael Ledeen’s forthcoming book, “The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction” (St. Martin’s Press), a rehash of neo-con arguments for “regime change” – by military force, if necessary – in Tehran. Judging by the excerpts that have been released to date, Ledeen’s latest tract will be entirely predictable, although, in addition to emphasizing, as he has for much of the last several years, the urgent need to support and fund the regime’s domestic opposition, he concludes that “his presidential administration or the next will likely face a terrible choice: appease a nuclear Iran, or bomb it before their atomic weapons are ready to go. While a sad exclamation point at the end of nearly thirty years of failed policy, confrontation may be virtually inescapable. Like other ideological wars of the twentieth century, this war will likely only end when one side has lost.”

Joining Ledeen at the afternoon panel will be former CIA director James Woolsey, the long-time Iran hawk who still believes Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda were tight and no doubt agrees with Ledeen’s analysis that Iran and al Qaeda have been even tighter, and – this is most interesting – ret. Gen. Jack Keane, one of the architects, along with Fred Kagan and other AEI scholars, of the Surge. Perhaps Keane is being brought in in order to echo the recent crescendo of charges regarding Iran’s alleged supply of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to Shi’a militias, but I will be interested to see whether he promotes the increasingly fashionable idea among hawks in and outside the administration in favor of cross-border raids into Iran, something that the Pentagon, I am told, is definitely against. Keane, of course, is regarded as close to Gen. David Petraeus, and whatever he says on the subject of Iran should be listened to closely for evidence if a widening split between the Joint Chiefs, on the one hand, and Petraeus, the neo-cons’ Caesar, on the other.

The chronological juxtaposition of the Surge panel September 6 and the roll-out of Ledeen’s book September 10 underlines the balance that AEI and other hawks (including the vice president’s office) are trying to achieve between their two top priorities at the moment – sustaining the Surge well into next year and rallying Congress and the public behind an attack on Iran before the end of Bush’s term, if by then “diplomacy” does not achieve the desired results of 1) freezing its nuclear program and/or 2) halting Tehran’s support for its Shi’a allies (including the Maliki government) in Iraq. To their dismay, they have been forced to spend far more time, effort, and, above all, ink, on defending the Surge over the past eight months than on laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran, although they are showing signs in recent days of trying hard to make up the difference. If it becomes clear by late September or early October that Democrats and uneasy Republicans will indeed acquiesce in the continuation of the Surge at least until next spring (when troop numbers will almost certainly have to be reduced anyway), I think it’s very likely we will see a much bigger focus by AEI and the neo-cons, as well as their allies within the administration, on Iran and the necessity of a military confrontation before Bush leaves.

[seemslikeadream]

28. Yep

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x1739811

[leftchick]

29. fuck!

and I mean Fuck!

:(

[bobthedrummer]

30. .

IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST

[alfredo]

31. Pat Buchanan spoke of it this morning. Wm Kristol wants it.