Note to Obama and Edwards: Step-Up on Iran

Note to Obama and Edwards: Step-Up on Iran
by Mike Gravel

I’m glad to see John Edwards and Barack Obama have finally begun to upbraid Hillary Clinton for going along with Bush’s impending attack on Iran. We presidential candidates must keep raising this story because the mainstream media is not doing its job, once again. Two weeks ago, Seymour Hersh exposed the Pentagon’s plans to attack Iran, but the MSM failed to follow up with a sustained inquiry. We presidential candidates must pick up the slack and constantly alert the American public that Bush, Clinton and the go-along Congressional Dems are leading us into another disastrous war.

Despite what Hillary claims, Congress gave Bush the green light to attack Iran when they labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRG) a terrorist organization. Bush can now attack the IRG as a counter-terrorism measure. All he needs is a “Gulf of Tonkin incident” in Iraq that can be tied to the IRG, and he will begin bombing IRG facilities in Iran. Of course Bush will disregard Hillary’s resolution demanding he check with Congress before attacking Iran. No president since James Polk has felt the need to check with Congress before “defending” American troops.

What makes Hillary believe a congressional resolution will prevent Bush from doing anything? A war on Iran has been a neocon dream for decades and Bush sees himself as a modern-day messiah ridding the world of evil-doers. Throughout his presidency, Bush has consistently disregarded checks and balances. He defied a Supreme Court decision banning torture simply by ordering his Justice Department to secretly issue a go-ahead. (The MSM also dropped this story.)

After Bush launches the planned strikes on the IRG, Iran will hit our naval forces in the Persian Gulf and our troops in Iraq. Within an afternoon, we will be at war. Bush might later ask our rubberstamp Congress for a show of support. But by then any opposition will be moot. The Iranian navy will cut the oil supply of the European economies and a worldwide depression will hit American markets. Other regional powers, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, might be drawn into the war. Within weeks tens of thousands will be dead and that’s only the beginning.

We presidential candidates must do our best to avoid this tragedy by bringing it up constantly. And it’s not enough for my fellow candidates just to challenge Bush and Hillary out on the stump. They must join me in challenging her directly during the debates.

If we immediately and consistently inform the American public what their government is up to, I believe we have a shot at stopping this war. Without any sort of public outcry, we are most certainly heading for disaster.

–Senator Mike Gravel