Hersh: VP Cheney Heard Proposal Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War?

EXCLUSIVE: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal To Dress Up Navy Seals As Iranians And Shoot At Them»
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/31/cheney-proposal-for-iran-war/

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

This seems too crazy to believe ... if it referred to any other administration. Nixon and W - reality is far more frightening than fiction.

We're going to Mars, bitches!

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

No, this seems just too crazy to believe. Period. I think Seymour Hersh has been watching too many movies.

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

Right. Because this has never happened before in American history. Spanish-American War. Gulf of Tonkin.

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

Yellow Cake.
Pat Tillman.
Secret foreign prisons.
Signing statements.

Shall I continue?

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War


Unthinkable?
From ABC News report March 1993. I don't think the link exists anymore. Here's a summary.

Were Neo-Conservatives’ 1998 Memos a Blueprint for Iraq War?

March 10 — Years before George W. Bush entered the White House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the direction of his presidency, a group of influential neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power.

The group, the Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, was founded in 1997. Among its supporters were three Republican former officials who were sitting out the Democratic presidency of Bill Clinton: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz.
In open letters to Clinton and GOP congressional leaders the next year, the group called for "the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power" and a shift toward a more assertive U.S. policy in the Middle East, including the use of force if necessary to unseat Saddam.

And in a report just before the 2000 election that would bring Bush to power, the group predicted that the shift would come about slowly, unless there were "some catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor."

That event came on Sept. 11, 2001. By that time, Cheney was vice president, Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, and Wolfowitz his deputy at the Pentagon.

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

Yup. Real crazy. Never heard of before.

http://abcnews.go.com/us/Story?id=92662&page=1

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

that's all well and good. None of it equals what Seymour Hersh is alleging.

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

If you're willing to lie about the death of a high-profile soldier, I wouldn't put anything past this group of bait and switchers.

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

hell - we actually had a debate about TORTURE and lost.
domestic spying
Terry Schiavo
US backed indentured servitude in Saipan
politicizing the justice system.

I'm truly surprised they didn't plant weapons in Iraq to justify the war.

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

The prevailing regime has played the "end justifies the means" game harder than any set of executives in U. S. history.

Cheney's recent record vis a vis veracity is beyond dubious.

Would you buy a used war from this man?

 

Re: Hersh: VP Cheney Proposed Staging Incident to Provoke Iran War

they don't need a reason to go to war with Iran if Israel will do it for them