What's Next in Bush's Game of Risk?

Just hours after George W. Bush issued a speech in which he delivered a thinly veiled threat to Iraq's border countries, Iran and Syria, a U.S. led invasion on an Iranian consulate building in Iraq commenced. Legal documents and computers were seized and 5 Iranian diplomats were arrested. Reasons cited by U.S. officials were that the diplomats were involved in providing assistance to insurgents. However, Iraqi sources argue that the charges are false, that the men had held their positions for the last ten years and that the U.S. gave no warning to Iraq that such operations were to take place.

With many Middle Eastern politicos crying foul and that this was an illegal act, the argument could be made that the U.S. has already launched an attack on Iran. In fact, U.S. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, announced in 2005 that the Bush administration had already begun proceedings to do so. Shortly thereafter, we began hearing about the frightening possibility of Iran seeking nuclear weapons. Sound familiar? According to Ritter, the war in Iraq had begun in 2002, much earlier than the March 2003 invasion that was so widely publicized. When no weapons of mass destruction were discovered in Iraq (as Ritter and David Kay had stated would be the case), it was largely hypothesized that they had been moved to Syria. I guess in this manner, we get a two-fer.

With the "surge" of another 21,500 troops promised by Bush, one has to ask if this is either prudent or effective. We have men and women already mentally and physically exhausted by what are, for some, multiple tours of duty. We will also be pulling troops from Afghanistan where we have been told that the man responsible for an actual attack on the U.S., Osama bin Laden, is still residing. And let's not forget the recent attack in Somalia. All the while our allies have begun pulling their troops out of Iraq if they hadn't already done so.

How long can we continue to close our eyes to the lunacy that is before us? Have we really not learned from what history showed us such a short time ago when a man with the overwhelming desire for global domination nearly brought down the world? Yes, the victors write the history books. Who will be there to tell the story this time?

For more information please see:

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2145136.ece
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2781522
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/

And to read the article by Scott Ritter:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0620-31.htm