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:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to
trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don't we
build - we in our shipyard - build four or five boats that look like
Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next
time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can't have
Americans killing Americans. That's the kind of - that's the level of
stuff we're talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
Watch it:
Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned
during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, "if you get the
right incident, the American public will support" it.
"Look, is it high school? Yeah," Hersh said. "Are we playing high
school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we
are. We're playing, you know, who's the first guy to run off the
highway with us and Iran."
Transcript:
HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected
- which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it
wasn't accepted - one of the items was why not...
There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The
one that interested me the most was why don't we build - we in our
shipyard - build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats.
Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our
boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some
lives.
And it was rejected because you can't have Americans killing
Americans. That's the kind of - that's the level of stuff we're talking
about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was
rejected - uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they're mice
training to be rats.
But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe.
But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in
the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident,
the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we're
into it.
...What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January,
the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So
that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.
Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you
know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We're playing,
you know, who's the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.
