For one hot minute, try to tear yourself away from the admittedly fascinating news that Iran has just made porn punishable by death.  “Corruptors of the world,” consider yourself warned.  (And Alberto Gonzales, consider yourself to have a like-minded new country to work in after you get impeached here!).

I don’t think even the Bush “Freedom Agenda” would allow for us to pursue regime change or drop tactical nukes in the name of oppressed Persian pornstars, but I do think the Bush Administration is trial-ballooning all sorts of justifications for doing something very bad to Iran. 

First they tried the accusation that Iran is attacking Americans in Iraq.  Why didn’t that one stick?  Ask yourself this -- do you think that Iraq would suddenly become a safe and welcoming place for Americans if the Iranians changed their cross-border behavior?  Right.  You see the problem (unless you’re a member of the Cheney or Lieberman families).  It’s like telling a dead cat he has fleas -- OK, fine maybe he does, but if you took the fleas away, he’d still be dead.  If you took away Iranian cross-border support for Shiite fighters, Iraq is still a fuckmare for Americans, let alone Iraqis.

So Americans being attacked by Iranians in Iraq isn’t resonating enough as a justification for attacking Iran.  Next up? The accusation that Iran is attacking Americans in Afghanistan. Here was US undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns, making the accusation on CNN this week:

“There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it's a pattern of activity... It's certainly coming from the government of Iran.”

Irrefutable evidence!  Woohoo!  Now we’re getting serious.  None of this vague namby-pamby smoking-gun mushroom-cloud hair-trigger deadly-stockpiles mixed-metaphor nonsense like we had on Iraq -- these guys have learned their war-selling lesson, and now they’re going to give us straight-up irrefutable evidence!  Hit it, boys!

“There have been indications over the past few months of weapons coming in from Iran. We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling or exactly what's behind this”
-- June 5th: Defense Secretary Bob Gates

“When you say weapons being provided by Iran[,] that would suggest there is some more formal entity involved in getting those weapons here... That's not my view at all... I just have no information to support that there's anything formal in some arrangement out of Iran to provide weapons here."
-- June 5th: NATO Commander in Afghanistan, US General Dan McNeill

"McCormack said he could not draw a 'hard link... between an Iranian government approved program and the transfer of ... arms [into Afghanistan]'."
-- June 13th: State Department spokesman Sean McCormack

"Commenting on potential Iranian government involvement in the arms flow, Mr. Gates said, 'I haven’t seen any intelligence specifically to this effect'...”
-- June 13th: Defense Secretary Bob Gates

Hey now, if this is going to be the way you guys sell us GulfWar3.0, maybe you guys ought to huddle ahead of time and make sure you’re all telling the same story, OK?  It’s “irrefutable evidence” you guys!  Get with the program!

Rachel