El Justo Reclamo

Seymour Hersh: White House Intensifying Plans to Attack

Democracy now!

In his latest article in the New Yorker magazine, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports there has been a significant increase in the tempo of planning for war with Iran inside the Bush administration. Hersh says the White House recently requested the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw longstanding plans for a possible attack. Hersh also reports the Bush administration's rationale for bombing Iran has shifted from Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program to Iran's role in Iraq. [includes rush transcript]
The Bush administration is approaching its last year in the White House. As the clock ticks towards 2008, speculation grows over whether President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will indeed launch a widely feared attack on Iran.
The latest report from the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says war planning is intensifying. Writing in the New Yorker, Hersh reveals that the White House recently requested the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw longstanding plans for a possible attack. According to Hersh, the Bush administration's rationale for bombing Iran has shifted from Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program to Iran's role in Iraq. Hersh writes: "What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism."
The focus is no longer a broad bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities but strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere. On Sunday, John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, called for the US to attack Iran and overthrow of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Bolton said: "If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back."
Seymour Hersh, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for the New Yorker. Read Hersh's article "Shifting Targets".