UMD Libertarians

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:

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.

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…

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.

Update: Kevin Drum adds:

If this story sounds familiar, that’s because it is. In one of David Manning’s famous memos describing a prewar meeting between George Bush and Tony Blair, he says that Bush admitted that WMD was unlikely to be found in Iraq and then mused on some possible options for justifying a war anyway:

"The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."

In the end, of course, we didn’t do this. We just didn’t bother with any pretext at all.

Now I don’t discount the possibility that Hersh has gone insane. If you don’t know who he is, though:

You notice bush isn’t mentioned personally at all in the main article?

this meeting takes place in cheney’s office.

Hence "cheney administration". (which I only use when it’s a situation like this where he’s really holding the reigns)

Bush was probably talking to jesus or playing videogames.
i don’t think this is out of the question for the current administration, but, make this thread again when a legitimate news source prints this

Hersh IS a legitimate news source (or he’s made himself illegitimate with this one)

so his first choice for exclusive, 100% true story was the think progress blog

like i said, this is totally believable, i just wonder why thinkprogress.org is the only one covering it

Did you read the article or just skim it?

kind of like how we were planning to nuke iran in 2006, right?
i read your post, the link looked to be the same as what you posted

Then let me slowly repeat the information in the article that would have answered your questions.

1) This wasn’t revealed TO thinkprogress, it was discussed at a conference and thinkprogress is reporting on that.

2) It was edited out of his piece in the new yorker because they rejected the plan instead of accepting it.
I swear, you clowns that attack things merely because they come from huffpo or thinkprogress don’t know anything about actual journalism or critical thinking.

i didn’t attack it, i said first thing it seems like something they would do, i was just skeptical. your later post….

I’m just saying I shouldn’t have had to make any of these posts explaining any of this stuff or had to include the biography of seymour hersh. It’s all right there or easily accessible to someone that actually wants to know the answer instead of just look for a pretense to attack.

Maybe that wasn’t your intention, but you know what I’m talking about and I deal with it day in and out from the clowns in this forum.
i don’t want to know "the answer" im sure it is worse than any of us could have imagined. i’m content to think the bush (cheney) administration are just a bunch of dick frat guys who want to make their friends rich at taxpayer expense

What are you saying?

The biggest clown in this forum that keeps asking for already provided information and asks people to explain things over and over again is you.

In my opinion, this article is pretty disturbing. I suppose because I do not doubt that Cheney is capable of this.

Let’s say Hersh is correct. Could he be punished for talking about private top secret meetings? He probably wouldnt be punished though, since they would have to admit to considering these terrible plans.

I’m saying that people (like you) ask questions that are answered in the article, or could be found simply by doing the world’s most basic research. (For example clicking a relevant link in the article, which links to explanatory information or the original source).

They ask these questions not out of genuine curiosity but simply as a way to attack what they don’t like when they have nothing to say about the actual content. (I.E. "Is thinkprogress the best you can do for this story?")

Like me? or like you. Find a thread where I do that? Find one thread. I bet you cant, because I have never done that.

my apologies. Then it must be other people who are similar to you but not you that do it. I don’t care.

I mislabeled fuzzybunny once…
It wouldn’t start a war or else we would have already been in one back in 1988 when the US and Iran were involved in the biggest naval battle since WW2. We ended sinking 5 of their ships.
an honest question to think about. What would the american people do if the government was open and honest with everything that did not effect nation defense ( meaning there not going to go on news and explain how there about to bomb some nation ) ibamericanpplflipshit
Historians are going to have a field day with the the last eight years

yes
if they can find documents that haven’t been severely redacted

Thankfully the Freedom of Information Act, while not perfect, does work a lot of the time.
ok…

1) How does Hersh get access to a meeting of this importance? Seriously…since when would the Bush/Cheney administration ever want that kind of person to sit in on this?

2) How the fuck is Iran going to be provoked if we launch an attack on FAKE patrol boats (that wouldn’t be listed as active duty in Iran) and not have any casualties considering we’d be attacking American soldiers? Are you seriously trying to say that this is a legitimate article and statement?

1) Hersh likely talked to someone else that was there. Secretaries and minor officials leak shit they think is wrong all the time.

2) Why do we need Iran to be provoked? We just need support for dropping bombs on them. That’ll provoke them plenty.

And how is this support for dropping bombs on Iran? We attack Americans, Iran releases a statement going ‘lol we werent attacked silly americans’ and we bomb them? Wtf.

Iran releases a statement "we did not attack your ship"

US government says "Our ships were attacked, we’re going to defend our troops, we can’t stand for this, iran will pay"

Who does the US populace believe?

lol that wasnt the proposed plan though. and unless there was undeniable proof, the american public would probably staunchly oppose it until there was proof.

the plan was to fake an attack on our troops by iranians as a pretext to declaring war on them

the american public was on the border of supprting war on iran when their speedboats were dropping boxes
latest rasmussen poll shows more americans trust iran than their own government
that would be a great idea to start a war. too bad it’s 100% bullshit.

This is exactly how we started the Spanish-American war

didn’t Ron Paul fight there?

nah he was already in his 30’s

Teddy Roosevelt didn’t lead the charge up San Juan Hill, Ron Paul did

notrly. the maine sunk because of an accidental engine fire; we didn’t do it on purpose to start the war (though we did hype it up and issue misleading statements about the culprit)

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