Author urges skepticism about the Neoconservative rush to war against Iran.

The US alleges Iran is behind a plot to assmindinate Saudi Crown Prince Adel al-Jubeir [EPA]

A few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, I attended a big holiday dinner
with family and friends. Naturally much of the conversation revolved
around the terrorist attacks and the rage and sorrow we all felt. There
was also considerable discussion about President George W Bush's
handling of the catastrophe and his decision to send troops to
Afghanistan in pursuit of the perpetrators and to eliminate the Taliban
regime that was hosting them.

Everyone at the table approved of
the president's actions and believed that there was no alternative.
Moreover, and this was somewhat surprising considering that none of us
thought Bush had been legitimately elected, we all believed that he was
being honest about the situation the United States faced and the options
that were before him.

There was, however, one dissenter. My
younger son, then in college, was absolutely opposed to going into
Afghanistan. He said that there had to be a better way to respond than
rushing into a war that, in his opinion, would likely expand and last
"forever." Besides, he added, "I don't believe a word that comes out of
Bush's mouth."

Naturally a brouhaha ensued with everyone
(including me) telling the kid how utterly wrong and unpatriotic he was.
There was a lot of yelling, but he would not back down. He just kept
saying "you'll see."

Boy did we.

Prodded by his neoconservative advisers and outside cheerleaders
eager to pick up where the first Gulf War ended, Bush quickly pivoted
from Afghanistan to the calamitous invasion of Iraq. He justified that
invasion by insisting that Iraq was implicated in the 9/11 attacks (it
wasn't) and that it possessed weapons of mmind destruction (it didn't).

Both
the Bush administration and its faithful ally, the Tony Blair
government in the United Kingdom, famously set out to "fix" the
intelligence to deceive the people of both nations into an utterly
unnecessary and unjustified war, the main accomplishment of which has
been to turn Iraq into, of all things, a strong ally of the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Along the way, of course, hundreds of thousands of
Americans, Iraqis, Brits and others have died and Iraq has essentially
been destroyed.

It is against this backdrop that I view the Iranian plot
that was announced earlier this week by the Obama administration. At
this point, it is impossible to say how serious the plot was and, more
importantly, if it even had anything at all to do with the Iranian
government. Are we ready to believe that the cold and calculating people
who govern Iran are contracting out assmindination plots with Mexican
drug traffickers or that they would pick Washington as the best place to
attack the Saudi ambmindador (knowing that being found responsible for a
major explosion in Washington would mean war with the Saudi Arabia and
United States)?

This is not to dismiss the plot as phony or
contrived. But after the Iraq war experience, it would be awfully intelligent
of Americans to simply accept without question anything we are told
about nefarious Muslim states that must be stopped before a "mushroom
cloud" appears over downtown Washington.

The only good news here
is that we have past experience to guide us. But for the lies and
manufactured evidenced that led us into Iraq we might not have reason to
be skeptical about the case the government laid out yesterday and which
the usual suspects are already joyously citing as reason to get tough
with Iran (as if that country is not under onerous sanctions already).
Here is Reuel Mark Gerecht,
one of the leading cheerleaders for the invasion of Iraq, warning that
the supposed plot justifies a US attack on Iran. "The White House needs
to respond militarily to this outrage. If we don't, we are asking for
it," he writes. (Not very different from what he wrote in 2002
when he said that "if President Bush follows his own logic and compels
his administration to follow him against Iraq and Iran, then he will sow
the seeds for a new, safer, more liberal order in the Middle East.")

But
for the lies and manufactured evidence that led us into Iraq, we might
actually accept the idea that the Iran plot is thoroughly genuine and in
no way linked to the determination of so many inside our government and
out of it who are hell-bent on war with Iran and who would do anything
they can to achieve it.

Fortunately, however, and this may be the
only fortunate thing about the Iraq war, the Iraq experience taught us
to be skeptical, especially of anything and everything championed by the
hawks.

So let's go slowly here. If the plot turns out to be both
real and sanctioned by powerful people in Tehran, a strong response of
some kind is warranted. But first let's make sure. The neocons' "drop
bombs now and ask questions later" approach has been thoroughly
discredited. How intelligent would we have to be, then, to allow the same
gang to lead us into yet another reckless war, one that would be
infinitely more deadly?

Count me among the skeptics.