Wag the dog: We’ve seen this before

In 1939, Hitler out­fit­ted sev­er­al of his SS troops and a num­ber of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in Polish mil­i­tary uni­forms and had them stage an attack on a German out­post just on the German side of the Polish bor­der.  No Germans were killed in the attack, but the pris­on­ers were left dead at the site and pre­sent­ed as proof that the Poles had vio­lat­ed German ter­ri­to­ry with a mil­i­tary incursion. 

This was the basis for a dec­la­ra­tion of war, and German forces blitzed across the Polish bor­der on September 1.  Two days lat­er, Britain declared war on Germany as its pledge to defend Poland against aggres­sion, and World War II was offi­cial­ly under­way.  This duplic­i­ty was not revealed or believed until much later.

In 2003, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion fab­ri­cat­ed and cher­ry-picked intel­li­gence mate­r­i­al to present to the American pub­lic that Iraq was har­bor­ing “weapons of mass destruc­tion.” The CIA worked for sev­er­al months to try to per­suade the admin­is­tra­tion, the press, Congress, and the American pub­lic that no such weapons exist­ed in Iraq.  A large part of the fab­ri­ca­tion rest­ed on non-exis­tent yel­low­cake (ura­ni­um ore) that had alleged­ly been pur­chased from Niger and on a large ship­ment of alu­minum tubes which were pur­port­ed to be for the refine­ment of ura­ni­um into weapons-grade mate­r­i­al.  No evi­dence exist­ed to sup­port a ship­ment of ura­ni­um ore to Iraq, and the alu­minum tubes were revealed to be unsuit­able for the alleged use.

Still, most of the American press and Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, were com­plete­ly duped.  Even Colin Powell, then ambas­sador to the UN, was hood­winked and made a case before Congress for inva­sion. Bush was giv­en the green light to invade Iraq.

Only after Iraq was dec­i­mat­ed and Saddam Hussein cap­tured was it con­firmed that there were no weapons of mass destruc­tion in Iraq, and that none had ever exist­ed.  Newspapers, includ­ing the New York Times, lat­er apol­o­gized to their read­ers for not doing due dili­gence in dis­cov­er­ing facts.  The heady days that saw the pub­li­ca­tion of The Pentagon Papers had passed.

Enter 2025. 

After a year of pum­mel­ing Gaza and killing some 30,000 Palestinians, Israel turned its sights east­ward and launched mis­siles and drones into near­by Iran, destroy­ing numer­ous mil­i­tary tar­gets and, accord­ing to Israeli sources, large­ly destroy­ing Iran’s air force.  This pre­cip­i­tat­ed mutu­al rock­et and drone attacks between the two countries. 

It is impor­tant to note that Israel tar­get­ed Iran’s air defense capa­bil­i­ty because ear­ly on June 22, US air­craft dropped 14 “bunker buster” bombs on alleged Iranian nuclear facil­i­ties.  According to the brief­ing fol­low­ing the attack, the Iranians launched no air defense against the American bombers.  It is near­ly impos­si­ble to believe that this oper­a­tion was not planned months in advance. 

American bombers flew across the Atlantic, American naval forces were already deployed in the region, and any poten­tial air defense had already been ren­dered inef­fec­tive by ear­li­er Israeli attacks. All this rea­son­ably sug­gests that coör­di­na­tion (col­lu­sion?) between the US and Israel had been under­way for a sub­stan­tial peri­od. And that President Trump’s day-before-the-attack state­ment that he would decide on any actions against Iran with­in a cou­ple of weeks was sim­ply a ploy to con­ceal the fact that he had already autho­rized that action, that the plan­ning was com­plete, and that the action was imminent.

President Trump has been played by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and sucked into a poten­tial con­flict that will inflame the mid­dle east.

There is a debate over whether the President act­ed legal­ly under the War Powers Act of 1973, an act designed to allow the President to act uni­lat­er­al­ly under cer­tain con­di­tions of immi­nent peril.

The War Powers Act, H.J. Res 542, a one-page doc­u­ment, in Section 2(c) states: The con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to intro­duce United States Armed Forces into hos­til­i­ties, or into sit­u­a­tion where immi­nent involve­ment in hos­til­i­ties is clear­ly indi­cat­ed by the cir­cum­stances, are exer­cised only pur­suant to (1) a dec­la­ra­tion of war, (2) spe­cif­ic statu­to­ry autho­riza­tion, or (3) a nation­al emer­gency cre­at­ed by attack upon the United States, its ter­ri­to­ries or pos­ses­sions, or its armed forces.

The first two sce­nar­ios did not exist pri­or to the U.S. bomb­ing of Iran, and any reliance on the third one does not apply because no attacks had been ini­ti­at­ed against the U.S. by Iran.

Maybe the com­ing days or weeks will reveal that Iran was, in fact, in the process of refin­ing nuclear fuel toward the pur­pose of cre­at­ing a nuclear weapon, and we will even­tu­al­ly know, prob­a­bly, whether the strikes against those Iranian facil­i­ties were a total suc­cess as pro­claimed by the President.  But it is also pos­si­ble that, as in 2003, we will again dis­cov­er that flim­sy, false, and fab­ri­cat­ed data was pro­vid­ed to sup­port ille­gal mil­i­tary action that will, again, reveal this coun­try as one which relies on the pro­pa­gan­da of its lead­ers to embroil it in unnec­es­sary wars and con­flicts abroad, this time in sup­port of a rogue nation which is con­stant­ly in con­flict with its neigh­bors, a con­flict for the pur­pos­es of keep­ing a war-mon­ger­ing admin­is­tra­tion in power.

And it is also pos­si­ble that the President has used this mil­i­tary exer­cise to draw atten­tion away from his ille­gal actions against immi­grants, the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, and pro­test­ers here in our own country.