On Saturday, the London Telegraph reported that "British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the U.S.-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from Gen. David Petraeus about Iran's intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a U.S. attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment."

The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Dick Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the U.S. governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress today and tomorrow with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that "the U.S. must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq."

Don't expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3, the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies, totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: "Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."

All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with it in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the United States from the nightmare.

Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki U.S. puppet government in Iraq: "Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq, and the new situation is the result of Iran's efforts."

Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Ryan Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim's report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting.

The absurdity of Crocker's claim is obvious, as even the neocon U.S.

media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the United States and Nouri al-Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi'ite al-Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on al-Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the U.S. supply line from Kuwait in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.

Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter U.S. helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the United States.

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to "finish the job" in the Middle East.

"Finishing the job" means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank, along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what "the war on terror" is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the United States and Israel are essentially isolated. The United States can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Putin said: "No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent."

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush regime wants.

Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the London Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit U.S. Congress today and tomorrow. On the other hand, the U.S. puppet media are likely to bury the real story and to trumpet Petraeus' claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the United States by sending weapons to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.

By Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the U.S. Congress and media whether the Bush regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.

To find out more about Paul Craig Roberts, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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