The title of this blog post is from the following Cato Institute posting:
The post examines the current push for war with Iran and compares the charges we’re hearing now to the charges in 2002 against Iraq:
The curious thing about the case against Iran, however, is that hawks have created this perception without providing so much as a Powell-at-the-UN-style dossier of evidence. Although administration officials have parroted claims against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for months, the charges are wholly based on inferential and nonspecific evidence that pales in comparison even to the trumped-up charges leveled against Iraq in 2002 and 2003.
An example of the “evidence” they are referring to is mentioned in the entry:
Emblematic of the selective reasoning in the Kagan report is one anecdote its author recounts. In describing a suspicious attack that killed five U.S. servicemen at an Iraqi base in Karbala in January, Kagan devotes two paragraphs to quoting a statement from Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner that pointed out that the Iraqi suspects captured in connection with the attacks had implicated the Quds Force of the IRGC. What Kagan does not point out, although she cites the Time article that reported the information, is that the formal U.S. investigation into the attacks implicated the very Iraqi police with whom the American servicemen were embedded—not Tehran. According to Time, “the U.S.’s initial probe of the incident found no evidence of direct Iranian involvement. Instead, the picture that emerged cast suspicion chiefly on senior Iraqi officials known to the Americans, as well as local thugs and associates of [Moqtada] al-Sadr.”
My fellow Americans, I urge you to heed the words of the President when he said “Fool me once … Won’t be fooled again.” Let’s not go down the path of war under flimsy pretenses again. Particularly at a time when every single one of our Army division is either in Iraq, preparing to go there or getting ready to come home. We started Iraq without finishing Afghanistan and we’re paying many prices for that. Let’s not start yet another war we don’t have to without ending our occupation of Iraq and transforming our presence into a purely advisory/reconstructive one.
