The latest signal came from George Bush, warning of a “nuclear holocaust” if Iran gets The Bomb (despite an IAEA report that Iran isn’t as much of a threat as Bush claims). There can’t be any more provocative words than “nuclear holocaust” to justify the purported prevention of one. Nor can there be any doubt that, with such freighted language, combined with the accusation that Iran is arming insurgents and terrorists in Iraq and that a substantial portion of its army is a terrorist organization, the propaganda campaign to soften us up for The Announcement is accelerating or that an attack, whether it actually happens or not, is solidly in the works.

The New York Times headline put it mildly, not even mentioning Iran. The Guardian was somewhat less reserved. Even less so is Gareth Porter, who homes in on Dick Cheney and Joseph Lieberman as being behind the push for war with Iran.

Much of the new attention to the propaganda project is due to this August 9th story in McClatchy, one of the few heroes of mainstream media for its insightful reporting (that is, professional journalism) in the weeks leading up to the Iraq War.

Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy…Cheney, who’s long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran’s complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

The press and blog warnings about a coming attack on Iran have been around for quite awhile, but the news is heating up drastically. Raw Story latched onto this report by a pair of University of London professors. It’s a scary thing, and has been unreported in mainstream media. Its central finding:

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran’s actions.

The desire of many Bush administration co-conspirators to destroy Iran has been in evidence for years now. Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article exposed Bush’s order for an attack on Iran after his 2004 re-election. In 2006 William Arkin imagined it in Newsweek. And on August 18 of this year former CIA field officer Robert Baer wrote in Time magazine that he thinks an attack is coming within six months.

An Administration official told me it’s not even a consideration. “IRGC IED’s are a casus belli for this Administration. There will be an attack on Iran.”

It’s Juan Cole who pins the propaganda campaign down with this August 30th tidbit, a couple of times removed from the source, but then Cole is pretty reliable:

Barnett Rubin relays a message from a well-connected friend in Washington on the Cheney Administration’s plans to roll out a military confrontation with Iran in September. He writes at the Global Affairs blog:

” My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this–they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

Of course I cannot verify this report. But besides all the other pieces of information about this circulating, I heard last week from a former U.S. government contractor. According to this friend, someone in the Department of Defense called, asking for cost estimates for a model for reconstruction in Asia. The former contractor finally concluded that the model was intended for Iran.”

Following the link in that quote takes you to a frightening comparison of the remarkable similarities between the propaganda for war with Iraq and what is happening now regarding Iran.

One of the “usual suspects” is evidently already on board. Fox News, which had already interviewed Baer on August 21, had John Bolton on August 22 saying how happy Baer’s prediction makes him:

[Fox propagandist] HEMMER: One final step here, too, that I want to take with you. You told one of our producers earlier today that you don’t know if it’s true — and you’ve made that clear in our interview here, that you don’t know what the odds are or are not against that — but you hope it’s true. Why do you hope it’s true?

BOLTON: Absolutely. I hope Iran understands that we are very serious, that we are determined they are not going to get a nuclear weapon capability, and unless they change the strategic decision they’ve been pursuing for close to 20 years, that that’s something they better factor into their calculations.

Watch it if you can stand to look at the guy.

Fox News is doing the same number on Iran as it did on Iraq. I imagine CNN and MSNBC are being courted, too, if not already compromised. The ever-gullible-despite-fervent-promises-not-to-be New York Times has been playing along with its stories of the Iranian connection to IEDs. Michael Gordon is the new Judith Miller.

There’s even a propaganda script to follow for the uninitiated and those journalists incurious about being pimped:

The first principle in manufacturing propaganda for the U.S. war party is to take it as a given that the United States has the legal and moral right to take the lead in making a case that the international community must act-here to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

The second principle, paralleling the U.S. right to do as it pleases, is the absence of the target’s right even to defend itself.

A third principle is inflating the menace that would follow from Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons.

Ironies abound in this whole scenario dating back to Napoleon; Cole has described the similarities between the Little Emperor and Little King George.

Another irony, should it happen, might be this. Skeptical? Read this.

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