Krugman Warns About Hyping Iran Threat -- That His Own Paper Pushed

[banana republican]

NEW YORK In a Monday column for The New York Times, Paul Krugman warns of the dangers of hyping the use of weapons from Iran against U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- stories based on anonymous sources that his own paper had featured prominently on its front page and the top of its Web site all weekend.

A story by Michael Gordon suggested that the "deadliest weapon" used against Americans in Iraq now comes from Iran. On Sunday, the Times and other media closely covered a briefing in Baghdad offering some evidence -- given by three officials who were not named.

Excerpts from Krugman's column follows. The entire piece can be found online for subscribers at www.nytimes.com.

<snip>

This time, however, the assertions wouldn’t be about W.M.D.; they’d be that Iranian actions are endangering U.S. forces in Iraq. Why? Because there’s no way Congress will approve another war resolution. But if you can claim that Iran is doing evil in Iraq, you can assert that you don’t need authorization to attack — that Congress has already empowered the administration to do whatever is necessary to stabilize Iraq. And by the time the lawyers are finished arguing — well, the war would be in full swing.

Finally, you’d build up forces in the area, both to prepare for the strike and, if necessary, to provoke a casus belli. There’s precedent for the idea of provocation: in a January 2003 meeting with Prime Minister Tony Blair, The New York Times reported last year, President Bush “talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation, including a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire.”

In the end, Mr. Bush decided that he didn’t need a confrontation to start that particular war. But war with Iran is a harder sell, so sending several aircraft carrier groups into the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf, where a Gulf of Tonkin-type incident could all too easily happen, might be just the thing....


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