Déjà Vu on Iran?

Here we go again. The clichés come frighteningly easy when one ponders the recent efforts of the hawks to gin up the case for military confrontation with Iran. The playbook is familiar: Pump up the threat, use the media as a conveyor and watch public opinion swing toward war.

A campaign of this sort has been under way for weeks. In late August the staff of the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee released a report on Iran that depicted it as a pressing strategic danger. Iran "probably" has a biological weapons program and "likely" has a chemical weapons research and development program, it said. More alarming, the report stated that Iran was definitely "seeking" nuclear weapons and enriching weapons-grade uranium. It conceded that US intelligence lacked crucial information on Iran's WMDs, but it warned intelligence analysts not to be wimps in reaching assessments about Iran's WMD capabilities and not to "shy away from provocative conclusions." That is, don't wait for hard-and-fast evidence before pronouncing Iran a nuclear threat.