Cheney's Secret Escalation Plan?

Joshua Partlow wrote in The Washington Post last month that Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner, the new U.S. military spokesman who is fresh from a stint at the White House, asserted that Iran's elite al-Quds Force was training Iraqi militiamen inside Iran -- at three camps near Tehran.

And there is evidence that Cheney is trying to undermine Rice's diplomatic efforts in the Middle East in favor of a more aggressive and militaristic approach. (See my June 4 column.)

Reports about Cheney's plans first surfaced on May 24 when Steve Clemons wrote in his influential blog, The Washington Note: "Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been . . . explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

"This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an 'end run strategy' around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument. . . .

"According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the 'right decision' when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.'"

Helene Cooper wrote in the New York Times on June 2 that "people who have spoken with Mr. Cheney's staff have confirmed the broad outlines of the reports."

Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball wrote for Newsweek on June 7: "A Newsweek investigation shows that Cheney's national-security team has been actively challenging Rice's Iran strategy in recent months."

Non-neoconservatives are generally in agreement that attacking Iran would be a disastrous move for the United States, potentially emboldening its enemies in Iran and elsewhere and increasing the risk of terror attacks.

But Cheney generally gets his way with this president. And that prospect worries even traditionally unflappable champions of bipartisanship. As I noted yesterday, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, recently wrote on the TPM Cafe Web site: "Here is my nightmare. The Cheneyites succeed in creating a situation in which Bush does decide to bomb Iran. Iran retaliates, as they openly threaten to do, with terrorist attacks against us on U.S. soil. That tilts the election."

How About Demanding Some Proof?

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For several months now, the Bush administration has been engaged in what appears to be a coordinated campaign to blame attacks on U.S. forces on Iran.

But as I wrote in my Feb. 12 column: "The administration finally unveiled its case this weekend, first in coordinated and anonymous leaks to a trusting New York Times reporter, then in an extraordinarily secretive military briefing at which no one would speak on the record, journalists weren't allowed to photograph the so-called evidence, and nothing even remotely like proof of direct Iranian government involvement was presented."

Since then, possibly the most dramatic charge against Iran has been that it was involved in planning a particularly deadly operation against U.S. forces in Karbala last January.