Isolate & Devastate - Post-911 Speak

The Downing Street memo showed that the U.S.'s decision to attack Iraq preceded establishment of a rationale to pretext the attack. The decision to go to war came first. The reason to justify it to the public came a distant second.

One suggestion put forward by top Bush administration officials for pretexting the attack was to demand inspections in Iraq, a request the administration could reasonably expect to be met with Iraqi intransigency. Diligently exploited by way of the UN, such a refusal of inspections would provide pretext aplenty for the administration to set in legitimized motion what already was a done deal - namely the decision to invade Iraq.

The same machinations that devised and expolited the Iraqi pretexting gambit are once again maturely in play for Iran.

By self-lauding the decision to consider sitting down with the Iranian government as perhaps the biggest foreign policy shift of Bush's presidency, the administration is craftily setting the stage for a dénouement of grand disappointment accompanied by the tears of professional wailers, one certain to be sufficiently moving to convince the domestic population that the administration has indeed gone that extra mile only to be met by unrepentant Iranian rebuke. Bolton is already perched in the wings ready to deliver the legitimacy of a U.N. resolution of isolation.

Whereas once isolation entailed a pleothora of punitive economic sanctions against a nation, in the post-911 vocabulary it will in convenient time be claimed by the administration to mean permission and legitimacy to attack Iran.

Condoleeza Rice used the ambidextrous term isolation 3 times in her press conference yesterday. It's a great word. Whereas few if any nation is now prepared to publicly condone U.S. military action against Iran, many have been armwrestled into a position where they are prepared to publicly support a resolution that isolates Iran.

With the magic of post-911 speak, Condoleeza Rice's isolate has just provided an avenue for tacit support of a military attack against Iran. The word isolate supplies plausible deniability from complicity in the U.S's pending attack for those that will nonetheless legitimize it by signing onto any resolution benignly condoning isolation. All the administration must do now is pace through the set choreography of a hyped negotiation designed from scratch to fail. Everything else, including Bolton and the Nimitz, is in ready and pouncing alert - while the Media continues to diligently play the role we've so come to rely on to make these games fly.

Iran is on, and on soon!