A former Army intelligence and public affairs officer, Captain May, delves into the dark issue of whether the Bush admininstration has already planned its October surprise in the form of a war with Iran -- and whether the American Establishment is going along with the idea.

Is War with Iran the October Surprise?

By Captain Eric H. May

Polls as Prologue

According to current polls, if the mid-term elections were held today, President George W. Bush and his Republican Party would lose badly. He would then face an opposition Congress in 2007, one bound and determined to reassert its oversight duties. Investigations, an inevitability, could easily lead to his impeachment, and in that event the two-thirds of the United States who don't trust him could ask troubling questions about his presidency, all the way back to the still-murky events of 9/11.

If they're up to their duty, a new Congress could impeach him as a man who was brought to power by a war cabal for the sole purpose of starting a war in the Middle East. They could say that his allegiances are not -- and never were -- to the American People. Rather, he has been bought and paid for by the Oil Lobby, the Military-Industrial Lobby and the Israel Lobby.

An American Armada

As I write, the U.S. Navy's Second Fleet has dispatched the aircraft carrier Eisenhower, attended by a strike group of subordinate ships, from its Norfolk home to the Persian Gulf, where it is due to arrive on Oct. 21. The strike group will link up with other pre-positioned military assets, and could easily start a war with Iran, making it part of the ultimate October Surprise.

Officers from the Eisenhower have reached out to the government, military and media ever since the orders came, protesting that they don't want to be used to initiate a war with Iran. They assert that this is against their service oath to the Constitution, which clearly states that only the Congress -- not the president -- can start a war. Their distress signal has reached official circles, thanks to a September article by The Nation magazine. It's a confirmation of a New Yorker story in the spring, by Seymour Hersh, alleging that the Pentagon was then putting the brakes on a Bush administration itching for a war with Iran.

Congress pretends not to notice what is happening, though, either too scared, too involved or too implicated to do its duty. It shamelessly gave away its authorization to an Iraq War in 2002, six months before Bush began the attack, and hasn't said a word against what may be the preparation for an Iran War in 2006. It's been many months since I've heard Congress say it doesn't think Bush has the right to start a new war -- and that means it thinks he does.

False Flags and False Friends

A false flag attack is one in which you or your war partners attack your own forces while pretending to be someone else -- then blame it on that someone else. As a lifelong soldier and military historian, it seems quite possible to me a false flag attack on a U.S. ship in the Persian Gulf could be planned to alter the upcoming U.S. elections. The war would be blamed on Iran, of course.

The U.S. has often gone to war after Navy incidents that were dubious at best, and false flag at worst. The Spanish-American War began after the U.S.S. Maine conveniently blew up as it lay anchored in Havana Harbor, where a jingoistic U.S. government had sent it as a provocation to a senile Spain that was trying to put down a Cuban revolution. Our government immediately called the explosion an attack, and blamed it on Spain, against whom we afterward declared a patriotic imperial war. Decades later we admitted to Spain that we knew they had not attacked us. The explosion was officially called an "accident" -- but just how accidental was it?

More and more evidence says that in the months before World War II, the Navy and White House worked together to allow the Pearl Harbor attack their own officers saw coming, the better to rouse the public for what was to come. Have the same powerful officials decided that a Persian Gulf Pearl Harbor is what we must suffer to start World War III?

If we don't want to do the unsavory job of a performing a false flag attack on ourselves, we can always count on Israel to do anything necessary to keep us fighting against their Middle Eastern enemies. In 1967, they launched an unsuccessful day-long assault against our U.S.S. Liberty, then sailing well outside its territorial waters in the Eastern Mediterranean. They intended to scuttle the ship, kill its survivors, then blame the attack on Egypt, against whom they wanted us to go to war. Not one in a hundred Americans know about the event; both media and government have colluded to keep the fact silent.

The Devil's Delight

In the aftermath of a successful false flag attack, blamed on Iran, Bush would have an easy answer to his current political and military woes: a new enemy. Iran would certainly fight back against our Navy and Air Force forces over its own territory, and would probably attack Army and Marine forces in Iraq. In both cases it could inflict heavy casualties, and thereby generate war rage in the United States. The same cooperative media that led the American People against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 could lead it against Iran in 2006. The United States would mobilize the economy and initiate the draft.

Bush could then use the war as a perfect excuse to sign the Detainee Treatment Bill -- the torture bill -- that Congress delivered to his desk two weeks ago. Thus empowered, he could suspend civil rights -- going back to habeas corpus -- from anyone he chooses, whether they are foreigners or U.S. citizens. That would go a long way toward silencing his domestic critics, whom he considers traitors, and who are the greatest single impediment to the world war plan he has served.

All this would mean an American dictatorship, of course, but Bush came into office saying he wouldn't mind one -- if he could be the dictator. Funny, how the media never repeats the words that we really need to hear to understand who Bush really is. Just a day ago he said that loss in Iraq would mean the loss of the Middle East, and the loss of the Middle East would mean the loss of the world's foremost strategic resource, oil. He said we'd be condemned by distant posterity. He is a man bent on war, and he doesn't care at all what we think of his means or ends.

May God protect the United States of America.

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Captain May, a former intelligence and public affairs officer, is the founder and commander of Ghost Troop, a cyber-intelligence unit on a mission of conscience to inform the American People of the dangers of the Bush administration. To learn more about him and Ghost Troop, refer to the article "Ghost Troop -- the Art of Info-War" in the Lone Star Iconoclast http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=402&z=52