Got nuked? Blame Clinton!

Cannon here: As readers know, I have long warned that a domestic terrorist incident involving a "small" nuclear device will trigger war with Iran. The Iranians have, of course, no practical reason to sponsor such an event, since the only possible outcome would be the annihilation of their country. Only Bush and the neocons would benefit from a terrrorist incident involving a WMD. They would then have sufficient strength to crush domestic dissent and to take over the oil fields of the Middle East.

Although I felt foolish when I first mentioned this "hare-brained" prediction, recent events have increased its plausibility:

1. Phil Giraldi, formerly of the CIA, revealed that his sources say that the administration plans to use a new terror event as the trigger for a nuclear war against Iran.

2. Seymour Hersh confirms that the Pentagon has made plans involving nuclear "bunker buster" bombs. As the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, these weapons stand little chance of penetrating deeply enough to take out underground facilities, but they will eradicate a large portion of the Iranian population -- in all likelihood, the real goal.

3. Politically, the Republicans stand a good chance of losing control of one or both houses of Congress. If that happens, impeachment becomes possible. Only a new terror strike can rescue the administration and the Republican party.

Only one part of the puzzle had been missing: How will the propagandists manage to blame Clinton for the next terror strike? Pointing the finger at Clinton is what they do.

James Risen provides the answer in his book State of War, which addresses the conflict between the W administration and the CIA. Along the way, Risen discusses a Clinton-era project called Operation Merlin, best described here. Basically, a Russian scientist secretly in the CIA's employ delivered nuclear plans to the Iranians. The plans contained deliberate flaws. The idea was to make sure that when the Iranians finally built The Bomb, it was the wrong bomb -- a dud.

That such a plan existed seems quite possible. This is the sort of deception operation one often reads about in the histories of spookery.

But certain aspects of Merlin remain shadowy. Apparently, the Russian scientist offered to fix the flaws in the nuke plans. There is the suggestion that the Iranians could well have spotted the problems themselves.

The egregious Newsmax is already using the story as a cudgel against Clinton, claiming that he personally approved the operation. We cannot be sure just what the CIA told him -- relations between the Agency and Clinton were strained, to say the least. The President was neither a nuclear scientist nor an espionage professional; he would have had to rely on the assurances of his briefers that the "Trojan horse" operation had a minimal risk factor.

Predictably, Newsmax tries to use "Merlin" as a weapon against Hillary. This is ironic, because she has positioned herself as the pro-war Democratic contender. (Like it or not, we may need such a candidate if a WMD hits one of our cities.)

Do not dismiss the possibility that the entire "Merlin" tale is a ruse -- a yarn spun to mislead James Risen and, through him, us.

Placing a tale damaging to Clinton within the confines of a book otherwise embarrassing to Bush would have been a clever move. All we know of Risen's sources is that they are career field agents, and guys like that have misled reporters in the past. Unless Risen burns his sources -- which he won't do -- we can only guess at the truth.