As always, Seymour Hersh explains the labyrinthine intricacies of American power and influence better than anyone. And his latest piece is a fucking doozy, and not just because it boasts research deeper than Wikipedia. No, it's because Hersh has uncovered how the Bush administration's strategic shifting in Iraq has betrayed both its motivations for invading the country, and how dependent they are on the economic influence of Saudi Arabia. If you remember (do you?), 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were fundamentalist Saudi wack jobs, not Iraqis or Iranians at all, but that hasn't stopped Bush and Cheney from sticking to them like white on rice. One would imagine that a country which maintains jihadist training schools whose only purpose is to engender a programmatic hatred of Israel and the United States wouldn't have a place in our foreign policy. But one would be wrong. Dead wrong.

Once again, Hersh is here is straighten us out, and that alignment is scary as hell:

"In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The 'redirection,' as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East...One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration's perspective, the most profound --- and unintended --- strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran."

Now, one could argue that Cheney and Bush invaded Iraq to deliberately empower Iran, in order to pull them into a widening conflict to rewrite the map of the Middle East. After all, Bush stated as much in his Axis of Evil speech, by singling them out together. Whether or not he was too stupid to realize that Iraq's Shiite majority would be emboldened by the defeat of Sunni titan Saddam Hussein is irrelevant, and naive to boot. Cheney has been in this business too long to be that dumb. No, it's much more likely that the Iraq oil grab was just the appetizer for the Iranian entree, which would also explain why the drumbeat of war with Iran keeps going even though everyone, including American generals who have threated to resign if it comes to pass, doesn't want anything to do with it. Well, except the Saudis, that is, who are salivating at the chance to put down a possible Shiite takeover of the Middle East, one that was nothing but a pipe dream until America invaded Iraq and threw the whole region into chaos. Here's Hersh:

"The key players behind the redirection are Vice-President Dick Cheney, the deputy national-security adviser Elliott Abrams, the departing Ambassador to Iraq (and nominee for United Nations Ambassador), Zalmay Khalilzad, and Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi national-security adviser...The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations."

First off, let's get one thing out of the way right now: Cheney, Abrams and Khalizad were all signatories to the infamous PNAC memorandum to Bill Clinton advising, what else, an invasion of Iraq and a subjugation of the Middle East via American military might. Also included on that letter are Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby and Jeb Bush, among other neocon nutjobs. Secondly, the idea of Saudi Arabia and Israel working together ought to make one choke on the coffee they are trying to wake up and smell. And now that Israel has more or less come right out and asked for permission -- from the Pentagon, of all places! -- to use Iraq's airspace to launch nuclear strikes on Iran, that bizarre collusion is coming into sharp relief:

"The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb. Under the plans, conventional laser-guided bombs would open 'tunnels' into the targets. 'Mini-nukes' would then immediately be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout. 'As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished,' said one of the sources."

Sure, the nuclear project will be demolished, but what about the Project for the New American Century, a wanker's utopia in which America enforces its democratic (laugh with me) will at the barrel of a gun across the Middle East? Will that succeed? Only an idiot would think so. The move will spark a massive regional conflagration whose main target would be none other than the United States. And those dolts in Israel. Talk about keeping it hyperreal. But more importantly, such a widening conflict would give Cheney and Bush the clearance they are looking for to go medieval on their enemies in the Middle East, which is more or less anyone who stands in the way of what little fossil fuels are left in the area. That is, literally, the only reason we are there. If the Middle East only had poppies and heroin to offer, we'd be bombing the shit out of Venezuela as I write this.

But what about that American military might, which is fracturing by the second fighting too many warring factions to count? Soldiers from America and the UK got into this war thinking they were in Iraq to disarm Saddam's nukes, and then to export democracy to the Sunnis and Shiites in the region. And then...well, that's not really the point is it? To be totally frank, our soldiers are there killing and dying on a daily basis to keep alive the Cheney plan to reorganize the Middle East, all of it. And if that means that American soldiers have to die at the hands of the same people their superiors are trying to court -- the Sunnis -- well, so be it. Because that is the way it is.

Let's go back to Hersh:

"Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that 'there is nothing coincidental or ironic' about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. 'The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when --- if you look at the actual casualty numbers --- the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,' Leverett said. 'This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.'"

In other words, American and British soldiers have since been killed extensively at the hands of the Sunnis they disempowered after taking Saddam and his Baathists down, and these are the very punkass bitches that the administration is cozying up to in hopes of drawing the bullseye on Iran. Add that to the fact that it is the fundamentalist Sunnis of Saudi Arabia -- including Osama bin Laden himself! -- who killed more than 3,000 people on 9/11, and you have a hyperreal clusterfuck of mammoth proportions.

And what are we going to do about it? Is this not sleeping with the enemy? Is this not treason? Is this not an impeachable offense? I implore every single one of you who even pretends to care about the death of innocents -- American, Iraqi and otherwise -- to wake the fuck up. Any alliance with Saudi Arabia is a deal with the devil, and this is coming from a guy who realizes that not only are devils invented, but that Satan himself used to be an angel. And don't even begin to play the pragmatist with me: Sure, Saudi Arabia has billions invested in the American economy, but blood money is blood money. They killed citizens on our turf, on Iraq's turf, and now we are making deals with them to kill Iranians via nuclear strikes. Iranians who did nothing to us, who couldn't even begin to sniff dominance in the Middle East until we marched to Baghdad and blew the whole thing wide open.

Short version, we are sacrificing our troops and citizens for no good reason. At all. Their blood, and the blood of those they kill in kind, is being spilled for a paradigm shift invented by cowards who have never picked up a gun of their own to fight for anything. Any further support for this war, for this president, for this administration, is an implicit rubber-stamp for the murder of our own. I simply cannot make that any clearer. Neither can Hersh.

So the next time you hear anyone, Democrat or Republican, waffle on the war, ditch them for good. And spread the word. Whether that is Hillary, Obama, McCain, whoever: They have to feel the pain of their hypocrisy, especially when they claim to support their troops who are being massacred by the very figures they are trying to make deals with in the dark, where truth and justice have no place and no pull. This is the only issue at stake. Everything else is just smoke, mirrors and murder.

The title of this piece is liberally riffed off an excellent article written by Morphizm's own Ross Levine, which is viewable here. Note the date, if you will. We've been calling bullshit on this escapade since before it started. It was that easy, yet not easy enough for Clinton, Biden and the rest to figure out. Why? Good question. You should ask them.