Trump team is exaggerating ‘small stuff’ to push US into war with Iran

It’s deja vu all over again.

Much like the fake intelligence the Bush administration used to get the United States into the quagmire of the Iraq War, one American official told the New York Times that the Trump administration is overblowing intelligence to justify a war with Iran.

According to the unnamed American official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, the intelligence surrounding what the Trump administration has described as a growing Iranian threat is actually “small stuff.”

The official went on to say that the Trump administration’s plan to send 120,000 troops to the Middle East in the wake of the threat is an overreaction.

And ultimately, the official said that the Trump administration’s Iranian policy — which is being driven by warmonger and national security adviser John Bolton — is merely an effort to goad Iran into war.

Foreign policy and military experts have echoed similar concerns about the Trump administration’s Iran policy.

“This is a crisis that has entirely been manufactured by the Trump administration,” Vali R. Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told the New York Times.

Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, an Iraq War veteran who now is on the board of the group VoteVets, told Shareblue: “With the same neocons who led us into Iraq now in charge of Donald Trump’s foreign policy, we’re hurtling towards a war with Iran that may very likely result in many more lives lost, for no good reason.”

Eaton added that the Trump administration should be forced to go before Congress and lay out the intelligence they have to warrant a military operation in the Middle East — and let Congress decide whether that intelligence is worthy of another deadly conflict.

“Let them go to Congress to allow the people’s representatives to debate and vote on it, as the Constitution requires,” Eaton said.

However, it’s difficult to imagine that the Trump administration will honor the Constitution and Congress’ oversight powers — which they have ignored and defied at every turn.

And that should scare Americans who have no appetite for yet another unjustified war.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.