At Right Web, Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib write:

Imagine there’s a Middle Eastern country with a history of rocky relations with the United States. Washington hawks insist the country poses a threat to both the United States and its allies. They undertake a PR campaign demonizing the country’s polity and make cocksure claims about its imminent acquisition of weapons of mass destruction. They also make dubious claims tying the country to the perpetrators of the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. The country’s name starts with the letters I – R – A. What country comes to mind?

Iraq and Iran both fit the profile.

In Iraq, years of pro-war drumbeating were kicked into high gear after 9/11, culminating in the 2003 invasion and occupation—and subsequent bloody civil war—based on inaccurate claims of WMD production and ties to Al Qaeda. The war came with enormous costs in blood and treasure, as well as loss of U.S. prestige and credibility—not to mention the price paid by Iraq.

Undeterred by these costs, many of the same people who led the push for regime-change in Baghdad now have their sights set on Tehran. Using the same playbook they used for Iraq, these hawks are again selling U.S. military strikes as a sort of “cakewalk.”

Few high-profile American commentators have openly called for a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran, but many of those who have are neoconservatives pundits, among them Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin^[1] and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ (FDD) Reue lMarc Gerecht^[2]. Others still, such as the AmericanEnterprise Institute’s (AEI) Michael Rubin, have called for assassinating Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.^[3]

To read the article in its entirety, visit Right Web.