The United States of America is engaged in a dangerous game: a concerted effort to provoke Iranian actions that will in turn provide a pretext for an American response that congress will feel obliged to authorize.

Am I dreaming or is CNN bringing back the old war slogans with a minor revision: Showdown Iran?

The Iranian gambit points out the inherent danger of a western government maintaining an occupation in the Middle East. It invites regional engagement and the longer the occupation rolls on, the greater that engagement will become.

We are approaching four years of an American occupied Iraq. The Saudis have already served notice that they will intervene if Shia oppression of the Sunnis becomes excessive. The Turks have served notice that they will engage if Iraqi Kurdistan becomes a security zone and a base of operations for the freedom fighters of Turkish Kurdistan.

With the occupation pushing to disarm the Shia militias, it is not unthinkable that Iraqi Shia with Iranian ties would look to Iran for support. It would be surprising if Iranians did not provide some measure of financial, political and armed assistance to their Iraqi brethren.

It would however be stunning if a government that has practiced a policy of restraint for four years would give official sanction to direct military assistance. It would be incredible if that same government provided sophisticated weaponry to the Sunni opposition. (So incredible that our government began back peddling almost immediately, leaving the impression that they floated a bogus claim as a trial balloon.)

There is of course an alternative explanation and one that would be far more consistent with the history of the Iraqi occupation. How difficult would it be for American operatives to score Iranian weapons on the black market, stage a weapons display, and level an anonymous accusation that 170 our troops were killed and 620 wounded by Iranian weapons?

The numbers are suspiciously round but so specific they imply a mountain of documentation yet the credibility of our government has fallen so low it would not be believed if we produced live video of the Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei ordering the assassination of American soldiers.

If ever a circumstance cried out for an international tribunal, this is it.

If such a tribunal were to examine the evidence and produce a finding that Iran in fact supplied arms to the Iraqi resistance, the Shia militias or both, would we consider it a cause for war or an assertion of Iran’s sovereign right to confront a hostile occupation on their border? Would it justify an expanded war or lead us to finally acknowledge the grave dangers we have unleashed by our unwarranted, aggressive actions?

If that same hypothetical tribunal found that our government once again fabricated facts to falsify a case for war, what would our response be then?

The Iranian gambit exposes the neocon deception of the of the withdrawal nightmare scenario as the desperate and last attempt to defend our illegal, immoral and catastrophic war. Whatever nightmare may unfold in post-occupation Iraq, with a concerted and sincere diplomatic effort, it will be lesser than it is today.

By an infinite margin, the greater nightmares unfold with a continued occupation. None should doubt that open warfare with Iran would produce mass casualties that would dwarf the hundreds of thousands already dead in Iraq. If you believe the Johns Hopkins’ estimate, the Iraqi death toll is now edging toward three quarters of a million.

Let your mind linger on that stone cold reality a moment longer.

Will we believe our president and his trusted advisors when then tell us, as they told us before, that Iranians will greet us with flowers of welcome?

If we attack Iran, the second of three in the Axis of Evil, how might the little dictator of North Korea respond? What would be the effects in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Afghanistan?

Since we do not have the troops to occupy another nation, even temporarily, how do we envision a two or three-front war if not with nuclear annihilation? Will we find ourselves hurling headlong toward military conscription? Will we hire mercenary armies the likes of which the world has never seen?

The implications of such actions by a lame duck president, desperate to salvage a legacy and the esteem of a distant father, are gruesome and horrifying beyond what the mind can endure.

The true nightmare scenarios are proceeding by executive decree.

George W. Bush is our president. We cannot remove him from office fast enough to prevent his mindless proliferation of disasters. We can only appeal to our newly elected leaders in congress: Stop him now.

As bad as it undeniably is, when you consider the prospects, in the words of Pete Seeger, we are only "knee deep in the Big Muddy."

Stop him before there is no turning back.

Think back to the months preceding "Shock and Awe." Remember well the repeated assurances of our president and his spokespersons that we would exhaust all diplomatic options and that we had no plans of attack.

I did not believe them then.

I pray the American people and our representatives in congress do not believe them now.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). THE CHRONICLES HAVE APPEARED ON THE ALBION MONITOR, PEACE-EARTH-JUSTICE, THE NATIONAL FREE PRESS, LEFTWARD, DISSIDENT VOICE AND COUNTERPUNCH. SEE RANDOM JACK: WWW.JAZZMANCHRONICLES.BLOGSPOT.COM