Casus belli anyone: direct, substantial Iran-al Qaeda-9/11 connection?

Mr. J.R. Nyquist reports Kenneth Timmerman's allegations in his recent book, Countdown to Crisis, about how intimately Iran was involved with al Quaeda just prior to 9/11. Mr. Nyquist also writes about American self delusion based on our love of the good life and the baseless dream that it can only continue indefinitely:

Shortly before the 9/11 Commission sent their final report to the printers in 2004, the Commission’s staff director called a meeting. According to Timmerman, "Commission staff members had discovered a document from a U.S. intelligence agency that described in detail Iran’s ties to al-Qaeda…. It had been buried at the bottom of a huge stack of highly classified documents on other subjects that had been delivered to a special high-security reading room in an undisclosed location in Washington, D.C."

The 9/11 Commission was amazed at this last-minute discovery. The CIA had lied to the Commission when it claimed no connection between al Qaeda and Iran. The 9/11 Commission demanded to see more documentation. "What the [Commission] team leader found," wrote Timmerman, "was nothing less than a complete documented record of operational ties between Iran and al-Qaeda for the critical months just prior to September 11."

According to Timmerman, a senior Iranian operative had "coordinated the travel of eight to ten of the ‘muscle hijackers’ between Saudi Arabia, Beirut, and Iran in October and November 2000." All of this is important, relevant information. The U.S. government finds it inconvenient because the U.S. military is overextended in Iraq. We cannot afford a war in Iran, if we want to keep our shopping mall culture. And that is why we ignore the enmity of Russia and China as well. Our policy is a simple one. It is based on hope. We hope that China will become an amiable and trustworthy trading partner. We hope that Russia will become a democracy. And as President Bush indicated in his State of the Union message, he hopes that the Iranian people will spontaneously rise up and free themselves from the mullahs. It’s as if the fall of the Soviet Union spoiled us, leaving us to expect the spontaneous collapse of every enemy.

What, one wonders, does it take to get our political leaders to recognize a genuine casus belli? Is there anything more pressing that should concern us than, say, the Mr. Cheney's unfortunate hunting accident or the recent discovery that there is actually lobbying going on in Washington?

Heck no. Let the search continue for painless ground combat, birthright cheap gas, costless border protection, sportsmanlike national competitors, and a culture that needs neither respect nor defense.

"Iran, Russia, and American Self-Deception." By J. R. Nyquist, Financial Sense Online, 2/10/06.