Showing posts with label US War. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US War. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2007
We Have to Keep Pressing Hard Against an Attack on Iran
"We've got to keep pressing hard against an attack on Iran: The security of the United States, as well as the Middle East, is hanging in the balance."
Friday, November 23, 2007
Law and Resistance: The Republic in Crisis and the People’s Response
"After September 11, 2001 the United States of America has vilified and demonized Muslims and Arabs almost to the same extent that America inflicted upon the Japanese and Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor . As the Nazis had previously demonstrated with respect to the Jews, a government must first dehumanize and scapegoat a race of people before its citizens will tolerate if not approve their elimination: Hiroshima and Nagasaki . In post-9/11 America we are directly confronted with the prospect of a nuclear war of extermination conducted by our White Racist Judeo-Christian Power Elite against People of Color in the Muslim and Arab worlds in order to steal their oil and gas. The Crusades all over again. But this time nuclear Armageddon stares all of humankind right in the face!"
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Iraq taught us nothing
The U.S. establishment's acceptance of a possible war with Iran shows that the folly that led to Iraq still rules Washington.
by Gary Kamiya - Nov. 6, 2007
The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
Let's repeat that. The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
The fact that this sentence can be written with a straight face proves that the Iraq debacle has taught us absolutely nothing. Talk of attacking Iran should be confined to the lunatic fringe. Yet America's political and media elite have responded to the idea of attacking Iran in almost exactly the same way they did to the idea of attacking Iraq. Four and a half years after Bush embarked on one of the most catastrophic foreign-policy adventures in our history, the same wrongheaded, ignorant and self-destructive approach to the Arab-Muslim world and to fighting terrorism still rules establishment thinking.
The disturbing thing is that we have no excuse this time. Five years ago, a wounded, fearful and enraged America was ready to attack anybody, and Bush waved his red cape and steered the mad bull toward Iraq. We now know that was folly. The completely unnecessary invasion has so far resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and almost 4,000 Americans, severely destabilized the region, cost billions of dollars, and increased the threat of terrorism. Yet today we are blithely considering attacking a much larger Middle Eastern country for equally dubious reasons, and mainstream politicians and the media are once again going along. The American people have signed off on the conventional "wisdom." In a recent poll, 52 percent of Americans say they would support attacking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
This is surreal. It's as if we're back on Sept. 12 and Iraq never happened.
It is not surprising that the GOP is calling for a wider Mideast war. The party has nothing except fear to sell: Its initials might as well stand for "Grand Orgy of Paranoia." But the acquiescence of many Democrats, and the mainstream media, shows just how intractable are the myths and fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism.
Four related misconceptions continue to distort our Middle East policy: the terrorism freakout, the Satan myth, the they're-all-the-same fallacy, and the belief that we're innocent.
In many ways the terrorism freakout is our founding error, one that predates 9/11 by decades. Our obsession with terrorism, our failure to place it in historical context, our hypocrisy in defining it, and our overreaction to it have marred our ability to craft an intelligent Middle East policy. It has seriously deformed our response to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis (still the region's key conflict), provided much of the impetus for the Iraq war, and now is paving the way for possible war with Iran.
America's response to Palestinian terrorism has set the tone for our subsequent responses to the phenomenon. No one condones terrorism: It is morally repugnant to kill civilians, no matter how legitimate the terrorists' political goals may be. But by simply declaring that Palestinian terrorism was evil, and refusing to acknowledge or address the Palestinians' legitimate grievances, America long ago locked itself into a morally incoherent, historically obtuse and ultimately self-defeating position. As Robert Fisk noted in "The Great War for Civilisation," because of America's pro-Israel bias, it has always seen Palestinian terrorism as "comfortably isolated from reason, cause or history ... 'Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence -- our violence -- which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously." The uncomfortable fact is that Israeli-Palestinian crisis is the crucial frame through which America has always understood the Middle East: Palestinians were the first of a long line of Arab and Muslim supervillains. Once we ourselves suffered a massive terrorist attack, our atavistic rage at these evildoers knew no bounds -- and it was easy for the Bush administration to persuade us to attack Iraq.
Our overreaction to terrorism, combined with military triumphalism, found its supreme expression in Vice President Dick Cheney's notorious "one percent doctrine," which holds that if there is even a 1 percent chance that an enemy will acquire dangerous weapons, the United States must launch a preventive attack. As Iraq should have shown us, this doctrine is paranoid, delusional and self-defeating. (The doctrine is aptly named: It has a 1 percent chance of success.) Yet as the Iran war drums show, it still drives U.S. policy.
Hysteria about terrorism leads to a dangerous belief in the efficacy of military force. Of course U.S. forces can destroy any conventional adversary. But victory on the battlefield does not necessarily translate into foreign-policy success -- especially not in an asymmetric war, like the one we face in Iraq and would face in Iran if we sent in ground forces. In fact, as Iraq should have shown us, we should wage war in the Middle East only as an absolute last resort. The costs are much too high and the risks of unintended consequences (Turkey and the Kurds, the crisis in Pakistan) too great. "Toughness" makes a great sound bite for opportunistic politicians, but in the real world it strengthens our terrorist enemies and ends up getting Americans killed for no reason.
Next comes the Satan myth, which says that our foes in the Middle East are uniquely evil, irrational, motiveless and impervious to deterrence. Just as the United States has seen the Palestinians as evil anti-Semites, not as complex actors with some legitimate historical grievances, so we saw Saddam as insane and undeterrable -- and now are asked to believe the same thing about the mad mullahs of Iran. The terror attacks on 9/11, which were carried out by fanatics who really were impervious to deterrence, made the Satan myth practically untouchable. Lost in the rage and fear over the attacks was the fact that violent jihadists like al-Qaida are few in number and have almost no popular support. Claiming that Iraq, like al-Qaida, was part of an "axis of evil," Bush used the Satan myth to sell the war against Iraq. And it now provides the key support for a war with Iran. If Iran is an insane, fanatical, undeterrable state, the equivalent of al-Qaida, then if follows that we must consider attacking it to prevent it from acquiring nuclear bombs.
The myth of a demonic, irrational, powerful Iran has no basis in fact. Iran, as Juan Cole has pointed out, "has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak." Nor is it bent on fighting the United States or Israel to the death. Iran made a major peace offer to the United States in 2003, offering a comprehensive diplomatic settlement, including ending its support for Hamas and recognition of Israel, in exchange for normal relations. The Bush administration, smugly certain that it was about to get rid of the entire regime, refused to talk.
Nor is Iran undeterrable. It obviously has significant differences with the United States. But it is a rational actor, concerned like any other state to maximize its regional power and minimize threats to its existence. As Trita Parsi, author of the new book "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.," argued in a recent piece in the Nation, "a careful study of Iran's actions -- not just its rhetoric -- reveals systematic, pragmatic and cautious maneuvering toward a set goal: decontainment and the re-emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent power in the Middle East." This is why retired Gen. John Abizaid recently said that America could live with a nuclear Iran.
Under the specious heading of "Islamofascism," we have dangerously conflated completely different regimes and non-state actors -- this is the "they're all the same" fallacy. The Bush administration has aggressively promoted the idea that every Mideast state or militant movement that isn't on the same side as the United States or Israel poses the same threat as al-Qaida -- or simply asserted that those states are synonymous with al-Qaida, as the Bush administration did before the Iraq war. This is absurd and violates the first principle of both statesmanship and generalship: See the situation clearly and objectively. It leads to completely false assessments of entities like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, and leads us to make far more enemies than we need to in the Arab-Muslim world.
Iran has no more to do with al-Qaida than Iraq did. Iran sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah, which have employed terrorism, but their fight is with Israel, not the United States. If we attack Iran because it supports Hezbollah, we might as well declare war on Kurdistan because it abets the PKK's far more deadly guerrilla campaign against Turkey. By treating Iran, or national-liberation groups like Hamas, as if they were al-Qaida, the United States is making an elementary and quite dangerous category error.
The final error is our invincible belief in our innocence, which derives from our almost complete ignorance of the region's history and its people. Americans can entertain notions of marching smartly into some Middle Eastern country, killing a bunch of evil ragheads, fixing things up, shaking hands all around, and marching out because most Americans simply have no knowledge of Middle Eastern history or America's long and often shameful record of imperialist and colonialist meddling. Perhaps Americans might view Iran differently if more of them knew that in 1953, America and Great Britain overthrew their democratically elected leader and installed a bloody but pro-U.S. tyrant, the Shah. The 1979 revolution that brought Khomeini to power, and put Iran and United States on the collision course that has lasted to this day, was a direct result of that infamous coup (which we engineered because we wanted cheap Iranian oil). Neither Iranians nor anyone else in the Middle East has forgotten such matters -- why should they? Until we understand and come to terms with our often-ugly track record in the region, we will be doomed to play the part of Graham Greene's haplessly idealistic Quiet American, blundering into places we don't understand, not knowing why the natives don't like us, and making things infinitely worse.
There are not many indications that Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, can break away from these persistent fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism. There are a few glimmers of hope, however. Sen. Barack Obama broke decisively with the establishment position last week, stating that if elected, he would "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy with Iran" without preconditions. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel took the same position in a letter he sent to Bush calling for "direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran." And in a noteworthy column, ultra-establishment pundit Fareed Zakaria recently attacked the entire set of assumptions behind the campaign to whip up war fever against Iran. "The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality," Zakaria wrote in Newsweek.
But the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not broken with the establishment paradigm. She has hedged her bets but not staked out a completely new course. And her refusal to do so means that the Democratic Party is failing to speak with one voice on the most important issue of our time. Until it does so, the paradigm shift that is so urgently necessary will not occur. Soon it may be too late -- either to prevent war with Iran or to find the will to break away from the ruinous assumptions that have left our Middle East policy in tatters.
by Gary Kamiya - Nov. 6, 2007
The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
Let's repeat that. The U.S. could attack Iran in the next few months.
The fact that this sentence can be written with a straight face proves that the Iraq debacle has taught us absolutely nothing. Talk of attacking Iran should be confined to the lunatic fringe. Yet America's political and media elite have responded to the idea of attacking Iran in almost exactly the same way they did to the idea of attacking Iraq. Four and a half years after Bush embarked on one of the most catastrophic foreign-policy adventures in our history, the same wrongheaded, ignorant and self-destructive approach to the Arab-Muslim world and to fighting terrorism still rules establishment thinking.
The disturbing thing is that we have no excuse this time. Five years ago, a wounded, fearful and enraged America was ready to attack anybody, and Bush waved his red cape and steered the mad bull toward Iraq. We now know that was folly. The completely unnecessary invasion has so far resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and almost 4,000 Americans, severely destabilized the region, cost billions of dollars, and increased the threat of terrorism. Yet today we are blithely considering attacking a much larger Middle Eastern country for equally dubious reasons, and mainstream politicians and the media are once again going along. The American people have signed off on the conventional "wisdom." In a recent poll, 52 percent of Americans say they would support attacking Iran to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.
This is surreal. It's as if we're back on Sept. 12 and Iraq never happened.
It is not surprising that the GOP is calling for a wider Mideast war. The party has nothing except fear to sell: Its initials might as well stand for "Grand Orgy of Paranoia." But the acquiescence of many Democrats, and the mainstream media, shows just how intractable are the myths and fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism.
Four related misconceptions continue to distort our Middle East policy: the terrorism freakout, the Satan myth, the they're-all-the-same fallacy, and the belief that we're innocent.
In many ways the terrorism freakout is our founding error, one that predates 9/11 by decades. Our obsession with terrorism, our failure to place it in historical context, our hypocrisy in defining it, and our overreaction to it have marred our ability to craft an intelligent Middle East policy. It has seriously deformed our response to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis (still the region's key conflict), provided much of the impetus for the Iraq war, and now is paving the way for possible war with Iran.
America's response to Palestinian terrorism has set the tone for our subsequent responses to the phenomenon. No one condones terrorism: It is morally repugnant to kill civilians, no matter how legitimate the terrorists' political goals may be. But by simply declaring that Palestinian terrorism was evil, and refusing to acknowledge or address the Palestinians' legitimate grievances, America long ago locked itself into a morally incoherent, historically obtuse and ultimately self-defeating position. As Robert Fisk noted in "The Great War for Civilisation," because of America's pro-Israel bias, it has always seen Palestinian terrorism as "comfortably isolated from reason, cause or history ... 'Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence -- our violence -- which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously." The uncomfortable fact is that Israeli-Palestinian crisis is the crucial frame through which America has always understood the Middle East: Palestinians were the first of a long line of Arab and Muslim supervillains. Once we ourselves suffered a massive terrorist attack, our atavistic rage at these evildoers knew no bounds -- and it was easy for the Bush administration to persuade us to attack Iraq.
Our overreaction to terrorism, combined with military triumphalism, found its supreme expression in Vice President Dick Cheney's notorious "one percent doctrine," which holds that if there is even a 1 percent chance that an enemy will acquire dangerous weapons, the United States must launch a preventive attack. As Iraq should have shown us, this doctrine is paranoid, delusional and self-defeating. (The doctrine is aptly named: It has a 1 percent chance of success.) Yet as the Iran war drums show, it still drives U.S. policy.
Hysteria about terrorism leads to a dangerous belief in the efficacy of military force. Of course U.S. forces can destroy any conventional adversary. But victory on the battlefield does not necessarily translate into foreign-policy success -- especially not in an asymmetric war, like the one we face in Iraq and would face in Iran if we sent in ground forces. In fact, as Iraq should have shown us, we should wage war in the Middle East only as an absolute last resort. The costs are much too high and the risks of unintended consequences (Turkey and the Kurds, the crisis in Pakistan) too great. "Toughness" makes a great sound bite for opportunistic politicians, but in the real world it strengthens our terrorist enemies and ends up getting Americans killed for no reason.
Next comes the Satan myth, which says that our foes in the Middle East are uniquely evil, irrational, motiveless and impervious to deterrence. Just as the United States has seen the Palestinians as evil anti-Semites, not as complex actors with some legitimate historical grievances, so we saw Saddam as insane and undeterrable -- and now are asked to believe the same thing about the mad mullahs of Iran. The terror attacks on 9/11, which were carried out by fanatics who really were impervious to deterrence, made the Satan myth practically untouchable. Lost in the rage and fear over the attacks was the fact that violent jihadists like al-Qaida are few in number and have almost no popular support. Claiming that Iraq, like al-Qaida, was part of an "axis of evil," Bush used the Satan myth to sell the war against Iraq. And it now provides the key support for a war with Iran. If Iran is an insane, fanatical, undeterrable state, the equivalent of al-Qaida, then if follows that we must consider attacking it to prevent it from acquiring nuclear bombs.
The myth of a demonic, irrational, powerful Iran has no basis in fact. Iran, as Juan Cole has pointed out, "has not launched an aggressive war against a neighbor since 1785 and does not have a history of military expansionism. Its population is a third that of the United States and its military is small and weak." Nor is it bent on fighting the United States or Israel to the death. Iran made a major peace offer to the United States in 2003, offering a comprehensive diplomatic settlement, including ending its support for Hamas and recognition of Israel, in exchange for normal relations. The Bush administration, smugly certain that it was about to get rid of the entire regime, refused to talk.
Nor is Iran undeterrable. It obviously has significant differences with the United States. But it is a rational actor, concerned like any other state to maximize its regional power and minimize threats to its existence. As Trita Parsi, author of the new book "Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S.," argued in a recent piece in the Nation, "a careful study of Iran's actions -- not just its rhetoric -- reveals systematic, pragmatic and cautious maneuvering toward a set goal: decontainment and the re-emergence of Iran as a pre-eminent power in the Middle East." This is why retired Gen. John Abizaid recently said that America could live with a nuclear Iran.
Under the specious heading of "Islamofascism," we have dangerously conflated completely different regimes and non-state actors -- this is the "they're all the same" fallacy. The Bush administration has aggressively promoted the idea that every Mideast state or militant movement that isn't on the same side as the United States or Israel poses the same threat as al-Qaida -- or simply asserted that those states are synonymous with al-Qaida, as the Bush administration did before the Iraq war. This is absurd and violates the first principle of both statesmanship and generalship: See the situation clearly and objectively. It leads to completely false assessments of entities like Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah, and leads us to make far more enemies than we need to in the Arab-Muslim world.
Iran has no more to do with al-Qaida than Iraq did. Iran sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah, which have employed terrorism, but their fight is with Israel, not the United States. If we attack Iran because it supports Hezbollah, we might as well declare war on Kurdistan because it abets the PKK's far more deadly guerrilla campaign against Turkey. By treating Iran, or national-liberation groups like Hamas, as if they were al-Qaida, the United States is making an elementary and quite dangerous category error.
The final error is our invincible belief in our innocence, which derives from our almost complete ignorance of the region's history and its people. Americans can entertain notions of marching smartly into some Middle Eastern country, killing a bunch of evil ragheads, fixing things up, shaking hands all around, and marching out because most Americans simply have no knowledge of Middle Eastern history or America's long and often shameful record of imperialist and colonialist meddling. Perhaps Americans might view Iran differently if more of them knew that in 1953, America and Great Britain overthrew their democratically elected leader and installed a bloody but pro-U.S. tyrant, the Shah. The 1979 revolution that brought Khomeini to power, and put Iran and United States on the collision course that has lasted to this day, was a direct result of that infamous coup (which we engineered because we wanted cheap Iranian oil). Neither Iranians nor anyone else in the Middle East has forgotten such matters -- why should they? Until we understand and come to terms with our often-ugly track record in the region, we will be doomed to play the part of Graham Greene's haplessly idealistic Quiet American, blundering into places we don't understand, not knowing why the natives don't like us, and making things infinitely worse.
There are not many indications that Americans, whether Democrats or Republicans, can break away from these persistent fallacies about the Middle East and terrorism. There are a few glimmers of hope, however. Sen. Barack Obama broke decisively with the establishment position last week, stating that if elected, he would "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy with Iran" without preconditions. Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel took the same position in a letter he sent to Bush calling for "direct, unconditional and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran." And in a noteworthy column, ultra-establishment pundit Fareed Zakaria recently attacked the entire set of assumptions behind the campaign to whip up war fever against Iran. "The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality," Zakaria wrote in Newsweek.
But the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, has not broken with the establishment paradigm. She has hedged her bets but not staked out a completely new course. And her refusal to do so means that the Democratic Party is failing to speak with one voice on the most important issue of our time. Until it does so, the paradigm shift that is so urgently necessary will not occur. Soon it may be too late -- either to prevent war with Iran or to find the will to break away from the ruinous assumptions that have left our Middle East policy in tatters.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
US downplays talk of Iran attack
It's interesting how the White House has toned down the "Iran War" rhetoric since Russia signaled that an attack on Iran would be viewed as an attack on Russia.
by Olivier Knox - Oct 30, 2007
After weeks of escalating US rhetoric on Iran, the White House vowed Tuesday vowed to "pursue every possible diplomatic means" to defuse the volatile dispute over Tehran's nuclear program.
Spokeswoman Dana Perino sought to quiet fears that US President George W. Bush plans to attack the Islamic republic over its refusal to freeze sensitive nuclear work that can lead to the development of atomic weapons.
"There's no reason for people to think that the president is about to attack Iran. I think that we need to make that clear," she said. "He doesn't want people to fear that, because what he is doing is pursuing a diplomatic track."
Perino pointed to Bush's meetings next week with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as evidence of diplomatic efforts to convince Iran to bow to international pressure over its nuclear program.
"He believes it's important for him to pursue every possible diplomatic means in order to persuade Iran to stop its pursuit of a nuclear weapon," said the spokeswoman. Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
Asked whether she was sure that Bush was not about to strike Iran, Perino replied: "I'm positive of that, and we're pursuing the diplomatic track."
"It's not the fault of the United States that we're in this position. It's the recalcitrance of Iran, they were provided a means to have a civil nuclear program with the cooperation of the international community, and they walked away from the table," she said.
"We would like to have them reverse that course, and (US) Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice said we would meet with her Iranian counterpart anytime, anywhere, but they've yet to take us up on that offer," said Perino.
"That's why we pursued the sanctions last week and we are pushing for a third resolution in the UN Security Council -- (which will) probably take place next month," she said.
On Monday, Washington bluntly dismissed the UN nuclear watchdog chief's warning that there was no proof Iran seeks atomic weapons and that warlike US rhetoric was only adding "fuel to the fire" in the dispute.
The United States has sharply escalated its rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, while slapping a new set of sanctions on its Revolutionary Guards, accused of spreading weapons of mass destruction, and its elite Quds Force, which was designated as a supporter of terrorism.
Three Iranian state-owned banks were also blacklisted, along with IRGC-controlled companies and the logistics arm of Iran's defense ministry.
On Friday, the White House rejected any parallels between its Iran rhetoric and the run up to the March 2003 Iraq invasion, adding it had not ruled out the use of force but was "very hopeful" of avoiding war.
In recent months, Bush has predicted "nuclear holocaust" and "World War III" if Tehran gets atomic weapons.
And Vice President Dick Cheney has warned of "serious consequences" for Iran if it defies global demands to freeze sensitive nuclear work -- echoing the UN resolution that Washington says authorized war in Iraq.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, has said that the United States is conducting "routine" contingency planning for possible military options against Iran.
Despite already being under two rounds of UN sanctions, Tehran refuses to suspend its controversial program of uranium enrichment, which the West fears to be a cover for atomic weapons development, a charge Iran denies.
by Olivier Knox - Oct 30, 2007
After weeks of escalating US rhetoric on Iran, the White House vowed Tuesday vowed to "pursue every possible diplomatic means" to defuse the volatile dispute over Tehran's nuclear program.
Spokeswoman Dana Perino sought to quiet fears that US President George W. Bush plans to attack the Islamic republic over its refusal to freeze sensitive nuclear work that can lead to the development of atomic weapons.
"There's no reason for people to think that the president is about to attack Iran. I think that we need to make that clear," she said. "He doesn't want people to fear that, because what he is doing is pursuing a diplomatic track."
Perino pointed to Bush's meetings next week with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel as evidence of diplomatic efforts to convince Iran to bow to international pressure over its nuclear program.
"He believes it's important for him to pursue every possible diplomatic means in order to persuade Iran to stop its pursuit of a nuclear weapon," said the spokeswoman. Tehran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
Asked whether she was sure that Bush was not about to strike Iran, Perino replied: "I'm positive of that, and we're pursuing the diplomatic track."
"It's not the fault of the United States that we're in this position. It's the recalcitrance of Iran, they were provided a means to have a civil nuclear program with the cooperation of the international community, and they walked away from the table," she said.
"We would like to have them reverse that course, and (US) Secretary (of State Condoleezza) Rice said we would meet with her Iranian counterpart anytime, anywhere, but they've yet to take us up on that offer," said Perino.
"That's why we pursued the sanctions last week and we are pushing for a third resolution in the UN Security Council -- (which will) probably take place next month," she said.
On Monday, Washington bluntly dismissed the UN nuclear watchdog chief's warning that there was no proof Iran seeks atomic weapons and that warlike US rhetoric was only adding "fuel to the fire" in the dispute.
The United States has sharply escalated its rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, while slapping a new set of sanctions on its Revolutionary Guards, accused of spreading weapons of mass destruction, and its elite Quds Force, which was designated as a supporter of terrorism.
Three Iranian state-owned banks were also blacklisted, along with IRGC-controlled companies and the logistics arm of Iran's defense ministry.
On Friday, the White House rejected any parallels between its Iran rhetoric and the run up to the March 2003 Iraq invasion, adding it had not ruled out the use of force but was "very hopeful" of avoiding war.
In recent months, Bush has predicted "nuclear holocaust" and "World War III" if Tehran gets atomic weapons.
And Vice President Dick Cheney has warned of "serious consequences" for Iran if it defies global demands to freeze sensitive nuclear work -- echoing the UN resolution that Washington says authorized war in Iraq.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, has said that the United States is conducting "routine" contingency planning for possible military options against Iran.
Despite already being under two rounds of UN sanctions, Tehran refuses to suspend its controversial program of uranium enrichment, which the West fears to be a cover for atomic weapons development, a charge Iran denies.
To Bomb, Or Not To Bomb
by Charles Pena - Oct 31, 2007
One of the most famous lines penned by William Shakespeare is from Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." In Iraq, the question is whether to bomb or not to bomb. So far this year, the U.S. military is bombing more than last year (1,140 air strikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of 2006, which does not include attacks by helicopter gunships) – more, in fact, than the last three years combined.
The argument in favor of increased bombing rests on the U.S. military's comparative advantage in air power and weapons technology. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm ushered in the use of precision-guided munitions intended to destroy high-value targets (often deeply buried and hardened) with greater effect and less collateral damage than "dumb" bombs. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan saw global positioning system (GPS) technology mated to dumb bombs to make them "smart," capable of striking within meters of their intended targets. The result was that the venerable B-52 bomber (which has been in service in the U.S. Air Force since 1955) could provide close air support flying at tens of thousands of feet altitude (a mission previously conducted by ground attack and fighter aircraft operating at lower altitude). In Iraq, as guidance technology makes bombs more accurate, they are getting smaller. Instead of 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs, 500-pound bombs are becoming the norm. New 250-pound bombs are on order, and the Hellfire missile (fired from helicopters or Predator drones) is only 100-pounds. According to Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Mueller, director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Iraq, the benefit of being able to use smaller bombs is that they can "take one building and not the whole block."
But according to Field Manual (FM) 3-24, the Army's counterinsurgency (COIN) manual crafted by Gen. David Petraeus (who is the now the commander of all U.S. force in Iraq),
"Precision air attacks can be of enormous value in COIN operations; however, commanders exercise exceptional care when using air power in the strike role. Bombing, even with the most precise weapons, can cause unintended civilian casualties. Effective leaders weigh the benefits of every air strike against its risks. An air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation (HN) government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory. Even when justified under the law of war, bombings that result in civilian casualties can bring media coverage that works to the insurgents' benefit. For example, some Palestinian militants have fired rockets or artillery from near a school or village to draw a retaliatory air strike that kills or wounds civilians. If that occurs, the insurgents display those killed and wounded to the media as victims of aggression."
Thus, the risk of the increased aerial bombardment is collateral damage and civilian casualties. In other words, bombing is a Catch-22. Insurgents or terrorists may be killed, but no matter how much care is taken to avoid noncombatant casualties so may innocent civilians. According to Wing Commander Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, "Even a 400-pound bomb has a wide area of blast, and you are quite likely to kill some civilians. Kill a wife, children, mother, or uncle, and people become so angry the terrorist cycle starts all over again."
To illustrate the potentially significant negative consequences of air attacks, it is worth noting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently called on the United States and NATO to cut back on their air strikes because of mounting civilian casualties (the number killed by air strikes has doubled and accounts for about half of total civilian deaths). According to Karzai,
"The United States and the Coalition Forces are not doing that deliberately. The United States is here to help the Afghan people. The Afghan people understand that mistakes are made. But five years on, six years on, definitely, very clearly, they cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power."
"Cannot comprehend" is probably an understatement. In the Kapisa province a U.S. air strike in March (targeting an alleged local Taliban leader) killed four generations of a single family: an 85-year-old man, four women, and four children, ranging in age from five years to seven months. According to one villager, "We used to hate the Russians much more than Americans. But now when we see all this happening, I am telling you Russians behave much better than the Americans." And the opinion about the Americans of the 7-year old boy who survived the bombing is plain enough: "I hate them."
Such a phenomenon was evident in Iraq very early on. In November 2003, U.S. F-16 fighter jets dropped several 500-pound bombs in Fallujah. According to one resident in the area where the bombs exploded, "We used to have hopes of the Americans after they removed Saddam. We had liked them until this weekend. Why did they drop bombs near us and hurt and terrify my children like this?" Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Which is what seems to be the case of using air strikes in Iraq. Consider last week's helicopter attack on a group of men planting roadside bombs north of Baghdad. A known member of a roadside bomb-making group was among five men killed, but five women and one child were also killed. According to the husband of one of the women who was killed, "They were peaceful people who had nothing to do with the resistance or gunmen."
According to FM 3-24:
"Successful counterinsurgents support or develop local institutions with legitimacy and the ability to provide basic services, economic opportunity, public order, and security. The political issues at stake are often rooted in culture, ideology, societal tensions, and injustice. As such, they defy nonviolent solutions. Military forces can compel obedience and secure areas; however, they cannot by themselves achieve the political settlement needed to resolve the situation. Successful COIN efforts include civilian agencies, U.S. military forces, and multinational forces. These efforts purposefully attack the basis for the insurgency rather than just its fighters."
In other words, winning over the civilian population is a key component of successful counterinsurgency. Yet increased use of air power is likely to have just the opposite effect. Which brings us back to the bard's question: To bomb, or not to bomb? You do the math.
One of the most famous lines penned by William Shakespeare is from Hamlet's soliloquy, "To be, or not to be: that is the question." In Iraq, the question is whether to bomb or not to bomb. So far this year, the U.S. military is bombing more than last year (1,140 air strikes in the first nine months of this year compared with 229 in all of 2006, which does not include attacks by helicopter gunships) – more, in fact, than the last three years combined.
The argument in favor of increased bombing rests on the U.S. military's comparative advantage in air power and weapons technology. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm ushered in the use of precision-guided munitions intended to destroy high-value targets (often deeply buried and hardened) with greater effect and less collateral damage than "dumb" bombs. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan saw global positioning system (GPS) technology mated to dumb bombs to make them "smart," capable of striking within meters of their intended targets. The result was that the venerable B-52 bomber (which has been in service in the U.S. Air Force since 1955) could provide close air support flying at tens of thousands of feet altitude (a mission previously conducted by ground attack and fighter aircraft operating at lower altitude). In Iraq, as guidance technology makes bombs more accurate, they are getting smaller. Instead of 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound bombs, 500-pound bombs are becoming the norm. New 250-pound bombs are on order, and the Hellfire missile (fired from helicopters or Predator drones) is only 100-pounds. According to Air Force Brig. Gen. Stephen Mueller, director of the Combined Air Operations Center in Iraq, the benefit of being able to use smaller bombs is that they can "take one building and not the whole block."
But according to Field Manual (FM) 3-24, the Army's counterinsurgency (COIN) manual crafted by Gen. David Petraeus (who is the now the commander of all U.S. force in Iraq),
"Precision air attacks can be of enormous value in COIN operations; however, commanders exercise exceptional care when using air power in the strike role. Bombing, even with the most precise weapons, can cause unintended civilian casualties. Effective leaders weigh the benefits of every air strike against its risks. An air strike can cause collateral damage that turns people against the host-nation (HN) government and provides insurgents with a major propaganda victory. Even when justified under the law of war, bombings that result in civilian casualties can bring media coverage that works to the insurgents' benefit. For example, some Palestinian militants have fired rockets or artillery from near a school or village to draw a retaliatory air strike that kills or wounds civilians. If that occurs, the insurgents display those killed and wounded to the media as victims of aggression."
Thus, the risk of the increased aerial bombardment is collateral damage and civilian casualties. In other words, bombing is a Catch-22. Insurgents or terrorists may be killed, but no matter how much care is taken to avoid noncombatant casualties so may innocent civilians. According to Wing Commander Andrew Brookes of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, "Even a 400-pound bomb has a wide area of blast, and you are quite likely to kill some civilians. Kill a wife, children, mother, or uncle, and people become so angry the terrorist cycle starts all over again."
To illustrate the potentially significant negative consequences of air attacks, it is worth noting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently called on the United States and NATO to cut back on their air strikes because of mounting civilian casualties (the number killed by air strikes has doubled and accounts for about half of total civilian deaths). According to Karzai,
"The United States and the Coalition Forces are not doing that deliberately. The United States is here to help the Afghan people. The Afghan people understand that mistakes are made. But five years on, six years on, definitely, very clearly, they cannot comprehend as to why there is still a need for air power."
"Cannot comprehend" is probably an understatement. In the Kapisa province a U.S. air strike in March (targeting an alleged local Taliban leader) killed four generations of a single family: an 85-year-old man, four women, and four children, ranging in age from five years to seven months. According to one villager, "We used to hate the Russians much more than Americans. But now when we see all this happening, I am telling you Russians behave much better than the Americans." And the opinion about the Americans of the 7-year old boy who survived the bombing is plain enough: "I hate them."
Such a phenomenon was evident in Iraq very early on. In November 2003, U.S. F-16 fighter jets dropped several 500-pound bombs in Fallujah. According to one resident in the area where the bombs exploded, "We used to have hopes of the Americans after they removed Saddam. We had liked them until this weekend. Why did they drop bombs near us and hurt and terrify my children like this?" Albert Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Which is what seems to be the case of using air strikes in Iraq. Consider last week's helicopter attack on a group of men planting roadside bombs north of Baghdad. A known member of a roadside bomb-making group was among five men killed, but five women and one child were also killed. According to the husband of one of the women who was killed, "They were peaceful people who had nothing to do with the resistance or gunmen."
According to FM 3-24:
"Successful counterinsurgents support or develop local institutions with legitimacy and the ability to provide basic services, economic opportunity, public order, and security. The political issues at stake are often rooted in culture, ideology, societal tensions, and injustice. As such, they defy nonviolent solutions. Military forces can compel obedience and secure areas; however, they cannot by themselves achieve the political settlement needed to resolve the situation. Successful COIN efforts include civilian agencies, U.S. military forces, and multinational forces. These efforts purposefully attack the basis for the insurgency rather than just its fighters."
In other words, winning over the civilian population is a key component of successful counterinsurgency. Yet increased use of air power is likely to have just the opposite effect. Which brings us back to the bard's question: To bomb, or not to bomb? You do the math.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Iraq, Iran and the U.S. "Vision"
by ROBERT FANTINA - Oct 28, 2007
The U.S.'s current cheerleader for American imperial arrogance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has now stated that Iran presents a major obstacle blocking the U.S.'s vision for the Middle East. In her fairy-tale world, this vision is of a region where the countries "trade more, invest more, talk more and work more constructively to solve problems."
This entire bizarre concept needs further exploration.
The first puzzling aspect is why the U.S., in the form of President Bush and his neocon cronies, has a 'vision' for the Middle East that it thinks it can establish. While anyone can have a wish or vision for any nation, all one can reasonably do is encourage such actions and foster any gains. Nations may have a vision of Iraq at peace; North Korea allowing freedom of the press and the U.S. allowing free speech; yet they have no inherent right to force those countries to adopt those principles. The U.S., however, in typical saber-rattling style, believes in deadly force to achieve its vision for sovereign nations in which it has no business meddling.
One indeed has a short memory if one forgets Mr. Bush's 'vision' for Iraq just four short years ago. In this happy picture, Iraqi citizens were throwing rose pedals under the feet of the U.S. soldiers who had liberated them, democratic elections quickly followed the 'Shock and Awe' invasion, and a whole new world of freedom, equality and democracy rose from the ashes of Saddam's Hussein's reign of terror. It appears that Mr. Bush might have been somewhat over-optimistic in this assessment, since the people of Iraq have been violently resisting his naïve vision for four years now. Acting upon his goal to force this 'vision' onto the unwilling targets of his misplaced largess has left them in far worse conditions then they were in under Saddam Hussein.
Ms. Rice spoke of increased trade and investment, the reverently-worshipped gods of U.S. capitalism. One cannot help but think of 'trade more' as meaning 'send oil to the U.S.,' and 'invest more' meaning greater riches for Halliburton and other oil companies with long ties to members of the Bush administration. That the middle class in the U.S. continues to shrink, not due to the growth in numbers of the wealthy, but because more and more people have fallen, and continue to fall, below the poverty level under Mr. Bush's disastrous policies, is not of Ms. Rice's concern. Her own lucrative career with Chevron, ending only when she became Secretary of State, may never be far from her mind. If it were perhaps she never would have been included with those who masterminded the tragic invasion of Iraq, and who continue to be tireless cheerleaders for the failed, deadly occupation in that beleaguered country.
It is an important part of this vision, Ms. Rice states, for the people in the Middle East to 'talk more.' Of course, Mr. Bush rejected the Iraq Study Panel's recommendation to 'talk more' in the Middle East when he disdained negotiations with Iran and Syria in December of 2006, when the panel issued its report. And while Arabic translators could provide significant help in talking to people in the Middle East, the U.S. does not seem particularly interested in keeping them available. For example, Mr. Stephen Benjamin was a petty officer in the Navy. He trained to serve in Iraq as an Arabic translator and by all accounts his skills were exemplary. Yet he was discharged from the Navy without ever serving in Iraq. What infraction, one might ask, had Mr. Benjamin committed that was so serious that the U.S. military felt it could do without his valuable skills? What had he done that so compromised the security of the United States that the military had no choice but to discharge him, thus losing his valuable, life-saving and very rare skills? There was no infraction; Mr. Benjamin broke no major rules, and performed his duties in an exemplary fashion. So why, in fact, was he discharged? Mr. Benjamin could no longer serve in the U.S. military, could no longer use his valuable, life-saving language skills, simply because it was discovered that he was gay.
The Bush administration wants countries in the Middle East to 'work more constructively to solve problems.' Does this mean, perhaps, not resorting to war when diplomacy has not been tried? Could it mean respecting the differences of others without attempting to kill them? Perhaps working 'more constructively to solve problems' means to do it Mr. Bush's way: if one perceives a problem, attempt to annihilate the other party before one even confirms whether or not a problem actually exists.
If, for Mr. Bush and his neocon Cabinet, working 'more constructively to solve problems' implies that the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites should simply sit down and iron out their differences, one wonders what planet he hails from. His bombs, bullets and soldiers, all the components of his deadly war machine, have not helped the diverse groups within Iraq to come together in anything other than their hatred of the U.S. Rather, he has spawned a catastrophic civil war that will not end for generations. It may result in the partitioning of the once united Iraq.
Mr. Bush has been critical of Turkey's threats to use force against Kurdish incursions into Turkey. Why, one wonders, does the U.S. not need to seek more constructive ways to solve problems, yet it insists that Turkey does so.
The current administration and the Democratically-controlled Congress have completely lost sight of reality in terms of the Middle East, assuming of course that they ever had even a slight glimpse of those realities. Peoples who lived together in relative, if tenuous, harmony for years under a dictatorship are now at each others' throats and the throats of the poor U.S. soldiers struggling to do some good in Iraq, without any direction on how to accomplish that. The number of Iraqi citizens who have died since Mr. Bush's astoundingly cruel and heartless 'Shock and Awe' campaign began is far greater than the number killed during the years of Saddam Hussein's reign. And now Mr. Bush and Congress are focusing their murderous designs on Iran, a nation that Vice President Cheney insists the U.S. will not allow to have nuclear weapons. One wonders how and why Mr. Cheney has the right to decree how Iran will protect itself, when its nearest neighbor was invaded by the most militarily powerful country in the world. Do not the 70,000,000 people of Iran deserve to escape the fate that their Iraqi neighbors continue to suffer?
One cannot expect Mr. Bush to learn from the past; expecting him to do so is a fantasy in and of itself. But Congress, which appears to be gaining more and more of an appetite to invade Iran, should know better. The U.S. has created a catastrophic mess in Iraq; does Congress expect a better result in a country with more than double the population? How long can the U.S. expect to meddle so violently in the Middle East, overthrowing governments and sparking civil wars at will, before it incurs serious repercussions at home and abroad? One of Mr. Bush's ever-changing reasons for attacking Iraq was to prevent the non-existent threat of terrorists that he claimed were headquartered there from bombing the U.S. He is using that same reason in his threatening rhetoric towards Iran. Does Congress not see how wrong he was then? Are there no cooler heads to prevail in Washington, D.C., or is everyone there a candidate for president wanting to avoid appearing 'soft' on terror and therefore willing to ignore reality?
The problem, if all this can be boiled down to its worst, but entirely too likely, case scenario, is that as Mr. Bush & Co. go about trying to force their vision on selected countries around the world, with Congress timidly following along, the risk to America and the world increases. Iraq, since the U.S. invasion, has become a hotbed of terrorist activity, which it was not before. A war with Iran would compound that disaster many times over. With a population more than twice that of Iraq, and with infrastructure far superior to that country's, Iran will not be an easy target for the U.S. One must be cautious if Mr. Bush, prior to any invasion of Iran, begins spouting once again his nonsense about U.S. soldiers being hailed as liberators. One can see how accurate that assessment was prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Where, one wonders, does all this leave the U.S., Iran and the world? Certainly it is not in a safer place than it was prior to Ms. Rice's peculiar visionary pronouncements. As the U.S. struggles to keep a resurgent Taliban from regaining total control in Afghanistan, and tries to subdue the Iraqi people sufficiently to grab that country's oil, another war on a new front does not seem like a reasonable course of action. But Mr. Bush and his neocon yes-men advisors do not seemed concerned with the facts as they have lived them these past four years. Rather, they prefer their pie-in-the-sky visions of the Middle East being overrun by U.S. soldiers and emerging a short time later as a model of peace and democracy. That Congress does not seem willing to prevent this colossal error is terrifying for much of the world. For the people living in the Middle East, the fear must be entirely overwhelming. And one cannot blame them if that fear turns to an anger that will threaten the world, much as Mr. Bush has threatened it.
The U.S.'s current cheerleader for American imperial arrogance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, has now stated that Iran presents a major obstacle blocking the U.S.'s vision for the Middle East. In her fairy-tale world, this vision is of a region where the countries "trade more, invest more, talk more and work more constructively to solve problems."
This entire bizarre concept needs further exploration.
The first puzzling aspect is why the U.S., in the form of President Bush and his neocon cronies, has a 'vision' for the Middle East that it thinks it can establish. While anyone can have a wish or vision for any nation, all one can reasonably do is encourage such actions and foster any gains. Nations may have a vision of Iraq at peace; North Korea allowing freedom of the press and the U.S. allowing free speech; yet they have no inherent right to force those countries to adopt those principles. The U.S., however, in typical saber-rattling style, believes in deadly force to achieve its vision for sovereign nations in which it has no business meddling.
One indeed has a short memory if one forgets Mr. Bush's 'vision' for Iraq just four short years ago. In this happy picture, Iraqi citizens were throwing rose pedals under the feet of the U.S. soldiers who had liberated them, democratic elections quickly followed the 'Shock and Awe' invasion, and a whole new world of freedom, equality and democracy rose from the ashes of Saddam's Hussein's reign of terror. It appears that Mr. Bush might have been somewhat over-optimistic in this assessment, since the people of Iraq have been violently resisting his naïve vision for four years now. Acting upon his goal to force this 'vision' onto the unwilling targets of his misplaced largess has left them in far worse conditions then they were in under Saddam Hussein.
Ms. Rice spoke of increased trade and investment, the reverently-worshipped gods of U.S. capitalism. One cannot help but think of 'trade more' as meaning 'send oil to the U.S.,' and 'invest more' meaning greater riches for Halliburton and other oil companies with long ties to members of the Bush administration. That the middle class in the U.S. continues to shrink, not due to the growth in numbers of the wealthy, but because more and more people have fallen, and continue to fall, below the poverty level under Mr. Bush's disastrous policies, is not of Ms. Rice's concern. Her own lucrative career with Chevron, ending only when she became Secretary of State, may never be far from her mind. If it were perhaps she never would have been included with those who masterminded the tragic invasion of Iraq, and who continue to be tireless cheerleaders for the failed, deadly occupation in that beleaguered country.
It is an important part of this vision, Ms. Rice states, for the people in the Middle East to 'talk more.' Of course, Mr. Bush rejected the Iraq Study Panel's recommendation to 'talk more' in the Middle East when he disdained negotiations with Iran and Syria in December of 2006, when the panel issued its report. And while Arabic translators could provide significant help in talking to people in the Middle East, the U.S. does not seem particularly interested in keeping them available. For example, Mr. Stephen Benjamin was a petty officer in the Navy. He trained to serve in Iraq as an Arabic translator and by all accounts his skills were exemplary. Yet he was discharged from the Navy without ever serving in Iraq. What infraction, one might ask, had Mr. Benjamin committed that was so serious that the U.S. military felt it could do without his valuable skills? What had he done that so compromised the security of the United States that the military had no choice but to discharge him, thus losing his valuable, life-saving and very rare skills? There was no infraction; Mr. Benjamin broke no major rules, and performed his duties in an exemplary fashion. So why, in fact, was he discharged? Mr. Benjamin could no longer serve in the U.S. military, could no longer use his valuable, life-saving language skills, simply because it was discovered that he was gay.
The Bush administration wants countries in the Middle East to 'work more constructively to solve problems.' Does this mean, perhaps, not resorting to war when diplomacy has not been tried? Could it mean respecting the differences of others without attempting to kill them? Perhaps working 'more constructively to solve problems' means to do it Mr. Bush's way: if one perceives a problem, attempt to annihilate the other party before one even confirms whether or not a problem actually exists.
If, for Mr. Bush and his neocon Cabinet, working 'more constructively to solve problems' implies that the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites should simply sit down and iron out their differences, one wonders what planet he hails from. His bombs, bullets and soldiers, all the components of his deadly war machine, have not helped the diverse groups within Iraq to come together in anything other than their hatred of the U.S. Rather, he has spawned a catastrophic civil war that will not end for generations. It may result in the partitioning of the once united Iraq.
Mr. Bush has been critical of Turkey's threats to use force against Kurdish incursions into Turkey. Why, one wonders, does the U.S. not need to seek more constructive ways to solve problems, yet it insists that Turkey does so.
The current administration and the Democratically-controlled Congress have completely lost sight of reality in terms of the Middle East, assuming of course that they ever had even a slight glimpse of those realities. Peoples who lived together in relative, if tenuous, harmony for years under a dictatorship are now at each others' throats and the throats of the poor U.S. soldiers struggling to do some good in Iraq, without any direction on how to accomplish that. The number of Iraqi citizens who have died since Mr. Bush's astoundingly cruel and heartless 'Shock and Awe' campaign began is far greater than the number killed during the years of Saddam Hussein's reign. And now Mr. Bush and Congress are focusing their murderous designs on Iran, a nation that Vice President Cheney insists the U.S. will not allow to have nuclear weapons. One wonders how and why Mr. Cheney has the right to decree how Iran will protect itself, when its nearest neighbor was invaded by the most militarily powerful country in the world. Do not the 70,000,000 people of Iran deserve to escape the fate that their Iraqi neighbors continue to suffer?
One cannot expect Mr. Bush to learn from the past; expecting him to do so is a fantasy in and of itself. But Congress, which appears to be gaining more and more of an appetite to invade Iran, should know better. The U.S. has created a catastrophic mess in Iraq; does Congress expect a better result in a country with more than double the population? How long can the U.S. expect to meddle so violently in the Middle East, overthrowing governments and sparking civil wars at will, before it incurs serious repercussions at home and abroad? One of Mr. Bush's ever-changing reasons for attacking Iraq was to prevent the non-existent threat of terrorists that he claimed were headquartered there from bombing the U.S. He is using that same reason in his threatening rhetoric towards Iran. Does Congress not see how wrong he was then? Are there no cooler heads to prevail in Washington, D.C., or is everyone there a candidate for president wanting to avoid appearing 'soft' on terror and therefore willing to ignore reality?
The problem, if all this can be boiled down to its worst, but entirely too likely, case scenario, is that as Mr. Bush & Co. go about trying to force their vision on selected countries around the world, with Congress timidly following along, the risk to America and the world increases. Iraq, since the U.S. invasion, has become a hotbed of terrorist activity, which it was not before. A war with Iran would compound that disaster many times over. With a population more than twice that of Iraq, and with infrastructure far superior to that country's, Iran will not be an easy target for the U.S. One must be cautious if Mr. Bush, prior to any invasion of Iran, begins spouting once again his nonsense about U.S. soldiers being hailed as liberators. One can see how accurate that assessment was prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Where, one wonders, does all this leave the U.S., Iran and the world? Certainly it is not in a safer place than it was prior to Ms. Rice's peculiar visionary pronouncements. As the U.S. struggles to keep a resurgent Taliban from regaining total control in Afghanistan, and tries to subdue the Iraqi people sufficiently to grab that country's oil, another war on a new front does not seem like a reasonable course of action. But Mr. Bush and his neocon yes-men advisors do not seemed concerned with the facts as they have lived them these past four years. Rather, they prefer their pie-in-the-sky visions of the Middle East being overrun by U.S. soldiers and emerging a short time later as a model of peace and democracy. That Congress does not seem willing to prevent this colossal error is terrifying for much of the world. For the people living in the Middle East, the fear must be entirely overwhelming. And one cannot blame them if that fear turns to an anger that will threaten the world, much as Mr. Bush has threatened it.
In Search of Logic About Iran
by ALI MOAYEDIAN - Oct 28, 2007
In Bushies' march to war with Iran. Many are concerned and see the dangers of war as imminent. Others are openly advocating for U.S. aggression against Iran and they scream for bombardment of another nation, just because we can!
Forces of Good and Evil are lining up. And this is no movie. There is no middle ground either. If Evil takes over, all that there is will have to succumb to Evil. Which side are you standing with? And which side do you think has the upper hand? I like to think it's the Good. Unfortunately I've been proven wrong before!
Brook's PsychoBush Theorem
Rosa Brook, a columnist for Los Angeles Times, puts is very bluntly, and she has got it right. The Bushies are all insane. Thus one cannot confront them in the domain of logic. One has to wonder how a psychotic Bush sold us one War for Peace, and how he continues his road shows selling more of Elixir Of Death as Elixir Of Life?
We are past the 9/11 patriotism. But it still takes guts for Brook to say it as she sees it. May the force protect her from blacklists!
Forget impeachment. Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.
Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," Zakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"
The Jihadi Cowboy
Dr. Ali Ettefagh, writing from Tehran in Washington Post, argues that since Iran hasn't attacked anyone the U.S. should leave her alone. This argument will make perfect sense to sane and/or logical people. But based on Brook's PsychoBush Theorem discussed above, we need to come up with new arguments to deal with psychotic Bushies. All evidence indicates that the Bushies only believe in language of force. To come and say "Iran hasn't invaded any countries" only aggravates the situation and causes the Bushies to show more teeth. You should instead write about all the times Iran has invaded and conquered others. Feel free to go back a few thousand years!
We have to accept that we live in an era of intellectual rip-offs, tactics sold as policy and instant strategies broadcast live on TV. The show on the plastic box and talking-head spin-meisters will do the thinking and planning for us all. Accordingly, we lower expectations and shall not be surprised when we see childish games are sold as a mimic of statesmanship. His Excellency, the president of a superpower, is now demanding that the world forget what it knows and listen to his version of stories.
Finally, it's useful to review history. Iran has not started a war, or grabbed a neighbor's territory, since the United States became an independent country. Iran helped the Allies during World War II, providing a supply route to Russia and a safe escape route for Polish Jews, some of whom settled in Iran. Iran has never trampled on the dignity of any one.
But a small Middle Eastern country fabricated after World War II might well start the world's next Iranian conflict--a country that that aspires to be the real spin-meister of cheap tactics in Washington.
The Real Threat
Lamis Andoni, a Middle East consultant for Al Jazeera, writing in Washington Post talks about worries of the people in the Arab world. What people like Lamis fail to understand is Bushies doesn't give a hoot (to be polite) for the anxiety and uncertainty of the Arabs. But no hard feelings. Katrina victims were treated the same, if not worse!
Talk of an American war against Iran has provoked anxiety and uncertainty here in the Arab world, especially in the Gulf Region, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. People are still reeling from the effects of the continuing war in Iraq and the lack of resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Many believe Iran's military power is the region's only deterrent against Israel--and many here support Iran's legal right to develop nuclear power. The view from the region is largely defined by the world's silence towards Israeli nuclear power.
Oil Gets Nervous
Considering Iran produces 4 million bpd and sits strategically between Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf, there is no question nervousness will turn into mass hysteria if sanity forbid the first GWB missile lands in Iran. Guess who will pay the price then? Now if some people have to pay more, others will naturally collect more. It's left an exercise to the readers to find who the select others are.
Then again you may ask that when the whole planet is going down with global warming, does it make sense to continue maximizing profits by engaging in Massive Murder and Destruction (WMD)? To that I have to answer you are thinking logically again. Please go back and study the PsychoBush Theorem again!
Crude oil rose above $90 a barrel to a record in New York the day after a government report showed an unexpected drop in U.S. stockpiles.
New U.S. sanctions against Iran, warnings of a Turkish assault on Kurdish militants in Iraq and a falling dollar also pushed prices higher today.
Hillary Clinton Advocates More Insanity
Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner Democratic Presidential Candidate, supports the new Bush Sanctions against Iran. We could perhaps forgive Hillary for voting for the war on Iraq. We can blame that on temporary insanity; or maybe she followed Bush blindly and natively. What now? Now that all the cards are on the table, what's her excuse? Maybe the insanity wasn't temporary after all? Is this the best that we can get for a first woman president? I Pass!
Here's the official statement from Hillary Clinton on Bush's Iran Sanctions Announcement:
"We must use all the tools at our disposal to address the serious challenge posed by Iran, including diplomacy, economic pressure, and sanctions.
"I believe that a policy of diplomacy backed by economic pressure is the best way to check Iran's efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons program and stop its support of terrorism, and the best way to avert a war. That's why I took to the Senate floor last February and warned the President not to take military action against Iran without going to Congress first and why I've co-sponsored Senator Webb's legislation to make that the law of the land. I've been concerned for a long time over George Bush's saber rattling and belligerence toward Iran.
"We must work to check Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support of terrorism, and the sanctions announced today strengthen America's diplomatic hand in that regard. The Bush Administration should use this opportunity to finally engage in robust diplomacy to achieve our objective of ending Iran's nuclear weapons program, while also averting military action. That is the policy I support."
Loony Romney Wants The Blood Flowing In Persian Gulf
Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney best exemplifies the mentality of the Republican hopefuls, except for Ron Paul of course. They are all eager to replace the flow of oil through Persian Gulf with blood. The Republicans, have turned the presidential campaign into an I'll Attack Iran First race instead. Mitt and company are screaming at the top of their lungs everywhere they go on the campaign trail trying to create a monster out of Iran, and they all try to top each other in how they plan to obliterate Iran. Will the voters see the real monsters close at home?
According to CNN, Romney told voters in New Hampshire that he would take military action, including a blockade or "bombardment of some kind," to stop Iran's move to gain nuclear weapons.
"If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us," Romney said. "That's an option that's on the table. And it's not something which we'll spell out specifically."
Romney also spoke out in favor of the Bush administration's sanctions against Tehran.
May Sanity Prevail
There is still hope. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wants engagement not confrontation. Rays of wisdom are forcing their way through the clouds of hatred and warmongering in Washington. But will the sun come out?
"Unilateral sanctions rarely, ever work," Hagel said by phone during his weekly news conference. "I just don't think the unilateral approach and giving war speeches helps the situation. It will just drive the Iranians closer together."
Hagel, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there's no question that Iran's behavior presents a problem, citing the country's activities in Iraq and elsewhere. But, he said, the answer is not "to throw unilateral sanctions on them." "It escalates the danger of a military confrontation," Hagel said. "I certainly think engagement is critical ... direct engagement," said Hagel. "That's what great powers do."
Senator Chris Dodd, a Democratic Presidential Candidate, also spoke against the new sanctions:
"I recognize the obvious threat a nuclear Iran poses to the region and beyond, and that we must stop Iran's continued support for international terrorism.
"Unfortunately, the action taken by the Administration today comes in the context of escalating rhetoric and drumbeat to military action against Iran.
"I am deeply concerned that once again the President is opting for military action as a first resort.
"The glaring omission of any new diplomatic measures by the President today is the reason I voted, and urged my colleagues to vote, against the Kyl -Lieberman resolution on September 26.
"The aggressive actions taken today by the Administration absent any corresponding diplomatic action is exactly what we all should have known was coming when we considered our vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and smacks, frankly, of a dangerous step toward armed confrontation with Iran."
But it was John Edwards, another Democratic Presidential Candidate, who had the harshest words for Bush, Cheney and above all Hillary Clinton:
"Today, George Bush and Dick Cheney again rattled the sabers in their march toward military action against Iran. The Bush Administration has been making plans to attack Iran for many months. At this critical moment, we need strong leadership to stand against George Bush's dangerous 'preventive war' policy, which makes force the first option, not the last.
"I learned a clear lesson from the lead up to the Iraq War in 2002: if you give this president an inch, he will take a mile - and launch a war. Senator Clinton apparently learned a different lesson. Instead of blocking George Bush's new march to war, Senator Clinton and others are enabling him once again.
"I have called for strong, capable diplomacy to deal with the challenge of Iran, and a carrots and sticks strategy aimed at results--not the Bush/Cheney path, which would escalate tensions, enable attacks, and lead to unintended consequences.
"The New Yorker recently reported that one reason the administration has not yet attacked Iran is because public opinion has turned against such a course. Senator Clinton's actions undermine the American people's opposition to war with Iran. Today's advancement of the Bush strategy on Iran shows how much we need strong opposition on this issue. I learned my lesson the hard way in 2002, but it appears that others still have some learning to do."
The High Costs
Unfortunately, the cryptic statement from Senator Barak Obama, another Democratic Presidential Candidate, didn't cut it. He's taken the middle ground (as if there is one). Obama wants us to believe he isn't for war. But he is afraid to be forceful and daring. He's obviously too concerned about the political costs: " It is important to have tough sanctions on Iran, particularly on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard which supports terrorism. But these sanctions must not be linked to any attempt to keep our troops in Iraq, or to take military action against Iran. Unfortunately, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment made the case for President Bush that we need to use our military presence in Iraq to counter Iran - a case that has nothing to do with sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard."
A Small Man Standing Tall
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is by far the strongest anti-war Democratic Presidential candidate. One can expect to hear straight words from Kucinich. No beating around the Bushies. He is a man of wisdom and logic. They've tried to put him down because of his height. But he's standing taller than all other candidates:
"The Administration has been dramatically increasing its efforts in the last several weeks to go to war with Iran," Kucinich said. "This latest stunt is nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into yet another war-this time with Iran."
Last week, President Bush stated in a news conference: "So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
In a speech Sunday to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, Vice President Dick Cheney said that if Iran continues on its current course, the United States and other nations are "prepared to impose serious consequences. Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions."
In announcing the sanctions today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said:
"Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon, building dangerous ballistic missiles, supporting Shia militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations, threatening to wipe Israel off the map."
"After the lies and deception used to lead us to war in Iraq, the belligerent Bush Administration cannot be given leeway with statements that suggest a preemptive attack on Iran is necessary," Kucinich said. "We are systematically destroying every available route to restoring peace and security in the Middle East."Congress must take back its exclusive authority to declare war from the Bush Administration."
In Bushies' march to war with Iran. Many are concerned and see the dangers of war as imminent. Others are openly advocating for U.S. aggression against Iran and they scream for bombardment of another nation, just because we can!
Forces of Good and Evil are lining up. And this is no movie. There is no middle ground either. If Evil takes over, all that there is will have to succumb to Evil. Which side are you standing with? And which side do you think has the upper hand? I like to think it's the Good. Unfortunately I've been proven wrong before!
Brook's PsychoBush Theorem
Rosa Brook, a columnist for Los Angeles Times, puts is very bluntly, and she has got it right. The Bushies are all insane. Thus one cannot confront them in the domain of logic. One has to wonder how a psychotic Bush sold us one War for Peace, and how he continues his road shows selling more of Elixir Of Death as Elixir Of Life?
We are past the 9/11 patriotism. But it still takes guts for Brook to say it as she sees it. May the force protect her from blacklists!
Forget impeachment. Liberals, put it behind you. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney shouldn't be treated like criminals who deserve punishment. They should be treated like psychotics who need treatment.
Writing in Newsweek on Oct. 20, Fareed Zakaria, a solid centrist and former editor of Foreign Affairs, put it best. Citing Bush's invocation of "the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon," Zakaria concluded that "the American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. . . . Iran has an economy the size of Finland's. . . . It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are . . . allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"
The Jihadi Cowboy
Dr. Ali Ettefagh, writing from Tehran in Washington Post, argues that since Iran hasn't attacked anyone the U.S. should leave her alone. This argument will make perfect sense to sane and/or logical people. But based on Brook's PsychoBush Theorem discussed above, we need to come up with new arguments to deal with psychotic Bushies. All evidence indicates that the Bushies only believe in language of force. To come and say "Iran hasn't invaded any countries" only aggravates the situation and causes the Bushies to show more teeth. You should instead write about all the times Iran has invaded and conquered others. Feel free to go back a few thousand years!
We have to accept that we live in an era of intellectual rip-offs, tactics sold as policy and instant strategies broadcast live on TV. The show on the plastic box and talking-head spin-meisters will do the thinking and planning for us all. Accordingly, we lower expectations and shall not be surprised when we see childish games are sold as a mimic of statesmanship. His Excellency, the president of a superpower, is now demanding that the world forget what it knows and listen to his version of stories.
Finally, it's useful to review history. Iran has not started a war, or grabbed a neighbor's territory, since the United States became an independent country. Iran helped the Allies during World War II, providing a supply route to Russia and a safe escape route for Polish Jews, some of whom settled in Iran. Iran has never trampled on the dignity of any one.
But a small Middle Eastern country fabricated after World War II might well start the world's next Iranian conflict--a country that that aspires to be the real spin-meister of cheap tactics in Washington.
The Real Threat
Lamis Andoni, a Middle East consultant for Al Jazeera, writing in Washington Post talks about worries of the people in the Arab world. What people like Lamis fail to understand is Bushies doesn't give a hoot (to be polite) for the anxiety and uncertainty of the Arabs. But no hard feelings. Katrina victims were treated the same, if not worse!
Talk of an American war against Iran has provoked anxiety and uncertainty here in the Arab world, especially in the Gulf Region, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. People are still reeling from the effects of the continuing war in Iraq and the lack of resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Many believe Iran's military power is the region's only deterrent against Israel--and many here support Iran's legal right to develop nuclear power. The view from the region is largely defined by the world's silence towards Israeli nuclear power.
Oil Gets Nervous
Considering Iran produces 4 million bpd and sits strategically between Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf, there is no question nervousness will turn into mass hysteria if sanity forbid the first GWB missile lands in Iran. Guess who will pay the price then? Now if some people have to pay more, others will naturally collect more. It's left an exercise to the readers to find who the select others are.
Then again you may ask that when the whole planet is going down with global warming, does it make sense to continue maximizing profits by engaging in Massive Murder and Destruction (WMD)? To that I have to answer you are thinking logically again. Please go back and study the PsychoBush Theorem again!
Crude oil rose above $90 a barrel to a record in New York the day after a government report showed an unexpected drop in U.S. stockpiles.
New U.S. sanctions against Iran, warnings of a Turkish assault on Kurdish militants in Iraq and a falling dollar also pushed prices higher today.
Hillary Clinton Advocates More Insanity
Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner Democratic Presidential Candidate, supports the new Bush Sanctions against Iran. We could perhaps forgive Hillary for voting for the war on Iraq. We can blame that on temporary insanity; or maybe she followed Bush blindly and natively. What now? Now that all the cards are on the table, what's her excuse? Maybe the insanity wasn't temporary after all? Is this the best that we can get for a first woman president? I Pass!
Here's the official statement from Hillary Clinton on Bush's Iran Sanctions Announcement:
"We must use all the tools at our disposal to address the serious challenge posed by Iran, including diplomacy, economic pressure, and sanctions.
"I believe that a policy of diplomacy backed by economic pressure is the best way to check Iran's efforts to acquire a nuclear weapons program and stop its support of terrorism, and the best way to avert a war. That's why I took to the Senate floor last February and warned the President not to take military action against Iran without going to Congress first and why I've co-sponsored Senator Webb's legislation to make that the law of the land. I've been concerned for a long time over George Bush's saber rattling and belligerence toward Iran.
"We must work to check Iran's nuclear ambitions and its support of terrorism, and the sanctions announced today strengthen America's diplomatic hand in that regard. The Bush Administration should use this opportunity to finally engage in robust diplomacy to achieve our objective of ending Iran's nuclear weapons program, while also averting military action. That is the policy I support."
Loony Romney Wants The Blood Flowing In Persian Gulf
Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney best exemplifies the mentality of the Republican hopefuls, except for Ron Paul of course. They are all eager to replace the flow of oil through Persian Gulf with blood. The Republicans, have turned the presidential campaign into an I'll Attack Iran First race instead. Mitt and company are screaming at the top of their lungs everywhere they go on the campaign trail trying to create a monster out of Iran, and they all try to top each other in how they plan to obliterate Iran. Will the voters see the real monsters close at home?
According to CNN, Romney told voters in New Hampshire that he would take military action, including a blockade or "bombardment of some kind," to stop Iran's move to gain nuclear weapons.
"If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us," Romney said. "That's an option that's on the table. And it's not something which we'll spell out specifically."
Romney also spoke out in favor of the Bush administration's sanctions against Tehran.
May Sanity Prevail
There is still hope. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska wants engagement not confrontation. Rays of wisdom are forcing their way through the clouds of hatred and warmongering in Washington. But will the sun come out?
"Unilateral sanctions rarely, ever work," Hagel said by phone during his weekly news conference. "I just don't think the unilateral approach and giving war speeches helps the situation. It will just drive the Iranians closer together."
Hagel, a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said there's no question that Iran's behavior presents a problem, citing the country's activities in Iraq and elsewhere. But, he said, the answer is not "to throw unilateral sanctions on them." "It escalates the danger of a military confrontation," Hagel said. "I certainly think engagement is critical ... direct engagement," said Hagel. "That's what great powers do."
Senator Chris Dodd, a Democratic Presidential Candidate, also spoke against the new sanctions:
"I recognize the obvious threat a nuclear Iran poses to the region and beyond, and that we must stop Iran's continued support for international terrorism.
"Unfortunately, the action taken by the Administration today comes in the context of escalating rhetoric and drumbeat to military action against Iran.
"I am deeply concerned that once again the President is opting for military action as a first resort.
"The glaring omission of any new diplomatic measures by the President today is the reason I voted, and urged my colleagues to vote, against the Kyl -Lieberman resolution on September 26.
"The aggressive actions taken today by the Administration absent any corresponding diplomatic action is exactly what we all should have known was coming when we considered our vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and smacks, frankly, of a dangerous step toward armed confrontation with Iran."
But it was John Edwards, another Democratic Presidential Candidate, who had the harshest words for Bush, Cheney and above all Hillary Clinton:
"Today, George Bush and Dick Cheney again rattled the sabers in their march toward military action against Iran. The Bush Administration has been making plans to attack Iran for many months. At this critical moment, we need strong leadership to stand against George Bush's dangerous 'preventive war' policy, which makes force the first option, not the last.
"I learned a clear lesson from the lead up to the Iraq War in 2002: if you give this president an inch, he will take a mile - and launch a war. Senator Clinton apparently learned a different lesson. Instead of blocking George Bush's new march to war, Senator Clinton and others are enabling him once again.
"I have called for strong, capable diplomacy to deal with the challenge of Iran, and a carrots and sticks strategy aimed at results--not the Bush/Cheney path, which would escalate tensions, enable attacks, and lead to unintended consequences.
"The New Yorker recently reported that one reason the administration has not yet attacked Iran is because public opinion has turned against such a course. Senator Clinton's actions undermine the American people's opposition to war with Iran. Today's advancement of the Bush strategy on Iran shows how much we need strong opposition on this issue. I learned my lesson the hard way in 2002, but it appears that others still have some learning to do."
The High Costs
Unfortunately, the cryptic statement from Senator Barak Obama, another Democratic Presidential Candidate, didn't cut it. He's taken the middle ground (as if there is one). Obama wants us to believe he isn't for war. But he is afraid to be forceful and daring. He's obviously too concerned about the political costs: " It is important to have tough sanctions on Iran, particularly on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard which supports terrorism. But these sanctions must not be linked to any attempt to keep our troops in Iraq, or to take military action against Iran. Unfortunately, the Kyl-Lieberman amendment made the case for President Bush that we need to use our military presence in Iraq to counter Iran - a case that has nothing to do with sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard."
A Small Man Standing Tall
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is by far the strongest anti-war Democratic Presidential candidate. One can expect to hear straight words from Kucinich. No beating around the Bushies. He is a man of wisdom and logic. They've tried to put him down because of his height. But he's standing taller than all other candidates:
"The Administration has been dramatically increasing its efforts in the last several weeks to go to war with Iran," Kucinich said. "This latest stunt is nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into yet another war-this time with Iran."
Last week, President Bush stated in a news conference: "So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them (Iran) from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."
In a speech Sunday to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, Vice President Dick Cheney said that if Iran continues on its current course, the United States and other nations are "prepared to impose serious consequences. Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions."
In announcing the sanctions today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said:
"Unfortunately the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security by pursuing nuclear technologies that can lead to a nuclear weapon, building dangerous ballistic missiles, supporting Shia militants in Iraq and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, and denying the existence of a fellow member of the United Nations, threatening to wipe Israel off the map."
"After the lies and deception used to lead us to war in Iraq, the belligerent Bush Administration cannot be given leeway with statements that suggest a preemptive attack on Iran is necessary," Kucinich said. "We are systematically destroying every available route to restoring peace and security in the Middle East."Congress must take back its exclusive authority to declare war from the Bush Administration."
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