They Did What !

If we were paying attention last January, we heard some of the build up to war with Iran in Bush’s January 10 speech. The President accused Iran of “providing material support for attacks on American troops” while promising to “disrupt the attacks on our forces” and “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

On the heels of that January speech, five Iranians were arrested in their consulate in northern Iraq. Washington claimed the Iranians were agents and members of the IRGC. Tehran said they were diplomats.

Throughout the following months, statements from the administration painted Iran as nearing nuclear capability and as an imminent threat to the U.S. No one wants Iran to have “the bomb” anymore than we wanted Iraq to have WMDs. But the intelligence does not support these allegations, just as it didn’t with Iraq. Are we really willing to let the same people, use the same strategy and lead us into yet another war?

Stephen Rose has an excellent blog http://viewsontheridge.com/dragonflight “Iran: Another Iraq?” dealing with this issue.

In a September 3 article in the Nairobi Business Daily Trita Parsi points out the August 28 Bush speech before the National American Legion conference continues the build up:

Accusing Iran of seeking to put an already unstable Middle East under “the shadow of a nuclear holocaust” and promising to confront Tehran —whose actions “threaten the security of nations everywhere” — before it is too late echo statements made by the Bush White House about Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Just as Bush continually made false assertions linking Saddam to 9/11, he now falsely links success in Iraq with stopping Iran’s nuclear program. There is nothing to back up this assumption and we are all too familiar with how this administration’s past assumptions have worked out.

Ted Galen Carpenter vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and author of seven books on international affairs wrote a September 2 article on TimesUnion.com. He said:

Tehran's quest for nuclear weapons is an extremely thorny issue, and there are no easy solutions. But one thing is clear: A defeat of the insurgency in Iraq will not have a meaningful impact on it.

It is ironic that blinded by their own agenda, Bush and company ignored the predictions of war critics that Iraqi Shiites would embark on a close working relationship with their co-religionists across the border. Carpenter goes on to say:

The brutal truth is that it was almost certain from the day U.S. forces overthrew Saddam Hussein that Iran would be the main beneficiary of that action. Saddam had been the nemesis of the clerical regime in Tehran for nearly a quarter century. The two countries had waged an extremely bloody war throughout the 1980s, and Iraq's Sunni political elite remained Iran's mortal adversary. Iraq under Sunni rule was the principal strategic counterweight to an assertive Iran.

Never deterred by logic or facts which contradict his assumptions, Bush continues his war of words against Iran as pointed out in a September 2 editorial in the Dallas Morning News:

President Bush recently declared that a chief reason for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq is to counter Iranian influence in the region and deter Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

That is what… justification number 5, 6 or is it 7 for staying the course in Iraq? The editorial goes on to say:

Containment of Iran is not part of the Iraq mission, and it's important that the White House, Congress and the public not let themselves be distracted.

Amen to that!

For months Bush has claimed that Iran is supplying Iraqi insurgents with sophisticated IED’s . The intelligence backing up that claim is minimal and there is good reason to believe these devices can and are being made in Baghdad. There was an Andrew Cockburn article in the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in the San Jose Mercury in February, about a largely unreported raid of a Baghdad machine shop last November. The raid uncovered copper disks that were determined to be part of an ongoing order. These disks plus a high powered explosive and a pipe-like container make an EFP – the “sophisticated” IED Bush is talking about. Contrary to Bush’s claim, EFPs are simple and inexpensive to make for anyone who knows how.

On FoxNews.com, Oliver North, campaigns to paint Democrats as “passive” regarding Iran’s nuclear program. The point – to convince people Democrats shouldn’t be trusted with the safety of our country. And of course, we can look at the Iraq quagmire and feel assured we can trust the Republicans. Right? Not! North also berates a State Department spokesperson (interesting since the State Department is Republican controlled) for remaining calm in response to one of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s saber rattling comments. Heaven forbid we should remain calm and not rise to the bait! How can we start another war if we avoid knee jerk reactions?

Despite the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report of “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear program, and a slow down in uranium enrichment, Bush’s rhetoric against Iran continues to escalate.

Paul Craig Roberts (CounterPunch, August 31) highlights the pot and kettle aspect of Bush’s accusations against Iran and the world’s view of the U.S.

The Pew Foundation's world polls show that despite all the American and Israeli propaganda against Iran, the US and Israel are regarded as no less threats to world stability than demonized Iran.

The "Iran issue" has been created by the Bush administration, not by Iran. Iran, like many other countries, has a nuclear energy program to which it is entitled as a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have found no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran.

The Bush administration has brushed away this fact, which should be determining, just as the Bush administration brushed away the fact that weapons inspectors reported, prior to Bush's invasion of Iraq, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. Not exactly a ranting liberal!

In Patrick Buchanan’s San Jose Mercury September 4 article, he states”

Today, the United States has 30,000 more troops in Iraq than on the day America repudiated the Bush war policy and voted the GOP out of power. And President Bush, self-confidence surging, is now employing against Iran bellicosity redolent of the days just prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Last spring, Nancy Pelosi herself, after a call from the Israeli lobby, pulled an amendment that would have forced Bush to come to Congress for specific authorization before attacking Iran. Before the August recess, the Senate voted 97 to zero for a resolution sponsored by Joe Lieberman to censure Iran for complicity in the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

(Bush said) "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities. . . . We've conducted operations against Iranian agents supplying lethal munitions to extremist groups." This suggests that U.S. forces may already be engaged in combat operations against Iranians.

Wake up America! Bush and company want to go to war with Iran just like they wanted to go to war with Iraq. And they are using the same strategy to accomplish their goal. They lie, manipulate intelligence, incite fear and anger using worse case scenarios, and hide or ignore facts that contradict what they want people to believe.

Write, call, and email your elected representatives and just say NO! Call and email your national and local media and demand they investigate instead of just parroting what the administration says about Iran. And do it over and over until they get the message.

To remain silent is to give assent to war with Iran.