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01
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Paul Craig Roberts: Iran in the Crosshairs |
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Written by Paul Craig Roberts via CounterPunch.org
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Tuesday, 01 April 2008 |
 READ ORIGINAL
A Third American War in the Making?
The US Congress, the US media, the American
people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as
Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.
If only America had an independent
media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity
left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked
aggression--a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard--by
the Bush Regime could be prevented.
On March 30, the Russian News
& Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking
security source: "The latest military intelligence data
point to heightened US military preparations for both an air
and ground operation against Iran."
According to Novosti, Russian
Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is
planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure
in the near future."
The chief of Russia's general
staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing
up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian
military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil
Americans."
On March 29, OpEdNews cited
a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked
up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported
on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's
rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national
plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards
that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible
attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors."
And Admiral William "there
will be no attack on Iran on my watch" Fallon has been removed
as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney's planned attack on
Iran.
The Iranians don't seem to
believe it, despite the dispatch of US nuclear submarines and
another aircraft carrier attack group to the Persian Gulf. To
counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to an attack,
the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US bases
and Saudi oil fields.
Two massive failures by the
American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people
have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran.
One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government's
explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal
to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying
to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching
an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.
If an American president can
start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not
be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush
and his evil regime have.
Hitler launched World War II
with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack"
on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a
group of Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station
in Germany. Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops
crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more
true than the Bush Regime's claim that "Saddam Hussein has
weapons of mass destruction." Hitler's lie failed, because
his invasion of Poland, which began the next day allegedly in
reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously been planned for
many months.
Iran is a beautiful and developed
country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one.
Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program.
The Bush Regime's case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime's
desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.
The International Atomic Energy
Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found
no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all
the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime
military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting
the American occupation.
If Iran were arming insurgents,
the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the
US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US
helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock
out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons
and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery
shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and
cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.
Indiscriminate American violence
has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially
destroyed--electricity, water and sewer systems, medical care
and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone,
including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of
Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped
an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions
of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed country
with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of
lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The
Bush Regime's lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and
have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent
American public.
In Afghanistan, death and destruction
rains on even the smallest village from the air. America's wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations.
Just as the world could not
believe Hitler's next horror and thus was always unprepared,
the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even
the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing
but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.
Iran's only chance would be
to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using
its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the
US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz,
instead of arming the Iraqi Shi'ites and moving them to insurgency,
Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US
and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr's Iraqi
Shi'ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi'ite
rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.
It is important to emphasize
that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed,
and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets,
Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack
Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation. On the
other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian
provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like
Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran
has long been in the works.
On March 29 the Associated
Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured
contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that
day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom
are on the American payroll, that their American masters would
turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after
using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.
Saddam had once been an ally
of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold
him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your
turn is next."
Gadhafi asked, "Where
is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?"
If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn
themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and
turn into garbage dumps."
Indeed, it is this disunity
that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle
East.
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. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at:
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