| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 6:47 am Post subject: Zionist Neocons Seek Vindication in Escalation |
| August 23, 2004
Neocons Seek Vindication in Escalation
by Patrick J. Buchanan
"The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons." This is the heart of the Bush Doctrine from the president's "axis of evil" address to Congress. And the nations that constituted that axis were Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
Under this doctrine, Iraq was invaded, Saddam overthrown and his army disbanded, though we have yet to find any of the "world's most destructive weapons."
With North Korea, the train has left the station. Pyongyang can now produce nuclear weapons and may possess half a dozen. For nations like North Korea and men like Kim Jong Il do not build costly and complex ballistic missiles simply to throw conventional explosives across an ocean.
Which leaves Iran. With Moscow's assistance, Tehran has been constructing a nuclear power plant at Bushehr. Once operational, Bushehr will, like Yongbyon in North Korea, yield plutonium as a byproduct.
Last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency also stumbled on a secret uranium-enrichment plant at Natanz. Its centrifuges were found to contain traces of weapons-grade uranium. Highly enriched uranium, U-235, is a component of atomic bombs. Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima, had a uranium core. Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki, had a plutonium core.
Lately, an effort by Russia, France and Germany to have Iran open up its nuclear plants to inspection has been rebuffed by Tehran. Having seen how America dealt summarily with Iraq, but proceeds gingerly with North Korea, Tehran has likely concluded that when a superpower is threatening preemptive strikes and preventive war, only nuclear weapons can deter it. Those who do not have such deterrents get the Saddam and Taliban treatment.
So it appears that the decisive test of the Bush Doctrine will come in Iran. And that test is probably not far off.
The Israelis have reportedly practiced strikes on Iran by crossing Turkish airspace and have special forces in the Kurdish regions of Iraq. There are rumors Sharon has told the White House that if we do not effect the nuclear castration of Iran, Israel will do the surgery herself, because she cannot live under the cloud of an atomic bomb in the possession of the patrons of Hezbollah.
Enter the "cakewalk" neoconservatives. Though disastrously wrong about Iraq's receptivity to U.S.-imposed democracy, and though they face disgrace and oblivion if Bush loses, they have one last card to play: That is to have America widen her wars with Afghanistan and Iraq with a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. For the neoconservatives, Iraq was simply Phase II of "World War IV" for imperial domination of the Middle East and serial destruction of the regimes in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
The neocons have not abandoned this imperial project. Nor has Bush removed a single one from power, though they may yet cost him his presidency. And the neoconservative commentariat is again beating the drums for war – this time on Iran.
This is their hole card. If they can ignite a new war, the country may forget how they bungled the old war. In escalation lies vindication.
And, in truth, Iran is a matter the president and Pentagon must address. Can we live with an Iranian atom bomb, which will restrict U.S. freedom of action in the Gulf and likely lead to proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Arab world? Or is Iran the place where the Bush Doctrine must be applied, even if it ultimately requires U.S. air and missile strikes on Iran's nuclear sites?
Given the overstretch of U.S. forces, the invasion and occupation of a nation three times as large and populous as Iraq is off the table. And what would be the probable result of America launching air strikes and starting yet another fire in the middle of the world's gasoline station?
Tehran would likely retaliate by sending fighters into Iraq, stirring up Shia guerrillas in the south, aiding anti-American warlords in Afghanistan, sponsoring terror attacks on U.S. citizens and inciting Hezbollah to refire the Lebanon front.
We could find ourselves in a third war with no allies save Israel. Another consequence could be the disruption of oil shipments from Iran, Iraq and the Gulf, a run-up in prices to $60 or $70 a barrel, and recessions in Japan, Europe and the United States.
Presently, America and her European allies appear to be moving toward Security Council sanctions if Iran does not render hard assurances it is not going nuclear. But if the mullahs have concluded their only defense against U.S. or Israeli preemptive strikes is a deterrent of their own – a not unreasonable assumption given what happened next door – we are headed for a showdown that will change our world forever.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=3427 | |  | | foppe37 | | Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 8:25 am Post subject: Occupation can be nothing but a temporary victory |
| Occupation can be nothing but a temporary victory
By Tamim al-Barghouti
Special to The Daily Star
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&Article_id=7628
It is said that during the early days of the Crusades, the fishing lines of two fishermen from Acre, one Arab the other Frankish, caught the same fish.
Each fisherman claimed the right to the fish and the quarrel started to develop into a physical fight.
The Arab, knowing that in any serious fight he would be outnumbered in Frankish occupied Acre, and knowing that no judge from Normandy or Flanders would rule in his favor, had an idea; he told the Frankish fisherman: look my good sir, let the strongest man have the fish, I will hit you with my stick then you hit me with yours, he who bears the hitting longer before he screams can have the fish.
The Frank, quite sure of his physical capabilities, agreed. The Arab said that he would start.
He hit the Frank as hard as he could for more then fifteen minutes before the Frank finally screamed.
The Arab then threw the stick away in the sea, and calmly started to walk away.
The Frank said: "Where are you going? It is your turn to be hit." The Arab answered: "Well, you know I do not like fish anyway ... you can have it."
Years passed, and Saladin liberated the lands of Palestine and Lebanon from the Crusaders. Richard Lionheart of England and Philip August of France attacked the Muslim coasts and reoccupied Acre, where they ordered thousands of Muslim captives to be massacred.
Jerusalem and the highlands of eastern Palestine, known today as the West Bank, stayed in the hands of Saladin.
The king of the English wanted to negotiate. First he started dictating terms, thinking that the sultan would be scared of his swift victories in the coast. He demanded that Christians take control of Jerusalem, which was rejected outright by the Muslims.
Then he demanded that Christians be given access to the city, to which Saladin replied that no access could be given as long as there were Christian armies in the land; only when the crusaders have laid down their arms would they be allowed to enter the city.
Finally Richard, frustrated by his failure to achieve anything holy in his holy war, asked Saladin to hand him the Holy Cross, the very one on which Christ is believed by Christians to have been crucified.
"It is only a piece of wood to you," Richard wrote in a letter read to Saladin. Saladin replied: "Well, it is actually a piece of wood to us, but since you want it so much, you have to give us something in return.
We want you to leave our land and go home. Once you do, we can allow you to come and see it, unarmed of course."
The English king lost his temper, and in his last angry letters to Saladin, he asked: "Why is it that you are so stubborn as if you did not know of our victories?"
Saladin's answer was quite calm: "Well may the young king know that he is three months away from his kingdom, sooner or later he will have to return.
I, on the other hand, am already at home; every victory you have here is by definition temporary, eventually you will go home and I will be waiting, and if not me then my children."
On this note the English left.
When the envoy of the sultan of Egypt and Syria finally went to Acre to demand the badly defeated Franks to hand the town over, they were nervous, and tried to get the best terms of surrender possible.
The generals paraded their forces in front of the envoy. He did not budge, and the terms he dictated were as harsh as they could be.
So one of the generals yelled: "Look at those armed thousands behind you, Saracen."
However, the envoy quickly replied: "Well, I do see them, but I can assure you that, back in Cairo, we have more of your soldiers in chains than you have here in armor."
And so the Franks had to leave.
I wanted to write these three stories, because the insistence of the invaders on achieving victory always appeared ridiculous to me.
It is totally meaningless, for, as the wise Sultan said, a foreigner's victory is always temporary, no matter how strong the Frank and how weak the Arab.
One will have to leave, and the one who will leave is the one that has that option.
On the other hand, invaders are seemingly destined to live this black comedy of insisting to win meaningless victories.
The invaders, because they are foreign, have to tame a hostile land, and to do that they insist on shows of force.
They insist to have it their way, but again because they are foreign, this cannot be done - only a funny, temporary semblance of it can.
What do the Americans, and their very sovereign government of Iraq, want from entering the sanctuary in Najaf and disarming the resistance?
Do they really believe that once, they do, they will have a stable Iraq, with no armed youth, and with no mosques?
Don't they know that an American soldier moving his tank in front of mosque is the perfect recipe to have thousands of Muslims ready to fight?
There is absolutely no political or military gain in the long run from attacking Najaf, even if they took over the sanctuary, and disarmed the Mehdi Army.
Iraqis, angry Iraqis and armed angry Iraqis will always be there and so will the mosques.
Whatever victory the Americans claim in Najaf is like the fish the Frank took from the Arab; the Frank can celebrate the fish as much as he wants but the sea speaks Arabic.
Tamim al-Barghouti is a Palestinian poet who writes a weekly article for The Daily Star | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 24, 2004 10:48 am Post subject: US Edging Closer to Iran for Zionist Neocon Warmonger Agenda |
| Just Saw the following at http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
Taliban Fighters Attack District Office; US Edge Afghan Soldiers Near Iranian Border
Aug 24, 2004
By Zafir Jamaal, JUS
Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said in a telephone interview that 80 Mujahideen carried out an attack on a district head's office in southern Afghanistan early today.
The attack in Kandahar Miana Shien district lasted for about two hours and killed two Afghan soldiers.
Afghan District head Shadi Khan confirmed the attack and said that a government soldier and two Taliban fighters were killed and two soldiers and two Taliban were wounded. Hakimi denied there were any Taliban casualties.
US Starts New Operation To Edge Closer To Iran
Meanwhile, the US-led coalition troops in Afghanistan are busy establishing a second Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Farah where clashes broke out near the border of Iran last week, US military said Saturday.
This latest operation follows Taliban attacks on the district electoral office in Farah city, the provincial capital of Farah province Thursday night that wounded six policemen.
With the establishment of the new PRT in Farah will bring the number of the US-run civilian-military units Afghanistan to 14.
The operation, which began last Saturday, will enable US military to airlift the Afghan puppet army along with US advisors to Shindand airport close to Iran.
Reports suggest that Iran has expressed concern over the development in west Afghanistan and the deployment of US military in Shindand district.
"We remain optimistic that Iran understands that coalition and Afghan government are trying to ensure stability in Afghanistan and it is for the interest of the region to have a stable Afghanistan," the spokesman stressed.
It's unlikely that Iran or local Afghans will see it that way. (JUS) | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
