| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 8:46 am Post subject: Crime of the Century:Are Bush & Cheney Planning Iran Att |
| Crime of the Century: Are Bush & Cheney Planning Early Attack on Iran?
http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_dave_lin_061223_crime_of_the_century.htm
by Dave Lindorff
Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-
Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for
an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier
strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a
month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS
Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors
based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.
There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it
is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after
all, but wrong about the timing.
As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran
started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of
the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They
knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic
proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group,
headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush
Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on
what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report.
Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public
with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that
the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that
country.
That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war
plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.
It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving
forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk
cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on
station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved
into the Persian Gulf. A second carrier group, led by the USS
Stennis, is steaming toward the Gulf, too. Already in position are
three expeditionary strike groups and an amphibious warship, all
suitable for landing Marines on Iranian beaches. On December 20, the
New York Times, citing Pentagon sources, reported that both Britain
and the U.S. are moving additional naval forces into the region "in a
display of military resolve toward Iran that will come as the United
Nations continues to debate possible sanctions against the country."
(We've all seen what "displays of force" by the Bush administration
actually turn out to be.)
The idea of hitting Iran may make sense from the Bush-Cheney bunker,
where the only consideration is not what's good for the country, but
what's good for Bush and Cheney. After all, if you're losing your war
in Iraq, and if you have hit bottom politically at home (Bush's
ppublic support ratings are now down in the 20s, where Nixon's were
just before his resignation, and Cheney's numbers have been in the
teens for months), and if the public is clamoring for an end to it
all--and maybe for your heads, too--expanding the conflict and
putting the nation on a full war footing can look like an attractive
even if desperate gambit.
From the nation's point of view, of course, an attack on Iran would
be an unmitigated disaster. There are no more troops that the U.S.
could throw into battle (the Pentagon is scrambling just to find
another 20,000 or so bodies that Bush wants to throw into the Iraq
quagmire), so an attack would have to be basically that--an attack.
Certainly the forces the Navy is assembling in the Persian Gulf,
together with the B-52s and B-1s and B-2s available at Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean and at bases in other countries in the region,
are capable of destroying most of Iran's nuclear facilities, as well
as its military infrastructure. But in terms of conquering territory,
the most the U.S. could hope to do would be to perhaps hold a
beachhead on the Straits of Hormuz, where the Persian Gulf links to
the Arabian Sea. And even that would be a bloody challenge.
There is no way the U.S. could hope to conquer Iran.
Nor would the Iranian people rise up and overthrow their theocratic
leaders--the same neoconservative fantasy that Bush war-mongers
promised ahead of the Iraq invasion, and which they are re-cycling
now to justify an attack on Iran. In fact, an attack on Iran, far
from sparking a rebellion against the government there, would crush
the new wave of reform that was evidenced in last week's local
elections in Iran, which dealt a blow to the country's hardliners.
Iran is a proud nation with a history reaching back thousands of
years. If attacked, its people can be counted on to rally around
their current rulers, and its war-hardened soldiers can be counted on
to fight to the death to defend their country.
Moreover, while its military may be no match for America's, Iran has
many asymmetrical options for retaliation. As the key player in Iraq,
with close links to Iraq's Shia factions, Iran's military has trained
and armed the Badr Brigades--the largest and best-armed faction in
Iraq, and one which to date has stayed out of the fighting against US
forces. Iran is also close to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr, and
could unleash his fanatical troops too, against US forces in Iraq. If
this happens, count on American casualty rates leaping to or even
surpassing Korea or Vietnam-era levels overnight.
Additionally, Iraq's intelligence services have connections with Shia
groups in Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing countries, and can be
expected to quickly organize cells to strike at economic and US
military targets there.
More seriously, of course, an attack on Iran will jack the price of
oil to levels never seen before. Even if the US managed to militarily
control the Straits of Hormuz, Iran's hundreds of stockpiled anti-
ship missiles, which are buried in bunkers all along the Persian
Gulf, would cause insurance rates to soar so high that no tanker
could afford to sail that route, effectively cutting off over one
quarter of the world's oil supply. Virtually all of the oil produced
in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait and the Arab Emirates would be
trapped in the ground. As well, the network of pipelines that bring
oil from wellheads to refineries and to storage and pier facilities
would be virtually indefensible against Iran-inspired sapper attacks.
Oil industry analysts have talked of oil leaping in price to $200 a
barrel or more in the event of a US war with Iran, and given how
panicked this country got when oil reached $80 a barrel recently,
there's no need to go into detail explaining what $200/barrel oil
would do to the U.S. economy--or to the global economy.
Of course, the biggest issue is that attacking Iran would be yet
another war crime by this craven administration. No one can argue
that Iran poses an imminent threat to anyone, least of all to the
U.S.--the only legitimate grounds under the U.N. Charter and the
Nuremburg Charter, to which the U.S. is a signatory, for initiating a
war. Attacking a country that poses no such threat is defined as the
most heinous of war crimes: a Crime Against Peace.
If Bush and Cheney perpetrate this crime, the Congress should
initiate immediate impeachment proceedings and should simultaneously
pass legislation terminating funding for the war. The important thing
now is for the American people to register their opposition to this
war before it happens. Call your senators and your representative and
let them know you don't want it to happen, and you want impeachment
if it does. And add your name to the petition against war. Also mark
down January 27 in your calendar, for the big march and rally against
war and for impeachment in Washington, D.C. (to be followed by two
days of lobbying Congress on Jan. 28-29.
Finally, send this story to everyone you know, and urge them to do
the same. At this point, with Democrats still cowering in their
offices, only the American people can stop this madness.
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Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/21/143259
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Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War
http://www.forward.com/articles/book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war/
Read this UPI article via the following URL as soon as possible as well as it is the duty of every American patriot to expose these serving Israel first traitors to America:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
A War for Israel?: Colin Powell Seems to Think So:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/10/08/a-war-for-israel-colin-powell-seems-to-think-so.php
Take a look at the Zionist Jew traitor (Elliott Abrams) to America who is pushing hard for the attack on Iran for Israel via his position at the National Security Council (NSC) by scrolling down to the article about his background associated with his picture in the left margin of the following URL:
http://nowarforisrael.com/Rachel%20Corrie.htm
Read more about this serving Israel first traitor to America via the following 'Iran: The Next War' article by James Bamford as well:
Iran: The Next War (for Israel):
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war
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http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html
Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2
By William R. Polk
Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible
for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor of
history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson
Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on
international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently
wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and
2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A
Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).
In my first article, http://hnn.us/articles/30797.html
I set out why I think an American attack on Iran is
likely. Now I will show what steps are being taken to prepare for that
event.
The first step toward war is to prepare the public. That step was
partly taken in the 2005 “National Defense Strategy” which proclaimed
that “America is a nation at war” and warned that “At the direction of
the President, we will defeat adversaries at the time, place, and in the
manner of our choosing ....”
The second step is to show that alternative methods to cope with the
proclaimed threat to the security of the United States have not worked.
To this end, the United States has approached the UN Security Council as
a whole and its members individually to discuss what they are willing to
do. The response was lukewarm.
The Europeans have talked of sanctions, but they will be opposed by
China and Russia which stand to lose crucial revenue and access to oil
as Turkey and Jordan did in the 1990s. In any event, even draconian
sanctions would be unlikely to deter the Iranian government from actions
it believes necessary for its survival. So the Neoconservative
advisers advocate military attack.
In recent days, world leaders have come out flatly against the idea of
military action: German Prime Minister Merkel told the Bundestag on
September 6 that “The military option isn’t an option.” While she was
speaking, the Chinese foreign minister said, “China advocates that this
issue be resolved through negotiation and dialog in a peaceful way and
this position remains unchanged.” The French foreign minister
proclaimed on September 5 that France does not support a military action
and the Italian and Russian foreign ministers echoed the same
sentiment. According to press reports, the British government has told
the Bush administration that it will not take part in any armed action
against Iran. Probably the sole advocate of military action is Israel.
Military action has been in planning since before the wars with
Afghanistan and Iraq. This could come in any one of three forms or some
combination of them: A US attack by air power alone, a ground invasion
as in the 1991 and 2003 attacks on Iraq, or the encouragement of an
Israeli attack.
The National Security Doctrine form of “Preventive Action” now under the
most intense study is aerial bombardment. This is attractive because
America does not have sufficient combat troops for a land invasion.
Moreover, allegedly the U.S. Air Force generals have said that even
alone air power could “take out” (destroy) all suspected Iranian nuclear
installations and so devastate Iran that the regime would collapse.
What would aerial bombardment entail? What it involved in Iraq gives at
least a starting point: in some 37,000 sorties the US Air Force dropped
13,000 “cluster munitions” that exploded into 2 million bombs, wiping
out whole areas, and fired 23,000 missiles. Naval ships launched 750
Cruise missiles with another 1.5 million pounds of explosives. More
powerful weapons are now available. Air Force General Thomas McInerney
gave the Neoconservative Weekly Standard in April an inventory of
“improved” weapons. They include vastly larger “bunker buster” bombs
and greater targeting ability. McInerney pointed out that a B-2 bomber
can drop 80 500 pound bombs independently targeted on 80 different aim
points. In effect, this aerial bombardment would eclipse the “shock and
awe” of 2003 and be far more destructive than the 1991 campaign or the
devastating air war on Vietnam. But would it work?
The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has been regarded as a test. Seymour
Hersh reported in The New Yorker talks he had with current and retired
American military and intelligence experts who told him that it was
regarded as “a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to
destroy Iran’s nuclear installations.” They did terrible damage and
killed many people, but they failed to accomplish their mission. As
Bush’s former Deputy of State Richard Armitage said, “If the most
dominant military force in the region – the Israel Defense Forces –
can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million,
you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with
strategic depth and a population of seventy million…The only thing that
the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the [Lebanese] population
against the Israelis.”
The Air Force plans have been resisted by the senior generals of the
Army, Navy and Marine corps. In rare public statements and frequently
in private, they have said that the plans are fatally flawed and that
even if an invasion begins with aerial attack it will soon require
ground troops. Despite the misgivings of the military professionals,
Joseph Cirincione wrote in the March issue of Foreign Policy that
conversations with senior officials in the Pentagon and the White House
had convinced him that the decision for war had already been made.
The Washington Post has reported that at least since March, large teams
have been working on invasion plans in the Pentagon and the intelligence
agencies, while the Iran “desk” at the State Department has been
augmented to task force size. It reports to Elizabeth Cheney, daughter
of the vice president, who is assistant secretary of state for the Near
East. In the Pentagon, a similar organization has been established
under Neoconservative Abram Shulsky. In addition a new outpost has
been set up in Dubai to coordinate plans. On October 2, a powerful naval
battle group around the giant aircraft carrier Eisenhower sailed for the
Persian Gulf and is due to arrive a week before the November
Congressional elections to join a similar battle group led by the
aircraft carrier Enterprise. Meanwhile aircraft of the U.S. Air Force
are being readied in bases surrounding Iran and in distant locations.
These forces could deliver destructive power that would dwarf the aerial
assaults on Iraq.
The Iranian leadership, I have been authoritatively told, believes all
this is a bluff. In my next article, I will examine what will happen if
they are wrong.
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US or Israel Will Attack Iran by March:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/12/19/us-or-israel-will-attack-iran-by-march.php
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Military Draft System to be Tested (for when Iran is attacked for Israel next?):
Associated Press | December 22, 2006
WASHINGTON - The Selective Service System is planning a comprehensive test of the military draft machinery, which hasn't been run since 1998.
The agency is not gearing up for a draft, an agency official said Thursday. The test itself would not likely occur until 2009.
Meanwhile, the secretary for Veterans Affairs said that "society would benefit" if the U.S. were to bring back the draft and that it shouldn't have any loopholes for anyone who is called to serve. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson later issued a statement saying he does not support reinstituting a draft.
The Selective Service "readiness exercise" would test the system that randomly chooses draftees by birth date and the network of appeals boards that decide how to deal with conscientious objectors and others who want to delay reporting for duty, said Scott Campbell, Selective Service director for operations and chief information officer.
"We're kind of like a fire extinguisher. We sit on a shelf" until needed, Campbell said. "Everyone fears our machine for some reason. Our machine, unless the president and Congress get together and say, 'Turn the machine on' ... we're still on the shelf."
The administration has for years forcefully opposed bringing back the draft, and the White House said Thursday that its position had not changed.
A day earlier, President Bush said he is considering sending more troops to Iraq and has asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to look into adding more troops to the nearly 1.4 million uniformed personnel on active duty.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, increasing the Army by 40,000 troops would cost as much as $2.6 billion the first year and $4 billion after that. Service officials have said the Army wants to increase its force by 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers and the Marine Corps would like 5,000 more troops.
The unpopular war in Iraq, where more than 2,950 American troops have already died, complicates the task of finding more recruits and retaining current troops - to meet its recruitment goals in recent years, the Army has accepted recruits with lower aptitude test scores.
In remarks to reporters in New York, Nicholson recalled his own experience as a company commander in an infantry unit that brought together soldiers of different backgrounds and education levels. He said the draft "does bring people from all quarters of our society together in the common purpose of serving."
Rep. Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat who has said minorities and the poor share an unfair burden of the war, plans to introduce a bill next year to reinstate the draft.
House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi has said that reinstating the draft would not be high on the Democratic-led Congress' priority list, and the White House said Thursday that no draft proposal is being considered.
Planning for the Selective Service exercise, called the Area Office Mobilization Prototype Exercise, is slated to begin in June or July of next year for a 2009 test. Campbell said budget cuts could force the agency to cancel the test, which he said should take place every three years but hasn't because of funding constraints.
Hearst Newspapers first reported the planned test for a story sent to its subscribers for weekend use.
The military drafted people during the Civil War and both world wars and between 1948 and 1973. An agency independent of the Defense Department, the Selective Service System was reincorporated in 1980 to maintain a registry of 18-year-old men, but call-ups have not occurred since the Vietnam War.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
What was not mentioned in the articles is that the US Congress has once again cuckolded itself -- Bush holds all the cards:
http://www.peacenow.org/hot.asp?cid=2682
June 23, 2006
(Iran) H. Amdt. 1072 to HR 5631: On June 20th Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) offered an amendment to HR 5631, the FY07 Defense Appropriations Bill, to "prohibit any of the funds made available by the Act from being used to initiate military operations against Iran except in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States." The amendment was defeated by a vote of 158-262. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject: |
| Just saw the following at http://www.juancole.com
Alexandrovna Guest Op-Ed:
Saddam's Execution and the Campaign Against Iran
Saddam's Execution is about Iran
Larisa Alexandrovna
'PROLOGUE:
When someone does something obviously egregious, we tend to look past it because it is our nature to believe that people are naturally sane, good, and honest. We cannot imagine that anyone would willfully destroy their own country, violate their own laws, trample on their own people, and do it with such naked bravado while the world looked on.
But people have done it and do it even still, because there is also a darker side to human nature. Those of us who see the good in people look past actions that appear to be willfully evil not only because it is in our nature but it is also a foundation of our culture, as Americans, we believe guilt must be proved.
So we do not see what is going on before our eyes and directly in front of us. We look past it, around it, through it, but not at it. We cannot look directly at it, because if we do, we lose the vision of our beloved America and see something so sinister, that our minds would rather collapse than accept it.
But chess forces us to abandon our preconceptions and emotions. It pushes us to think in terms of cause and effect and it forces us to consider each action and counteraction in terms of the whole game. That is to say, chess forces us to think beyond our own present and fixed position, forcing us to reason every possible outcome of each action and counteraction.
Furthermore, chess teaches us to calculate not against a person, or a group, or a nation, but against a strategy that has no inherent religious, moral, or human characteristics. Master players can suspend their fixated self at will. Sadly, I am no master, and so I continue to struggle in seeing the game despite my human nature as an obstacle.
But sometimes, it just happens, something sets it off and there you are, inside the board, walking each action out in your mind and seeing the whole from beginning to end.
QUESTIONS AND SEEING THE BOARD
Sometime this morning, all the various and truly bizarre events the Bush administration has been engaged in recently with regard to troop levels and surges suddenly crystallized for me, as though I were sitting at a chess board and seeing the entire strategy unfold before my eyes.
This is of course my opinion and I may very well be wrong. In fact, I hope I am wrong. But the news that Saddam Hussein would be executed soon, and then the news that it would be in the next 48 hours, boggled my mind. Why on earth would anyone want to set off an ideological bomb during an already chaotic situation? I do not defend Saddam Hussein, not by any measure. But when Iraq is falling into total chaos and civil war, and as American troops continue to die, why would anyone want to add fuel to that fire, enough fuel to destroy what is left?
Suspend your emotions and think strategically. Now look at the question again and in context.
The administration is stalling as it supposedly weighs its Iraq options, when in fact they have already made their decision. How do I know they have made their decision? One need only look at the slow leaks coming out, not the least of which was Joe Lieberman’s op-ed in the Washington Post, to understand that we are going to be sending more troops to Iraq. So why does the administration wait to tell us this?
In the meantime, naval carriers are deployed to send Iran “a warning,” as though the threats thus far and the passing of sanctions are not warning enough. Add to that the detainment of Iranian diplomats invited to Iraq by the Iraqi leadership. Why is the US arresting diplomats invited to a country that the US claims is a sovereign nation governing itself?
And what about those sanctions, which ultimately mean nothing and sadly mean everything? The sanctions are so watered down as to have no real effect on the Iranian population or economy. Why even bother passing them?
Why censor Dr. Leverett's opinion piece on Iran when the CIA already cleared it?
Now given this entire context, ask yourself again why Saddam Hussein is being executed now, during Hajj even? What is the urgency?
THE UGLY STRATEGY I SEE
This is what I think may be playing out, my opinion of course. And yes, the strategy is so brazenly obvious, arrogant, and antithetical to everything America is supposed to be and stand for that it will be difficult to digest.
What the Bush administration appears to be waiting for, stalling for, while they allegedly mull over the Iraq question, is for the naval carriers and other key assets to fall into position. This will happen in the first week of January. Saddam Hussein is being executed (and I would not be surprised if every major network aired it) to enrage tempers and fuel more violence in Iraq. This violence will justify an immediate need for a troop surge, although I think it will be described as temporary. Remember too that the British press has for the past week done nothing but report that Britain will be attacked by the New Year. Clearly they are preparing themselves for a contingency, and that contingency is the massive violence that will erupt across the Muslim world as they watch (and I really believe it will be televised) Saddam’s hanging just before the New Year.
Why is the rush to execute Saddam Hussein not account for Hajj? Or does it?
The carriers will be in position. I imaging there will be an event of some sort in Iraq, or the violence will spill into friendly (our friends) territory. It will be dramatic, even more so than the immediate violence.
The attacks will be blamed on Iran, with the help of the Saudis and Pakistan. Iran will be blamed for something that happens in Iran. The naval carriers, again, will be in position. The sanctions, as watered down as they are, have given the administration the blank check they needed from the world (and they still have their blank check from Congress) to order aerial strikes. The surge troops will be in position, and I estimate that ground support will begin around late February, early March.
Saddam’s execution and the violence will also be a convenient cover while the administration moves pieces into position.
But what the planners in the administration don’t seem to realize is that the Persians are the most expert of chess players, and they are a patient, strategy minded opponent. They are watching this develop, all of it, and they too are planning their counteraction. They know better than to strike first, because in doing so, they would lose the moral argument in the eyes of the world, as well as the advantage of counteraction. The US has a superior air force, but Iran has a formidable navy, and while the house of Saud will fuel this, the fallout will be fatal. Why?
Here is why: Because the US is too stretched to be able to protect Israel, and Israel cannot sustain a long term attack. They can sustain a few hits, but they will not be able to sustain a full blown attack.
If you have any doubt, go back to the recent war with Lebanon. The British will pull out, despite promises of support. Blair is on his way out, and the British public will not tolerate support for Israel, because of its help in supporting US imperialistic aggression. Whatever terrorist cells lurk in the US, and make no mistake, our administration has done little to address this issue, will be activated.
Also consider that the house of Saud is not prepared to defend itself against an uprising, and that the US cannot protect it while simultaneously operating on three different fronts and covertly in god knows how many. Despite the various sectarian differences in the Muslim world, there are two enemies that they all agree to fight and die fighting against: the US and Israel. This attack will set off a Muslim counterattack so large, that nothing will be able to stop it or contain it.
But our leadership does not see this, because they cannot think strategically and won't think in human terms, so they are left with nothing but arrogance. And we ae left with a world ablaze. '
Larisa Alexandrovna maintains the blog At-Largely and is Managing Editor - of Raw Story. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2006 1:56 pm Post subject: |
| http://www.forward.com/articles/book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war/
Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War
Nathan Guttman | Fri. Dec 29, 2006
A former United Nations weapons inspector and leading Iraq War opponent has written a new book alleging that Jerusalem is pushing the Bush administration into war with Iran, and accusing the pro-Israel lobby of dual loyalty and “outright espionage.”
In the new book, called “Target Iran,” Scott Ritter, who served as a senior U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998 and later became one of the war’s staunchest critics, argues that the United States is readying for military action against Iran, using its nuclear program as a pretext for pursuing regime change in Tehran.
“The Bush administration, with the able help of the Israeli government and the pro-Israel Lobby, has succeeded,” Ritter writes, “in exploiting the ignorance of the American people about nuclear technology and nuclear weapons so as to engender enough fear that the American public has more or less been pre-programmed to accept the notion of the need to militarily confront a nuclear armed Iran.”
Later in the book, Ritter adds: “Let there be no doubt: If there is an American war with Iran, it is a war that was made in Israel and nowhere else.”
Ritter’s book echoes recent high-profile attacks on the pro-Israel lobby by former President Jimmy Carter and by scholars Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer. Ritter, who recently returned from a weeklong speaking engagement on The Nation cruise, speaks of a “network of individuals” that pursues Israel’s interests in the United States. The former weapons inspector alleges that some of the pro-Israel lobby’s activities “can only be described as outright espionage and interference in domestic policies.” Ritter also accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of having an inherent dual loyalty. He called for the organization to be registered as a foreign agent.
Representatives for both Aipac and the Israeli Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Ritter’s accusations.
In his book, Ritter also accuses the pro-Israel lobby of invoking the memory of the Holocaust and of crying antisemitism whenever Israel is accused of betraying America. “This is a sickening and deeply disturbing trend that must end,” Ritter writes.
According to Ritter, Iran is far from developing a nuclear weapons program and will not do so in the future if the world makes sure that stringent inspections are in place to verify that the Iranians live up to the requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“If Iran does make a political decision to develop nuclear weapons, it will take them a decade and it won’t go undetected,” Ritter said. “But it will take the U.S. only five weeks to build up a force capable of destroying Iran by air strikes. It’s a timeline of five weeks compared to a decade, so I’m not worried about taking a risk.”
As for Israeli and American fears regarding Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president who vowed to “wipe Israel off the map,” Ritter dubbed the leader a “sick joke” and asserted that he does not make the decisions in Tehran.
Ritter argues that the Bush administration knows that inspections can solve the Iranian nuclear problem but, at the urging of Jerusalem and its American allies, is in reality pursuing a different goal: regime change in Tehran.
“Israel has, through a combination of ignorance, fear and paranoia, elevated Iran to a status that it finds unacceptable,” Ritter writes in his book. “Israel has engaged in policies that have further inflamed this situation. Israel displays arrogance and rigidity when it comes to developing any diplomatic solution to the Iranian issue.”
Ritter is no stranger to controversy.
As a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, he headed several surprise inspection missions that were denied access to suspicious sites, and led to the Saddam Hussein regime accusing Ritter of being an American spy. The frequent refusal of the Iraqis to provide Ritter and his team access to sites of interest led eventually to the abandonment of the inspection regime in Iraq. Ritter resigned his post in 1998, accusing the United States and the U.N. of caving in to the Iraqis.
But Ritter later became a leading voice warning against taking military action against Iraq, arguing that a resumption of inspections would be sufficient to contain Hussein. He accused the United States of trying to use the U.N. inspection force for spying purposes and claimed that Iraq was deliberately held to higher standards than other countries in order to justify a military invasion.
In early 2004, Ritter charged in an interview on the Web site Ynet, operated by the daily Yediot Aharonot, that Israeli intelligence had deliberately overstated what it knew to be a minimal threat from Iraq in an effort to push America and Britain to launch a war. Ritter’s accusations were roundly rejected across the Israeli political spectrum. Security officials interviewed by the Forward insisted that no branch of the military could or would deliberately skew the findings in that way, but they also said that Israeli intelligence tended to exaggerate threats because it was operating under flawed assumptions.
Now Ritter is arguing that a similar effort is under way to produce an attack against Iran.
Speaking to the Forward this week, Ritter stressed that he is not accusing all American Jews of having dual loyalty, saying that “at the end of the day, I would like to believe that most of American Jews will side with America.”
Ritter is already working on his next book, due for publication in March 2007. In this tome, he sets out to teach the anti-war movements that he supports how to wage an effective campaign to win over American public opinion.
Thursday, December 21st, 2006
Target Iran: Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and Investigative Journalist Seymour Hersh on White House Plans for Regime Change
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/21/143259
Fri. Dec 29, 2006
Pro-Israel Lobby Pushing US to Attack Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
Additional at the following URL:
Scroll down to the Netanyahu warmongering article from the Jerusalem Post at the following URL:
Ritter Book: Israel, Lobby Pushing Iran War
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/12/31/ritter-book-israel-lobby-pushing-iran-war.php | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
