After trying our hand at smaller targets, it's time we took it up to the next level: Iran. Never mind that none of our liberation missions has been anywhere near accomplished, for the objective is to keep things in motion so that the 99% remain dazed and confused about the economy and any other matter of real concern. Let's hear from the 99%:
SA
Houston, TX
I’m concerned that the impending I.A.E.A. report on Iran’s alleged advances in her nuclear program may not be strictly professional and fair. And it’s because, as this article states, “the director of the agency, Yukia Amano,” secretly visited “the White House 11 days ago to meet top officials of the National Security Council about the coming report ….”
Is it customary for the head of the I.A.E.A. to meet secretly with “top officials of the National Security Council” of each of the member states of the I.A.E.A. Board to discuss a coming report?
The United States, Israel and Europe provided some of the information used for the impending report. These are the same countries which have been leading the crusade to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. A conflict of interest is obvious.
An inconvenient truth is that the US has the unhealthy habit of corrupting international bodies and their officials. The case for this harsh but unavoidable observation is laid out in the article, “Special Relationship,” by Colum Lynch, in the April 18, 2011, issue of Foreign Policy (www.foreignpolicy.com
“In the aftermath of Israel’s 2008-2009 intervention into the Gaza Strip, Susan E. Rice, the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, led a vigorous campaign to stymie an independent U. N. investigation into possible war crimes, while using the prospect of such a probe as leverage to pressure Israel to participate in a U. S.-backed Middle East peace process….”
And the “United States and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal U.N. deliberations on an “independent” U.N. board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process.”
Obviously, the U. S. tampered with the integrity of the U. N. Secretariat and a supposedly “independent” U. N. investigation.
Ms. Rice also warned the president of the ICC that an investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes could damage its standing with the United States
The U.S. also colluded with Israel in ultimately stopping the original investigation that was ordered by U.N. Security Council resolution 1405 into alleged Israeli misconduct during her intervention in Jenin, the West Bank.
ALL nations must abide by international laws. When any country habitually obstructs justice, we have a duty to yell “STOP!” As Charles Peguy, the French philosopher, noted, “He who does not bellow the truth, when he knows the truth, makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.”
The I.A.E.A. should do its job without the heavy-handed interference of outside interests.
Bill Messina
NY
Who the heck are we to demand that other countries stop their nuclear weapon strategy?
If we don't give up ours, why should they have to give up their research.
Since any country that has a nuclear capability is immune from our "shock and awe" tactics (Russia, China, North Korea, Pakistan), why wouldn't these countries try to develop doomsday weapons to protect themselves against us?
Considering that we could totally destroy any country, that would dare send a nuclear weapon our way, none of them would dare take an offensive action against us.
What are we doing, here, attempting to build up a consensus to repeat our foolhardy efforts in Iraq against the Iranian people?
Citizens! Beware! The military industrial complex is still scheming.
MACV in DaNang
Castro Valley, CA
So What!. Iran deserves and reserves the right to acquire Nuclear Weapons. Who knows what country may try and invade (Israel, America) or bomb their people. A NUKE keeps everyone on their toes and in-their-place. Remember in 1953 The democratically elected government of Iran was overthrown by the CIA and Britain's MI6. This led to the Shah of Iran dictatorship up until 1979, during which thousands of Iranians were killed, tortured and repressed and the oil flowed to the west like honey. Now a country that can't tell the difference between forged papers concerning Yellow Cake Uranium from Niger, a country that created Abu Graib, Guantanamo Bay, the secret prisons and prison ships around the world, a country that launched two recent wars on faked justifications and killed more than a million civilians, a country that overthrew 13 legitimate democracies, and that installed and financed 42 bloody and brutal dictatorships around the world, shouldn't be shooting off too loudly about human rights violations and IRAN; there are still murderers with badges, guilty of lynchings, running around free. By the way, Asians have a loooong memory and they remember the 'Chinese Exclusion Act'. They also know that the Opium Poppy is not and was never native-to-China. The British (read White-man) introduced it in order to addict the population and control the tea-silk-spice trade. Now the Chinese own us lock-stock and barrel. They are in Africa, the Mid-East and South America. Do you really think China (and Russia) will allow the U.S. or Israel to start World War III without them being involved?
Are you still stupid after all these years? Have you forgotten the U.S.S. Liberty which was attacked in international waters by Israeli forces on June 8, 1967, killing 34 Americans and wounding another 174?
James O'Donnell III
Fremont, CA
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer winner who accurately debunked Bush’s case for war in IRAQ, sheds light on today’s crusade to vilify Iran using the IAEA (from DemocracyNow, 6/3/11):
“What the IAEA said is something it’s been saying repeatedly, even under ElBaradei. And I must say, the new director general, Mr. Amano, is, I think, more willing to please us than ElBaradei was, just in terms of speculating more.
...The word ‘evidence’ was nowhere in the report. It’s been going on a long time... the IAEA has put out... report after report that say one thing, that’s the most important thing: NO EVIDENCE of any diversion of enriched materials, NO EVIDENCE that they’re squirreling away enriched uranium to make a secret bomb. They have a lot of uranium enriched, the 3.7 percent, yes, but there’s NO EVIDENCE they’re doing anything more than storing it up to run a civilian nuclear reactor... And so, it’s the same thing that’s been going on. You can look at the questions raised and lead your story with that, or you can look at the fact they say consistently that there’s been no diversion.”
And regarding those documents fed to the IAEA during Bush’s tenure -- the same SECRET-SOURCE, unauthenticated junk that’s been recycled for today’s warmongers (now that there’s a Western stooge leading the agency) -- here’s an excerpt from an IAEA press release in September 2009:
“...the IAEA reiterates that it has NO CONCRETE PROOF that there is or has been a nuclear weapon programme in Iran. At the Board of Governors´ meeting on 9 September 2009, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei warned that continuing allegations that the IAEA was withholding information on Iran are POLITICALLY MOTIVATED AND TOTALLY BASELESS.”
So now, in 2011, Washington is having secret meetings with its preferred IAEA director and AGAIN endeavoring to hurl the world into chaos based on a pack of lies. The evidence supporting THAT conclusion is abundant.
James O’Donnell III
Invitation2Artivism.com
Johndrake07
NYC
The US Neo-Cons have been salivating over Syria and Iran for years now - all you have to do is read their report 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' on the Middle East found on the (now disappeared) web site of the 'Project for a New American Century' and the textbook instructions on how they and their proxy, Israel, plan on destabilizing those countries, overthrowing their leaders, and seizing the oil and natural gas resources for the US in their hegemonic drive to sole world power status - all part of what they call the "Great Game."
General Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book 'Winning Modern Wars' being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan and Somalia [and Lebanon].
When Douglas Feith was asked which of the six regimes on the Clark list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
Fortunately there are some saner heads standing up to the Israelis, the US and the Brits. Russia has finally started to exercise some clout and has warned Israel off of any attack or interference in the internal affairs of Iran or an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.
Now if we could get China to make similar suggestions to the US and the UK, then we might actually see some diplomatic skills at work and a defusing of the tensions that are threatening to embroil the US in yet another unaffordable war.
The Iranians are not stupid. Their civilization goes back way longer than others in the region. They are not Arabs, nor are they insane jihadists as other posters have written. They have never threatened the US.
This is all about making sure our puppet regimes in the Middle East are propped up with lackeys of our own making, and guaranteeing that oil and gas continue to flow. He who controls the oil controls the world.
Ike Solem
CA
According to NYT reporter James Risen in his book, "State of War", a least some of that nuclear explosive trigger technology was delivered to Iran via a Russian engineer as the result of flawed covert CIA program (with some assistance from Department of Energy scientists), along the lines of the "Fast and Furious" fiasco in Mexico that led to the resignation of the ATF head.
This was all apparently true, as evidenced by the CIA and DOJ responses:
Subpoena Issued to Writer in C.I.A.-Iran Leak Case
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: May 24, 2011
"WASHINGTON — With the approval of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., federal prosecutors are trying to force the author of a book on the C.I.A. to testify at a criminal trial about who leaked information to him about the agency’s effort to sabotage the Iranian nuclear program at the end of the Clinton administration."
Given similar claims about the Iraqi nuclear program - made by both the UN agency as well as by the Bush Administration lackeys - all this should be considered highly suspect.
If the UN would generate a report on Israel's nuclear weapons program, to go hand-in-hand with the one on the supposed Iranian version, then they might have a little more credibility on this.
John Williford
Richland, Washington
We see an endless chain of demonization of foreigners, creating the enemies needed to manipulate the public to support endless military actions and enrichment of the elite military-industrial complex. The pattern is the old technique of manipulation of meat puppets who imagine that their voting privilege gives them leverage on events. It is the story of Mussolini in Italy and Adolph Hitler in Germany. It is an easily recognized pattern of fascism.
If, like the Germans of the 1930s, we eat the hate-mongering garbage we are fed and continue to ignore the theft of our republic by the current crop of fascists, we will no doubt continue to be drawn into endless war, and greater and greater war criminality.
Fascism is an amoral system, playing to the most base aspects of crowd psychology. In the short term, it creates an illusion of being part of a Master Race (read American Exceptionalism), which is taken as an entitlement or exemption from law and morality.
Although it is said that the trains ran on time in Italy during the fascist period, the system does not have legs. In pragmatic terms, fascism doesn't work, because the dependence on external enemies and constant war leads to collapse and loss. This is not rocket science.
Looking at the Italian fascists and the German Nazi party, only an ignorant fool afflicted with exceptional vanity would purposely take this path.
The question ahead of US is: Does China want to own Iran? Hint: Is China getting a better deal from the liberated Libya than from Qaddafi?
Business Insider, August 31, 2009:
New York Times, today:
We all owe our gratitude to NBC News for single-handedly correcting the shameful, long-standing exclusion from our media discourse of the views of young, journalistically accomplished heirs and heiresses to political power and great fortune; it is long overdue that former NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller, son of the CEO and Chairman of Chevron, finally be joined by the next generation.
