- 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.
-
- _____
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- Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
during President Reagan's first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall
Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including
the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution,
Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President
Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An
Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet
Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with
Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors
and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.
Click here for Peter Brimelow's Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts
about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
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