rzydzi pomoga Ameryce tak jak kiedys pomogli Europie
- From: Bolek i Lolek Wasner <rca.cdr@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:04:11 -0800
Attacking Iran for Israel?
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News. Posted November 1, 2007.
With 200-300 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, Israelis enjoy a
nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. They mean to keep it that way,
and they want the U.S. to help.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is at her mushroom-cloud
hyperbolic best, and this time Iran is the target. Her claim last week
that "the policies of Iran constitute perhaps the single greatest
challenge to American security interests in the Middle East and around
the world" is simply too much of a stretch.
To gauge someone's reliability, one depends largely on prior
experience. Sadly, Rice's credibility suffers in comparison with
Mohammed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA). Basing his judgment on the findings of IAEA inspectors in
Iran, ElBaradei reports that there is no evidence of an active nuclear
weapons program there.
If this sounds familiar, it is in fact déjà vu. ElBaradei said the
same thing about Iraq before it was attacked. But three days before
the invasion, American nuclear expert Dick Cheney told NBC's Tim
Russert, "I think Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong."
Here we go again. As in the case of Iraq, U.S. intelligence has been
assiduously looking for evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran,
but, alas, in vain. Burned by the bogus "proof" adduced for Iraq --
the uranium from Africa, the aluminum tubes -- the administration has
shied away from fabricating nuclear-related "evidence." Are Bush and
Cheney again relying on the Rumsfeld dictum, that "the absence of
evidence is not evidence of absence?" There is a simpler answer.
Cat out of the bag
The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Sallai Meridor, let the
cat out of the bag while speaking at the American Jewish Committee
luncheon on Oct. 22. In remarks paralleling those of Rice, Meridor
said Iran is the chief threat to Israel. Heavy on the chutzpah, he
then served gratuitous notice on Washington that countering Iran's
nuclear ambitions will take a "united United States in this matter,"
lest the Iranians conclude, "come January '09, they have it their own
way."
Meridor stressed that "very little time" remained to keep Iran from
obtaining nuclear weapons. How so? Even were there to be a nuclear
program hidden from the IAEA, no serious observer expects Iran to
obtain a nuclear weapon much sooner than five years from now.
Truth be told, every other year since 1995 U.S. intelligence has been
predicting that Iran could have a nuclear weapon in about five years.
It has become downright embarrassing -- like a broken record,
punctuated only by so-called "neoconservatives" like James Woolsey,
who in August publicly warned that the United States may have no
choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt Tehran's nuclear weapons
program.
Woolsey, self-described "anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish
Institute for National Security Affairs," put it this way: "I'm afraid
that within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they
[the Iranians] could have the bomb."
The day before Ambassador Meridor's unintentionally revealing remark,
Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated, "We will not allow Iran to have
a nuclear weapon." That remark followed closely on President George W.
Bush's apocalyptic warning of World War III, should Tehran acquire the
knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon.
The Israelis appear convinced they have extracted a promise from Bush
and Cheney that they will help Israel nip Iran's nuclear program in
the bud before they leave office. That is why the Israeli ambassador
says there is "very little time" -- less than 15 months.
Never mind that there is no evidence that the Iranian nuclear program
is any more weapons-related than the one Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld
persuaded President Gerald Ford to approve in 1976. Westinghouse and
General Electric successfully lobbied for approval to sell the Shah
for $6.4 billion the kind of nuclear facilities that Iran is now
building, but the deal fell through when the Shah was ousted in 1979.
With 200-300 nuclear weapons in their arsenal, the Israelis enjoy a
nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. They mean to keep that monopoly,
and Israel's current leaders are pressing for the United States to
obliterate Iran's fledgling nuclear program.
Anyone aware of Iran's ability to retaliate realizes this would bring
disaster to the whole region and beyond. But this has not stopped
Cheney and Bush in the past. And the real rationale is reminiscent of
the one revealed by Philip Zelikow, confidant of Condoleezza Rice,
former member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
and later executive director of the 9/11 Commission. On Oct. 10, 2002,
Zelikow said this to a crowd at the University of Virginia:
"Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll
tell you what I think the real threat is -- it's the threat to Israel.
And this is the threat that dare not speak its name ... the American
government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because
it is not a popular sell."
Harbinger?
The political offensive against Iran coalesced as George W. Bush began
his second term, with Cheney out in front pressing for an attack on
its nuclear-related facilities. During a Jan. 20, 2005, interview with
MSNBC, just hours before Bush's second inauguration, Cheney put Iran
"right at the top of the list of trouble spots," and noted that
negotiations and U.N. sanctions might fail to stop Iran's nuclear
program. Cheney then added, with remarkable nonchalance:
"Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is
the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might decide to act first and
let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess
afterwards."
Does this not sound like the so-called "Cheney plan" being widely
discussed in the media today? An Israeli attack; Iranian retaliation;
the United States springing to the defense of its "ally" Israel?
A big fan of preemption, the vice president was the first U.S.
official to speak approvingly of Israel's air attack on Iraq's reactor
at Osirak in 1981. He included that endorsement in his important
speech of Aug. 26, 2002, in which he set the terms of reference for
the subsequent campaign to persuade Congress to approve war with Iraq.
Cheney has done little to disguise his attraction to Israel's penchant
to preempt. Ten years after the attack on Osirak, then-Defense
Secretary Cheney reportedly gave Israeli Maj. Gen. David Ivri,
commander of the Israeli Air Force, a satellite photo of the Iraqi
nuclear reactor destroyed by U.S.-built Israeli aircraft. On the photo
Cheney penned, "Thanks for the outstanding job on the Iraqi nuclear
program in 1981."
Nothing is known of Ivri's response, but it is a safe bet it was along
the lines of, "We could not have done it without your country's help."
Indeed, although the United States officially condemned the attack
(the Reagan administration was supporting Saddam Hussein's Iraq at the
time), intelligence and operational support that the Pentagon shared
with the Israelis made a major contribution to the success of the
Israeli raid. With Vice President Cheney now calling the shots,
similar support is a virtual certainty in the event of an Israeli
attack on Iran.
It is no secret that former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon was
already pressing in 2003 for an early preemptive strike, insisting
that Iran was likely to obtain a nuclear weapon much earlier than the
time forecast by U.S. intelligence. Sharon even brought his own
military adviser to brief Bush with aerial photos of Iranian nuclear-
related installations.
More troubling still, in the fall of 2004, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who
served as national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush and
as chair of the younger Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board,
made some startling comments to the Financial Times.
A master of discretion with the media, Scowcroft nonetheless saw fit
to make public his conclusion that Sharon had Bush "mesmerized;" that
he had our president "wrapped around his little finger." Needless to
say, Scowcroft was immediately ousted from the advisory board and is
now persona non grata at the White House in which he worked for so
many years.
An unstable infatuation
George W. Bush first met Sharon in 1998, when the Texas governor was
taken on a tour of the Middle East by Matthew Brooks, then executive
director of the Republican Jewish Coalition. Sharon was foreign
minister at the time and took Bush on a helicopter tour of the Israeli-
occupied territories. An Aug. 3, 2006, McClatchy wire story by Ron
Hutcheson quotes Matthew Brooks:
"If there's a starting point for George W. Bush's attachment to
Israel, it's the day in late 1998, when he stood on a hilltop, where
Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and, with eyes brimming with
tears, read aloud from his favorite hymn, "Amazing Grace." He was very
emotional. It was a tear-filled experience. He brought Israel back
home with him in his heart. I think he came away profoundly moved."
Bush made a gratuitous but revealing reference to that trip at the
first meeting of his National Security Council on Jan. 30, 2001. After
announcing he would abandon the decades-long role of "honest broker"
between Israelis and Palestinians and would tilt pronouncedly toward
Israel, Bush said he had decided to take Sharon "at face value" and
unleash him.
At that point the president brought up his trip to Israel with the
Republican Jewish Coalition and the flight over Palestinian camps, but
there was no sense of concern for the lot of the Palestinians. In Ron
Suskind's Price of Loyalty, then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who
took part at the NSC meeting, quotes Bush: "Looked real bad down
there," the president said with a frown. He then said it was time to
end America's efforts in the region: "I don't see much we can do over
there at this point."
O'Neill reported that Colin Powell, the newly minted but nominal
secretary of state, was taken completely by surprise at this
nonchalant jettisoning of more nuanced and balanced longstanding
policy. Powell demurred, warning that this would unleash Sharon and
"the consequences could be dire, especially for the Palestinians."
According to O'Neill, Bush just shrugged, saying, "Sometimes a show of
strength by one side can really clarify things." O'Neill says that
Powell seemed "startled."
It is a safe bet that the vice president was in no way startled.
What now?
The only thing that seems to be standing in the way of a preemptive
attack on Iran's nuclear facilities is unusual-but-sensible foot-
dragging by the U.S. military. It seems likely that the senior
military leadership has told the president and Cheney: This time let
us brief you on what to expect on Day 2, on Week 4, on Month 6 -- and
on the many serious things Iran can do to Israel, and to us in Iraq
and elsewhere.
CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon is reliably reported to have
said, "We are not going to do Iran on my watch." And in an online Q-
and-A on Sept. 27, award-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest
spoke of a possible "revolt" if pilots were ordered to fly missions
against Iran. She added:
"This is a little bit of hyperbole, but not much. Just look at what
Gen. Casey, the Army chief, has said ... that the tempo of operations
in Iraq would make it very hard for the military to respond to a major
crisis elsewhere. Besides, it's not the 'war' or 'bombing' part that's
difficult; it's the morning after and all the days after that. Haven't
we learned that (again) from Iraq?"
How about Congress? Could it act as a brake on Bush and Cheney? Forget
it. If the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with its
overflowing coffers supports an attack on Iran, so will most of our
spineless lawmakers. Already, AIPAC has succeeded in preventing
legislation that would have required the president to obtain advance
authorization for an attack on Iran.
And for every Adm. Fallon, there is someone like the inimitable
retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a close associate of
James Woolsey, "cakewalk" Ken Adelman and other "neocons." The air
campaign "will be easy," says McInerney, a FOX pundit who was a rabid
advocate of shock and awe over Iraq. "Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran
that we can't penetrate," he adds, and several hundred aircraft,
including stealth bombers, will be enough to do the trick:
"Forty-eight hours duration, hitting 2,500 aim points to take out
their nuclear facilities, their air defense facilities, their air
force, their navy, their Shahab-3 retaliatory missiles, and finally
their command and control. And then let the Iranian people take their
country back."
And the likely White House rationale for war? Since, particularly with
the fiasco of Iraq as backdrop, it will be a hard sell to promote the
idea of an imminent threat from a nuclear-armed Iran, the White House
PR machine has already begun focusing on other "evidence" -- amorphous
so far -- indicating that Iran is supporting those who are "killing
our troops in Iraq."
The scary thing is that Cheney is more likely to use the McInerneys
and Woolseys than the Fallons and Caseys in showing the president how
"easily" it can all be done -- Cakewalk II.
Madness.
It is not as though our country has lacked statesmen wise enough to
warn us against foreign entanglements and about those who have
difficulty distinguishing between the strategic interests of the
United States and those of other countries:
"A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety
of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion of
an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest
exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and betrays the
former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter
without adequate inducement or justification." (George Washington,
Farewell Address, 1796)
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C. He was a CIA
analyst for 27 years and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
.
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