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Thursday, February 15th, 2007
Volume 6, No. 3
(Editor's Note: According to the Final Judgment at Nuremberg, a ruling that has provided all succeeding generations with the classic pronouncement on the illegality of aggressive war: "War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
Editor's Second Note: Petition by physicists on nuclear weapons policy
As physicists we feel a special responsibility with respect to nuclear weapons; our profession brought them into existence 60 years ago. We wish to express our opposition to a shocking new US policy currently under consideration regarding the use of nuclear weapons. We ask our professional organizations to take a stand on this issue, the Congress of the United States to conduct full public hearings on this subject, and the media and public at large to discuss this new policy and make their voices heard.
This new policy was outlined in the document Nuclear Posture Review delivered to Congress in December 2001, part of which has been made public, and is further defined in the unclassified draft document Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations dated March 15, 2005, which is in the final stages of being adopted and declared official policy by the US government, according to reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times (9/11/05). It foresees pre-emptive nuclear strikes against non-nuclear adversaries, for purposes which include the following (Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, Page III-2):
* For rapid and favorable war termination on US terms.
* To ensure success of US and multinational operations.
* To demonstrate US intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD.
* Against an adversary intending to use WMD against US, multinational, or alliance forces.
The Nuclear Posture Review document states that:
*US nuclear forces will now be used to dissuade adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten U.S. interests or those of allies and friends.
* Nuclear weapons could be employed against targets able to withstand non-nuclear attack
This dangerous policy change ignores the fact that nuclear weapons are on a completely different scale than other WMD's and conventional weapons. Using a nuclear weapon pre-emptively and against a non-nuclear adversary crosses a line, blurring the sharp distinction that exists between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, and heightens the probability of future use of nuclear weapons by others. The underlying principle of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is that in exchange for other countries forgoing the development of nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapon states will pursue nuclear disarmament. Instead, this new U.S. policy conveys a clear message to the 182 non-nuclear weapon states that the United States is moving strongly away from disarmament, and is in fact prepared to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries. It provides a strong incentive for countries to abandon the NPT and pursue nuclear weapons themselves and dramatically increases the risk of nuclear proliferation, and ultimately the risk that regional conflicts will explode into all-out nuclear war, with the potential to destroy our civilization.
We urge members of Congress, professional organizations and the media to raise public awareness and promote discussion on these issues, and we express our repudiation of these dangerous policies in the strongest possible terms.)
4 Articles
1. Endless Summer Not As Nice As It Sounds
2. Stop The Iran War Before It Gets Started
3. Impeachment: The Case In Favor
4. Setting Up the Next US-Israeli Target (Iran) [In 3 parts; this is Part 1.]
1. ENDLESS SUMMER NOT AS NICE AS IT SOUNDS
BY
STEPHEN LEAHY
Warmer, wetter and stormier -- the largest ever scientific review of climate change will say there is virtually no doubt that emissions from burning fossil fuels are causing the documented rise in global temperatures.
Average temperatures are set to rise between two and 4.5 degrees C sometime between 2030 and 2050, bringing with them massive ecological impacts, according to media reports of leaked documents from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an umbrella organisation of scientists from around the world and the preeminent authority on climate change.
Part one of the IPCC's massive Fourth Assessment Report will be officially made public in Paris on Feb. 2.
"It's the same message that the IPCC has been saying for 20 years but with much better scientific understanding and certainty," said Andrew Weaver, a climatologist at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences in University of Victoria, Canada.
"The bottom line is that the temperature rise is not going to be any lower than two degrees C," Weaver, one of the lead authors of the forthcoming IPCC report, told IPS.
Nearly 30 years ago, climate scientists began to calculate the impacts of the burning of fossil fuels on global temperatures. If the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere doubled from the pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million (ppm), it would raise global temperatures from 1.5 to 4.5 degrees C, they found.
Currently CO2 is at roughly 380 ppm and rising at three ppm per year and that rate is accelerating as China, India and other countries industrialise. Many climate experts say it will be extremely difficult to avoid reaching 560 ppm -- or a doubling -- sometime between 2030 and 2050.
Six years of study and analysis by more than 2,500 scientists in more than 130 countries involved in the IPCC process will conclude that doubling CO2 will result in a global temperature rise on average of two and 4.5 degrees C. The temperature increase will not be evenly distributed, and temperatures in Arctic regions will go much higher -- four to eight degrees C.
The bottom end of the range is virtually guaranteed, but the upper could go much higher depending on complex, and poorly understood, positive feedback mechanisms.
A meltdown of the Northern hemisphere's permafrost or a massive die-out of the Amazon rainforest, as projected in some models, could push global temperatures well above this range.
"This is not good news," Weaver said with considerable understatement.
A two-degree C rise -- unprecedented since the age of the dinosaurs -- is hardly good news either.
"At two degrees C we will experience massive changes to the Earth's ecosystems," he said.
Heat waves and droughts will be more intense and last longer, while floods will be more frequent and more damaging. The rate of change will be too fast for most species to adapt, Weaver says.
While human societies in rich countries may be able to buffer themselves from most of the worst impacts, the world's poor will not have that luxury.
"There will be massive displacements of people which will create major instability in the world," said Weaver.
At 2.7 degrees C, the entire Greenland ice sheet will melt, eventually raising sea levels six to seven metres worldwide, he said.
The IPCC estimation of the impacts of climate change will be released in part two of the Fourth Assessment Report in early April. Part three will look at how to mitigate climate change and will be released in early May.
"The only real scientific question regarding climate change over the past two decades has been how bad and how fast," said Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies, at University of California, San Diego.
"The only remaining issue is whether we will take appropriate action, soon enough," Oreskes said in a press conference.
The IPCC process has become the "gold standard" for global scientific collaboration and has been copied by others, she says.
The IPCC operates under the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and does not fund any research itself. It collects, evaluates and synthesises scientific data. Any U.N. country can be a member of the IPCC and can challenge the findings in its reports. And consensus is required for every word in the "Summary for Policy Makers" section included in each report.
It's an inherently conservative process, with oil-rich countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia always trying to tone down the conclusions and emphasise uncertainties and unknowns, said Weaver.
In other words, the IPCC report will be sober, factual and as un-dramatic as possible. However, it will conclude that the scientific evidence on human-induced climate change is overwhelming.
"It is time for the climate scientists to step aside and let the engineers of the world begin to develop solutions," Weaver said.
Major new technologies and changes are going to be needed and quickly to prevent a doubling of CO2.
Many experts believe it is ironic that in era of rapid scientific development, cars and trucks still use an internal combustion engine developed 100 years ago and much of the world's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants first developed in the 17th century.
"Only switching to energy-saving light bulbs is not going to cut it," Weaver concluded.
An international treaty does exist to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming. Under the Kyoto Protocol, 36 highly industrialised nations must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Parties have agreed that even tougher actions will be needed after that deadline, but many are already having trouble meeting the 2012 targets.
And the George W. Bush administration has rejected the treaty as too costly to enforce, even though the United States is by far the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and consumes a quarter of global energy resources.
2. STOP THE IRAN WAR BEFORE IT STARTS
BY
SCOTT RITTER
In April 2001 I was invited to Washington, DC, by a group of Republican Congressmen collectively known as the Theme Team. The subject was Iraq. It seems that the Theme Team, responsible for monitoring the ideological pulse of America, was somewhat perturbed that a self-described Republican and former Marine officer, not to mention a former UN weapons inspector, was trash-talking America's Iraq policy. While this sort of action might have been acceptable during the tenure of a Democratic President like Bill Clinton, it was not part of the grand design when it came to the presidency of George W. Bush.
The conference room was packed with more than seventy Representatives and their staffs. I provided an opening in which I stressed that the case being made against Saddam Hussein and Iraq, centered as it was on the issue of WMD, did not hold water. I chastised the Republican lawmakers with a warning: If they continued to support the policy of confronting Saddam's Iraq over a trumped-up charge, they would not only get America involved in a war it could not win but would end up destroying the credibility of the Republican Party, and turn control of the Congress, and eventually the Presidency, to the Democrats. There were questions asked, and answers given, and in the end most thanked me for what they called an "illuminating" meeting.
Then they proceeded to do nothing.
Today that warning has become reality. America is bogged down in a losing war in Iraq, the Republican Party lies in shambles over its partisan support of a policy that was never debated or discussed but rather rubber-stamped and the Democrats now control the Senate and the House of Representatives. There is a very real chance that the Democrats will take control of the presidency in 2008, since the debacle that is Iraq will not be resolved prior to that date.
President Bush will go down in history with complete ownership of the Iraq War. The Republican Party will also be tarnished by this legacy. It doesn't matter that the policies of sanctions-based containment and regime change, which set in motion the events leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, were conceived of and implemented by Clinton, or that the Democrats in Congress were as complicit (and incompetent) in their support of those policies through their "bipartisan" support of both the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 (which set America's policy toward Iraq as regime change) and the War Authorization Resolution of 2002, which punted away Congress's constitutional responsibilities when it came to the declaration of war. To most Americans, the war in Iraq is a Republican war, and blame has been placed squarely at the doorstep of the Republican Commander in Chief who got us there, George W. Bush.
In his recent State of the Union address, Bush spent a great deal of time speaking about Iraq and his plans for how to achieve "victory" there. The Democrats, in their various responses, rightly criticized the President and his plans as unrealistic and insupportable. The stage has been set for an old-fashioned showdown between executive and legislative power, where the advantages are stacked in favor of those who control the power of the purse (i.e., Congress), since the President's new "surge" strategy hinges not only on the availability of troops to be surged but also on the money to pay for it.
When it comes to Iraq, newly empowered Democrats in Congress are getting a free ride, so to speak. While the honorable (and right) thing to do would be to combine their just criticism of the President's policy with a vision (and corresponding plan) of their own on how to proceed in Iraq, the Democrats instead seem to have taken the less risky and more politically savvy path of simply pointing an accusatory finger at the President, demanding that he fix what he broke. There is no coherent, broad-based Democratic plan for Iraq other than to criticize the President. In the case of Iraq, Democrats have demonstrated that they are just as capable of letting American service members die in order to preserve their own political ambition as their Republican counterparts are.
While this is abominable, the Democrats will most likely get away with it. After all, the horror that is present-day Iraq did not happen on their watch. Iraq is a Republican debacle, and it will continue to play out as such politically on the domestic front.
If I were to be invited to go to Washington today and speak to the Democratic equivalent of the Republican Theme Team, I would spend very little time on the issue of Iraq. Right or wrong, the Iraq War was a product of domestic American politics, not any genuine threat to national security, and as such the solution for Iraq will be derived not from whatever happens inside Iraq, surge or no surge, but rather from what happens here in America. It will take two or more national election cycles for the American electorate to purge Congress of those elements, Republican and Democratic alike, who are responsible for the Iraqi quagmire.
Until American politicians from either party show that they care more about the lives of the men and women in the armed forces who operate in harm's way than they do about their own political fortunes, we will remain in Iraq. It takes courage to stand up against this war when the tide of public opinion continues to hold out hope for victory. "Doing the right thing" is a thing of the past, it seems. "Doing the politically expedient thing" is the current trend. The American public may have articulated frustration with the course of events in Iraq, but this feeling is derived more from a frustration at being defeated than from any moral outrage over getting involved in a war that didn't need to be fought in the first place. Congress takes its cues from the American people, and until the American people are as outraged over the mere fact we are in Iraq as they are over the rising costs of the conflict--human, moral and financial--then Congress will continue to dither.
If I were to address a Democrat Theme Team equivalent, I would focus my effort on trying to impress them with the issue that will cost them political power down the road. This issue is Iran. While President Bush, a Republican, remains Commander in Chief, a Democrat-controlled Congress shares responsibility on war and peace from this point on. The conflict in Iraq, although ongoing, is a product of the Republican-controlled past. The looming conflict with Iran, however, will be assessed as a product of a Democrat-controlled present and future. If Iraq destroyed the Republican Party, Iran will destroy the Democrats.
I would strongly urge Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate, to hold real hearings on Iran. Not the mealy-mouthed Joe Biden-led hearings we witnessed on Iraq in July-August 2002, where he and his colleagues rubber-stamped the President's case for war, but genuine hearings that draw on all the lessons of Congressional failures when it came to Iraq. Summon all the President's men (and women), and grill them on every phrase and word uttered about the Iranian "threat," especially as it has been linked to nuclear weapons. Demand facts to back up the rhetoric.
Summon the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), or any other lobby promoting confrontation with Iran, to the forefront, so that the warnings they offer in whispers from a back room can be articulated before the American public. Hold these conjurers of doom accountable for their positions by demanding they back them up with hard fact. See if the US intelligence community concurs with the dire warnings put forward by these pro-war lobbyists, and if it doesn't, ask who, then, is driving US policy toward Iran? Those mandated by public law and subjected to the oversight of Congress? Or others, operating outside any framework representative of the will of the American people?
If a real case, based on facts as they pertain to the genuine national security interests of the United States, can be made for a confrontation with Iran that leads to military conflict, so be it. America should never shy away from defending that which legitimately needs defending. The sacrifice expected of our military forces, while tragic, will be defensible. But if the case for war with Iran is revealed to be as illusory as was the case for war with Iraq, then Congress must take action to stop this conflict from occurring. This is the Democrats' issue now, the one that will make or break them in 2008 and beyond.
If hearings show no case for war with Iran, then Congress must act to insure that the United States cannot move toward conflict with that nation on the strength of executive dictate alone. As things currently stand, the Bush Administration, emboldened with a vision of the unitary executive unprecedented in our nation's history, believes it has all of the legal authority it requires when it comes to engaging Iran militarily. The silence of Congress following the President's decision to dispatch a second carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf has been deafening. The fact that a third carrier battle group (the USS Ronald Reagan) will probably join these two in the near future has also gone unnoticed by most, if not all, in Congress.
The President and his advisers believe that they are acting in accordance with the authorities given to the executive by the US Constitution, and by legislative authority as well, as provided for in both the Authorization for Use of Military Force resolution of September 14, 2001 (after the attacks of September 11, where Congress not only authorized the President to use military force against the perpetrators of the terror attacks but also against those nations deemed to be harboring people or organizations involved in the attacks), and the Authorization of Military Force Against Iraq resolution of October 2002 (where Congress concurred that any presidential action would be "consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001").
The National Security Strategy of the United States, most recently promulgated in March 2006, lists Iran as the number-one threat to the United States, not only in terms of its yet-to-be-proven nuclear weapons program but also from its status, as declared by the Bush White House, as the world's leading state sponsor of terror. The Bush Administration has repeatedly linked Iran with the perpetrators of the 9/11 terror attacks and has accused Iran of harboring people and organizations involved in that attack. If left unchallenged by Congress, the Bush Administration firmly believes it has all of the authority required to initiate military action against Iran without Congressional approval.
This is not an idle statement on my part. One needs only to read the words of President Bush during his recent State of the Union address:
Osama bin Laden declared: "Death is better than living on this earth with the unbelievers among us." These men are not given to idle words, and they are just one camp in the Islamist radical movement.
In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East.
Many are known to take direction from the regime in Iran, which is funding and arming terrorists like Hezbollah, a group second only to Al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.
The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat. But whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent, they have the same wicked purposes: They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale. In the sixth year since our nation was attacked, I wish I could report to you that the dangers have ended. They have not.
And so it remains the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool of intelligence, diplomacy, law enforcement and military action to do our duty, to find these enemies and to protect the American people. [Author's emphasis]
What is unrealized in this passage is the loud applause given by members of Congress to the President's words.
Democrats in Congress have the opportunity to nip this looming disaster in the bud. The fact that most of the Democratic members of Congress who enjoy tenure voted in favor of the resolutions giving the President such sweeping authority is moot. Democrats are all capable of pleading that they were acting under the influence of a Republican-controlled body and unable to adequately ascertain through effective oversight the genuine state of affairs. This is no longer the case. The Democrats in Congress are in firm control of their own destiny, and with it the destiny of America. A war with Iran will pale in comparison with the current conflict in Iraq. And if there is a war with Iran, this Congress will be held fully accountable.
Democrats should seek immediate legislative injunctions to nullify the War Powers' authority granted to the President in September 2001 and October 2002 when it comes to Iran. Congress should pass a joint resolution requiring the President to fully consult with Congress about any national security threat that may be posed to the United States from Iran and demand that no military action be initiated by the United States against Iran without a full, constitutionally mandated declaration of war. Those who embrace the notion of a unitary executive will scoff at the concept of a Congressional declaration of war. They hold that the power to make war is not an enumerated power per se. While statutory authorization (i.e., a formal declaration of war) is enumerated in the Constitution, the reality (as reflected by the current War Powers Act) is that the powers of bringing America to a state of war are not so much separated as they are linked and sequenced, with Congress exercising its control over budgetary appropriations and the President through command.
There may well be merit to this line of argument. But one thing is perfectly clear: Only Congress holds the power of the purse. While a President may commit American forces to combat without the consent of Congress (for periods of up to 180 days), he cannot spend money that has not been appropriated. There is, in the passing of any budget, inherent authority given to the President when it comes to national defense. However, Congress can, if it wants to, put specific restrictions on the President's ability to use the people's money. A recent example occurred in 1982, when Congress passed the Boland Amendment to restrict funding for executive-sponsored actions, covert and overt, in Nicaragua. While it is in the process of getting a handle on America's policy vis-à-vis Iran, Congress would do well to pass a resolution that serves as a new Boland Amendment for Iran. Such an amendment could read like this:
An amendment to prohibit offensive military operations, covert or overt, being commenced by the United States of America against the Islamic Republic of Iran, without the expressed consent of the Congress of the United States. This amendment reserves the right of the President, commensurate with the War Powers Act, to carry out actions appropriate for the defense of the United States if attacked by Iran. However, any funds currently appropriated by Congress for use in support of ongoing operations by the United States Armed Forces are hereby prohibited from being allocated for any pre-emptive military action, whether overt or covert in nature, without the expressed prior consent by the Congress of the United States of America.
However it is worded, the impact of such an amendment would be immediate and could forestall any military moves planned by the Bush Administration against Iran until Congress can fully familiarize itself with the true nature of any threat posed to the United States. President Bush seems to be hellbent on making war with Iran. The passage of time is, in effect, the enemy of his Administration's goals and objectives. By buying the time required to fully study the issues pertaining to Iran, and by forestalling the possibility of immediate pre-emptive action through budgetary restrictions, Congress may very well spare America, and the world, another tragedy like Iraq. If a Democrat-controlled Congress fails to take action, and America finds itself embroiled in yet another Middle East military misadventure, there will be a reckoning at the polls in 2008. It will not bode well for the Democrats currently in power, or those seeking power in the future.
3. IMPEACHMENT: THE CASE IN FAVOR
BY
ELIZABETH HOLTZMAN
Approximately a year ago, I wrote in this magazine that President George W. Bush had committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be impeached and removed from office. His impeachable offenses include using lies and deceptions to drive the country into war in Iraq, deliberately and repeatedly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on wiretapping in the United States, and facilitating the mistreatment of US detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act of 1996.
Since then, the case against President Bush has, if anything, been strengthened by reports that he personally authorized CIA abuse of detainees. In addition, courts have rejected some of his extreme assertions of executive power. The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees, and a federal judge ruled that the President could not legally ignore FISA. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's recent announcement that the wiretapping program would from now on operate under FISA court supervision strongly suggests that Bush's prior claims that it could not were untrue.
Despite scant attention from the mainstream media, since last year impeachment has won a wide audience. Amid a flurry of blogs, books and articles, a national grassroots movement has sprung up. In early December seventy-five pro-impeachment rallies were held around the country and pro-impeachment efforts are planned for Congressional districts across America. A Newsweek poll, conducted just before election day, showed 51 percent of Americans believed that impeachment of President Bush should be either a high or lower priority; 44 percent opposed it entirely. (Compare these results with the 63 percent of the public who in the fall of 1998 opposed President Clinton's impeachment.) Most Americans understand the gravity of President Bush's constitutional misconduct.
Public anger at Bush has been mounting. On November 7 voters swept away Republican control of the House and Senate. The President's poll numbers continue to drop.
These facts should signal a propitious moment for impeachment proceedings to start. Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment "off the table." (Impeachment proceedings must commence in the House of Representatives.) Her position doesn't mean impeachment is dead; it simply means a different route to it has to be pursued. Congressional investigations must start, and public pressure must build to make the House act.
This is no different from what took place during Watergate. In 1973 impeachment was not "on the table" for many months while President Nixon's cover-up unraveled, even though Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But when Nixon fired the special prosecutor to avoid making his White House tapes public, the American people were outraged and put impeachment on the table, demanding that Congress act. That can happen again.
Congressional and other investigations that previously found serious misconduct in the Nixon White House made the public's angry reaction to the firing of the special prosecutor--and the House response with impeachment proceedings--virtually inevitable. Early in 1973, once it appeared that the cover-up might involve the White House, the Senate created a select committee to investigate. The committee held hearings and uncovered critical evidence, including the existence of a White House taping system that could resolve the issue of presidential complicity. The Senate also forced the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Watergate. Other committees looked into related matters. None of the investigations were prompted by the idea of impeachment. Still, they laid the groundwork for it--and the evidence they turned up was used by the House impeachment panel to prepare articles of impeachment against Nixon.
The same approach can govern now. Senate and House committees must commence serious investigations that could uncover more evidence to support impeachment. The investigations should ascertain the full extent of the President's deceptions, exaggerations and lies that drove us into the Iraq War. (They can simply in effect resurrect Republican Senator Howard Baker's famous questions about Richard Nixon: "What did the President know and when did he know it?") Congress should also explore the wiretapping that has violated the FISA law, the President's role in mistreatment of detainees and his gross indifference to the catastrophe facing the residents of New Orleans from Katrina.
Investigations should also be conducted into Vice President Cheney's meetings with oil company executives at the outset of the Administration. If divvying up oil contracts in Iraq were discussed, as some suggest, this would help prove that the Iraq War had been contemplated well before 9/11, and that a key motivation was oil. Inquiries into Halliburton's multibillion-dollar no-bid contracts should also be conducted, particularly given Cheney's ties to the company.
White House documents about Katrina that have not already been turned over to Congress should be sought to document further the President's failure to discharge his constitutional duty to help the people of New Orleans.
Our country's Founders provided the power of impeachment to prevent the subversion of the Constitution. President Bush has subverted and defied the Constitution in many ways. His defiance and his subversion continue.
Failure to impeach Bush would condone his actions. It would allow him to assume he can simply continue to violate the laws on wiretapping and torture and violate other laws as well without fear of punishment. He could keep the Iraq War going or expand it even further than he just has on the basis of more lies, deceptions and exaggerations. Remember, as recently as October 26, Bush said, "Absolutely, we are winning" the war in Iraq--a blatant falsehood. Worse still, if Congress fails to act, Bush might be emboldened to believe he may start another war, perhaps against Iran, again on the basis of lies, deceptions and exaggerations.
There is no remedy short of impeachment to protect us from this President, whose ability to cause damage in the next two years is enormous. If we do not act against Bush, we send a terrible message of impunity to him and to future Presidents and mark a clear path to despotism and tyranny. Succeeding generations of Americans will never forgive us for lacking the nerve to protect our democracy.
4. SETTING UP THE NEXT US-ISRAELI TARGET (IRAN) FOR ANOTHER "SUPREME INTERNATIONAL CRIME"
BY
EDWARD S. HERMAN AND DAVID PETERSON
[In 3 parts; this is Part 1.]
Still digesting their recent and ongoing aggressions in the Middle East, the Bush and Israeli regimes now threaten to attack Iran. As these warrior states cast their long shadow across the region, they find themselves aided and abetted by the Security Council, the other major powers, parties of the opposition, and the media.
01/28/07 "ICHBlog" -- -The ease with which a supposedly independent media in a supposedly democratic society like the United States can demonize enemies and convert third- and fourth-rate official targets into major threats is almost beyond belief. And the collective amnesia of the establishment media enables them to do the same thing over and over again; they never learn, and most important never have to learn, because the collective amnesia they help instill in the society protects them against correction—an unending series of victories over memory in the exercise of "reality-control" (Orwell). This enables the media to serve as de facto propaganda agents of their state while still claiming to be independent watchdogs. Less than three years ago, in 2004, the New York Times and Washington Post were hardly alone in offering partial mea culpas for having swallowed and regurgitated Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Powell-Rice lies about Saddam Hussein’s menacing weapons of mass destruction (WMD),2 thereby making a major contribution to the criminal and costly quagmire they now bemoan (but, along with Bush, still declining to urge any quick exit or meaningful withdrawal.) And yet they had barely gotten out their apologies before they eagerly climbed aboard the Bush-Cheney-Rice-Olmert bandwagon on the Iran menace and urgent need to do something about that grave threat.
And what a threat it is! Admittedly, Iran doesn’t possess a single nuclear weapon, and won’t have one for some years even if it is trying to get one, which its religious leaders vigorously deny. If it got a nuclear weapon it couldn’t use it except in desperate self-defense as both Israel and the United States have many nuclear bombs and superior delivery systems, so that any offensive use of its nuclear weapon(s) would entail Iranian national suicide. It may be recalled that Saddam used his WMD only against Iran and his Kurds, but not even in self-defense during the 1991 Persian Gulf war attack on Iraq by the United States and its “coalition”—the former use was with U.S. approval, the latter case of non-use was because Saddam would have suffered disproportionate retaliation by the United States and his restraint followed. This point is not made in the establishment media, possibly because it would seem to qualify the Iran nuclear menace.
The media also do not draw the further inference that an Iranian nuclear weapon would therefore serve only as a means of self-defense and to give Iran a little more leverage in dealing with the nuclear power states—the United States and Israel—that openly threaten it. Instead, the media, following the official line, talk about an Iranian nuclear weapon as “destabilizing,” when what they really mean is that the Israeli-U.S. continuous war-making, ethnic cleansing, and deliberate and effective destabilization of the Middle East would be made more difficult.
Of course, in the demonization tradition, the media feature the special menace of the evil men who run the Iranian state. In the good old days the trick was to tie them to the Evil Empire (the Guatemalan leadership in 1954, the Sandinistas in the 1980s, and in fact any national liberation movement or uncooperative leader who might have sought arms from the Soviet Union), carefully avoiding any awkward earlier support the United States might have given the evil man when he was doing its bidding (Noriega, Saddam in the 1980s and earlier). The media play this game well and regularly perform in the manner that would fit comfortably into the world of Big Brother, where “any past or future agreement [with the demonized enemy] was impossible.…The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia so short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated.” In the case of the Iraq war the technique has been simply to play dumb and never mention the earlier alliance between “Oceania" (the United States) and “Eurasia”(Iraq).
In the Iran case, its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has done yeoman service in facilitating the demonization process, although the media have distorted his remarks, misrepresented his power, and generally provided a misleading context to meet the demands of demonization. Ahmadinejad allegedly proclaimed that "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world," a threat proving how dangerous Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon would be for Israel; the former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party Chairman Benjamin Netanyahu currently leads a campaign calling for Ahmadinejad's indictment on the charge of inciting genocide against the Jewish state.3 But it has been shown that Ahmadinejad did not threaten Israel with violence in his October 26, 2005 address before the World Without Zionism conference. Rather, to commemorate International Quds Day, he quoted a number of passages from Ayatollah Khomeini, and in one of these quotes, Khomeini had predicted the passing or ending or vanishing of the Israeli occupation of Quds (i.e., Jerusalem) from the pages of time.4 Furthermore, Ahmadinejad does not rule Iran and does not have the power to go to war against Israel—that power lies with the Mullahs, as the New York Times and others deign to mention when the Mullahs are criticizing Ahmadinejad and thus points can be scored against him.5
On the other hand, both Israel and the United States have leaderships greatly influenced by religious groups whose principles encourage and welcome violent expansionism and even apocalyptic, “end-time” scenarios. The media do not mention U.S. and Israeli religious fanaticism as posing any kind of regional or global existential threat. Nor do they discuss or express great concern over the fact that whereas a few nuclear weapons would only help Iran to deter other states from attacking it, the United States and Israel could use nuclear weapons against Iran without committing national suicide. And both of these nuclear states threaten and reportedly have very active plans for such an attack.6 In the Kafka Era, while such credible plans and threats disappear, the mythical threat to wipe Israel "off the map" is placed front and center, helping make the real threat politically more feasible.
These media failures are closely related to the power of the pro-Israel Lobby in the United States, which has paralyzed the Democratic Party and made it into an ally of Bush administration hardliners pushing for an attack on Iran. Israeli leaders want a war with Iran, preferably with the United States doing the fighting, and this translates into Lobby pressures and hence Democratic leaders jumping on the war bandwagon, often trying to outdo the Republicans. U.S. Senator John Edwards told a recent conference on the "Balance of Israel's National Security" that the "rise of Islamic radicalism, use of terrorism, and the spread of nuclear technology and weapons of mass destruction represent an unprecedented threat to the world and Israel." He immediately added: "At the top of these threats is Iran. Iran threatens the security of Israel and the entire world. Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons."
Edwards is far from alone. Prior to winning election to the Senate in 2004, Illinois' Barack Obama told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune that "launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in. On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.” Last October, New York Senator Hillary Clinton told the Council on Foreign Relations that "U.S. policy must be unequivocal. Iran must not build or acquire nuclear weapons….We have to keep all options on the table…." More recently, Indiana's Democratic Senator and one-time presidential hopeful Evan Bayh called Iran "everything we thought Iraq was but wasn’t. They are seeking nuclear weapons, they do support terrorists, they have threatened to destroy Israel, and they’ve threatened us, too."
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