[News] Bombing Iran - Taking the World Down With Them

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08062010.html

August 6 - 8, 2010


Taking the World Down With Them


Bombing Iran

By WILLIAM BLUM

If and when the United States and Israel bomb 
Iran (marking the sixth country so blessed by 
Barack Obama) and this sad old world has a new 
daily horror show to look at on their TV sets, 
and we then discover that Iran was not actually 
building nuclear weapons after all, the American 
mainstream media and the benighted American mind 
will ask: "Why didn't they tell us that? Did they want us to bomb them?"

The same questions were asked about Iraq 
following the discovery that Saddam Hussein 
didn't in fact have any weapons of mass 
destruction. However, in actuality, before the US 
invasion Iraqi officials had stated clearly on 
repeated occasions that they had no such weapons. 
I'm reminded of this by the recent news report 
about Hans Blix, former chief United Nations 
weapons inspector, who led a doomed hunt for WMD 
in Iraq. Last week he told the British inquiry 
into the March 2003 invasion that those who were 
"100 percent certain there were weapons of mass 
destruction" in Iraq turned out to have "less 
than zero percent knowledge" of where the 
purported hidden caches might be. He testified 
that he had warned British Prime Minister Tony 
Blair in a February 2003 meeting ­ as well as US 
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in separate 
talks ­ that Hussein might have no weapons of mass destruction. 1

In August 2002, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq 
Aziz told American newscaster Dan Rather on CBS: 
"We do not possess any nuclear or biological or chemical weapons." 2

In December, Aziz stated to Ted Koppel on ABC: 
"The fact is that we don't have weapons of mass 
destruction. We don't have chemical, biological, or nuclear weaponry." 3

Hussein himself told Rather in February 2003: 
"These missiles have been destroyed. There are no 
missiles that are contrary to the prescription of 
the United Nations [as to range] in Iraq. They are no longer there." 4

Moreover, Gen. Hussein Kamel, former head of 
Iraq's secret weapons program, and a son-in-law 
of Saddam Hussein, told the UN in 1995 that Iraq 
had destroyed its banned missiles and chemical 
and biological weapons soon after the Persian Gulf War. 5

There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials 
telling the world that the WMD were non-existent.

If you don't already have serious doubts about 
the mainstream media's devotion to questioning 
the premises and rationales underlying American 
foreign policy, consider this: Despite the two 
revelations on Dan Rather's CBS programs, and the 
other revelations noted above, in January 2008 we 
find CBS reporter Scott Pelley interviewing FBI 
agent George Piro, who had interviewed Saddam Hussein before he was executed:

PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his 
weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed?

PIRO: He told me that most of the WMD had been 
destroyed by the U.N. inspectors in the '90s, and 
those that hadn't been destroyed by the 
inspectors were unilaterally destroyed by Iraq.

PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?

PIRO: Yes.

PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your 
nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade? 6

Would it have mattered if the Bush administration 
had fully believed Iraq when it said it had no 
WMD? Probably not. There is ample evidence that 
Bush knew this to be the case, as did Tony Blair. 
Saddam Hussein did not sufficiently appreciate 
just how psychopathic his two adversaries were. 
Bush was determined to vanquish Iraq, for the 
sake of Israel, for control of oil, and for 
expanding the empire, though it hasn't all worked 
out as the empire expected; for some odd reason, 
it seems that the Iraqi people resented being 
bombed, invaded, occupied, and tortured.

The result of Bush's Iraqi policy can be summed 
up by saying that it would be difficult to cite 
many other historical examples of one nation 
destroying another so completely, crushing and 
perverting virtually every aspect of their society and humanity.

Now Israel presses Washington relentlessly to do 
the same to Iran ­ not that the US necessarily 
needs much prodding ­ primarily because Israel is 
determined to remain the only nuclear power in 
the Middle East; this despite Iran telling the 
United States and the world many times that it is 
not building nuclear weapons. But if Iran is in 
fact building nuclear weapons, we have to ask: Is 
there some international law that says that the 
US, the UK, Russia, China, Israel, France, 
Pakistan, and India are entitled to nuclear 
weapons, but Iran is not? If the United States 
had known that the Japanese had deliverable 
atomic bombs, would Hiroshima and Nagasaki have 
been destroyed? Does USrael believe that there is 
not already enough horror and suffering in the news?

In what could be part of the preparation for an 
attack on Iran, 47 members of the House of 
Representatives recently put forth a non-binding 
resolution declaring Iran to be "an immediate and 
existential threat to the State of Israel". To 
illustrate this threat, the resolution quoted 
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on several 
occasions avowing sentiments like: "God willing, 
with the force of God behind it, we shall soon 
experience a world without the United States and 
Zionism" ... calling for "this occupying regime 
[Israel] to be wiped off the map" ... "Like it or 
not, the Zionist regime is heading toward 
annihilation" ... "I must announce that the 
Zionist regime, with a 60-year record of 
genocide, plunder, invasion, and betrayal is 
about to die and will soon be erased from the 
geographical scene" ... "Today, the time for the 
fall of the satanic power of the United States 
has come, and the countdown to the annihilation 
of the emperor of power and wealth has started".

Pretty damning stuff, isn't it? N'est-ce pas? 
Nicht wahr? But there's a lot less here than 
meets the eye. Notice that it doesn't quote 
Ahmadinejad in a single specific, explicit threat 
of an Iranian attack upon Israel or the United 
States. No mention or indication that "I" or "We" 
or "Iran" is going to do any of this, carry out 
any act of violence. And I would say that that's 
because it's not what he meant. In another quote, 
which the resolution fails to cite, the Iranian 
president in December 2006 said: "The Zionist 
regime will be wiped out soon, the same way the 
Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve 
freedom." 12 Obviously, the man is not calling 
for any kind of violent attack upon Israel, for 
the dissolution of the Soviet Union took place 
very peacefully. Furthermore, in June 2006, 
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 
stated: "We have no problem with the world. We 
are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the 
world knows it. We will never start a war. We 
have no intention of going to war with any 
state.7 Why didn't the authors of the congressional resolution quote that one?

I think that one can derive a better 
understanding of the Iranian president's 
statements by seeing them as metaphor, as 
bragging, as wishful thinking, as well as poor 
translation (for example: "wiped off the map" 8), 
coming from a man foolish enough to publicly 
claim that there are no gays in Iran.

But more significantly, the resolution offers no 
reason why Iran actually would attack Israel or 
the United States. What reason would Iran have to 
use nuclear weapons against either country other 
than an irresistible desire for mass national 
suicide? Indeed, the very same question could 
have ­ and should have ­ been asked before the 
invasion of Iraq. Of the many lies surrounding 
that invasion, the biggest one of all was that 
if, in fact, Saddam Hussein had had those weapons 
of mass destruction the invasion would have been justified.

With all the lies exposed about the American 
Iraqi misadventure, I and many others had allowed 
ourselves the luxury, the hidden pleasure, of 
believing that the United States government and 
media had learned a lesson which would last for 
some time. They'd been caught and exposed. But 
it's the same all over again with the lies about 
Iran and Ahmadinejad. (No, he's not even a Holocaust denier.)

In any event, Israel probably doesn't believe its 
own propaganda. In March of last year, the 
Washington Post reported: "A senior Israeli 
official in Washington" has asserted that "Iran 
would be unlikely to use its missiles in an 
attack [against Israel] because of the certainty 
of retaliation." 9 This was the very last 
sentence in the article and, according to an 
extensive Nexis search, did not appear in any 
other English-language media in the world.

And earlier this year we could read in the Sunday 
Times of London: "Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 
75, a war hero and pillar of the [Israeli] 
defence establishment, believes it will probably 
take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons. 
The views expressed by the former 
director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy 
Commission contradict the assessment of Israel's 
defence establishment and put him at odds with political leaders." 10

If any country in this world is a threat to use 
nuclear weapons with remarkably little regard for 
the consequences it's Israel. Martin van Creveld, 
an Israeli professor of military history, and 
loyal Israeli citizen, remarked in 2002: "We have 
the capability to take the world down with us. 
And I can assure you that this will happen before 
Israel goes under." 11 Think of the closing scene 
of "Dr. Strangelove". That's Israel sitting 
astride the speeding nuclear missile waving the cowboy hat.

William Blum is the author of 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512526/counterpunchmaga>Killing 
Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since 
World War II, 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga>Rogue 
State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power. 
and 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1887128727/counterpunchmaga>West-Bloc 
Dissident: a Cold War Political 
Memoir<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga>.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20100806/d4649881/attachment.htm>