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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08062010.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/blum08062010.html<br><br>
</a></font><font size=2 color="#990000">August 6 - 8, 2010<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=4><b>Taking the World Down With Them <br><br>
<br>
</font><font size=5 color="#990000">Bombing
Iran</b></font></h1><font size=4>By WILLIAM BLUM <br><br>
</font><font size=3>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?"<br><br>
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 <br><br>
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 <br><br>
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 <br><br>
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 <br><br>
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 <br><br>
There are yet other examples of Iraqi officials telling the world that
the WMD were non-existent.<br><br>
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:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>PELLEY: And what did he tell you about how his weapons of mass
destruction had been destroyed?<br><br>
<dd>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.<br><br>
<dd>PELLEY: He had ordered them destroyed?<br><br>
<dd>PIRO: Yes.<br><br>
<dd>PELLEY: So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put
your own life at risk to maintain this charade? 6 <br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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?<br><br>
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".<br><br>
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?<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.)<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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 <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>William Blum</b> is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567512526/counterpunchmaga">
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II</a>,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga">
Rogue State: a guide to the World's Only Super Power</a>. and
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1887128727/counterpunchmaga">
West-Bloc Dissident: a Cold War Political
Memoir</a>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511945/counterpunchmaga">
.</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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