A series of indicators this week, not to mention words from the Joint Chief Chairman's mouth, signify a clear step forward on the part of the Bush administration toward war with Iran and Syria. Admiral Michael Mullen said today that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" against Iran, because of their "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq.
More intrigue from our top brass and Executive branch below the fold.
The U.S. military, once again, declared there was a military skirmish between U.S. and Iranian vessels...to which Iran unequivocably denied one hour ago.
Iran on Friday denied there had been any confrontation between its forces and a U.S. ship in the Gulf, Iranian media reported, after a U.S. official said a ship contracted by the U.S Military Sealift Command fired on an Iranian vessel.
Some media suggested that, if there had been an incident, it may have involved a private boat that could have been Iranian.
"There has been no confrontation between Iranian boats and U.S. military vessels in the Persian Gulf," the state-owned English-language satellite channel Press TV reported on its website, citing a source in Iran's Revolutionary Guards...Even if there was a shooting ... American forces have likely shot at a non-military or fishing boat, and even then one cannot be certain that it was Iranian," Iran's Mehr News Agency reported.
A U.S. defence official earlier said a ship contracted by the U.S Military Sealift Command had fired at least one shot toward an Iranian boat.
As you probably recall, the Pentagon released a similar lie misstatement back in January, including a video of the "attack" from an Iranian vessel accompanied by a strange recording that was later determined to be a hoax.
The Pentagon party line,, of course is this for Iran:
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said.
"The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It's plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way," Mullen said.
The Admiral lied while plans are being drawn up to attack stressed that "diplomacy" will take place first:
Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. "I have no expectations that we're going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future," he said.
The Bush administration doesn't give a flying toaster has never been too keen on diplomacy:
Bush Began to Plan War Three Months After 9-11
Anti-Iraq War US Diplomats Poorer But Proud
The Struggle For Iraq: Diplomacy
Pope Criticizes US For Shunning Diplomacy Before Iraq War
Bush Says Hussein Must Leave Iraq Within 48 Hours
Bush: Diplomacy "Will Not Work" To Disarm Saddam
Also today, top Pentagon officials released an accusation that Syria built a nuclear reactor in order to ready nuclear weapons, and which was attacked by Israel seven months ago. Syria also denies this accusaion. Syrian President Bashar Assad:
questioned the logic of such allegations and insisted that the site was an unused military facility. "Is it logical for a nuclear site to be left without protection and not guarded by anti-aircraft guns?" Assad told the Qatari newspaper Al-Watan.
"A nuclear site under the watch of satellites in the middle of Syria in the desert and in an open location?" Assad said.
He reiterated that the site destroyed by the Israelis was "a Syrian military position under construction and not a nuclear reactor."
The intelligence community agrees:
However, both the U.S. intelligence officials and independent analysts said there was no reprocessing facility at the site — something that would be needed to extract plutonium from spent reactor fuel for use in a bomb. That gives little confidence that the facility was meant for weapons development, they said.
Israel remains silent on the attak on Syria.
(Good articles on Syria and Iranian alliance here and here.)
The complexities are vast, but we can be sure of one thing: Iran and Syria are ruining our chances for world domination positioned very favorably to natural resources. Noam Chomsky articulates it best:
That's much less significant for the United States than Iran. The Iranian issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons frankly. Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons -- nor should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct from North Korea, is that this is center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after the Second World War, it's been a U.S. preserve. That's been an axiom of U.S. foreign policy, that it must control Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access as people often say. Once the oil is on the seas it goes anywhere. In fact if the United States used no Middle East oil, it'd have the same policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it'd keep the same policies. Just look at the internal record, or the logic of it, the issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power.
But what of our diminished troop levels, you ask? Admiral Mullen, the Joint Chief Chairman, doesn't seem concerned about the lack of troops or resources. He stated that a conflict with Iran's 65.3 million (very nationalistic) citizens would be "extremely stressing" but not impossible. (To which I reply, "Are you people out of your fucking minds?") Where did we hear something similar? Oh yes, Donald Rumsfeld, "We go to war with the Army we have."
In conclusion, if we as citizens don't actively stand up to say NO! to war with Iran and Syria, you can bet your bottom dollar (no pun intended) that it is on the agenda for the summer. A parting thought about Cheney.
Please contact your Congress people.