The world military junta continues to promote the pretext for war with Iran, despite the fact that even Israel admits it is not pursuing nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. itself has helped Iran develop a civilian nuclear program:
The Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes that are building key parts of Iran’s Bushehr reactor even though the United States has spent years trying to shut it down, according to a House committee.
In a letter sent to Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman on Wednesday, Representative John Dingell, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee, say that the Energy Department has approved projects with the two institutes worth $4 million.
Mr. Dingell, in a telephone interview, pointed out that the State Department has accused Iran of using the Bushehr reactor as a cover for obtaining nuclear technologies useful in a weapons program. “We’ve got a bunch of Federal laws that impose sanctions on U.S. companies that develop Iran’s oil,” he said, adding, “Here we’ve got U.S. money providing assistance to help develop a reactor that we’re busy denouncing.”
As the pro-war media spins the IAEA non-finding, the Iraq chickenhawks have reemerged to fan the flames for an Iranian invasion. Long in the planning, the Neo-Con crew of liars have been licking their chops for at least two decades:
The motivations for an Iran strike were laid out as far back as 1992. In classified defense planning guidance written for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney by then-Pentagon staffers I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, World Bank Chief Paul Wolfowitz, and ambassador-nominee to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad Cheney's aides called for the United States to assume the position of lone superpower and act preemptively to prevent the emergence of even regional competitors. The draft document was leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post and caused an uproar among Democrats and many in George H. W. Bush's Administration.
In September 2000, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) issued a report titled Rebuilding America's Defenses, which espoused similar positions to the 1992 draft and became the basis for the Bush-Cheney Administration's foreign policy. Libby and Wolfowitz were among the participants in this new report; Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other prominent figures in the Bush administration were PNAC members.
“The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security,” the report read.
In 2007, the Bush administration spent $400m to “prepare the battlefield”, funding opposition groups within Iran. However this strategy goes all the way back to 1952, when Britain attempted to thwart the nationalization of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (BP) by teaming up with the U.S. to stage an Iranian coup:
- Britain, fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup in 1952 and pressed the United States to mount a joint operation to remove the prime minister.
- The C.I.A. and S.I.S., the British intelligence service, handpicked Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and covertly funneled $5 million to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed.
- Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government.
Do the ends justify the means, as Neo-Con favorite Machiavelli once asserted? What about taking credit for terrorist attacks, as has often been done by Israeli intelligence? When the statements by such groups are literally quoted from private contractors of the Pentagon, how far would a war architect go for pretext? Would an American city be nuked, as one presidential candidate is fond of saying?
Andrew Card on why the Bush administration waited until September to sell the Iraq war: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August".