By Bernard Weiner

The essence of Bush&Co. strategy, from January 2001 to today, can be boiled down to this: We'll continue doing whatever we want to do until someone stops us.

Fallout around the world would be grim

Tim Harper
Saturday April 15, 2006
Toronto Star

Poison-laced missiles raining down on U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, the downing of a U.S. passenger airliner, suicide bombers in major cities, perhaps unleashing their deadly payload in a shopping mall food court. It could be 9/11 all over again. Or worse.

On the political front, more anti-Americanism.

Renewed venom aimed at Washington from European capitals, greater distrust from China and Russia, outright hatred in the Arab and Muslim world. Oil prices spiralling out of control, a global recession at hand.

In Iran, a galvanizing of a splintered nation. An end to hopes for political reform, a rally-around-the-leader phenomenon common among the victimized, an ability to rebuild a nuclear program in two to four years.

These are the potential costs of a U.S. military strike in Iran.

The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a former US intelligence analyst disclosed on Sunday.

Maxim Kniazkov
Sunday April 16, 2006
The Asian Age

William Arkin, who served as the US Army’s top intelligence mind on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against Iraq, said the plan is known in military circles as Tirannt, an acronym for "Theatre Iran Near Term."

It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass destruction, Mr Arkin wrote in the Washington Post. US and British planners have already conducted a Caspian Sea war game as part of these preparations, the scholar said.

"According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to Army General John Abizaid, now commander of Centcom, in 2002," Arkin wrote, referring to the Florida-based US central command. But preparations under Tirannt began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The plan has since been updated using information collected in Iraq. Air Force planners have modelled attacks against Iranian air defences, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal targets and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian crisis can only be understood as the inevitable result of Israel's US-backed WMD monopoly in the region

David Hirst
Tuesday April 4, 2006
The Guardian

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS

Before the U.S. House of Representatives, April 5, 2006

The Government is to hold secret talks with defence chiefs tomorrow to discuss possible military strikes against Iran.

A high-level meeting will take place in the Ministry of Defence at which senior defence chiefs and government officials will consider the consequences of an attack on Iran.

It is believed that an American-led attack, designed to destroy Iran's ability to develop a nuclear bomb, is "inevitable" if Teheran's leaders fail to comply with United Nations demands to freeze their uranium enrichment programme.

Tomorrow's meeting will be attended by Gen Sir Michael Walker, the chief of the defence staff, Lt Gen Andrew Ridgway, the chief of defence intelligence and Maj Gen Bill Rollo, the assistant chief of the general staff, together with officials from the Foreign Office and Downing Street.

A new compendium of global "people power" initiatives shows that non-violence and peace activism can be a more effective instrument of social change than military force.

The release of Norman Kember and two Canadian fellow-members of the Christian Peacemaker Teams group (James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden) from kidnappers in Baghdad after 119 days in captivity was followed by a mixed public reaction. There was widespread welcome and relief; renewed sadness at the murder of their American colleague Tom Fox, who had been seized with them on 26 November 2005; yet also (in Britain at least) instant criticism of Kember in many sectors of the media.

The criticism was on two counts: Kember's tardiness in offering thanks to the troops who freed him, and his and his group's supposed naivety. The first criticism was met by Kember's statement on his homecoming from Iraq, but the second is part of a more enduring outlook: that Kember and people like him are foolish amateurs interfering in a conflict-zone, putting themselves at risk, and getting in the way of military professionals doing a far more important job (see Andrew Mueller, "'Getting in the way'": Christian peacemakers from the West Bank to Iraq", 5 December 2005).

The Bush administration's growing charge-sheet against Iran, including an active role in the Iraqi insurgency, is bringing armed confrontation closer.

An energetic charm offensive launched by the George W Bush administration in November-December 2005, involving a series of speeches by the president himself and supporting declarations from vice-president Dick Cheney, attempted to convince the American public that the situation in Iraq was improving. Whatever favourable short-term impact on public opinion the campaign had, the continuing conflict in Iraq in January-February 2006 largely negated.

The huge upsurge of violence sparked by the 22 February bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra has dealt a further blow to Washington's narrative of progress in Iraq. This is occurring at a time when tensions with Iran are on the rise. But amidst its troubles, the United States persists in seeking comfort (see "Victory in Iraq", 15 December 2005).

The president returned to the rhetorical fray with a speech on 13 March at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies . As so often, George W Bush's intervention coincided with further severe violence in Iraq: numerous bomb attacks in and around Baghdad, including the bombing of a market in the mainly Shi'a Sadr city district that killed up to sixty people. There have also been numerous cases of mass abductions followed by torture and execution; in just one gruesome example, eighty-five bodies were found dumped in three sites across Baghdad on 14 March.

 

The war lovers I have known in real wars have usually been harmless, except to themselves. They were attracted to Vietnam and Cambodia, where drugs were plentiful. Bosnia, with its roulette of death, was another favorite. A few would say they were there "to tell the world"; the honest ones would say they loved it. "War is fun!" one of them had scratched on his arm. He stood on a land mine.

I sometimes remember these almost endearing fools when I find myself faced with another kind of war lover – the kind that has not seen war and has often done everything possible not to see it. The passion of these war lovers is a phenomenon; it never dims, regardless of the distance from the object of their desire. Pick up the Sunday papers and there they are, egocentrics of little harsh experience, other than a Saturday in Sainsbury's. Turn on the television and there they are again, night after night, intoning not so much their love of war as their sales pitch for it on behalf of the court to which they are assigned. "There's no doubt," said Matt Frei, the BBC's man in America, "that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East … is now increasingly tied up with military power."

Frei said that on April 13, 2003, after George W. Bush had launched "Shock and Awe" on a defenseless Iraq. Two years later, after a rampant, racist, woefully trained, and ill-disciplined army of occupation had brought "American values" of sectarianism, death squads, chemical attacks, attacks with uranium-tipped shells and cluster bombs, Frei described the notorious 82nd Airborne as "the heroes of Tikrit."

Escalating rhetoric, continued losses in Iraq, Bush's political problems, and an ideologically-driven pursuit of power make the possibility of a U.S. military attack on Iran - however reckless and however dangerous its consequences - a frighteningly real possibility.

Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has not violated the Treaty. While there appear to be unresolved issues regarding full transparency, its nuclear program, including enriching uranium, is perfectly legal under NPT requirements for non-nuclear weapons states.

Iran does not have nuclear weapons; even if it is trying to build a nuclear weapons program, it could not produce weapons for five to ten years or more.

There is a dangerous, unmonitored and provocative nuclear arsenal in the Middle East; it belongs to Israel, not Iran. U.S. hypocrisy and double standards in nuclear policy, accepting Israel's unacknowledged nuclear arsenal and rewarding India's nuclear weapons status while threatening war against Iran and denying its own obligations under the NPT, has undermined Washington's claimed commitment to non-proliferation.