off topic..next stop..Iran..sorry, its a long one.

[Guest guest]

sorry..don't have the link handy

 

Attacking Iran: I Know It Sounds Crazy, But...

By Ray McGovern

TomDispatch

 

Wednesday 02 March 2005

 

" 'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran

is simply ridiculous.'

 

(Short pause)

 

" 'And having said that, all options are on the table.'

 

" Even the White House stenographers felt obliged to note the

result: '(Laughter).' "

 

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin on George Bush's February 22 press

conference.

For a host of good reasons -- the huge and draining commitment of

U.S. forces to Iraq and Iran's ability to stir the Iraqi pot to

boiling, for starters -- the notion that the Bush administration

would mount a " preemptive " air attack on Iran seems insane. And still

more insane if the objective includes overthrowing Iran's government

again, as in 1953 -- this time under the rubric of " regime change. "

 

But Bush administration policy toward the Middle East is being

run by men -- yes, only men -- who were routinely referred to in high

circles in Washington during the 1980s as " the crazies. " I can attest

to that personally, but one need not take my word for it.

 

According to James Naughtie, author of The Accidental American:

Tony Blair and the Presidency, former Secretary of State Colin Powell

added an old soldier's adjective to the " crazies " sobriquet in

referring to the same officials. Powell, who was military aide to

Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger in the early eighties, was

overheard calling them " the f---ing crazies " during a phone call with

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw before the war in Iraq. At the

time, Powell was reportedly deeply concerned over their determination

to attack -- with or without UN approval. Small wonder that they got

rid of Powell after the election, as soon as they had no more use for

him.

 

If further proof of insanity were needed, one could simply look

at the unnecessary carnage in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.

That unprovoked attack was, in my view, the most fateful foreign

policy blunder in our nation's history...so far.

 

It Can Get Worse

 

" The crazies " are not finished. And we do well not to let their

ultimate folly obscure their current ambition, and the further

trouble that ambition is bound to bring in the four years ahead. In

an immediate sense, with U.S. military power unrivaled, they can be

seen as " crazy like a fox, " with a value system in which " might makes

right. " Operating out of that value system, and now sporting the more

respectable misnomer/moniker " neoconservative, " they are convinced

that they know exactly what they are doing. They have a clear

ideology and a geopolitical strategy, which leap from papers they put

out at the Project for the New American Century over recent years.

 

The very same men who, acting out of that paradigm, brought us

the war in Iraq are now focusing on Iran, which they view as the only

remaining obstacle to American domination of the entire oil-rich

Middle East. They calculate that, with a docile, corporate-owned

press, a co-opted mainstream church, and a still-trusting populace,

the United States and/or the Israelis can launch a successful air

offensive to disrupt any Iranian nuclear weapons programs -- with the

added bonus of possibly causing the regime in power in Iran to

crumble.

 

But why now? After all, the director of the Defense Intelligence

Agency has just told Congress that Iran is not likely to have a

nuclear weapon until " early in the next decade? " The answer,

according to some defense experts, is that several of the Iranian

facilities are still under construction and there is only a

narrow " window of opportunity " to destroy them without causing huge

environmental problems. That window, they say, will begin to close

this year.

 

Other analysts attribute the sense of urgency to worry in

Washington that the Iranians may have secretly gained access to

technology that would facilitate a leap forward into the nuclear club

much sooner than now anticipated. And it is, of course,

neoconservative doctrine that it is best to nip -- the word in

current fashion is " preempt " -- any conceivable threats in the bud.

One reason the Israelis are pressing hard for early action may simply

be out of a desire to ensure that George W. Bush will have a few more

years as president after an attack on Iran, so that they will have

him to stand with Israel when bedlam breaks out in the Middle East.

 

What about post-attack " Day Two? " Not to worry. Well-briefed

pundits are telling us about a wellspring of Western-oriented

moderates in Iran who, with a little help from the U.S., could seize

power in Tehran. I find myself thinking: Right; just like all those

Iraqis who welcomed invading American and British troops with open

arms and cut flowers. For me, this evokes a painful flashback to the

early eighties when " intelligence, " pointing to " moderates " within

the Iranian leadership, was conjured up to help justify the

imaginative but illegal arms-for-hostages-and-proceeds-to-Nicaraguan-

Contras caper. The fact that the conjurer-in-chief of that

spurious " evidence " on Iranian " moderates, " former chief CIA analyst,

later director Robert Gates, was recently offered the newly created

position of director of national intelligence makes the flashback

more eerie -- and alarming.

 

George H. W. Bush Saw through " the Crazies "

 

During his term in office, George H. W. Bush, with the practical

advice of his national security adviser Gen. Brent Scowcroft and

Secretary of State James Baker, was able to keep " the crazies " at

arms length, preventing them from getting the country into serious

trouble. They were kept well below the level of " principal " -- that

is, below the level of secretary of state or defense.

 

Even so, heady in the afterglow of victory in the Gulf War of

1990, " the crazies " stirred up considerable controversy when they

articulated their radical views. Their vision, for instance, became

the centerpiece of the draft " Defense Planning Guidance " that Paul

Wolfowitz, de facto dean of the neoconservatives, prepared in 1992

for then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. It dismissed deterrence as an

outdated relic of the Cold War and argued that the United States must

maintain military strength beyond conceivable challenge -- and use it

in preemptive ways in dealing with those who might acquire " weapons

of mass destruction. " Sound familiar?

 

Aghast at this radical imperial strategy for the post-Cold War

world, someone with access to the draft leaked it to the New York

Times, forcing President George H. W. Bush either to endorse or

disavow it. Disavow it he did -- and quickly, on the cooler-head

recommendations of Scowcroft and Baker, who proved themselves a

bulwark against the hubris and megalomania of " the crazies. "

Unfortunately, their vision did not die. No less unfortunately, there

is method to their madness -- even if it threatens to spell eventual

disaster for our country. Empires always overreach and fall.

 

The Return of the Neocons

 

In 2001, the new President Bush brought the neocons back and put

them in top policymaking positions. Even former Assistant Secretary

of State Elliot Abrams, convicted in October 1991 of lying to

Congress and then pardoned by George H. W. Bush, was called back and

put in charge of Middle East policy in the White House. In January,

he was promoted to the influential post (once occupied by Robert

Gates) of deputy assistant to the president for national security

affairs. From that senior position Abrams will once again be dealing

closely with John Negroponte, an old colleague from rogue-elephant

Contra War days, who has now been picked to be the first director of

national intelligence.

 

Those of us who -- like Colin Powell -- had front-row seats

during the 1980s are far too concerned to dismiss the re-emergence of

the neocons as a simple case of déjà vu. They are much more dangerous

now. Unlike in the eighties, they are the ones crafting the

adventurous policies our sons and daughters are being called on to

implement.

 

Why dwell on this? Because it is second in importance only to the

portentous reality that the earth is running out of readily

accessible oil - something of which they are all too aware. Not

surprisingly then, disguised beneath the weapons-of-mass-destruction

smokescreen they laid down as they prepared to invade Iraq lay an

unspoken but bedrock reason for the war -- oil. In any case, the

neocons seem to believe that, in the wake of the November election,

they now have a carte-blanche " mandate. " And with the president's

new " capital to spend, " they appear determined to spend it, sooner

rather than later.

 

Next Stop, Iran

 

When a Special Forces platoon leader just back from Iraq matter-

of-factly tells a close friend of mine, as happened last week, that

he and his unit are now training their sights (literally) on Iran, we

need to take that seriously. It provides us with a glimpse of reality

as seen at ground level. For me, it brought to mind an unsolicited

email I received from the father of a young soldier training at Fort

Benning in the spring of 2002, soon after I wrote an op-ed discussing

the timing of George W. Bush's decision to make war on Iraq. The

father informed me that, during the spring of 2002, his son kept

writing home saying his unit was training to go into Iraq. No, said

the father; you mean Afghanistan... that's where the war is, not

Iraq. In his next email, the son said, " No, Dad, they keep saying

Iraq. I asked them and that's what they mean. "

 

Now, apparently, they keep saying Iran; and that appears to be

what they mean.

 

Anecdotal evidence like this is hardly conclusive. Put it

together with administration rhetoric and a preponderance of

other " dots, " though, and everything points in the direction of an

air attack on Iran, possibly also involving some ground forces.

Indeed, from the New Yorker reports of Seymour Hersh to Washington

Post articles, accounts of small-scale American intrusions on the

ground as well as into Iranian airspace are appearing with increasing

frequency. In a speech given on February 18, former UN arms inspector

and Marine officer Scott Ritter (who was totally on target before the

Iraq War on that country's lack of weapons of mass destruction)

claimed that the president has already " signed off " on plans to bomb

Iran in June in order to destroy its alleged nuclear weapons program

and eventually bring about " regime change. " This does not necessarily

mean an automatic green light for a large attack in June, but it may

signal the president's seriousness about this option.

 

So, again, against the background of what we have witnessed over

the past four years, and the troubling fact that the circle of second-

term presidential advisers has become even tighter, we do well to

inject a strong note of urgency into any discussion of the " Iranian

option. "

 

Why Would Iran Want Nukes?

 

So why would Iran think it has to acquire nuclear weapons? Sen.

Richard Lugar, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was

asked this on a Sunday talk show a few months ago. Apparently having

a senior moment, he failed to give the normal answer. Instead, he

replied, " Well, you know, Israel has... " At that point, he caught

himself and abruptly stopped.

 

Recovering quickly and realizing that he could not just leave the

word " Israel " hanging there, Lugar began again: " Well, Israel is

alleged to have a nuclear capability. "

 

Is alleged to have...? Lugar is chair of the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee and yet he doesn't know that Israel has, by most

estimates, a major nuclear arsenal, consisting of several hundred

nuclear weapons? (Mainstream newspapers are allergic to dwelling on

this topic, but it is mentioned every now and then, usually buried in

obscurity on an inside page.)

 

Just imagine how the Iranians and Syrians would react to Lugar's

disingenuousness. Small wonder our highest officials and lawmakers --

and Lugar, remember, is one of the most decent among them -- are

widely seen abroad as hypocritical. Our media, of course, ignore the

hypocrisy. This is standard operating procedure when the

word " Israel " is spoken in this or other unflattering contexts. And

the objections of those appealing for a more balanced approach are

quashed.

 

If the truth be told, Iran fears Israel at least as much as

Israel fears the internal security threat posed by the thugs

supported by Tehran. Iran's apprehension is partly fear that Israel

(with at least tacit support from the Bush administration) will send

its aircraft to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, just as American-

built Israeli bombers destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak

in 1981. As part of the current war of nerves, recent statements by

the president and vice president can be read as giving a green light

to Israel to do just that; while Israeli Air Force commander Major

General Eliezer Shakedi told reporters on February 21 that Israel

must be prepared for an air strike on Iran " in light of its nuclear

activity. "

 

US-Israel Nexus

 

The Iranians also remember how Israel was able to acquire and

keep its nuclear technology. Much of it was stolen from the United

States by spies for Israel. As early as the late-1950s, Washington

knew Israel was building the bomb and could have aborted the project.

Instead, American officials decided to turn a blind eye and let the

Israelis go ahead. Now Israel's nuclear capability is truly

formidable. Still, it is a fact of strategic life that a formidable

nuclear arsenal can be deterred by a far more modest one, if an

adversary has the means to deliver it. (Look at North Korea's success

with, at best, a few nuclear weapons and questionable means of

delivery in deterring the " sole remaining superpower in the world. " )

And Iran already has missiles with the range to hit Israel.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Sharon has for some time appeared eager to

enlist Washington's support for an early " pre-emptive " strike on

Iran. Indeed, American defense officials have told reporters that

visiting Israeli officials have been pressing the issue for the past

year and a half. And the Israelis are now claiming publicly that Iran

could have a nuclear weapon within six months -- years earlier than

the Defense Intelligence Agency estimate mentioned above.

 

In the past, President Bush has chosen to dismiss unwelcome

intelligence estimates as " guesses " -- especially when they

threatened to complicate decisions to implement the neoconservative

agenda. It is worth noting that several of the leading neocons -

Richard Perle, chair of the Defense Policy Board (2001-03); Douglas

Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and David Wurmser,

Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney -- actually wrote

policy papers for the Israeli government during the 1990s. They have

consistently had great difficulty distinguishing between the

strategic interests of Israel and those of the US -- at least as they

imagine them.

 

As for President Bush, over the past four years he has amply

demonstrated his preference for the counsel of Israeli Prime Minister

Ariel Sharon who, as Gen. Scowcroft said publicly, has the

president " wrapped around his little finger. " (As Chairman of the

President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until he was

unceremoniously removed at the turn of the year, Scowcroft was in a

position to know.) If Scowcroft is correct in also saying that the

president has been " mesmerized " by Sharon, it seems possible that the

Israelis already have successfully argued for an attack on Iran.

 

When " Regime Change " Meant Overthrow for Oil

 

To remember why the United States is no favorite in Tehran, one

needs to go back at least to 1953 when the U.S. and Great Britain

overthrew Iran's democratically elected Premier Mohammad Mossadeq as

part of a plan to insure access to Iranian oil. They then emplaced

the young Shah in power who, with his notorious secret police, proved

second to none in cruelty. The Shah ruled from 1953 to 1979. Much

resentment can build up over a whole generation. His regime fell like

a house of cards, when supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini rose up to do

some regime change of their own.

 

Iranians also remember Washington's strong support for Saddam

Hussein's Iraq after it decided to make war on Iran in 1980. U.S.

support for Iraq (which included crucial intelligence support for the

war and an implicit condoning of Saddam's use of chemical weapons)

was perhaps the crucial factor in staving off an Iranian victory.

Imagine then, the threat Iranians see, should the Bush administration

succeed in establishing up to 14 permanent military bases in

neighboring Iraq. Any Iranian can look at a map of the Middle East

(including occupied Iraq) and conclude that this administration might

indeed be willing to pay the necessary price in blood and treasure to

influence what happens to the black gold under Iranian as well as

Iraqi sands. And with four more years to play with, a lot can be done

along those lines. The obvious question is: How to deter it? Well,

once again, Iran can hardly be blind to the fact that a small nation

like North Korea has so far deterred U.S. action by producing, or at

least claiming to have produced, nuclear weapons.

 

Nuclear Is the Nub

 

The nuclear issue is indeed paramount, and we would do well to

imagine and craft fresh approaches to the nub of the problem. As a

start, I'll bet if you made a survey, only 20% of Americans would

answer " yes " to the question, " Does Israel have nuclear weapons? "

That is key, it seems to me, because at their core Americans are

still fair-minded people.

 

On the other hand, I'll bet that 95% of the Iranian population

would answer, " Of course Israel has nuclear weapons; that's why we

Iranians need them " -- which was, of course, the unmentionable

calculation that Senator Lugar almost conceded. " And we also need

them, " many Iranians would probably say, " in order to deter 'the

crazies' in Washington. It seems to be working for the North Koreans,

who, after all, are the other remaining point on President

Bush's 'axis of evil.' "

 

The ideal approach would, of course, be to destroy all nuclear

weapons in the world and ban them for the future, with a very

intrusive global inspection regime to verify compliance. A total ban

is worth holding up as an ideal, and I think we must. But this

approach seems unlikely to bear fruit over the next four years. So

what then?

 

A Nuclear-Free Middle East

 

How about a nuclear-free Middle East? Could the US make that

happen? We could if we had moral clarity -- the underpinning

necessary to bring it about. Each time this proposal is raised, the

Syrians, for example, clap their hands in feigned joyful

anticipation, saying, " Of course such a pact would include Israel,

right? " The issue is then dropped from all discussion by U.S.

policymakers. Required: not only moral clarity but also what Thomas

Aquinas labeled the precondition for all virtue, courage. In this

context, courage would include a refusal to be intimidated by

inevitable charges of anti-Semitism.

 

The reality is that, except for Israel, the Middle East is

nuclear free. But the discussion cannot stop there. It is not

difficult to understand why the first leaders of Israel, with the

Holocaust experience written indelibly on their hearts and minds, and

feeling surrounded by perceived threats to the fledgling state's

existence, wanted the bomb. And so, before the Syrians or Iranians,

for example, get carried away with self-serving applause for the

nuclear-free Middle East proposal, they will have to understand that

for any such negotiation to succeed it must have as a concomitant aim

the guarantee of an Israel able to live in peace and protect itself

behind secure borders. That guarantee has got to be part of the deal.

 

That the obstacles to any such agreement are formidable is no

excuse not trying. But the approach would have to be new and

everything would have to be on the table. Persisting in a state of

denial about Israel's nuclear weapons is dangerously shortsighted; it

does nothing but aggravate fears among the Arabs and create further

incentive for them to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

 

A sensible approach would also have to include a willingness to

engage the Iranians directly, attempt to understand their

perspective, and discern what the United States and Israel could do

to alleviate their concerns.

 

Preaching to Iran and others about not acquiring nuclear weapons

is, indeed, like the village drunk preaching sobriety -- the more so

as our government keeps developing new genres of nuclear weapons and

keeps looking the other way as Israel enhances its own nuclear

arsenal. Not a pretty moral picture, that. Indeed, it reminds me of

the Scripture passage about taking the plank out of your own eye

before insisting that the speck be removed from another's.

 

Lessons from the Past...Like Mutual Deterrence

 

Has everyone forgotten that deterrence worked for some 40 years,

while for most of those years the U.S. and the USSR had not by any

means lost their lust for ever-enhanced nuclear weapons? The point is

simply that, while engaging the Iranians bilaterally and searching

for more imaginative nuclear-free proposals, the U.S. might adopt a

more patient interim attitude regarding the striving of other nation

states to acquire nuclear weapons -- bearing in mind that the Bush

administration's policies of " preemption " and " regime change "

themselves create powerful incentives for exactly such striving. As

was the case with Iraq two years ago, there is no imminent Iranian

strategic threat to Americans -- or, in reality, to anyone. Even if

Iran acquired a nuclear capability, there is no reason to believe

that it would risk a suicidal first strike on Israel. That, after

all, is what mutual deterrence is all about; it works both ways.

 

It is nonetheless clear that the Israelis' sense of insecurity --

however exaggerated it may seem to those of us thousands of miles

away -- is not synthetic but real. The Sharon government appears to

regard its nuclear monopoly in the region as the only

effective " deterrence insurance " it can buy. It is determined to

prevent its neighbors from acquiring the kind of capability that

could infringe on the freedom it now enjoys to carry out military and

other actions in the area. Government officials have said that Israel

will not let Iran acquire a nuclear weapon; it would be folly to

dismiss this as bravado. The Israelis have laid down a marker and

mean to follow through -- unless the Bush administration assumes the

attitude that " preemption " is an acceptable course for the United

States but not for Israel. It seems unlikely that the

neoconservatives would take that line. Rather...

 

" Israel Is Our Ally. "

 

Or so said our president before the cameras on February 17, 2005.

But I didn't think we had a treaty of alliance with Israel; I don't

remember the Senate approving one. Did I miss something?

 

Clearly, the longstanding U.S.-Israeli friendship and the ideals

we share dictate continuing support for Israel's defense and

security. It is quite another thing, though, to suggest the existence

of formal treaty obligations that our country does not have. To all

intents and purposes, our policymakers -- from the president on down -

- seem to speak and behave on the assumption that we do have such

obligations toward Israel. A former colleague CIA analyst, Michael

Scheuer, author of Imperial Hubris, has put it this way: " The

Israelis have succeeded in lacing tight the ropes binding the

American Gulliver to Israel and its policies. "

 

An earlier American warned:

 

" A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety

of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation facilitates the illusion

of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common

interest exists, infuses into one the enmities of the other, and

betrays the former into participation in the quarrels and wars of the

latter without adequate inducement or justification.... It also gives

to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens, who devote themselves

to the favorite nation, facility to betray or sacrifice the interests

of their own country. " (George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796)

In my view, our first president's words apply only too aptly to

this administration's lash-up with the Sharon government. As

responsible citizens we need to overcome our timidity about

addressing this issue, lest our fellow Americans continue to be

denied important information neglected or distorted in our

domesticated media.

 

--------

Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years -- from the

administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush.

During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the

President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's

most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence

Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

 

 

 

Kick over the wall 'cause government's to fall

How can you refuse it?

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power

D'you know that you can use it?