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February 16, 2007

 

The Most Dangerous Place on the Face of the Earth?

StratCom and the Coming War on Iran

By TIM RINNE

 

Reports of a possible U.S. air assault against Iranian nuclear

facilities have been circulating in the media for more than a year and

a half now. Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi (The American

Conservative, 8/1/05), Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh

(New Yorker Magazine, 4/17/06) and most recently, investigative

reporter Craig Unger in the March 2007 Vanity Fair, have all warned of

the White House's plans for an air- and sea-based strike against Iran.

 

But such an assault has been in the planning since before November

2003, when U.S. Strategic Command near Omaha, Nebraska completed its

preparations for waging offensive and preemptive strikes against Iran

and North Korea (William Arkin, Washington Post, 5/15/05). Under

" CONPLAN 8022 " (Contingency Plan 8022), the Omaha-based command center

is now commissioned to strike anywhere in the world within minutes of

detecting a target deemed a threat to the United States' national

security. And the projected attack against Iran--which could well

include nuclear as well as conventional weapons--will be planned,

launched and coordinated by StratCom.

 

For over half a century, the seemingly remote Omaha Air Force Base in

the American heartland served exclusively as the command center for

the U.S.'s nuclear deterrent. After 9/11, however, StratCom underwent

a significant transformation of its role and mission, becoming in

effect the war room' for waging the White House's " War on Terror. "

StratCom retained its historic responsibility for overseeing the

largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. But it acquired the

additional charges of " full-spectrum global strike " (staging

offensive, preemptive attacks); combating weapons of mass destruction;

space and computer warfare; ballistic missile defense; and

surveillance and reconnaissance (the " warrantless wiretaps " conducted

by the National Security Agency, for instance, were a StratCom

project).

 

According to the Vanity Fair article, StratCom could be ready to

launch a " massive " aerial attack against the hundreds of nuclear

facilities in Iran as soon as the end of this month (February). The

possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons to penetrate the

reinforced bunkers protecting the Iranian nuclear research facilities

is also apparently real.

 

Today, U.S. Strategic Command in Bellevue, Nebraska (a suburb of

Omaha) is the most dangerous place on the face of the earth. To thwart

this wrong-headed and potentially catastrophic assault on Iran by

StratCom will require nothing less than a mobilization by the world

community. The Bush/Cheney Administration must be publicly challenged

in the court of world opinion, and international media coverage of

StratCom's leading role is integral to rallying opposition.

 

Can you imagine the public reaction--particularly in the Muslim world--

if the war plans taking shape at StratCom were common knowledge?

 

Here we have the command center for the world's largest nuclear

arsenal orchestrating an unprovoked attack (possibly even with nuclear

weapons) on a non-nuclear Muslim nation, in order to prevent that

country from even developing nuclear power for civilian purposes, for

fear it might someday make a bomb.

 

StratCom's policy promotes a morally repugnant double standard. And it

is begging to be turned into a bully pulpit,' from which opponents can

expose its hypocritical behavior.

 

Under international law, were the United States again to launch an

unprovoked attack against a Muslim nation-- as it did with Iraq--it

would be acting illegally. But if the U.S. were also to use tactical

nuclear weapons on Iran, it would be only the second time in over 61

years that a nuclear weapon has been used militarily. And on each of

those occasions, it will have been the United States that used them.

 

The role and mission of StratCom has changed so dramatically in the

past five years that most of the world has little idea of what is

currently going on there.

 

Tim Rinne is State Coordinator, Nebraskans for Peace, the oldest

statewide Peace & Justice organization in the United States, and has

been working for more than 35 years to alert the public about U.S.

Strategic Command. Check out our website at: www.nebraskansforpeace.org

 

 

" Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies

in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are

cold and are not clothed. "

-- Dwight Eisenhower