US-Iran Attack Plan

The End is at Hand (to Leftist Conspiracy Theories)

dlindorff — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:36:32 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

With the polls continuing to show Barack Obama holding a steady or
even growing lead heading into Election Day, especially in the key
swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, New Hampshire
and Virginia, and with Democratic challengers looking strong in at
least 10 Senate races and dozens of open-seat or Republican-held House
races, it’s looking like this will be a big win for Democrats, both in
the presidential and the Congressional races.

Hopefully one thing such an across-the-boards win will lead to
would be a withering away of the self-destructive conspiracy-theory
paranoia that has gripped much of the Left over the last eight years.

Once largely emblematic of the far Right, which saw black
helicopters of the dreaded United Nations behind every mountain, Jews
running everything, Communists working nefariously under every bed,
fluoridation plots, an immigrant assault on the Anglo-Saxon gene pool,
and a liberal cabal out to steal their assault hunting rifles, now the
Left is awash in the same kind of fevered thinking.

Chief among the leftist conspiracy theories are that the
Bush/Cheney administration was behind the 9-11 attacks, that the
current administration has plans to cancel or annul the November 4
election and institute martial law, that there are plans for a “false
flag” attack on American forces which will be used to justify an
all-out war against Iran, that there is a false-flag terror attack
planned inside the US set for before the election, designed to throw
the vote towards John McCain, that the Wall Street meltdown and
subsequent bail-out are a deliberate scheme to steal the nation’s
assets and funnel them into Republican pockets, and that Republican
operatives have the technological capability, and plan to steal the
current election by manipulating the results on the electronic voting
machines used by many election districts. In a variant of the Right’s
anti-Semitic ravings, the Left attributes god-like powers to the Israel
lobby and its formal lobbying organization, the American Israel Public
Affairs Committee (AIPAC)

Never mind that some of these conspiracies are mutually exclusive
(if Bush and Cheney are going to declare martial law, they should have
no need to steal the election), or that it’s getting pretty late in the
game for others to actually happen. The common thread running through
these conspiracies is that “they” (the Republicans, AIPAC or the ruling
corporate elite, as the case may be), have superhuman powers beyond our
wildest imaginations, as well as flawless execution, and are going to
achieve their evil ends no matter what we do.

Following this line of thinking (if it can be called that), there’s
no point in voting, because “they” are going to steal the election
anyhow (and that, of course, is if the election is even held next
week!). There’s no point in going to rallies or marches in Washington
DC, because “they” are going to attack Iran and start World War III
anyhow. Public protest is also dangerous, because “they” are going to
declare martial law, and then all of us who go out and publicly oppose
the government will end up locked away in detention camps in the Mojavi
desert.

I confess, as a journalist, to having unwittingly aided and abetted
some of this conspiracy thinking, for example with my reporting on the
evidence that all four of the so-called “black boxes” from the two
planes that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11 were recovered, and that
the FBI actually has them, despite its testimony to the contrary before
the 9-11 Commission. I make no apology for, and still stand by that
report, which was based upon reliable sources at the National
Transportation Safety Administration and in the New York Police
Department, but I want to stress that such a report does not justify
going beyond asking the logical question, “What is the government
hiding here?” to making the wild speculation that it means the
government planned and carried out those attacks.

I also reported on solid evidence in 2006 that the Bush/Cheney
administration was moving several aircraft carrier battle groups into
position in the Persian Gulf in advance of Congressional off-year
elections in what appeared to be possible plans for an attack on Iran.
I still believe that may have been the administration’s game plan, but
that it was derailed by senior Republican leaders who prevailed on
James Baker, chair of the Iraq War Study Group, to release his team’s
bi-partisan study three months early, which called for negotiations
with Iran and Syria in order to bring peace and stability to the Iraq
region. I would add that this is a far cry from imagining that the
administration was planning to fake an Iranian attack on American
forces.

I am not saying that governments don’t engage in treacherous
conspiracies. Certainly the faked tale of a Gulf of Tonkin incident was
a conspiracy designed to allow the Johnson administration to begin an
all-out war against the Vietnamese. And certainly there was a
conspiracy in the Bush/Cheney administration during 2002 and early 2003
to mislead and lie to the Congress and the American people about Saddam
Hussein’s alleged links to 9-11 and to global terrorists. But those
relatively simple conspiracies actually prove my point—both have been
clearly exposed thanks to leaks, turncoats, and good investigative
reporting.

What I am saying is that the grander conspiracies being concocted
in the more fevered brains of some people on the Left do not hold up
under careful and critical inspection. The biggest failings they share
are two: first of all, conspiracies as grand as multi-state election
thefts via electronic fraud, and the carrying out of a two-front,
high-casualty mass terrorist act on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, require the cooperation of such large numbers of people that
leaks, turncoats, informants and simple screw-ups are inevitable; and
secondly, this administration in particular has shown itself to be
phenomenally inept, intellectually stunted, and tactically clueless.
The War in Iraq, which was supposed to be a “cakewalk,” has been an
unmitigated disaster for Republicans. The War in Afghanistan is a
fiasco. The War on Terror, while a success in terms of helping
Republicans win seats in Congress in 2002, and Bush to win re-election
in 2004, has been a bust longer term. Management of the US economy has
been a model of incompetence. So has the grand plan to crush Democrats
and create a dominant Republican Party for the next century. The Rovian
campaign strategy of lies, smears and dirty tricks, while initially
successful, appears to have worn out its effectiveness in just three
two-year national election cycles.

None of this would matter except that I think the Left’s embrace of
conspiracy-theories has become profoundly damaging to the whole
progressive movement. Conspiracy thinking produces a deep cynicism
towards positive action and towards the kind of long-term organizing
upon which real social and political change depends. When people think
that the fix is in, they are not inclined to put time and energy into
the hard work of organizing unions, working to get local candidates
elected to office, running for positions on party committees, etc.
Conspiracy thinking also leads people on the left to completely write
off the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change, as the
notion that “they” run everything is broadened to include in the term
“they” the elected Democrats in the White House and Congress. Democrats
may be weenies, but such a conflation of Republicans and Democrats is
also self-defeating nonsense, as is the notion that Obama is “just
another tool” of the corporate/imperialist power structure. Democrats
are not just Republicans by another name, and Obama is not just McCain
or Bush with a better tan.

The reality is that if Obama is elected president, and if Democrats
end up gaining solid control of Congress, it will be critically
important for progressives to organize powerfully to press this new
government to do the right things—promptly ending the two wars in the
Middle East, taking strong and far-reaching action to tackle global
warming, restoring some basic equity to the economic and tax system,
making health care affordable and available to all, restoring the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights, demanding punishment for those in
the current administration who have committed crimes, and so on.

We cannot expect Obama, or the Democrats in Congress who have
proven themselves to be such gutless compromisers, to take significant
progressive actions on their own. They must be driven by force of
public action to do the right thing.

Maybe when this election goes right and isn’t stolen, making Obama
the president, and debunking the vote-theft fear-mongers, and when
Obama goes on to be inaugurated in January, without being blocked by a
military coup, these paranoid conspiracy theories will fade away and
people on the Left will start working to make change happen instead of
imagining reasons why it can’t or just moaning that “they” are going to
destroy us all.
___________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Bush Exits with a Bang: Toxic Bailout and Two More Wars?

Heather Wokusch — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:53:09 -0400

The Bush administration is heading us towards more disaster with its 'toxic debt' bailout and destabilization of Pakistan and Iran. We can't afford to go down this road again. In this short video, Heather Wokusch provides background, context and ideas for taking action.

Links for sources cited in this video:

Bailout:

Crisis talks over $700B 'toxic debt' rescue plan

Bush: "The American people have got to know that I made this decision along with a lot of experts because it was necessary to protect them."

Pakistan:

Washington is Risking War with Pakistan

The American War Moves to Pakistan

Iran:

Preparing The Battlefield July 07, 2008

Dutch intel: US to strike Iran in coming weeks September 1, 08

Israel asks U.S. for arms, air corridor to attack Iran September 11, 08

U.S. to sell IAF smart bombs for heavily fortified targets September 14, 08

Bush could still attack Iran Sept 17 08

Foreign Policy and National Security Are Not the Same Thing

dlindorff — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:27:10 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

One of the sorrier legacies of eight years of Bush and Cheney in the White House has been the conflation of the terms “National Security” and “Foreign Policy” by both Republicans and Democrats.

Granted that the history of US foreign policy in the world has been heavily larded with wars, many of them at America’s instigation. It is nonetheless true that foreign policy is much bigger and more far reaching than just what has come to be known as “national security” issues.

In Bush-speak, national security come to mean having big guns, lots of heavily armed troops, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, naval armadas and a bully’s willingness to use these weapons on a whim, with no thought of consequences.

The term is kind of oxymoronic, since it is clear that by resorting to war and to threats of war, and by squandering unprecedented sums of money on the military, eight years of bellicosity has not made the nation more secure. Quite the opposite: The military has been run into the ground, the economy has been bankrupted, education, healthcare and other critical national services have been shortchanged, and the country has become a pariah state, viewed around the world as a loose cannon and a terror nation—hardly a comforting position to be in.

Foreign policy, meanwhile, has ceased to have any meaning at all, beyond the making of war or threats of war, making it virtually synonymous with the term national security.

When I was a Fulbright professor in China, back in 1991, at a mid-year conference in the southern Chinese city of Kunming, we grantees were addressed by the head of the Fulbright Program in China, a cultural affairs director from the US embassy in Beijing. He informed us that as teachers (I was teaching journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai), we Fulbrighters were the frontline of American foreign policy in China. Most of us were kind of repulsed by his semi-military allusion to a battle line and by implication to us as soldiers, and we chose instead to see our role as something different: emissaries from the American people to the Chinese people. In fact, given that most of the 21 of us were hardly superpatriots or cold warriors (the academics, journalists, lawyers and other professionals who serve in the Fulbright Program tend demographically to be among the most liberal and left-leaning group in the American workforce), we would have made a pretty bad defense line. Rather, what we were doing in China, by teaching and building relationships with young Chinese college students, was the essence of real foreign policy—building bridges at the grass roots level between the people of China and the people of the US.

Foreign policy can be reduced to a strategic chess game—the kind of “real politik” practiced by Klemens von Metternich in the 19th Century, or espoused by Henry Kissinger in the Nixon years—but it is actually, or at least ought to be, much broader than that kind of cold and calculating manipulation and pursuit of narrow self-interest.

Real foreign policy should be about winning friends, building trust, establishing relationships between countries and peoples, negotiating treaties designed to achieve mutual advantage and to deter aggression. It is about aiding countries that are in need of assistance, and at its best, should also be about making the world a safer, better place for all, which in the end is the best way to guard against war and the threats of war.

Now it would be naïve to imagine a foreign policy that ignored national self-interest. Much as I or others might wish for a world without borders and a common humanity, in a world of nation states, it is inevitable that foreign policy as practiced by any nation, including the United States, will be focused on achieving the maximum benefit for that nation, and US foreign policy has always been about just that, and unfortunately probably always will be. But even granted this selfish parochialism, it is incredibly shortsighted and ignorant to treat foreign policy as simply an America-first process of bullying others into submission to our dictates. Thousands of American teachers and Peace Corps volunteers and aid workers do much more to advance America’s position in the world and to enhance the nation’s security than do hundreds of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs and missiles.

For Republicans, there is no difference between national security, which is defined as a powerful and assertive military, and foreign policy. But Democrats, who at times have had a more nuanced view, have more recently bought into this too. At the current Democratic Convention, anxious to look as tough as Republicans, Democratic speakers have used the terms national security and foreign policy interchangeably.

Afghanistan and Iraq provide excellent cases in point. Clearly, the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, ostensibly aimed initially at hunting down Al Qaeda fighters and leaders, quickly devolved into an all-out assault on that nation, which has been reduced to the same rubble and state of chaos and civil war as has Iraq. Now, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is talking about expanding the war there, and increasing the killing and destruction in that country. In Iraq, where the US has been involved in an orgy of killing and destruction now for over five years, Obama and fellow Democrats are calling for a “responsible exit” from that conflict over the course of another 16 months. A truly responsible exit would be an immediate withdrawal, a national apology to Iraqis and to the world community, and a massive program of reparations to help rebuild that nation.

What Obama and the Democrats are touting is not foreign policy. It is a continuation of national security run amok.

No amount of American force, no level of mayhem and slaughter, will bring about a secure and tranquil Afghanistan. In fact, every time Americans kill Afghanis, as American bombers recently did, slaughtering 60 children and 30 other adults, women and men, in an aerial bombardment reminiscent of the German Luftwaffe’s attack on the Basque village of Guernica, they produce not peace and submission, but rather hatred and a desire for vengeance.

It will take perhaps a generation of good works for the US to undo the evil done to American foreign relations by eight years of Bush/Cheney obsession with national security, but it doesn’t even look like the Democrats “get it.” In Congress, they have vied with Republicans to look tough, supporting both the invasion of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq, they have supported the continued funding of those wars and increased funding for the already bloated US war machine, and they are now backing Obama’s call for more combat troops in Afghanistan.

Real foreign policy would be looking at ways to work with other nations to bring down the level of combat, and to bring peace to Afghanistan and to other war-torn regions of the world.

Meanwhile, the concept of national security needs to be broadened. As Genghis Khan, conqueror of China, is reputed to have said as a frightened Chinese empire, at extraordinary financial and human cost, constructed the Great Wall to fend him off, “A wall is only as strong as the people behind it.”

One need only drive through any American city today and view the bombed-out neighborhoods, the crack dens, the pot-holed streets, the decrepit transit systems, the shamefully overcrowded and prison-like schools where any teaching and learning that goes on is an accident, one need only visit ignored and forgotten rural areas of America where unemployment is the norm and healthcare is half a day’s drive and half a year’s income away, one need only drive through a suburban neighborhood and look at all the “For Sale” and even more pathetic “For Sale: Reduced Price!” signs in front of houses, to see that what lies behind America’s walls, like the ridiculous one being built now along parts of the border with Mexico, is incredible weakness. (At the rate things are going here, it won’t be long before Americans will be scaling that wall to find jobs in Mexico!)

The folly of conflating national security and foreign policy, and of imagining that a mindless willingness to resort to force and bullying is the sine qua non for being “presidential,” has been made painfully clear not only in the screams of wounded children in Iraq and Afghanistan, but in the cries of hungry children in America. The United States does not need a man of war in the White House. It needs a wise advocate of peace.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

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Huffing and Puffing at the Pentagon

dlindorff — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:02:26 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

American Secretary of War Robert Gates knows a real leader when he sees one. “Clearly, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, Vladimir Putin, and not President Dmitry Medvedev, "has the upper hand right now."

Well hell, Gates should know. After all, he deals on a daily basis with the same peculiar situation here in the US, where the president also is a figurehead and the real power lies in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But Gates doesn’t speak with such clarity and directness in other matters. "I think that there is a real concern that Russia has turned the corner here and is headed back toward its past rather than toward its future, and my hope is that we will see actions in the weeks and months to come that provide us some reassurance," he said, speaking on ABC and CNN, claiming that the country was returning to the authoritarianism of the old Soviet era.

Ahem.

It might also be noted that the US is heading increasingly towards an authoritarian future, no? Certainly over the course of the last seven years we have seen the executive branch in the US claim that it no longer needs to enact or adhere to laws passed by Congress or to terms of international treaties approved by the Senate. We have also seen this administration refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas for information and testimony from White House officials, effectively establishing the presidency as a dictatorship, have we not?

As for Gates’ condemnation of Russia for resorting to force in Georgia, one need not defend Russia’s actions there to note that such tactics have long been deemed fully appropriate in the US. Only recently America used force to depose an elected government in Haiti, hustling its elected president off into exile. The US has also been working assiduously through covert means to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela, even supporting (and probably helping to organize) a temporarily successful military coup there. Then of course there is the decades-long effort by the US to overthrow the government of Cuba, which has included everything from invasions and embargos to multiple assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Russia is clearly moving in an authoritarian direction at home, and is reasserting its influence and control over some—though hardly all—of the states that were formerly part of the USSR. But in all of this it is merely aping the behavior of the US government, which is becoming more authoritarian also, and which has always been a bully in its local neighborhood.

If Gates has anything legitimate to complain about it is that the American military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its preoccupation with drumming up conflict with Iran, have rendered the Pentagon almost impotent when it comes to threatening Russia.

All that is left for Gates to do is huff and puff about Russia backsliding to the bad old days when it was able to stand up to the US as an equal.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Shoot Your Friends First: The Cheney Doctrine

dlindorff — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:28:17 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Some people are expressing consternation and disbelief at a report
by journalist Seymour Hersh that Vice President Dick Cheney had
discussed the idea in his office of having some Navy Seals dress up as
Iranians, and then putting them in faked Iranian speedboats to make a fake
attack on US ships in the Persian Gulf. The ensuing faked battle, with
fake Iranians shooting at US ships and US ships firing back, he
suggested, could be used to spark a war between the US and Iran.

` I don’t know why people would find it hard to believe that this
vice president would think up an idea like having Americans shoot at
other Americans in the interest of his own warped view of national
security.

After all, this is a guy who shoots his own friends.

Besides, Cheney is in good company in this kind of thinking. We know
from reports of the meeting filed by British intelligence that
President Bush engaged in the same kind of thing when he was having
trouble getting the country and the rest of the civilized world behind
his and Cheney’s plan to attack Iraq. It was disclosed years later that
in early 2003, Bush suggested to Prime Minister Tony Blair that the US
could paint a U-2 spy plane in UN colors and fly it over sensitive
parts of Iraqi airspace, so that Saddam Hussein would order it show
down. That, he argued, would anger enough UN member states to win a
security resolution to support a war on Iraq, and failing that, would
give the US an excuse to go in on its own. Blair was reportedly
horrified at this kind of kamikaze thinking—but not horrified enough to
expose the president as a nutcase.

So that’s where we are today folks. A president and a vice president
who both think that it’s a great idea to either send some of your own
troops under false flags into harm’s way to get shot at so you can
start a war, or, even worse, to dress up some of your soldiers as the
enemy you want to go after, and have them open fire on your own guys so
that you can claim you were attacked, and then go to war.

Who gets tricked by all these mad schemes?

Not the Iranians, or in the earlier instance, the Iraqis. They know
they aren’t attacking American forces. No. It’s us, the American
people, who are being tricked. Cheney knows that most Americans think
the idea of attacking Iran—especially when we’re five years into an
interminable war in Iraq and seven years into another war in
Afghanistan, neither of which has an end in sight—is really, really
stupid. So they’re trying to think up a way to trick us into supporting
doing such a stupid thing. And the only thing they can come up with to
overcome our reticence is making us think that our guys are being
attacked.

Now let me say that I’ve been a skeptic about people who claim the
9-11 attacks were an “inside job”—that the US government actually
organized those attacks. I know all the arguments and evidence, but it
always seemed to me that it was over the top to think that our leaders
would try to deliberately kill Americans in order to achieve some
policy goal. And yet, here we have Dick Cheney, the real brains (such
as they are) behind the Bush administration, discussing a plan, using
American forces, to fake an attack on other American forces.

It makes me wonder whether maybe Cheney deliberately shot his friend
Harry Whittington, either to flush those damned elusive quail he was
after, or so that he could generate public sympathy for the embattled
President Bush. And it even makes me wonder whether crazy Dick actually
did have a hand in bringing down those Twin Towers. He may be too
stupid to pull something like that off, but he has made it clear that
it isn’t moral scruples that would prevent him from doing such a
monstrous thing.

As ludicrous, pathetic and outrageous as this administration is, we
need to take this latest Hersh report seriously. It seems clear that
Cheney has a predilection for using fratricide to achieve his nefarious
ends.

It’s one thing when he does it with his own rifle, though. It’s
another when he does it with the world’s most mighty military machine.
______________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is
“The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available
in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

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digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\nSome people are expressing consternation and disbelief at a report by journalist Seymour Hersh that Vice President Dick Cheney had discussed the idea in his office of having some Navy Seals dress up as Iranians, and then put them in faked Iranian speedboats to make a fake attack on US ships in the Persian Gulf. The ensuing faked battle, with fake Iranians shooting at US ships and US ships firing back, he suggested, could be used to spark a war between the US and Iran.\r\n\r\n` I don’t know why people would find it hard to believe that this vice president would think up an idea like having Americans shoot at other Americans in the interest of his own warped view of national security.\r\n\r\nAfter all, this is a guy who shoots his own friends.\r\n\r";
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Carah Ong on Alternatives to Attacking Iran

davidswanson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:13:25 -0400

Helena Cobban on Alternatives to Attacking Iran

davidswanson — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:32:40 -0400

Charlottesville Virginia Says Don't Attack Iran

davidswanson — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:20:21 -0400

Corporate Media Blackouts Continue as Iran War Looms and Impeachment Moves Ahead

dlindorff — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:55:18 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The sorry performance of the US corporate media, which blacked out
stories questioning the official line on the so-called “Iraq Threat”
until the nation was deeply mired in to pointless, bloody war in that
country, and which has almost completely ignored a three-year,
nation-wide movement calling for the impeachment of the president and
vice president, has continued.

Search far and wide, and you will find no reporting on the fact
that Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who has filed a total 36 proposed articles
of impeachment against President Bush, is finally going to get to
formally present his case to the House Judiciary Committee, beginning
on July 25. Although this is not an impeachment hearing, it is putting
impeachment “on the table,” from which it has been banned for two years
by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Although the House last week voted
251-166 to send Kucinich’s articles to the Judiciary Committee for
hearings, the New York Times, the Washington Post
and the nation’s television news organizations ignored this
breakthrough (which included 24 Republicans voting for the measure).
Only USA Today, at least in its online edition, even
mentioned it, with a headline saying “Pelosi cracks door open on
impeachment resolution”--and that was just a five-sentence story.

Another critically important story that is being blacked out by the
corporate media is the Bush/Cheney administration’s march towards war
with Iran. On Sunday, the London Times ran a well-researched and reported piece headlined President George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran,
saying that Bush has given the “amber light” to Israel to get its air
force ready for an aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The
article, which quoted an unnamed “senior Pentagon official,” reported
that while an actual attack would require a further “green light” from
the president, the “amber light” meant planning could proceed.

The article also stated that the president was acting, “Despite the
opposition of his own generals and widespread skepticism that America
is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of
an airborne strike on Iran.”

Surely such news of an increased possibility of the US being dragged
into yet a third war in the Middle East should at least warrant a
mention in the mainstream media. The Times of London is,
after all, hardly a fringe publication. Though owned by Rupert
Murdoch’s NewsCorp. it has a sterling reputation. If it reported on a
gossipy story about another sex scandal involving the British royal
family, you can bet the American media would be quoteing it ad nauseum.

Yet while the rest of the world is holding its collective breath
wondering if such a cataclysmic attack might be about to happen with US
sanction and assistance (Israel would be flying American-made planes in
any attack, and would have to be given clearance to fly over
US-controlled airspace in Iraq, even if it was denied access to US
airbases along the way), Americans are being left blissfully unaware of
this latest crime in the making by their war-mongering president.

This is news of major import, and it is nothing short of a shame and
a scandal that it is not being reported in the American media, which
more and more is resembling state propaganda.

Those who want better of their news purveyors should contact local
editors and demand that they stop blacking out stories like these.
Better yet, get together with friends and picket your local news
outlets!
___________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at ThisCantBeHappening.net

Iran Resolution Must Change

davidswanson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:45:38 -0400

By Congressman Robert Wexler

Over the past several weeks, there has been a growing debate in Congress, the blogosphere and throughout the media about a controversial non-binding resolution (House Concurrent Resolution 362), which expresses the sense of Congress regarding the threat Iran's nuclear pursuit poses to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States.

This resolution's introduction and the subsequent debates that have taken place across the country have come at a time when the United States faces grave security challenges. It also comes at a time when Congress and the US must be especially careful -- given the monumental foreign policy failures of President Bush -- and remain vigilant in deciding which direction to take our nation, especially as it relates to our policy in Iran.

In the coming weeks, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, of which I am a member, may vote on House Concurrent Resolution 362. Given my growing concerns regarding this resolution, including its failure to advocate for direct American engagement with Tehran and open language that could lead to a US blockade of Iran, I will lead an effort to make changes to this resolution before it comes to the Foreign Affairs committee for a vote. Despite being a cosponsor of this resolution -- these changes will ultimately determine whether or not I will continue to support H. Con. Res. 362.

My rationale for originally supporting H. Con. Res. 362, which currently has 230 cosponsors, was to urge the Bush administration to pursue a policy to place additional economic, political and diplomatic pressure on Iran as part of an international endeavor to prevent Tehran from moving forward on its nuclear program. Given my intense distrust of President Bush and his administration's disastrous foreign policy record, I also sponsored legislation (H. R. 3119), which if passed into law would prohibit the use of funds for military operations in Iran unless authorized by Congress and prevents the president from unilaterally going to war.

It is still my belief that it is in America's strategic interest to use strong diplomacy and directly engage Iran in order to prevent the Iranian government from developing nuclear weapons and to avoid a third regional war. However this diplomatic surge will only be successful if the US takes the lead role along with our European allies in directly engaging Iran. American engagement with Iran must be done from a position of strength and with sufficient leverage. In this vein, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman recently pointed out in a May 2008 article, "When you have leverage, talk. When you don't have leverage, get some -- by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-à-vis Iran."

It should have been an American representative last week along with European Union High Representative Javier Solana sitting down with Iranian leaders and offering an incentives package as part of an international effort to suspend a key part of Iran's nuclear program. It is my goal to add language to H. Con. Res. 362 highlighting a more effective American strategy that calls for direct engagement with Tehran for the purpose of thwarting Iran's nuclear weapons program and ending its support for international terrorism.

It is clear that despite carefully worded language in H. Con. Res. 362 that "nothing in this resolution should be construed as an authorization of the use of force against Iran" that many Americans across the country continue to express real concerns that sections of this resolution will be interpreted by President Bush as "a green light" to use force against Iran.

The language that is most disconcerting in the resolution is the third resolved clause, which demands that the president initiate among several things an "international effort to impose stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran."

I firmly believe it was not the intention of the authors of this resolution to open the door to a US blockade or armed conflict with Iran. However, I fully understand and share the American public's mistrust of President Bush and his administration, which has abused its executive powers, willfully misled this nation into a disastrous war in Iraq and disturbingly continues to beat the Iran war drum.

To that end, I am not willing to leave even the "slightest crack" open for this president to unilaterally set this nation down another disastrous path of war in Iran. It is unacceptable for Congress once again to leave the door open for President Bush to exploit -- as he did when Congress authorized the use of military force against Iraq in a 2002 resolution. I believe it is essential that Congress remove the language in H. Con. Res. 362 that could lead to president Bush's unilateral imposition of a blockade on Iran.

We are in a unique moment in American history because the misgivings about the Bush administration's intentions and policies run so deep that the President is not trusted to carryout security policies that are in the best interest of our nation. As we debate H. Con. Res. 362, it has become clear that Congress must counter the Administration's tendencies of preferring armed conflict over diplomacy, and we must make every effort to change the text of this resolution. The stakes are too high for Congress to kowtow to this Administration; therefore, I am preparing to offer amendments to H. Con. Res. 362 and articulate a responsible policy that places America in the strongest possible diplomatic position to thwart Iran's nuclear program and the difficult security challenges we face.