Neo-con Hawks and the Duping of America - Part II - the Iranian Campaign...

Zen Garcia

April 13, 2005

President Bush has been on an intensive tour of Town Halls, trying to look good for cameras while reinforcing the spin 'that the war is going just great.' Gotta encourage those pro-war families still in denial trying to hold on to the belief that we're doing the right thing, that we've got to stay the course. How long will parents offer up children as sacrifice to the carnage of war? That's really why they want the open borders. They need soldiers and what better way than by offering citizenship for service. Immigrants are expendable as their not included among the official tally of killed in action as many have no contacts in the US to be notified upon death. Many speculate that the true number of american casualties far exceeds the Pentagon declaration. They lie to us about everything else, I have to assume they are lying about this as well.

As the President's approval rating plummets and more and more Americans side with the blossoming Antiwar movement, monitor of such groups is increasing as the war hawks pressure security forces to crackdown on dissent even labeling such tools of democracy as non-violent protest as subversive, a tell tale sign of domestic terrorism. The pressure to dismantle dissent among the citizenry will escalate as they go about plotting their empirical policies of conquest and occupation, but they will not deter us from dissent. We must fight the police state at home and stop the surrender of liberty for security especially now that those that were once gung ho for war, reallize that the very way the President forced us into Iraq, has only placed America at greater risk for future attacks especially when one takes into account that our borders are still wide open, and that the same Chinese that just last year threatened to nuke 200 American cities if we even pointed a missle in their direction, was just quietly handed over security of another of America's most important seaports based in the Bahamas.

General Zhu Chenghu said in a press conference with a room full of foreign journalists as quoted in the Financial Times, “If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons.” The LA Times printed an op-ed piece on this, "Maj. Gen. Zhu Chenghu of the Chinese People's Liberation Army caused quite a stir last week when he threatened to nuke "hundreds" of American cities if the U.S. dared to interfere with a Chinese attempt to conquer Taiwan."

Bearing this in mind does it make any sense at all that the United States would hand control of the Panama Canal, our only deep water naval shipping port based on the West Coast in Long Beach, California, and now East Coast operations to the Communist Chinese expecting them to be responsible for the monitor of radioactive materials which may be smuggled into the American mainland through our still wide open shipping ports Bush refuses to secure. Does this make sense to anyone? Why hand over monitoring of nuclear materials to a country whose top General just a year ago July threatened to nuke "hundreds" of American cities?

America must be extremely vigilant in keeping tabs on this runaway administration especially as they sound the call to plunge us into further escalation by forcing new battles with Iran and Syria while ignoring security breeches like the open borders right here at home. We cannot even handle the conflicts we are currently in, nor can we afford any further accumulation of debt. Bush may see the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the embodiment of a modern day Hitler to be countered at all costs, however the world sees America as the new Germany and Bush as the new Hitler according to America's unilateral policy of premption, extraordinary rendition, and outsourcing of torture abroad. A BBC survey of 11 countries revealed that 57% of those polled had a very unfavorable, or fairly unfavorable attitude towards America and our dictatorial, warmongering President. Opinion was sought for a recently produced British television program called What The World Thinks of America. The Poll conducted clearly suggests that world opinion has turned against America's war time criminal President and our unilateral foreign policy.

As billions continue to go missing from coffers slated to rebuild Iraq, Senior Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia posed a question that should have long ago been asked on the Senate floor, can we continue sending these billions to Iraq? With no proof that we've done anything beneficial or positive for the people of Iraq, does this administration really expect us to extend any more trust or financial courtesy to them based on what we know of their past performance? The latest requests for reconstruction funds are all allocated for building prisons for interrogation and further torture. Iraq "is filled with projects that were never completed or were completed and have never been used." A new report has determined the U.S.-led reconstruction of Iraq has largely been a failure. Nearly $60 billion has been spent but Iraq is still producing less oil, has less electricity and less water than before invasion.

With 72% of U.S. Troops on the ground in Iraq calling for an end to the war this year, and 51% of Americans believing that removing Saddam Hussein from power not worth the number of U.S. Military casualties and the financial cost of the war, when will our government listen to the voice and will of the people? Will they listen to us as they don't seem to be able to hear the Iraqi's themselves, as they have been calling for immediate withdrawal for years. A poll put out by USA Today in 2004 reports ,"But while they acknowledge benefits from dumping Saddam a year ago, Iraqis no longer see the presence of the American-led military as a plus. Asked whether they view the U.S.-led coalition as "liberators" or "occupiers," 71% of all respondents say "occupiers." A growing negative attitude toward the Americans is also reflected in two related survey questions: 53% say they would feel less secure without the coalition in Iraq, but 57% say the foreign troops should leave anyway."

It is clear that the American public, our soldiers, and the Iraqi people themselves want an immediate end to the war in Iraq. It is even clear from a New Zogby Poll that the majority of Americans support impeaching Bush for warrantless and illegal wiretapping especially now that it is known the administration is targeting groups opposed to the illegal war; and yet the spineless Democrats run anytime anyone like Russ Feingold calls for censuring Bush or John Murtha calls for immediate withdrawal. If America does not impeach this president, everybody in congress will consider themselves as Bush does now above the law. By a margin of 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval, which he did. If Congress won't move to impeach, vote them out of office (must get rid of the paperless easily hacked unreliable voting machines first) and vote someone in who will, someone hungry to represent the will of the people.

The whole world now knows that the Bush administration lied to get public support for the war by first trying to tie Iraq to the atrocities of September 11th, 2001. Once that admonishment was debunked they tried to frighten American by invoking images of 'mushroom clouds on American soil.' Desperate for something, anything to scare the American public into believing that the nuclear threat from Iraq was real and that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, the administration began a systematic and deliberate attempt to distort links between 9/11, Al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein, resulting in 69 percent of Americans believing that Saddam Hussein had part in attacking the United States.. Democratic Senators charged that the White House had fanned the misperception by mentioning Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks in ways suggesting a link. Bush, on March 6, 2003, said, "Saddam Hussein is a threat to our nation. September the 11th changed the strategic thinking, at least, as far as I was concerned, for how to protect our country. My job is to protect the American people. It used to be that we could think that you could contain a person like Saddam Hussein, that oceans would protect us from his type of terror. September the 11th should say to the American people that we're now a battlefield, that weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist organization could be deployed here at home." After the 9/11 Commission came out and publicly stated that there was not a relationship between Saddam, 9/11, and Al-Qaeda, Bush said on June 17, 2004, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al-Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda." He continued exaggerating claims and made several more statements like, "After September the 11th, America had to assess every potential threat in a new light. Our nation awakened to an even greater danger, the prospect that terrorists who killed thousands with hijacked airplanes would kill many more with weapons of mass murder. We had to take a hard look at every place where terrorists might get those weapons. And one regime stood out, the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein." - GWB, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Oct. 6, 2004.

They continued their policy of deception by then trying to convince America that she was in imminent danger from a nuclear attack from Iraq. Bush said in a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." Rice said, "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." On NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney accused Saddam of "moving aggressively to develop nuclear weapons... to add to his stockpile of chemical and biological arms. Increasingly, we believe that the United States may well become the target of those activities."

The whole administration had been hard at work instilling fear to scare America into supporting an illicit invasion, while Bush was behind closed doors with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, busily dreaming up ways to provoke Saddam Hussein into attacking allied forces and in that way justify their war. Recently released minutes on White House letterhead and signed by the President, show that during a private two-hour meeting with Blair in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, Bush revealed to Blair that he was determined to invade Iraq even without a second UN resolution, and even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons. He then discussed a proposal to paint a United States surveillance plane in the colors of the United Nations in hopes of drawing fire and setting in motion war.

This exact plan was discussed in an earlier 1962 document called Operation Northwoods in which the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up and approved clandestine operations intending to stage 'terrorism' in order to create American hostility towards Cuba. On page 13 of the 15 page declassified memo, the Joint Chiefs of Staff discuss, "An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization in the Miami area. At a designated time the duplicate would be subsituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with the selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone."

On page 8 the Joint Chiefs state, "This plan, incorporating projects selected from the attached suggestions, or from other sources, should bedeveloped to focus all efforts on a specific ultimate objective which would provide adequate justification for US military intervention. Such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camoflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States. The plan would also properly integrate and time phase the courses of action to be pursued. The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an inter-national image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere." Clearly what is being suggested is treasonous actions against our own country by our own military leaders, who also entertain subversive actions against other sovereign nations as a way to make Cuba look bad. Terrorism in the name of anti-communism is still terrorism especially when carried out secretly against the United States by the United States.

Fearing that the window of opportunity to get into Iraq may slip away, the Neo-con Bush administration set itself on a course to "fix the facts around the policy" as proven by the first leaked Downing Street Minutes. In their rush to war, they blamed intelligence agencies for not gathering together the proper and necessary intelligence needed to assess a proper plan for deciding on whether to go to war or not. However, we know Bush and Blair had already committed themselves to invading Iraq and both ignored any threat assessment that did not support their call for an invasion.

America, we had better get serious about reeling in this out of control administration especially now that the very same Neo-con hawks which premeditatively lied and deceived the American public into supporting the horror that is Iraq; are now sounding the drums again, calling for not just conventitional but nuclear tactical strikes on over 200 targets in Iran. America please wake up, the lives of children here and all over the world depend on it. We must hold these fear inciting war criminals accountable as it is they themselves who are profiting from the continued violence and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan through unethical defense investments with private financial firm, the Carlyle Group. This company is not opened to the public scrutiny or investment, the SEC has never audited them, members consider themselves unauditable much like the privately owned Europeanly controlled Federal Reserve System.

We know that Bush and Co. will lie, cheat, and deceive in order to fulfill their PNAC directive for securing the Middle East through a series of permanent forward staging bases to then be used as preemptive strike capability in securing the fascist interests of the oil corporations dominating government through massive lobbying. How else would these companies get billion dollar subsidies at a time of record profit. Why else would the positioning of permanent bases line-up to pipeline plans or drilling agreements? We must demand accoubtability. We cannot allow this corrupt administration to purposely lie and deceive the public into supporting bogus wars of aggression against sovereign nations when real threats exist right here at home. There are already myriad reasons to impeach this President as many of his staff are already folding to indictments. So I ask why, why is America not in the streets everyday, at the White House and Congress everyday demanding the end of all support for this warmongering, anti-constitutional dictatorial administration.

Our country cannot afford another war anywhere with anybody. We are already drowning in surmounting debts accumulated predominately from the failed war in Iraq and yet regardless, this administration seems hell bent on taking us into further escalation's with Iran and Syria. The fact that the U.S. has already warned Turkey of our intent to launch air strikes on Iran and Syria, let's you know how close we are to another full out war as nations will be forced to take sides. Recently a London Guardian reporter released an article called, "Are we going to war with Iran?" to further investigate allegations of impending war. Seymour Hersh a few days earlier wrote in the New Yorker, that the war against Iran had already begun. "Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium." Colonel Sam Gardner verified Hersh in an interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, "The issue is not whether the Military option would be used but who approved the start of operations already."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced on April 11th that its nuclear engineers had advanced to a new phase in the enrichment of uranium. The Clerics also announced that the nation would speed ahead, in defiance of a United Nations Security Council warning, to produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale for civil power production as is their right accorfding to the Non-Proliferation Treaty which the US has recently violated by authorizing the production of a new generation of nuclear devices and also by agreeing to sell India nuclear technology when India itself has not signed onto the NPT. America in signing the NPT, promised not to help other countries with their nuclear-weapons technology unless those countries had all their nuclear facilities under international safeguards which India does not and never will.

Does this then mean unavoidable war? Are we to wake up one day with our country having attacked Iran? I heard on just a few days ago, that we just may wake up one day and find that our country had already bombed Iran, and that if that were the case it would improve Bush's poll numbers. Does this sound like insanity to anyone else? If you do not wish to see us plunged into further Bush administration chaos, call everyone of your federal contacts, Representatives, and Senators right now and bug them continuously without pause, so that they absolutely know, we do not want an attack on Iran and that attacking Iran will only endanger our country and their jobs.

Ask them if you really wanted to stop the nuclear program in Iran, why allow the CIA to provide them the blueprints in the first place? If we the U.S. and Britain were really concerned about Iran gathering the necessary program to create a nuclear bomb, why then would our governments allow American and British companies to sell them the exact material needed to advance their nuclear program? We must ask why British officials would defy their own arms embargo toward Iran, and approve the export of key components necessary to make nuclear weapons? If they were that concerned with a nuclear Iran, why provide the material necessary to advance the nuclear program at all stages? Why wait until they reach the point of activating the technology we've provided for their nuclear programs to cry wolf? President Gerald Ford authorized the Shah to buy and operate a plutonium-extracting and processing facility in 1976, if we were concerned with Iran as a threat, isn't prevention key, meaning never allow them to reach this point?

Scott Ritter a former UN weapons inspector warned us last year of the encroaching war with Iran. The only thing yet to be determined is whether it will be Israel or the US that does the actual air strikes, or whether it will be a joint US-Israeli strike, either way America will be plunged headlong into what could the catalyst for the next global war. We need to clean house in America, starting with the whole administration but not ending until we've moved through all branches of government destroying the corrupt electronic paperless electoral system and in particular dismantle the lobby system which allows politicians to be bought legally. Remember the people united will never be defeated, the people silenced will never be heard.

What I want to know is who is going to protect this country, should our country nuke Iran and plunge us into the next global war? We do not even have a larg civilian defense force present in the country to protect our homefront as most are in Iraq. This vulnerability was perfectly illustrated by the Katrina disaster and the abandonment of hundreds of thousands of American citizens on the streets of New Orleans,desperate in need for critical, basic life necessities which their government, leadership failed to provide. Many died in the streets awaiting help that was yet days away. Bush and Co. must not have considered the drowning of one of America's greatest cities an important enough cause to end their month long sabbaticals as they did not even disrupt their vacations to address the onrushing threat of what turned out to be the greatest natural disaster to ever hit American soil.

The National Guard troops that should be protecting our homeland are in Iraq, breathing the same depleted uranium killing our active duty military. It is just a matter of time before many of our troops begin dying from the mysterious Gulf War syndrome that military doctors inside the US cannot declare cause of, but doctors outside the military have determined to be depleted uranium poisoning. Our troops are not going to be able to take care of themselves much less defend our nation, protect the common good, from fascist interests domestic and abroad. At some point our nation will have to one day own up to the horrible truth that the leadership that lied to gain public support for this most illegal war; not only invaded and now occupies a sovereign nation but that this leadership is responsible for poisoning our own troops and the polluting Afghanisrtan and Irag with tonnes of DU. Once the grunts on the field understand that the President and military leaders sacrificed them like a sin offering, who then will ever join our military to defend our nation? How could soldiers in the field ever trust leadership that lied about reasons for going to war, then endangered their lives by not telling them the dangers of depleted uranium usage, and all without a peep to the soldiers on nthe ground. It is unconscienable that our military leadership has known since 1943 that depleted uranium weaponry would be grossly harmful to ground soldiers as well as civilian populations that remain behind long after the battle is waged.

A declassified memo (written by James B. Conant and two other physicists working on the U.S. nuclear project during the Second World War) sent to Brig. Gen. L.R. Groves on October 30, 1943, proves our government's accountability. "As a gas warfare instrument the [radioactive] material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs," the 1943 memo reads. "In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. It has been estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulation in a person's body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty."

If our leaders really wanted to support our troops, they would come clean on the realities and horrors of depleted uranium usage and immediately subsist in its usage. Can you imagine how betrayed our military personnel will feel once they realize the leadership condemned them to die horrible deaths and that their familoies will now have to suffer needlessly unless they all get detoxed from exposure to this nuclear waste which the Veterans Administration won't pay for or even list as a cause for Gulf War Syndrome symptoms. Studies of the first Gulf War veterans and the gulf war syndrome find 300,000 US veterans have been exposed to inhaled DU and are excreting uranium 238 (DU) in their urine and semen. Children in countries where DU has been used (Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq) are having a higher than normal incidence of malignancies and congenital malformations. Children of Gulf War veterans exposed to DU also stand the higher than normal risk of malignancy or malformation.

The crises only grows as we continue adding DU particles into the atmosphere. Whereas Coalition Forces dropped 350 tonnes of DU in the first gulf war, 2003 estimates for the current gulf war we have dropped or shot, 1100 to 2200 tonnes of depleted uranium shells, bullets, and bombs as of 2004. Unless we place pressure on the pentagon to quit using DU munitions, the whole world will be at risk as DU can travel piggyback easily into every part of the world threatening the health of all biological creatures everywhere it ends up. This stuff is so harmful that just 1 particle can lead to cancer in lung, bone, kidney, prostate, gut and brain. Here's the real shocker, DU has a half-life of 4.5 billion years which means contamination will last until it is placed in a secure environment where it cannot harm living tissue or contaminate soil or groundwater.

Our Military and National Guard everyday return home sick and dying from exposure to depleted uranium rounds. As they suffer doctors try as they might to alleviate the pain, they can not do much about the escalating symptoms. How does the U.S. Military view the safety of DU munitions? In a letter to Senator Sam Nunn, a representative of the U.S. Air Force stated, "...these projectiles are no more hazardous to store, transport, or employ than those composed of lead or copper" (Ref. 39). This view is echoed in the U.S. Army report to Congress that states, "The health risks associated with using DU in peacetime are minimal. This includes risks associated with transporting, storing and handling intact DU munitions and armor during peacetime" (Ref. 40). Neither the Air Force nor the Army has publicly presented an analysis of the health risks to soldiers and to others who inhale or ingest radioactive fallout particles of DU, or the health risks of living in an environment contaminated with DU after these munitions have been fired: these are the real safety issues they ignore."

In the AEPI report, (Ref. 42) the Army judges it an acceptable risk if its personnel become exposed in an unprotected fashion to the combustion products of fired DU munitions on the battlefield or elsewhere. The official military stand on DU is that it does not harm soldiers or civilians. The truth is people are dying, soldiers, civilians, babies, animals are everyday dy6ing as our gtovernment engages in empty rhetoric. Like Sudan this is a travesty repeating everyday and everyday people die. The American people must demand our government truly support our troops by bringing them home and getting them the help they absolutely need to detox, preserve their lives, and the unity of their families. Then we must accept responsibility for polluting Iraq.