Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in The Empire
Sunday, January 21, 2007
It takes a “specialist” on “Persian Gulf affairs,
with special emphasis on Iran and Iraq” to get at the real
reason behind the impending neocon attack on Iran.
Kenneth Katzman, who analyzes U.S. policy and legislation on
the Persian Gulf region for members of Congress and their staffs,
assigned to the House International Relations Committee, talks
the talk across the corporate media spectrum, i.e., he is a neocon
propagandist. Katzman tells us “Iran’s ascendancy
is not only manageable but reversible,” that is if one “understands
the Islamic republic’s many vulnerabilities,” Reuters
reports.
As should be obvious by now, the neocon plan to deal with Iran’s
“ascendancy” has nothing to do with nukes. It has
everything to do with the fact our rulers, in particular the neocon
faction, believe Iran is too big for its britches and thus will
be cut down to size.
As the Clean Break boys told us a decade ago, an “effective
approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be
if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders
by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran.” In this context,
we can define “strategic initiative” as back-to-back
bombing runs, wanton destruction of civilian infrastructure, and
plenty of mass murder and prolonged misery, and not simply along
Israel’s northern border.
According to Wayne White, former top Middle East analyst for
the State Department’s bureau of intelligence and research,
the neocon plan for mass destruction will not be limited to a
“surgical strike” against phantom nuke facilities.
“I’ve seen some of the planning,” claims White.
“You’re talking about a war against Iran” that
likely would destabilize the Middle East for years. “We’re
not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets
inside Iran. We’re talking about clearing a path to the
targets” by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo
submarines, anti-ship missiles that would undoubtedly target “commerce”
(i.e., oil tankers) or U.S. warships now parked in the Gulf, patiently
waiting for a new Gulf of Tonkin incident to get the World War
Four ball rolling. Mr. White, no longer attached to the State
Department, is “much more worried about the consequences
of a U.S. or Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure,”
and rightfully so.
Iran’s illusory nukes, not dissimilar from Iraq’s
nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, are simply a pretext,
as the idea is to “shock and awe” the target population
into submission.
“The logic of targeting civilian infrastructure appears
in the book from which the Bush Administration drew its bombing
strategy in 2003. Military researchers at the National Defense
University wrote Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance in 1996.
The text suggested applying U.S. military ‘resources to
controlling, affecting, and breaking the will of the adversary
to resist,’” writes William
Van Wagenen. “Through Shock and Awe, the authors hoped
that ‘the non-nuclear equivalent of the impact that the
atomic weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese’
would result. President Bush responded enthusiastically to the
concept of ‘Shock and Awe’ when Secretary of Defense
Rumsfeld introduced it to him in the lead up to the war….
As a war against Iran may be upon us in the coming years, we need
to keep in mind the effects of U.S. military tactics on civilian
populations. Targeting civilians is still terrorism, whether undertaken
for the best of motives or the worst.” For the neocons,
nuclear “shock and awe” is perfectly acceptable, even
preferable.
Meanwhile, as “speculation over whether the American President
was considering a nuclear strike against Tehran grew after his
remarks in which he said that the U.S. will take any steps to
halt Tehran’s alleged meddling in Iraq, Democratic leaders in
Congress stepped up warning against what they said were White
House plans to launch an attack against the Islamic Republic without
first seeking approval from Congress,” reports Alijazeera.
Note the Democrats are not opposed to attacking Iran, but rather
irked by Bush’s insistence on going it alone in solitary
unitary decider fashion.
“The president does not have the authority to launch military
action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization,”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat version of a warmonger,
complained. Reid apparently had nothing to say about the morality
or sanity of such an attack.
Of course, as events unfold, any pissing contest between the
unitary decider and the Democrats, the latter insulted because
they are out of the neocon loop, is entirely irrelevant.
As the aircraft carrier John C. Stennis set sail for the Middle
East earlier this week, marking the first time since Bush’s
2003 invasion of Iraq that the U.S. will have two carrier battle
groups in the region, the Iranians are massing troops for the
coming invasion of their country.
“Iranian troops are reportedly gathering along the border
with northern Iraq,” reports United
Press International this morning. “An Iraqi Kurdish
source told the Kuwait News Agency, KUNA, that Iran is massing
troops stationed at its main border crossing with Iraq, in Pashmakh.”
DPA
adds: “The Iranian soldiers were positioned east of the
northern Iraqi province of Suleimaniya at the Bashmakh border
station, the most important crossing between Iran and the Kurdish
autonomous region in Iraq…. Iranians were witnessed yelling
‘Death to America,’” a quite natural response
considering the United States kidnapped Iranian diplomats in Erbil,
Iraq.
“An informed source in Iraq’s northern city of Erbil
said… the US raid on the Iranian consulate general and kidnapping
of the Iranian diplomats has fueled the anti-American atmosphere
in the region,” reports the Fars
News Agency. Iran has officially complained to the UN and
UN Security Council, an admittedly futile exercise.
Regardless of the concerns on the part of Tweedledee Democrats,
confronting their partisan Looking Glass—or, more spot on,
to quote Lewis Carroll, Tweedledum and Tweedledee “agreed
to have a battle”—the neocons are moving all the pieces
into place.
“The United States has signaled to Gulf Arab allies that
an attack on Iran could take place in 2007,” reports the
Middle
East Newsline. “Diplomatic sources said the Bush administration
has raised the prospect of a U.S. strike on Iran over the next
few months. The sources said the discussions with Gulf Cooperation
Council states have also been conducted by U.S. Central Command
as well as the U.S. intelligence community.”
In addition, as now appears obvious, Condi the Destroyer trekked
to the Middle East under the cover of yet another Israeli-Palestinian
“peace deal” nonstarter in order to hand-deliver the
message “that the GCC must get ready for any contingency.”
Increasingly, with every passing day, it becomes more obvious
that the neocon plan to attack Iran will indeed occur sometime
this year, more likely sooner before later as the neocon marshaled
armada of warships are now convened, with the USS Stennis not
far behind, ready to unleash their murderous fury on the people
of Iran.
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