Exactly as
the British press predicted, last week's congressional testimony
by Gen. David Petraeus and Green Zone administrator Ryan Crocker
set the propaganda stage for a Bush regime attack on Iran.
On April 10, Robert H. Reid of AP News reported: "The top US commander
has shifted the focus from Al-Qaeda to Iranian-backed 'special
groups' as the main threat... The shift was articulated by Gen.
Petraeus who told Congress that 'unchecked, the special groups
pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic
Iraq'." http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=122754
According
to the neocon propaganda, the "special groups" (have you ever
heard of them before?) are breakaway elements of Al-Sadr's militia.
Nonsensical
on its face, the Petraeus/Crocker testimony is just another mask
in the macabre theatre of lies that the Bush regime has told in
order to justify its wars of naked aggression against Muslims.
Fact #1:
Al-Sadr is not allied with Iran. He speaks with an Iraqi voice
and has his militia under orders to stand down from conflict.
The Badr militia is the Shi'ite militia that is allied with Iran.
Why did the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki attack Al-Sadr's militia
and not the Badr militia or the breakaway elements of Sadr's militia
that allegedly now operate as gangs?
Fact #2:
The Shi'ite militias and the Sunni insurgents
are armed with weapons available from the unsecured weapon stockpiles
of Saddam Hussein's army. If Iran were arming Iraqis, the Iraqi
insurgents and militias would have armor-piercing, rocket-propelled
grenades and surface-to-air missiles. These two weapons would
neutralize the US advantage by enabling Iraqis to destroy US helicopter
gunships, aircraft and tanks. The Iraqis cannot mass their forces
as they have no weapons against US air power. To destroy US tanks,
Iraqis have to guess the roads US vehicles will travel and bury
bombs constructed from artillery shells. The inability to directly
attack armor and to defend against air attack denies offensive
capability to Iraqis.
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If
Iran were arming Iraqis, the Iraqi insurgents and militias
would have armor-piercing, rocket-propelled grenades and
surface-to-air missiles. These two weapons would neutralize
the US advantage by enabling Iraqis to destroy US helicopter
gunships, aircraft and tanks.
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If
the Iranians desired to arm Iraqis, they obviously would provide
these two weapons that would change the course of the war.
Just
as the Bush regime lied to Americans and the UN about why Iraq
was attacked, hiding the real agenda behind false claims that
Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections
to Al-Qaeda, the Bush regime is now lying about why it needs to
attack Iran. Could anyone possibly believe that Iran is so desirous
of having its beautiful country bombed and its nuclear energy
program destroyed that Iran would invite an attack by fighting
a "proxy war" against the US in Iraq? http://tinyurl.com/4em9uh
That
the Bush regime would tell such a blatant lie shows that the regime
has no respect for the intelligence of the American public and
no respect for the integrity of the US media.
And
why should it? The public and media have fallen for every lie
the Bush regime has told.
The
moral hypocrisy of US politicians is unrivaled. John McCain says
that if he were president he would not attend the opening ceremony
of the Beijing Olympics because China has killed and injured 100
Tibetans who protested Tibet's occupation by China. Meanwhile
the Iraqi toll of the American occupation is one million dead
and four million displaced. That comes to 20 per cent of the Iraqi
population. At what point does the US occupation of Iraq graduate
from a war crime to genocide?
Not
to be outdone by McCain's hypocrisy, Bush declared: "The message
to the Iranians is: we will bring you to justice if you continue
to try to infiltrate, send your agents or send surrogates to bring
harm to our troops and/or the Iraqi citizens."
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The
Iraqi toll of the American occupation is one million dead
and four million displaced. That comes to 20 per cent of
the Iraqi population. At what point does the US occupation
of Iraq graduate from a war crime to genocide?
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Consider
our "Christian" president's position: It is perfectly appropriate
for the US to bomb and to invade countries and to send its agents
and surrogates to harm Iraqis, Afghans, Somalians, Serbians and
whomever, but resistance to American aggression is the mark of
terrorism, and any country that aids America's victims is at war
with America.
The
three-week "cakewalk" war that would be paid for by Iraqi oil
revenues is now into its sixth year. According to Nobel economist
Joseph Stiglitz, the cost of the war to Americans is between three
and five trillion dollars. Five trillion dollars equals the entire
US personal and corporate income tax revenues for two years.
Of what benefit
is this enormous expenditure to America? The price of oil and
gasoline in US dollars has tripled, the price of gold has quadrupled,
and the dollar has declined sharply against other currencies.
The national debt has rapidly mounted. America's reputation is
in tatters.
The Bush
regime's coming attack on Iran will widen the war dramatically
and escalate the costs.
Not content
with war with Iran, Republican presidential candidate John McCain
in a speech written for him by neocon warmonger Robert Kagan promises
to confront both Russia and China.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/11/wuspols311.xml
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Consider
our "Christian" president's position: It is perfectly appropriate
for the US to bomb and to invade countries and to send its
agents and surrogates to harm Iraqis, Afghans, Somalians,
Serbians and whomever, but resistance to American aggression
is the mark of terrorism, and any country that aids America's
victims is at war with America.
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Three questions
present themselves:
(1) Will
our foreign creditors - principally China, Japan and Saudi Arabia
- finance a third monstrous Bush regime war crime?
(2) Will
Iran sit on its hands and wait on the American bombs to fall?
(3) Will
Russia and China passively wait to be confronted by the warmonger
McCain?
Should a
country that is over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan be preparing
to attack yet a third country, while threatening to interfere
in the affairs of two large nuclear powers? What sort of political
leadership seeks to initiate conflict in so many unpromising directions?
With Iran,
Russia, China, and North Korea threatened by American hegemonic
belligerence, it is not difficult to imagine a scenario that would
terminate all pretense of American power: For example, instead
of waiting to be attacked, Iran uses its Chinese and Russian anti-ship
missiles, against which the US reportedly has poor means of defense,
and sinks every ship in the American carrier strike forces that
have been foolishly massed in the Persian Gulf, simultaneously
taking out the Saudi oil fields and the Green Zone in Baghdad,
the headquarters of the US occupation. Shi'ite militias break
the US supply lines from Kuwait, and Iranian troops destroy the
dispersed US forces in Iraq before they can be concentrated to
battle strength.
Simultaneously,
North Korea crosses the demilitarized zone and takes South Korea,
China seizes Taiwan and dumps a trillion dollars of US Treasury
bonds on the market. Russia goes on full nuclear alert and cuts
off all natural gas to Europe.
What would
the Bush regime do? Wet its pants? Push the button and end the
world?
If America
really had dangerous enemies, surely the enemies would collude
to take advantage of a dramatically over-extended delusional regime
that, blinded by its own arrogance and hubris, issues gratuitous
threats and lives by Mao's doctrine that power comes out of the
barrel of a gun.
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If
the rest of the world were to tire of American aggression
or to develop a moral conscience, it would be easy to organize
a boycott of America and to ban US banks from participating
in the international banking system.
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There are other less dramatic scenarios. Why does the US assume
that only it can initiate aggression, boycotts, freezes on financial
assets of other countries and bans on foreign banks from participation
in the international banking system? If the rest of the world
were to tire of American aggression or to develop a moral conscience,
it would be easy to organize a boycott of America and to ban US
banks from participating in the international banking system.
Such a boycott would be especially effective at the present time
with the balance sheets of US banks impaired by subprime derivatives
and the US government dependent on foreign loans in order to finance
its day-to-day activities.
Sooner or
later it will occur to other countries that putting up with America
is a habit that they don't need to continue.
Does America
really need more political leadership that leads in such unpromising
directions?
Note:
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in
the Reagan administration. He is credited with curing
stagflation and eliminating "Phillips curve" trade-offs between
employment and inflation, an achievement now on the verge of being
lost by the worst economic mismanagement in US history. He
was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page
and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of
The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He was awarded the Legion
of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He
can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.
Other
articles by Paul Craig Roberts:
A Third American War In The Making?
The March Of Folly
No Jobs For The New Economy Or The Old
The Lies At The End Of The American Dream
America's Days Of Reckoning
Supermodel Spurns The Dollar
The Wages Of Hegemony
Hypocrisy Rules The West
American Economy, R.I.P.
The War Criminal In The Living Room
More War On The Horizon
China Is Not The Problem
China's Threat To The Dollar Is Real
In The Hole To China
A Free Press Or A Ministry Of Truth?
