Iran: Bush sticks with same calamitous playbook

[freedomfries]

IRAN: Bush sticks with same calamitous playbook

Jim Mullins
Sin-Sentinel, FL
February 8, 2007
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-08forum09feb08,0,7988596.story?coll=sfla-news-opinion

Yogi Berra had it right -- "It's déjà vu all over again," for we are now witnessing the same exaggerations and outright deception about Iran that the Bush administration fed to the American people four years ago as the prelude to the disastrous war on Iraq. His insincere protestations of a resort to diplomacy, U.N. resolutions and U.N. inspections were a cover for preparations for an Iraqi invasion.

It began weeks after 9-11 with the pull-out of Special Forces troops from Afghanistan, leaving bin Laden's al-Qaida on the loose; California desert warfare training of tens of thousand of U.S. troops; increasing naval deployment in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf; and acceleration of air-strikes in Iraqi no-fly zones.

President Bush's playbook hasn't changed. A 2002 State of the Union address branding Iran as an "Axis of Evil" state put it in the same demonized category as Iraq -- even though Iran denounced Osama bin Laden's 9-11 attack, participated at U.S. invitation at the Bonn meeting on Afghanistan's future, and pledged three times the U.S. amount for Afghan reconstruction. And despite Iran's cooperation, a secret Iranian proposal of dialogue without preconditions on all issues between the U.S. and Iran was rejected by Bush.

Two years ago, the Bush administration began leaking disinformation intended to sow suspicion of Iran's nuclear ambitions. An unsigned drawing taken from a stolen laptop of an excavation that could have many uses but was defined as a nuclear test site soon emerged. ("Curveball's" mobile labs reincarnated.)

The charge that Iran had produced weapons-grade uranium fell apart after an investigation by U.S. and U.N. scientists had determined that the minute amount found on centrifuges in Iran was there when they were bought from Pakistan -- as Iran had contended. (The Niger uranium fraud revisited.)

Iran has every right to enrich uranium to provide fuel for its nearly completed reactor that Russia is building under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that "there is simply no peaceful rationale for the Iranian regime to resume uranium enrichment" has no basis in fact or international law. U.S. hypocrisy is evident, for Saudi Arabia has announced that it and the smaller Gulf states have begun a uranium program, Pakistan is building eight plutonium processing plants, and the U.S. has agreed to provide India with nuclear reactors (a violation of U.S. law and the NPT).

Saudi Arabia admits that its private citizens have been supporting Iraq's Sunni insurgents and threatens to intervene officially if the Shiite death squads are not brought under control. The Saudi Arabian border with Iraq is at least as long as that of Iran or Syria, yet Bush threatens only Syria and Iran.

A report on Bush's charges of "solid evidence" that Iranian agents support attacks on American soldiers in Iraq has been postponed twice. Last Friday, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Defense Secretary Robert Gates demolished Bush's bluster; the report, in Hadley's words, was "sent back to be focused on the facts," and Gates dismissed it with "the information I've seen is ambiguous and not clear."



Solid evidence is available of a constantly expanding military buildup for an Iranian invasion. Journalist Seymour Hersh warned a year ago of Bush's plans, obtained from U.S. military and intelligence officials. U.S. aircraft carriers and minesweepers surround Iran. The U.S. has persuaded Bulgaria and Romania to allow us to situate enough land-based aircraft for a massive raid on Iran.

Bush gambled on Iraq with a losing hand. His "doubling down" with an Iraqi escalation and his "going for broke" in Iran are indicative of an addiction to risk that has brought us, as former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski testified last Thursday, to a "historic, strategic and moral calamity."

Americans should quickly add their voices to the brave and patriotic American military and intelligence officials, retired and active, who oppose escalation in Iraq and an invasion of Iran.

Jim Mullins is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and a resident of Delray Beach.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-08forum09feb08,0,7988596.story?coll=sfla-news-opinion