A Weapon that Doesn’t Work for a Threat that Doesn’t Exist

Related
Complex 2030: The Costs and Consequences of the Plan to Build a New Generation of Nuclear Weapons, a World Policy Special Report by William D. Hartung and Frida Berrigan, April 2007 (PDF)
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April 25, 2007

Anti-Missile Missiles in Europe

By William D. Hartung

As Sen. Jess Trussme (a mythical political leader played by our good friend Ira Shorr) is wont to say, the beauty of missile defense is that it is “a weapon that doesn’t work for a threat that doesn’t exist.” This is doubly true for the Bush administration’s plan to put missile interceptors in Poland and anti-missile radars in the Czech Republic.By optimistic projections, the system would cost $3.5 billion and would be ready to go by 2013. U.S. officials involved with the project argue that this is early enough to deal with the highly touted Iranian threat, since they believe that Tehran will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon and mount it on a ballistic missile until at least 2015. If this is so, there is much more time available to negotiate a cap on Iran’s nuclear program than Bush administration officials have officially acknowledged. Negotiations would not only be more effective, but they wouldn’t waste billions of dollars that could be used for far better purposes.

And what kind of system would exist by 2013, if - in a first for the missile defense program - it was actually developed on schedule? Most likely one that is no more effective than current missile interceptors, which have given no evidence that they can stop an incoming warhead under realistic conditions.

If the proposed system only wasted money, that would be outrageous enough. But it is also provoking a three-way political crisis among Europe, Russia, and the United States. One common objection has been raised by Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg: “We don’t want to be a political football between Russia and the United States. We want the United States, Russia, and Europe to play together in a common defence project.” (Kristin Roberts, “Russian Official Dismisses U.S. Shield Cooperation,” Reuters, April 24, 2007).

While the Czech and Polish governments seem to be prepared to go along with the U.S. plans, nobody has asked the Czech and Polish people. A full 57% of Czechs oppose having U.S. anti-missile radars on their soil, versus 25% in favor. In Poland, the numbers are 68% against U.S. missile interceptors, versus 26% in favor.

As for the Russians, they are having none of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ arguments that they can “share” the project with Washington. From Moscow’s perspective, a system of ten missiles now could be expanded in the future in an effort to blunt their nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis the United States.

Given the obscene nuclear overkill possessed by both countries, the threat of US missile defenses may not be all it is cracked up to be.
But Russian leaders see it in the context of other provocative moves by the United States, from expanding NATO right up to their borders, to building military relationships with former Soviet Republics (and bordering states) from the Ukraine to Georgia to Kazakhstan, to seeking military bases in Rumania and Bulgaria. As the Washington Post put it, “it’s hard to think of a better way to revive the Cold War” than getting the U.S. and Russia into a tangle over the administration’s proposed missile deployments in Europe (”Missile Fantasies,” Washington Post, February 25, 2007).

The real danger of the whole missile defense effort is that it serves as a rationale for maintaining large, ongoing nuclear arsenals. As long as the illusion of a “technical fix” to the nuclear threat is kept alive, the urgency for reducing nuclear stockpiles is diminished.

Combined with the Bush administration’s “Complex 2030″ plan, which calls for building a new generation of nuclear weapons, missile defense represents a threat to peace, and ultimately a threat to all human life. The truth is that the only way to be truly safe from nuclear weapons is to get rid of them - all of them. This is no easy task, but if the U.S. government expended a small portion of the energy it is throwing into its misguided missile defense program into promoting nuclear disarmament, substantial progress could be made in relatively short order.

Iran: A nation of nose jobs, not nuclear war

By PETER HITCHENS - Last updated at 21:57pm on 21st April 2007

For years we in the West have been looking for a new Evil Empire to fill the gap left when Russia - a genuine threat - retired from the job and deprived us of an enemy. What were all those spies to do? How could we justify those missiles and bombs? What should we be scared of now?

At one stage we were reduced to pretending that Panama's General Noriega was a menace to our way of life. Then it was Slobodan Milosevic. Finally, we inflated the piffling Saddam Hussein into a looming Hitler.

Now the same experts think they have found something to be afraid of in Iran. It is tempting to believe them. This is the land of the glowering ayatollahs, the book-burning mobs, the fatwas of death and the black chador. And Iran has just become even more frightening because in its secret vaults Islamic scientists are fumbling with atoms and testing long-range rockets.

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• Click here for his latest entry - and don't miss his diary from Iran on Tuesday

Changing tastes: An Iranian mother and her daughters enjoy ice creams

Holiday snaps: Friends take photos of each other on a beach

Such is our terror of this mysterious land that Navy bluejackets and Royal Marines seem to have thought they were in the hands of cannibal dervishes when they were captured by them, quailing at the thought of rape, torture and death. Even now, having been subtly humiliated instead of butchered, they do not seem to have grasped that things might not be as they seem. Nor have many of us.

When I told my friends and family I was going to Tehran, they looked at me as if I were taking a short break in Mordor, and expected that the next time they saw me I would be being paraded by Revolutionary Guards after confessing to espionage, and then publicly hanged from a large crane at a busy traffic intersection.

Well, not quite. The people of Iran are probably the most pro-Western in the world, though that will not stop them fighting like hell if we are foolish enough to attack them. Not that they will do so with nuclear weapons any time soon. Iran is rather bad at grand projects. Its sole nuclear power station has never produced a watt of electricity in more than three decades, the capital's TV tower is unfinished after 20 years of work and Tehran's airport took 30 years to build.

By bringing this information back to you I expect to annoy the frowning mullahs, who want their people to fear us as much as George W. Bush and Anthony Blair want us to fear Iran. That is why they constantly tease us about their inadequate nuclear programme. They long for our rage and threats.

Again and again, Iranians told me Western hostility was the main force that could push them into the arms of a regime they did not much like. The last thing the ayatollahs need is for the peoples of Europe and America to know much about their country and its people, or to realise the truth - that Iran is our natural ally in the Middle East, a European civilisation trapped by history and geography in the midst of Arabia. It does not belong there, culturally or religiously.

We treat Turkey like a brother, when it is a militant Islamic state kept secular only by a disguised military dictatorship. And we treat Iran like a pariah, when it's a largely secular nation kept Islamic only by an ageing and discredited, but open, despotism.

In the past ten days I have travelled across beautiful, hospitable Persia and talked to many of its people, unsupervised, unmonitored and unofficially. I have been inside private homes and found out what Iranian people think and why. I have met citizens who voted for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, citizens who now wish they hadn't and those who think he is a sick joke.

I have sat among hot-eyed zealots at Friday prayers in Tehran as they chanted 'Death to England'. I have seen the melodramatic anti-aircraft defences round the nuclear plant at Natanz. I have met supporters of the regime and endangered, persecuted dissenters, as well as plenty in between. I am under no illusions about how barbaric the government can be to those who challenge it openly in the Press or other public forums. But I think its power is waning, and can be kept alive only if we are fool enough to fall for the propaganda of the people who brought us the Iraq War.

I have tried to understand the sweet, sad mystery of Iran's unique brand of Islam, quite unlike the hard, aggressive faith found in the Arab lands. I have touched the silver bars of the holiest shrine in the country, as the pious crowds thronged around it, many crying out in ecstasy that they have reached this sacred place. I suspect these scenes are the closest I shall come to what English pilgrims to Canterbury must once have known.

I have heard the hundredfold 'thwack' as prayer carpets were unrolled across enormous, majestic courtyards and watched the faithful at their evening devotions beneath gold domes and among some of the loveliest architecture on the planet. I have also talked to those who enjoy the illicit thrill of drinking whisky in an Islamic republic whose soldiers still spend hours smashing smuggled cargoes of alcohol. I have observed the cunning efforts of Iran's women to subvert and mock the ridiculous dress codes forced on them by silly old men. I have seen how many others choose to follow rules of modesty they personally believe in.

I have been told unprintably rude jokes about the late Ayatollah Khomeini. And I have been kissed on both cheeks by a hairy mullah in the holy city of Qom.

Let me begin in Tehran, Iran's colossal, ugly and charming capital city, which contains two wholly different nations within its ever-expanding boundaries. This is a very young city in a very youthful country. About 40 per cent of Iran's 70million people are 15 years old or younger, and in Tehran the concentration of the young is even greater.

Grinding along its clogged, modern streets where buildings are the colour of porridge or a sort of dirty custard-yellow, you see plenty of evidence of the horrible, murderous revolution that shocked the world in 1979. Portraits of Khomeini and of other religious leaders are everywhere. So are anti-American murals - the most striking is a US flag in which the stripes are the slipstreams of falling bombs and the stars are replaced by skulls.

On the walls of the long-deserted US Embassy, site of the kidnap of dozens of diplomats, slogans in English and Persian still promise to inflict a great defeat on America. Perhaps that promise has now been fulfilled in Iraq, a few hundred miles away, where American arms have suffered their greatest catastrophe since Vietnam - though the White House does not seem to know it yet.

But these things are old, flaking, faded and largely ignored by the people. They have other things on their minds - mainly private life.

In a bustling restaurant in north Tehran, where Iran's wealthy middle classes live, it is obvious that Islamic dress has been forced on the many women present and that they are determined to let everyone know it is not their choice. Personally, I found Tehran much less oppressively Islamic than Kensington High Street in London, where an ever-growing number of women voluntarily go about in black shrouds, masks and veils.

This is not some medieval theocracy where females are hidden away or forced to do the will of their menfolk. Men and women sit in animated mixed groups at the lunch tables, conversing as equals. Headscarves are worn. It is still the absolute law. But they are worn in such a way as to make a fool of that law. They are pushed back as far as they can go without actually falling off, held in place by no more than a blast of hairspray, revealing the front parts of elaborate and often vertical hairstyles - frequently blonde.

In a park by a lake, some teenage girls are splashing each other. Incredibly, several of them have illegally taken off their headscarves. Even more incredibly, their teachers pretend not to notice. This would have been unthinkable a year ago. What unthinkable things will be happening a year hence?

Everyone knows next month there will be the annual ritual crackdown, when the police will reprimand thousands of women for defying the official code. And everyone knows that, once it is over, scarves will creep back a little further and heels will get a little higher.

On the streets the women walk and stand like Parisians. Somehow, with a belt here and an adjustment there, they manage to make the modest 'manteau' jackets look chic. They laugh and chatter. The days when public laughter was a criminal offence are long gone.

About one in 50 seems to have had recent plastic surgery on her nose. They wear their bandages with pride and some even stick plaster on their faces to pretend that they have undergone this subversive surgery.

The desire among lovely Persian women to look like Snow White is strange but it is a direct reaction to authority's attempts to make them look like bats and crows.

The fashionable cafes are full of painted, un-Islamic butterflies, sipping milkshakes or coffee. The upstairs rooms are reserved - by common consent - for couples to meet away from the intrusive eyes of their families.

In the evenings, cinemas are popular places for some mild canoodling, though it is unlikely to go further than a Fifties-style kiss. But there is plenty of extramarital and illicit sex in Iran, some of it licensed by the Islamic authorities who permit highly dubious 'temporary marriages'. Among the rich, operations for 'revirginisation' are quite common before marriage, and contraceptives, once prohibited, are now freely on sale. Prostitutes patrol the night streets. I point this out not because I am specially glad about it, but to show how morals enforced from on high will fail if they do not have real popular support.

But travel in the smooth, modern metro down to poor south Tehran and you will find many more black veils and chadors, and many more beards and ringed fingers, the usual signs of serious Islam and support for the regime. For it is the poor who have largely benefited from the revolution, which gave them state jobs and good schools.

Even here, things are not quite what they seem. My guide in this part of the city was Reza, who is now unemployed thanks to the mullahs' mismanagement of what ought to be a fabulously rich oil and gas economy. Reza recalls wryly: 'When I was four, Ayatollah Khomeini came to my school and blessed me. It's been downhill ever since - everything just gets worse. I've even gone prematurely bald where the old man put his hand on my head.'

In his part of town, there is often more fervour for football than for Islam.

Reza cannot hide his distaste when we go together to the great shrine to Khomeini, a few miles out of the city. This is a startlingly shabby place - and far from busy.

Its only charm is that the Ayatollah apparently willed that it should be a place of relaxation, so small children are allowed to run around and even play football close to the old man's tomb. On the motorway that leads to it, speed cameras alternate with signboards bearing quotations from the Koran.

On the anniversary of the Ayatollah's death, great crowds gather round the shrine in a strange celebration - half holiday, half memorial service. Stallholders sell mementoes and you might think they are keen on the Ayatollah's memory. But an Iranian-American friend recalls how he once tried to buy some Khomeini clocks to take home.

The salesman became suspicious. 'You're American, aren't you?' he asked the returning exile. 'Yes, I am,' the Iranian-American replied. 'What of it?' He thought the merchant was an admirer of the one-time supreme ruler and expected to be upbraided for being irreverent. But no. The clock-seller asked him: 'Then why on earth do you want to buy so many pictures of this ****hole?' Both exploded in relieved laughter.

Things are quite different at another nearby shrine, a shocking, city-sized cemetery for the young men who died in the terrible war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Each shaded tomb is decorated with a touching portrait of a very young man (some of the volunteers who marched into minefields or poison gas were as young as 11).

Suddenly Reza is not cynical. He shows me a grave that is said to be always wet (with tears?) and to smell permanently of rosewater. I think Reza wishes to believe in this miracle, even if he couldn't give a dried apricot for the rest of the official myths.

This war, which most Iranians regard as at least partly the doing of the West, ended in 1988. It is shamelessly used by the regime to create a sort of unity between the revolutionary government and the people.

It cannot last for ever. This year, for the first time, a comedy film was made about the war - reverence is beginning to fade. And so is the revolution's claim to have made life better, which is untrue for so many.

People are encouraged to visit the Shah's old palace, with its vulgar chandeliers, decaying tennis courts and enormous bedrooms, so that they can look on his opulent living quarters and rejoice that he was brought down. The Khomeini state has wittily sawn down a large statue of the monarch that used to stand here, leaving only his boots behind.

But people such as Reza have the wrong reaction when they come here. They walk around muttering that the Shah cannot have been that bad and become madly nostalgic for his reign, which was, in fact, notorious for corruption, secret-police savagery and wild incompetence.

The more the Islamic Republic tells them to loathe the Shah or America, the more they yearn to have the Shah back, and to live in America. In this country, America is probably more popular, even now, than in any other country on the planet.

Some people here, the Westernised intellectuals, have always despised a regime they see as backward and stupid. It is gospel among them that Khomeini was not specially clever. They refer scornfully to the regime's supporters - usually poor state employees or tradesmen - as 'Hizbollah'. Women who wish to join the West's drive for sexual equality also loathe the state and are loathed back. One woman I met had been arrested for her feminist views and is now facing trial. Her likely fate is a suspended prison sentence, which will be imposed if she steps out of line again.

But such people are always dissenters. To seek a more representative view, I took the clean, comfortable sleeper train 500 miles east to the shrine city of Mashhad, near the Afghan border, where I met many devout but open-minded and tolerant Iranians.

In some houses, the women stayed covered at all times and I could not even shake hands with them, bowing instead. In others, they dressed and acted like Westerners. It was clear that public opinion exists and matters here. I asked about the gruesome public hangings. My neighbour at the dinner table explained: 'At the beginning of the revolution these sorts of things, public hangings and floggings and the amputation of limbs, were common. But people didn't like them. They do sometimes hang mass killers or child molesters but if they announced the public hanging of an ordinary murderer, people would stay away to show their disapproval.'

Remember, this is a country that does have elections and those elections don't always go according to plan, despite ruthless official rigging. I asked those present if they had supported Ahmadinejad in the presidential poll. All hands but one went up. Would they do so again? No hands went up. By the way, the women dominated this conversation.

'We were hoping he would be different,' one said in justification. This kind of hope that something or someone will turn up is at the heart of Iran's Shia Islam, a religion of mourning and loss, whose adherents still feel woe over the defeat and murder of the three great Imams, Ali, Hossein and Reza.

These martyrdoms took place 1,300 years ago but are still grieved over, especially at the shrine in Mashhad where Reza's tomb lies. The real zealots mark this each year by beating themselves bloody with chains and slashing their scalps with swords. It is rumoured that people die at these events.

In a belief rather like the ancient British one that King Arthur will one day come back and save his people, Shias constantly await the return of the 'hidden Imam', who disappeared in 878 AD, and may reappear at any time, with Jesus at his side, to restore peace and goodness to the world. I know how this sounds in cold print, but even the modest 39 Articles of the Church of England look pretty extravagant when seen from the outside.

It would be hard for anyone to see the devotion of the pilgrims at Mashhad and not come away respecting the force of this faith, which is a living, normal thing among Iranians, as natural a part of their lives as the low passions of football and the Lottery are in ours. Who is to say they do not have the better part of the bargain? I have never been anywhere with such a sense of generous hospitality and consideration to strangers.

At the evening prayers, the sense of deep human emotion is electric. But it is important to realise Sunni Islam, the great majority of the Muslim world, regards Shia Islam as a serious, idolatrous heresy, much as Ian Paisley regards the Pope and all his works.

The austere brand of Islam favoured in Saudi Arabia is specially displeased by the Shia love of relics and glitter. When Iranian Shias go to Mecca, they are said to be treated with cold hostility. The only Shia beloved in the Sunni world is President Ahmadinejad, whose noisy, disreputable hostility to Israel and whose support for Holocaust denial has made him the taxi-drivers' favourite in every Sunni Muslim country from Indonesia to Morocco.

Which brings me to Friday prayers in Tehran, the weekly festival of loathing for the West that takes place in a hangar-like building in the university. Many of the thousands who attend are bussed in, and one of them, a soldier in uniform, confessed to a friend of mine that if he didn't bellow 'Death to America!' at the appropriate moment he wouldn't eat that day. A middle-ranking mullah presides, starting with a sermon on family values, and then moving on to political matters.

His message is interesting. Shia and Sunni Muslims, he urges, must forget their differences. Wicked England has been seeking to divide the two branches of Islam for centuries. There is a general belief that British spies are behind everything in Iran. It sounds funny, but it isn't. It dates partly from the 19th Century when, with guile and bribes, British agents controlled the south of the country, hoping to keep the western borders of the Indian Empire safe.

But more recently, it results from our involvement in a 1953 coup against Iran's most beloved modern leader, Mohammed Mossadeq. This cynical and short-sighted action was designed to stop Iran getting a bigger share of the proceeds from its own oilfields, then owned by BP, so that we could spend the money instead on our expensive new welfare state.

A British MI6 man called Monty Woodhouse (later Tory MP for Oxford) and the CIA's Kermit Roosevelt (grandson of President Teddy) bribed newspapers, paid mobs and suborned soldiers and police to overthrow Mossadeq. (Details of this have actually been published by the CIA.) They succeeded. But bitter memories of that event lay behind much of the savagery of the 1979 revolution, in which anyone who might have been an ally of the West was ruthlessly imprisoned or murdered.

At the end of this renewed denunciation - which I think reveals the mullahs' determination to keep Iran away from its natural friends in the West - a cheerleader urged the seated crowd into cries of 'Marg Bar Amrika' (Death to America!) and 'Marg bar Angeleez' (Death to England!). The shouts sounded listless and perfunctory to me, a duty done rather than the passion I had seen at Mashhad.

My next destination was the tomb of the poet Hafez in Shiraz - until the revolution, a centre of wine-growing, appropriately enough, for Hafez writes about love and wine. His verses are revered by the Persian people and much distrusted by the Islamic authorities, yet he is too great to be suppressed.

I fell into conversation with two women. They said the schools taught that Hafez's references to love were about the love of religion, and that when he spoke about the joys of wine they should know that prayer had the same effect as wine. 'How would they know if prayer was like wine, since they aren't allowed to drink?' I asked them, and the two giggled. They hadn't thought of asking that. But they will next time.

A few miles away are the great ruins of Persepolis, a historical monument equal to the Pyramids. The ruins were dug out of the sand only 150 years ago, and there are strong rumours that the Ayatollahs wanted to destroy this inconvenient proof that Persian civilisation existed long before Islam. Fortunately, they did not.

I went on to the glorious city of Esfahan, a treasure-house of art and architecture that would be on every tourist itinerary were it in Europe. In the great square, I was accosted by several Iranians anxious to talk. I met two contrasting groups of schoolgirls. One group, all equipped with the coolest possible mobile phones, were deeply worried. One said: 'We are all sure there will be war with the West this summer.' This is specially frightening here, since the city hosts one of Iran's nuclear sites.

The other trio - one severely veiled, one more adventurous and one positively brazen with inches of hair exposed - were angered by Western threats of sanctions and worse. 'The more you threaten us,' the severe one said, 'the more we will rally round our government and the closer we will be to them.' In this they echoed almost every conversation I had had in Iran.

As one veteran of the Iran-Iraq War had said: 'If you had come here before the Iraq invasion, lots of us would have said, 'Please, come and invade us, come and save us.' America was the most popular country in Iran then. But we have seen what liberation has brought to Iraq and Afghanistan, and if you came now we would certainly fight, not like the Iraqis, but from the very start.'

On the road north to Tehran, I passed close to Natanz, the supposed centre of Iran's atomic programme. Natanz is an attractive town, where it would have been pleasant to stop for a glass of tea. I chose not to, to avoid any suggestion of spying. But a few miles north, the government had provided spectacular evidence of its warlike posture. On either side of the busy public road, anti-aircraft guns pointed at the sky.

It was as if, where the M4 runs reasonably close to the Aldermaston nuclear weapons plant, the British Army had installed flak batteries. As a military precaution against modern jets, they would be useless. But they help create the atmosphere of tension that keeps the ayatollahs and the people side by side, and so keeps Iran and the West apart.

My final destination was the holy city of Qom, where the ideas of the 1979 revolution were born. I had expected something dark and oppressive. Instead, I found a kind of Shia Blackpool, brightly lit streets full of busy shops selling cut-price Korans and also the local delicacy, a sweet pistachio nut brittle. Iranians, like our own forefathers, see nothing strange in mixing pleasure and faith.

Mullahs patrolled every street. If you watched a corner, a mullah would come round it, brown-robed and turbaned. There were mullahs upright on motorbikes, mullahs surging off buses or clambering on to them, mullahs with briefcases.

The only dark place was a painfully moving war cemetery at the gates of the shrine, paved with gravestones and walled with propaganda posters.

Beyond, the shrine glittered with gold and polished mirrors, floodlit and sparkling merrily in the night. And there I met a mullah who wanted to argue. Like all dogmatists, he was stuck in a circle. The Islamic republic had been a success, despite retreating so far from its original rules. The reforms by the last, liberal president, Khatami, had been made to strengthen Islam in Iran, even though they had relaxed many of the Islamic laws. But what he really wanted to talk about was the British sailors.

'They were spies,' he insisted, and when I said that spies didn't usually wear uniform, he retorted that this would be a typical devious British trick. Then he criticised the way they had behaved when they got home, claiming they had been mishandled when they had been well treated. I didn't feel like contradicting him.

At that point he looked at me sternly. 'You won't behave like them when you get home, will you?' he asked. And when I said that I really rather hoped not, he suddenly embraced me and gave me a great smacking kiss on both cheeks.

Despite the mullah's unwanted kisses, I am sticking to my view. By threatening Iran, we only help its rulers keep the wavering support of their people and strengthen their alliance with Muslim hardliners elsewhere.

Iran is not a serious threat to us, and if we treat it as one we will be tumbling into yet another foolish trap, devised by silly, ignorant politicians, from which it will take decades to escape.

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N Korean bomb a flop: CIA chief

29mar07

SEOUL: The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, has said Washington does not recognise North Korea as a nuclear power because its first atomic bomb test last October was a failure.

The US position was made clear when Mr Hayden met South Korean Defence Minister Kim Jang-soo, the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported.
"The US does not recognise North Korea as a nuclear power, because its nuclear test last year was a failure," Mr Hayden was quoted by a South Korean military source as telling Mr Kim.

The source said Mr Hayden stressed the importance of exchanging intelligence on North Korea between Seoul and Washington. "The US has a large amount of intelligence on North Korea, and South Korea has many experts who understand well North Korean sentiments and culture," Mr Hayden was quoted as saying. "US-South Korean intelligence exchange is crucial to analyse North Korea's decisions."

Defence Ministry officials confirmed the Hayden-Kim meeting but refused to say what was discussed. And the US embassy would not comment on the CIA chief's visit.

US officials said last October that air samples had confirmed a nuclear test occurred but that the explosion yield was less than one kiloton. South Korean officials said they believed the test was only a partial success.

Mr Hayden arrived on Monday for a three-day visit, the Yonhap news agency said, and met senior intelligence officials to share information on North Korea's nuclear activities.

The CIA chief arrived from Tokyo and was due to leave for Beijing yesterday.

Six-party talks on scrapping the North's nuclear program have been under way since 2003. They group the US, China, the two Koreas, Russia and Japan.

Under a February 13 deal, the North should should shut down its plutonium-producing Yongbyon nuclear reactor and other plants by April 14 in exchange for energy aid and the unfreezing of its bank deposits.

AFP

Nuclear Weapons Transparency

GOOD Magazine

Nuclear Weapons Transparency

GOOD Magazine

What Would You Do if You Were Iran?

Posted on Mar 5, 2007

By Tad Daley

Any New Yorker will tell you that the best views of Manhattan are to be found not on the island, but from across the water. The most sublime commentator on the workings of “democracy in America,” it is often argued, was not from America, but Europe—Alexis de Tocqueville, in his majestic work by that very title. The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped many breathtaking photographs of wondrous spiral galaxies millions of light years away, but no human has ever held such a perspective on our own spiral galaxy, the Milky Way, because no human (nor even any human artifact) has ever viewed it from the outside.

The greatest insight into a difficult and complex matter often comes from an outside observer. In late February the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that Iran had accelerated rather than suspended its uranium enrichment activities. Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking from Australia, immediately warned Tehran, “All options are still on the table.” Two days later Cheney suddenly showed up, publicly unannounced, in Pakistan, setting off a flurry of talk radio and Internet speculation that the true purpose of the visit was to negotiate flyover rights for an impending air assault on Iran. In response, an Iranian deputy foreign minister stated, “We’re prepared for any situation—even for war.”

To the dismay and astonishment of the peace and progressive Democratic base that swept the party back into power last November, the three early front-runners for the 2008 presidential nomination—Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards—have consistently expressed a similar hawkishness on Iran. Clinton and Edwards have even uttered the identical “all options on the table” phrase!

Why is Iran so intent on pursuing its atomic ambitions, despite such naked saber rattling from the planet’s overweening military leviathan? The most candid, unvarnished answer to that question has recently come not from any Iranian or American but from someone viewing the impasse from across the water. From Europe. From the outside.
Vladimir Putin.

“We are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper-use of military force in international relations,” the Russian president said in Munich last month, referring unambiguously to the United States. “Nobody feels secure anymore,” and America’s adversaries “feel cornered.” Of course, said Putin, “such a policy stimulates an arms race. The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction” (emphasis added).

Putin said what no Iranian officials will say, because if they did they would have to admit that they are seeking not just nuclear electricity but nuclear weapons. Putin said what no Bush administration officials will say, because if they did they would have to admit that all their efforts to, as President Bush put it in 2002, “free the world from weapons of mass destruction in the hands of those who hate freedom” have had precisely the opposite effect.

Make no mistake. The repugnant comments by Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, about the Jewish past and the Israeli future deserve to be renounced by any right-thinking citizen of the world. But Ahmadinejad’s true influence among the mullahs has always been limited, and is now, by all accounts, in free fall. Regardless of who is really running the show, might not Iran have some legitimate national security interests in its own self-preservation?

Consider the world as seen from Tehran in the past half-decade. George W. Bush announced a new doctrine of “pre-emption,” wherein the U.S. may see fit to launch regime-changing invasions of states that Washington, in its own subjective judgment, concludes might pose a threat, someday, to American national security. He declared that of all the odious regimes on the planet, three alone constitute an “axis of evil.” Breaking with the entire Cold War legacy of mutual nuclear deterrence, he issued a new nuclear doctrine, one that contemplated nuclear attacks on non-nuclear states (in explicit violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). He actually named seven states (including Iran) as possible targets of a pre-emptive American nuclear first strike. Then he launched his first pre-emptive war against the country next door to Iran, decapitating its regime and driving its leader first into a spider hole in the ground and then to the gallows.

And after all that, Tehran finds itself surrounded on four sides by American military power—Iraq to the west, Afghanistan to the east, U.S. bases in Turkey and Central Asia to the north, and the mighty U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf to the south (which just recently doubled its presence there).

Putin did not explain exactly how nuclear weapons could serve to defend a country like Iran from an overwhelming American air assault. But the old Cold Warrior surely understands the new model of nuclear deterrence that is emerging in the post-Cold War world—one that could radically transform the 21st century nuclear landscape.

During the Cold War’s long atomic arms race, it became clear that nuclear weapons had little actual military value. It was difficult to conceive of any scenario where the benefits of launching a nuclear weapon could exceed the almost infinite risks. But we needed thousands of nuclear weapons, the argument ran, because the Soviets possessed thousands of nuclear weapons. And they needed them because we had them. Our atomic arsenal deterred them from using theirs, and their atomic arsenal deterred us from using ours. This, of course, was the logic behind “mutually assured destruction,” or MAD—surely the most appropriate acronym in all of human history.

But if a country like Iran manages to acquire a nuclear arsenal, its function will be dramatically different. Iran, of course, cannot hope to defeat the United States in any kind of direct military confrontation. No one can. But Tehran could aspire not to defeat but to deter what must seem to Iranian leaders to be a very real threat of an American military first strike. And to exercise such deterrence, it doesn’t need the capacity to bring about the “assured destruction” of the entire American nation. All it needs is the capability to vaporize an American military base or three in Qatar or Kuwait or Iraq, or an entire aircraft carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf, or even an American city on one coast or the other. It also needs to indicate that it would respond to any attack by employing that capability immediately, before it becomes too late, following the venerable maxim: “Use them or lose them.” This, we learned in recent years from now-elderly Soviet officers who were on the ground during the Cuban missile crisis, is precisely what they were prepared to do at even a hint of an American first strike.

There is, of course, only one thing that can provide Iran with this kind of deterrent capability. Hint: it’s not nuclear electricity.

When Tehran looks west, it sees an Iraq that abandoned its nuclear weapons program, opened itself to unprecedented intrusions on its sovereignty, did not in fact possess any weapons of mass destruction—and got itself invaded for its trouble.

When Tehran looks east, it sees a North Korea that is one of the most desperate countries in the world. Most of its citizens are either languishing in gulags or chronically starving. It is impoverished, puny, a pathetic excuse for a 21st century nation-state. And yet, because it chose an alternate course—constructing a small nuclear arsenal in secret, then whipping back the curtain to reveal that arsenal to the world—it appears to be successfully deterring any kind of military attack from the greatest military juggernaut in human history.

What would you do if you were Iran?

It is true that neither the International Atomic Energy Agency nor American intelligence officials have put forth a shred of evidence indicating that Iran has diverted materials from its nuclear energy activities to a nuclear weapons program. It is also quite possible that Iran might be dissuaded from its nuclear ambitions, in return for an end to U.S. support for internal Iranian groups seeking the violent overthrow of the regime (imagine if Iran were doing that here!), a formal mutual security pact with non-aggression pledges in both directions, and some acknowledgement on our part that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty doesn’t just impose nonproliferation obligations on them but also disarmament obligations on us.

Instead, astonishingly, with the ceaseless beating of the Iran war drums in the background, the Energy Department on March 2 announced a contract to build a brand-new, ultra-modernized U.S. nuclear warhead—the first in two decades—to ensure the long-term “reliability” of the American nuclear arsenal.

Until more enlightened diplomacy starts emanating from Washington, Tehran will continue its march toward the nuclear Rubicon. The logic of the situation requires it. No rational Iranian defense planner could responsibly recommend anything else.

A Cold War concept that never captured the public imagination quite like MAD was the simple idea of “unacceptable damage.” If a vulnerable nation could obtain the capability to impose unacceptable damage on an adversary, that would probably be enough to cause that adversary to pause, indefinitely, before initiating any kind of war. And the obliteration of an American military base or naval formation or city would clearly seem to qualify as “unacceptable damage” for us. Although “UD” hardly contains the rich acronymphomaniacal irony delivered by MAD, Iran and North Korea may be the first states to base their national security strategies solidly upon it.

There is very little reason to suppose that they will be the last.

Tad Daley is a veteran international policy analyst and nuclear disarmament advocate. He served as a policy aide to the late U.S. Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and as national issues director for the 2004 presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio. He is presently Peace and Disarmament Fellow in the Los Angeles office of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Nobel laureate anti-nuclear organization. He can be reached at tad@daleyplanet.org.

GOP House Minority Whip To Aid Group Seeking Nuclear War, Holocaust

Bruce Wilson: "Christians United For Israel" leader gets promise of red carpet visit in DC from Roy Blunt.

By Bruce Wilson
Posted on March 1, 2007

US House minority whip Roy Blunt flew to San Antonio, last week, to pay tribute to Texas Pastor and apocalyptic nuclear war advocate John Hagee. In a "Christians United For Israel" [CUFI] mailing sent February 26th, Hagee wrote:

I am delighted to announce that Roy Blunt is a strong supporter of Israel and following our conversation about CUFI has offered to gather groups of Congressmen in his office any time I come to Washington D.C. in the future.

Blunt is not the only politician to have courted Hagee, who had a private meeting with Senator John McCain in late January to discuss Israel and "other matters." McCain has recently said, of US tensions with Iran, that the situation could be "armageddon"

John Hagee, one of several alleged religious influences on George W. Bush, has characterized liberal Jews who do not agree with his political views as "poisoned" and is a strong proponent for a "preemptive" ( or unprovoked ) US and Israeli nuclear attack against Iran. In "Jerusalem Countdown," Hagee's latest book that has so far sold over 1.1 million copies, Hagee says the Holocaust and historical persecution of the Jews is a divine punishment for the "disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, as is antisemitism... Their own rebellion [against God] had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come." ( Jerusalem Countdown, pages 92 and 93, paperback edition ).

[image: The Holocaust, part of divine plan ?]
The Holocaust also served as a divine mechanism, suggests Hagee in the book, to scare Jews into moving to Israel where he seems to feel they properly belong, as a necessary, magical human precondition that must be in place before the Rapture, that will grant Christians physical immortality in Heaven, can occur. In Hagee's view, after Christians are "Raptured" to Heaven, Israeli Jews will be mostly killed in the End-Time apocalyptic conflict the Texas pastor has also formed a lobbying group to -- apparently -- encourage.

In a recent Charisma Magazine issue John Hagee, in a piece entitled "The Coming Holy War," wrote : "Israel and America must confront Iran's nuclear ability and willingness to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons."

On July 19, 2006, at a CUFI sponsored Washington DC event called "A Night to Honor Israel," with GOP Party head Ken Mehlman and US GOP Senators Sam Brownback, Rick Santorum, John Cornyn, and Kay Bailey-Hutchinson ( President George W. Bush sent recorded greetings to the event ) , Pastor John Hagee declared:

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West... a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation [...] and [the] Second Coming of Christ."

As recounted by Terje Langeland, reporting for the Colorado Springs Independent in 2003, one of Pastor John Hagee's CUFI board members, George Morrison, expresses his sense of how Israeli and Israeli Jews will fare in the apocalytpic scenario Hagee and others long for:

"Morrison, whose casual, folksy manner belies his apocalyptic beliefs, already sees signs that the End is approaching. The European Union, he says, might be the alliance of nations that according to prophecy will join the Arabs to wage war against Israel during the final days.

"Great wars will begin to take place" Morrison says in a matter-of-fact voice. "Those wars are going to involve nukes."

The extent of the destruction will prompt Jesus to return in order to stop it, Morrison believes. Unfortunately, he says, many Jews will be killed.

"It's another Holocaust, if you will" Morrison says. "

[image, above : Hiroshima survivor's drawing of the bombing's aftermath, from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum]

Many Christian Premillenial Dispensationalists -- the theological persuasion Pastor John Hagee belongs to -- believe that the majority of the Jews currently living in Israel will be killed in the period of warfare that follows the "Rapture," when "believing" Christians ( fundamentalist Christians, that is ) are bodily transported up to safety in heaven. The standard interpretation is that 2/3 or more of Israeli Jews will be slaughtered during this period but that a righteous "remnant", who have realized the error of their ways and converted to Christianity, will survive what Christian Zionists often call the "final Holocaust" or the "second Holocaust." Writings and statements made by CUFI board member Jerry Falwell, made in 1984, sum up such views:

Falwell said, in a December 2, 1984 sermon: "Millions of Jews will be slaughtered at this time but a remnant will escape and God will supernaturally hide them for Himself for the last three and a half years of the Tribulation, some feel in the rose-red city of Petra. I don't know how, but God will keep them because the Jews and the Chosen People of God." (December 2, 1984 sermon)"

From a pamphlet by Jerry Falwell entitled “Armageddon and the Coming War with Russia." :"the stage is rapidly being set, even today in the Middle East, for the final conflict. Russia will invade Israel, communism will be defeated, the antichrist will appear and the 'final holocaust' at Armageddon will consume the Earth." ( as quote by the The Oakland Tribune, October 23, 1984 )

In "Jerusalem Countdown", Pastor Hagee writes, in reference to passages from the Bibles Book Of Isaiah 10:22, 22:

"Who is this remnant [those who will survive] ?

First, it's obvious that all of that remnant is Jewish.....

God promises that by his sovereign grace a "remnant" would be saved by the grace of God, a group of survivors who have the opportunity to receive Messiah, who is a rabbi known to the world as Jesus Christ." ( Jerusalem Countdown, paperback edition, pages 192 and 194 )

This is a continuation of a running series on Pastor John Hagee and his new "apocalypse lobby," CUFI. For the last installment, see:

What Secret "Other Matters" Did McCain Discuss With "Apocalypse Now" Hagee ?

and also these stories:

footnote: What is CUFI ?

Max Blumenthal : Israel, the US, and the Christian Right: The Menage a Trois From Hell

Bill Berkowitz : Holy Warriors Set Sights

on Iran

Esther Kaplan : Christian Zionism all juiced up

Richard Bartholomew : Armey: Bush Believes in Tribulation, but not Trying to Make it Happen

Bruce Wilson : Dick Armey Denies Bush Administration Trying To Provoke "End Times"

Sarah Posner: Lobbying For Armageddon

"As Bush's War Strategy Shifts to Iran, Christian Zionists Gear Up for the Apocalypse"

"Apocalyptic preacher John Hagee says McCain is 'on target'"

"Can Giuliani Be the Armageddon Candidate?"

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online

The Words None Dare Say: Nuclear War

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By George Lakoff

Last modified Tuesday, February 27, 2007 01:34 PM

"The elimination of Natanz would be a major setback for Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the conventional weapons in the American arsenal could not insure the destruction of facilities under seventy-five feet of earth and rock, especially if they are reinforced with concrete."

—Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, April 17, 2006

"The second concern is that if an underground laboratory is deeply buried, that can also confound conventional weapons. But the depth of the Natanz facility - reports place the ceiling roughly 30 feet underground - is not prohibitive. The American GBU-28 weapon - the so-called bunker buster - can pierce about 23 feet of concrete and 100 feet of soil. Unless the cover over the Natanz lab is almost entirely rock, bunker busters should be able to reach it. That said, some chance remains that a single strike would fail."

—Michael Levi, New York Times, April 18, 2006

A familiar means of denying a reality is to refuse to use the words that describe that reality. A common form of propaganda is to keep reality from being described.

In such circumstances, silence and euphemism are forms of complicity both in propaganda and in the denial of reality. And the media, as well as the major presidential candidates, are now complicit.

The stories in the major media suggest that an attack against Iran is a real possibility and that the Natanz nuclear development site is the number one target. As the above quotes from two of our best sources note, military experts say that conventional "bunker-busters" like the GBU-28 might be able to destroy the Natanz facility, especially with repeated bombings. But on the other hand, they also say such iterated use of conventional weapons might not work, e.g., if the rock and earth above the facility becomes liquefied. On that supposition, a "low yield" "tactical" nuclear weapon, say, the B61-11, might be needed.

If the Bush administration, for example, were to insist on a sure "success," then the "attack" would constitute nuclear war. The words in boldface are nuclear war, that's right, nuclear war — a first strike nuclear war.

We don't know what exactly is being planned — conventional GBU-28's or nuclear B61-11's. And that is the point. Discussion needs to be open. Nuclear war is not a minor matter.

The Euphemism

As early as August 13, 2005, Bush, in Jerusalem, was asked what would happen if diplomacy failed to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program. Bush replied, "All options are on the table." On April 18, the day after the appearance of Seymour Hersh's New Yorker report on the administration's preparations for a nuclear war against Iran, President Bush held a news conference. He was asked,

"Sir, when you talk about Iran, and you talk about how you have diplomatic efforts, you also say all options are on the table. Does that include the possibility of a nuclear strike? Is that something that your administration will plan for?"

He replied,

"All options are on the table."

The President never actually said the forbidden words "nuclear war," but he appeared to tacitly acknowledge the preparations — without further discussion.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, speaking in Australia last week, backed up the President.

"We worked with the European community and the United Nations to put together a set of policies to persuade the Iranians to give up their aspirations and resolve the matter peacefully, and that is still our preference. But I've also made the point, and the president has made the point, that all options are on the table."

Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain, on FOX News August 14, 2005, said the same.

"For us to say that the Iranians can do whatever they want to do and we won't under any circumstances exercise a military option would be for them to have a license to do whatever they want to do ... So I think the president's comment that we won't take anything off the table was entirely appropriate."

But it's not just Republicans. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards, in a speech in Herzliyah, Israel, echoed Bush.

"To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table. Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table."

Although, Edwards has said, when asked about this statement, that he prefers peaceful solutions and direct negotiations with Iran, he has nonetheless repeated the "all options on the table" position — making clear that he would consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but without using the fateful words.

Hillary Clinton, at an AIPAC dinner in NY, said,

"We cannot, we should not, we must not, permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons, and in dealing with this threat, as I have said for a very long time, no option can be taken off the table."

Translation: Nuclear weapons can be used to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Barack Obama, asked on 60 Minutes about using military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, began a discussion of his preference for diplomacy by responding, "I think we should keep all options on the table."

Bush, Cheney, McCain, Edwards, Clinton, and Obama all say indirectly that they seriously consider starting a preventive nuclear war, but will not engage in a public discussion of what that would mean. That contributes to a general denial, and the press is going along with it by a corresponding refusal to use the words.

If the consequences of nuclear war are not discussed openly, the war may happen without an appreciation of the consequences and without the public having a chance to stop it. Our job is to open that discussion.

Of course, there is a rationale for the euphemism: To scare our adversaries by making them think that we are crazy enough to do what we hint at, while not raising a public outcry. That is what happened in the lead up to the Iraq War, and the disaster of that war tells us why we must have such a discussion about Iran. Presidential candidates go along, not wanting to be thought of as interfering in on-going indirect diplomacy. That may be the conventional wisdom for candidates, but an informed, concerned public must say what candidates are advised not to say.

More Euphemisms

The euphemisms used include "tactical," "small," "mini-," and "low yield" nuclear weapons. "Tactical" contrasts with "strategic"; it refers to tactics, relatively low-level choices made in carrying out an overall strategy, but which don't affect the grand strategy. But the use of any nuclear weapons at all would be anything but "tactical." It would be a major world event – in Vladimir Putin's words, "lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons," making the use of more powerful nuclear weapons more likely and setting off a new arms race. The use of the word "tactical" operates to lessen their importance, to distract from the fact that their very use would constitute a nuclear war.

What is "low yield"? Perhaps the "smallest" tactical nuclear weapon we have is the B61-11, which has a dial-a-yield feature: it can yield "only" 0.3 kilotons, but can be set to yield up to 170 kilotons. The power of the Hiroshima bomb was 15 kilotons. That is, a "small" bomb can yield more than 10 times the explosive power of the Hiroshima bomb. The B61-11 dropped from 40,000 feet would dig a hole 20 feet deep and then explode, send shock waves downward, leave a huge crater, and spread radiation widely. The idea that it would explode underground and be harmless to those above ground is false — and, anyway, an underground release of radiation would threaten ground water and aquifers for a long time and over wide distance.

To use words like "low yield" or "small" or "mini-" nuclear weapon is like speaking of being a little bit pregnant. Nuclear war is nuclear war! It crosses the moral line.

Any discussion of roadside canister bombs made in Iran justifying an attack on Iran should be put in perspective: Little canister bombs (EFP's — explosively formed projectiles) that shoot a small hot metal ball at a humvee or tank versus nuclear war.

Incidentally, the administration may be focusing on the canister bombs because it seeks to claim that the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 permits the use of military force against Iran based on its interference in Iraq. In that case, no further authorization by Congress would be needed for an attack on Iran.

The journalistic point is clear. Journalists and political leaders should not talk about an "attack." They should use the words that describe what is really at stake: nuclear war — in boldface.

Then, there is the scale of the proposed attack. Military reports leaking out suggest a huge (mostly or entirely non-nuclear) airstrike on as many as 10,000 targets — a "shock and awe" attack that would destroy Iran's infrastructure the way the US bombing destroyed Iraq's. The targets would not just be "military targets." As Dan Plesch reports in the New Statesman, February 19, 2007, such an attack would wipe out Iran's military, business, and political infrastructure. Not just nuclear installations, missile launching sites, tanks, and ammunition dumps, but also airports, rail lines, highways, bridges, ports, communications centers, power grids, industrial centers, hospitals, public buildings, and even the homes of political leaders. That is what was attacked in Iraq: the "critical infrastructure." It is not just military in the traditional sense. It leaves a nation in rubble, and leads to death, maiming, disease, joblessness, impoverishment, starvation, mass refugees, lawlessness, rape, and incalculable pain and suffering. That is what the options appear to be "on the table." Is nation destruction what the American people have in mind when they acquiesce without discussion to an "attack"? Is nuclear war what the American people have in mind? An informed public must ask and the media must ask. The words must be used.

Even if the attack were limited to nuclear installations, starting a nuclear war with Iran would have terrible consequences — and not just for Iranians. First, it would strengthen the hand of the Islamic fundamentalists — exactly the opposite of the effect US planners would want. It would be viewed as yet another major attack on Islam. Fundamentalist Islam is a revenge culture. If you want to recruit fundamentalist Islamists all over the world to become violent jihadists, this is the best way to do it. America would become a world pariah. Any idea of the US as a peaceful nation would be destroyed. Moreover, you don't work against the spread of nuclear weapons by using those weapons. That will just make countries all over the world want nuclear weaponry all the more. Trying to stop nuclear proliferation through nuclear war is self-defeating.

As Einstein said, "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

Why would the Bush administration do it? Here is what conservative strategist William Kristol wrote last summer during Israel's war with Hezbollah.

"For while Syria and Iran are enemies of Israel, they are also enemies of the United States. We have done a poor job of standing up to them and weakening them. They are now testing us more boldly than one would have thought possible a few years ago. Weakness is provocative. We have been too weak, and have allowed ourselves to be perceived as weak.

The right response is renewed strength--in supporting the governments of Iraq and Afghanistan, in standing with Israel, and in pursuing regime change in Syria and Iran. For that matter, we might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions--and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

—Willam Kristol, Weekly Standard 7/24/06

"Renewed strength" is just the Bush strategy in Iraq. At a time when the Iraqi people want us to leave, when our national elections show that most Americans want our troops out, when 60% of Iraqis think it all right to kill Americans, Bush wants to escalate. Why? Because he is weak in America. Because he needs to show more "strength." Because, if he knocks out the Iranian nuclear facilities, he can claim at least one "victory." Starting a nuclear war with Iran would really put us in a world-wide war with fundamentalist Islam. It would make real the terrorist threat he has been claiming since 9/11. It would create more fear — real fear — in America. And he believes, with much reason, that fear tends to make Americans vote for saber-rattling conservatives.

Kristol's neoconservative view that "weakness is provocative" is echoed in Iran, but by the other side. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted in the New York Times of February 24, 2007 as having "vowed anew to continue enriching uranium, saying, 'If we show weakness in front of the enemies, they will increase their expectations.'" If both sides refuse to back off for fear of showing weakness, then prospects for conflict are real, despite the repeated analyses, like that of The Economist that the use of nuclear weapons against Iran would be politically and morally impossible. As one unnamed administration official has said (New York Times, February 24, 2007), "No one has defined where the red line is that we cannot let the Iranians step over."

What we are seeing now is the conservative message machine preparing the country to accept the ideas of a nuclear war and nation destruction against Iran. The technique used is the "slippery slope." It is done by degrees. Like the proverbial frog in the pot of water – if the heat is turned up slowly the frog gets used to the heat and eventually boils to death – the American public is getting gradually acclimated to the idea of war with Iran.

• First, describe Iran as evil – part of the axis of evil. An inherently evil person will inevitably do evil things and can't be negotiated with. An entire evil nation is a threat to other nations.
• Second, describe Iran's leader as a "Hitler" who is inherently "evil" and cannot be reasoned with. Refuse to negotiate with him.
• Then repeat the lie that Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons —weapons of mass destruction. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei says they are at best many years away.
• Call nuclear development "an existential threat" – a threat to our very existence.
• Then suggest a single "surgical" "attack" on Natanz and make it seem acceptable.
• Then find a reason to call the attack "self-defense" — or better protection for our troops from the EFP's, or single-shot canister bombs.
• Claim, without proof and without anyone even taking responsibility for the claim, that the Iranian government at its highest level is supplying deadly weapons to Shiite militias attacking our troops, while not mentioning the fact that Saudi Arabia is helping Sunni insurgents attacking our troops.
• Give "protecting our troops" as a reason for attacking Iran without getting new authorization from Congress. Claim that the old authorization for attacking Iraq implied doing "whatever is necessary to protect our troops" from Iranian intervention in Iraq.
• Argue that de-escalation in Iraq would "bleed" our troops, "weaken" America, and lead to defeat. This sets up escalation as a winning policy, if not in Iraq then in Iran.
• Get the press to go along with each step.
• Never mention the words "preventive nuclear war" or "national destruction." When asked, say "All options are on the table." Keep the issue of nuclear war and its consequences from being seriously discussed by the national media.
• Intimidate Democratic presidential candidates into agreeing, without using the words, that nuclear war should be "on the table." This makes nuclear war and nation destruction bipartisan and even more acceptable.

Progressives managed to blunt the "surge" idea by telling the truth about "escalation." Nuclear war against Iran and nation destruction constitute the ultimate escalation.

The time has come to stop the attempt to make a nuclear war against Iran palatable to the American public. We do not believe that most Americans want to start a nuclear war or to impose nation destruction on the people of Iran. They might, though, be willing to support a tit-for-tat "surgical" "attack" on Natanz in retaliation for small canister bombs and to end Iran's early nuclear capacity.

It is time for America's journalists and political leaders to put two and two together, and ask the fateful question: Is the Bush administration seriously preparing for nuclear war and nation destruction? If the conventional GBU-28's will do the job, then why not take nuclear war off the table in the name of controlling the spread of nuclear weapons? If GBU-28's won't do the job, then it is all the more important to have that discussion.

This should not be a distraction from Iraq. The general issue is escalation as a policy, both in Iraq and in Iran. They are linked issues, not separate issues. We have learned from Iraq what lack of public scrutiny does.

George Lakoff Bio

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ABC News: U.S. Developing Plan to Bomb Iran within 24 hours of Bush Command

Our Very Own War Criminals

February 19, 2007

The neocons who helped bamboozle the U.S. into its current futile war—and are ginning Americans up for the next one—claim that their actions and disinformation tactics were undertaken for the moral good of the world. The mind reels at their continued arrogance after the disaster of Iraq. Secure in their think tanks and comfortable government pensions, these Fifth Column fanatics have not had the grace to even do a mea culpa after the destruction they have caused. To the contrary, the leading warmonger, William Kristol, has been provided with a column in Time Magazine in order to spread his poison to a larger audience. There is only one thing to do. Boycott Time, the Fox news programs in which he appears, and, of course, the Weekly Standard which he edits. Please inform your friends. Boycotts, alas, bring results. The neocons have been doing it for years. Let’s give them some of their own medicine back.

Cheney, Kristol, Abrams, Abraham, Gaffney, Adelman, Krauthammer, Reynolds, Frum, Wolfowitz, Giuliani, Feith, Podhoretz, Perle, Pipes, the Kagans and their ilk are as shameless and contemptible as most traitors are, but with a difference. Most traitors at least take some risks—to the point of life and limb. These pundits didn’t risk their lives in pursuit of their dishonourable goals. Oh yes, I forgot a little man by the name of Abraham Shulsky, the Pentagon’s chief of Special Plans, who helped sell the Iraq war with false claims about the Al Qaeda connection. This slimy individual is now heading the war against Iran campaign in the Pentagon’s aptly named “Iranian Directorate.” In the meantime, Congress is sitting on its hands, too scared of AIPAC to rein in these con men, or even to denounce them by name during a special Congressional hearing.

AIPAC and the neocons use that tired old canard of anti-Semitism against any and every one who disagrees with them—including Jews. For instance, the eminent academic Tony Judt, who has found his ability to speak in public trammeled by back-channel phone calls placed by power brokers who disapprove of him. Another group of honorable folks are the eminent physicists who recently urged the Congress to pass binding legislation to restrict the authority of the U.S. president to order nuclear strikes against non-nuclear-weapon states. Reading over the names, it seems to me that at least half of these peace-loving researchers are Jewish. Not that such trivial concerns as the truth will stop the likes of Kristol. Foxman, Dershowitz and the rest of the gang from slinging the slurs far and wide. One might well recall the way some Catholic leaders hurled charges of anti-Catholicism at the reporters who uncovered the priestly sex abuse scandal--until the cases and evidence piled up, and it became clear that this was nothing but a smoke screen, designed to help corrupt and powerful men get away with murder. It’s the same thing when powerful policymakers in Washington try to silence their critics by hiding behind the photos of poor murdered Anne Frank. And the public is catching on.

In fact, Congress needs to pass such legislation as soon as possible. The United States has no right to use nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear attack. Nuking a nation that does not possess them, and has not attacked us, is in fact a war crime—the kind of crime for which we rightly hanged the Nazis at Nuremberg. (What a pity that we couldn’t have swung the Russians, too—and perhaps the Brits and Americans who ordered bombings like Dresden.) Israel might contemplate it, but if I might make a subtle point… the United States is not Israel. Nor is the converse true. They are… hold your breath, and listen carefully my friends: two… separate… countries. Got that? Try to keep in mind; it may turn out to be important.

Craig Unger, writing in this month’s Vanity Fair said it all: “The neocons orchestrated a spectacular disinformation operation—and once again neo-con ideologues have been flogging questionable intelligence about WMDs. Once again, dubious Middle East exile groups are making the rounds in Washington urging regime change in Syria and Iran. Once again, heroic exile leaders are promising freedom.”

And it gets worse. Washington is actually discouraging those Israelis who want to make peace—for instance, our bold diplomats helped scotch a rapprochement between Jerusalem and Damascus last summer. Elliott Abrams, the admitted liar-to-Congress who handles the peace process portfolio for the White House (and Norman Podhoretz’s son-in-law) has assured the hard-line Israelis, including Ehud Olmert, that there will be no real peace initiative from Washington with the Palestinians.

In other words, the Bush administration is recognizing “realities on the ground.” Which means we have recognized the legality of Jewish settlements on territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, and many more since. Although this should make the neocons happy, it is like asking a very greedy person to stop eating. They will always want more. Now the neo-cons want Iran. It is up to us to stop them.

Posted by Taki Theodoracopulos

Mutual Assured Damnation

February 21, 2007

For men to choose to kill the innocent as a means to their ends is always murder, and murder is one of the worst of human actions. So the prohibition on deliberately killing prisoners of war or the civilian population is not like the Queensbury Rules: its force does not depend on its promulgation as part of positive law, written down, agreed upon, and adhered to by the parties concerned. —Elizabeth Anscombe, “Mr. Truman’s Degree”

In 1956, Oxford philosopher and Catholic convert Elizabeth Anscombe published a little pamphlet entitled “Mr. Truman’s Degree,” in which she explained her reasons for opposing the decision of Oxford University to grant an honorary degree to former U.S. president Harry Truman. In critiquing Truman’s justification for using nuclear bombs to destroy the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Anscombe created a modern classic of Christian just-war theory that, sadly, is little known (and less read) today.

Anscombe was, of necessity, writing after the fact; but the silence of American Catholic intellectuals who know only too well that the architects of current U.S. nuclear-weapons policy find their model in Truman’s barbarism is deafening. Worse still are those public voices of Catholicism who attempt to justify the current policy through the revision—or outright dismissal—of nearly two millennia of the Church’s just-war teaching.

It is an almost unbearable irony that former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, the chief architect (under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson) of the policy that became known as “Mutual Assured Destruction,” is one of the few prominent figures calling for the end of the immoral targeting of civilian populations as a matter of policy. Whether his change of heart represents a true conversion or simply an aging Democrat’s opposition to the destructive warmongering of the current Republican president, only he knows. But in “Apocalypse Soon,” an article published in the May/June 2005 issue of Foreign Policy, McNamara wrote that

“There is no way to effectively [sic] contain a nuclear strike—to keep it from inflicting enormous destruction on civilian life and property, and there is no guarantee against unlimited escalation once the first nuclear strike occurs. We cannot avoid the serious and unacceptable risk of nuclear war until we recognize these facts and base our military plans and policies upon this recognition.”

Common sense, one might argue; and yet that is precisely what the current debate is lacking.

Throughout the war in Iraq, we have heard rumors of the possible use of “tactical nuclear strikes.” As the Bush administration (without even the pretense of congressional approval) prepares to expand the war into Iran, ostensibly to prevent Iran from developing her own nuclear weapons, officials refuse to take the “nuclear option” off of the table and slyly intimate that Israel, our proxy in the Middle East, might be the one dropping the bombs (bombs that Israel continues to refuse to acknowledge that she has). The same rhetoric characterizes this administration’s “diplomacy” with North Korea, as she (acting rationally, in light of stated U.S. policy) attempts to join the “nuclear club.”

These are not simply dangerous bluffs or attempts at strong-arm diplomacy. In his book Target Iran, former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, whose pre-war analysis of Iraq’s nuclear and other WMD capability has been proved correct in virtually every detail, points to a policy paper, “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,” issued on March 15, 2005, by the Department of Defense. The paper, Ritter explains, makes “permissible the employment of nuclear weapons by the United States preemptively, in non-nuclear environments, either to defeat overwhelming conventional opposition, or simply to assure U.S. victory.”

Victory, we might ask, at what cost? As McNamara rightly points out, exposing his own lies as secretary of defense:

“The statement that our nuclear weapons do not target populations per se was and remains totally misleading in the sense that the so-called collateral damage of large nuclear strikes would include tens of millions of innocent civilian dead.”

All of this should give pause to those who claim fidelity to the teachings of a Church whose two most recent popes have spoken eloquently against the current war in Iraq and have suggested that the mere possibility of the use of weapons of mass destruction—chemical, biological, and nuclear—makes it extraordinarily difficult for a military action to meet the traditional criteria for a just war. Can there be “a serious prospect of success” when nuclear weapons may be used? Only if we define success as a military victory at any cost, including the intended death of the innocent, rather than as the redressing of the wrong that justified the war.

Again, if a conflict may “go nuclear,” can we be certain that “The use of arms [will] not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated”? The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly notes that “The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.”

American Catholic proponents of the current war, some of whom are already starting to beat the drums for the next one, dismiss such concerns, and even the direct and unequivocal opposition of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, as mere “prudential judgments.” The final responsibility, they rightly point out (though it may be the only thing they get right), lies with the proper authority in the country that chooses to go to war. Having the authority to make the decision, however, does not override the moral obligation to make the correct one. Should we not hope and pray that, even in a prudential judgment, our President would defer to a Pope who declares that the conditions for a just war have not been met and that the use of nuclear weapons is never a moral option?

Already in 1956, Elizabeth Anscombe warned of those who quibble over definitions when the life of the innocent is at stake:

“‘But where will you draw the line? It is impossible to draw an exact line.’ This is a common and absurd argument against drawing any line; it may be very difficult, and there are obviously borderline cases. But we have fallen into the way of drawing no line and offering as justifications what an uncaptive mind will find only a bad joke. Wherever the line is, certain things are certainly well to one side or the other of it.”

We hear the same arguments today from American Catholic supporters of the war in Iraq regarding “torture” and “collateral damage” and “noncombatants” (the latter two terms having the sole purpose of saving their speakers from referring to “the innocent”). We need an air-tight definition! they exclaim. If you can’t provide one that I accept, then who are you, or Pope Benedict, to dissent from the judgment of the President?

And once their sophistry has allowed them to make their peace with torture, they move on to applaud, in their little corner of St. Blog’s Parish, Michael Ledeen’s bloodthirsty call for executing enemy soldiers after they have surrendered, and they embrace the insane claim of Victor Davis Hanson that there are, by definition, no true innocents in any country with which we are at war.

They have forgotten (if, indeed, they ever knew) the purpose of just-war theory. They regard the requirements of both jus ad bellum (the determination of the justice of a war before commencing it) and jus in bello (proper conduct in fighting a just war) as restrictions on our ability to defend ourselves and to ensure victory—restrictions that they fervently believe are unnecessary, since they are convinced of the necessity of any war conducted by a Republican president (the Republicans are the Party of Life, after all!) and the inherent justice of any American actions taken during that war (waterboarding isn’t torture, because the United States doesn’t torture prisoners!).

The purpose of just-war theory, however, is a different type of defense of ourselves, and not simply a high-minded application of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In prosecuting an unjust war, or in prosecuting a just war through unjust means, we may do great physical harm to our declared enemy, but we do even greater spiritual harm to ourselves and our country. Truman’s decision to drop the bomb shaped the political geography of the 20th century. But the stubborn refusal of so many Americans who should know better to acknowledge the essential immorality of the act continues to shape the spiritual geography of American Catholicism and conservatism. And it is making us something other than the Christians we claim to be. As John Lukacs wrote in Confessions of an Original Sinner, responding to Phyllis Schlafly’s remark that “God gave America the atom bomb,”

“No: the atom bomb was made in America with the help of Central European refugee scientists whose ideas of morality could not have been more different from those espoused by Mrs. Schlafly. Humility and a knowledge of sinfulness, these essential essences of a Christian belief have now become entirely absent in the pronouncements—and, presumably, in the minds—of American ‘conservative’ Christians.”

Those who gave us Christian just-war theory—from Augustine to Aquinas, from Vitoria to Suárez—understood that it was possible to be victorious even in physical defeat, provided that we have acted with justice in the pursuit of the truth. Today, for too many Americans who call themselves conservatives and Christians, that seems a ridiculous notion. “What good does it do to follow just-war theory if we might cease to exist?” they ask. The question is rhetorical, of course, since they have no desire to hear the obvious answer: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Matthew 16:25-26).

And that, in the end, is the most fearsome aspect of the transformation of American Catholicism and conservatism, because it exposes the ugly truth: We have become, in practice if not in profession, more concerned with fleeting victory in this life than with salvation in the next. And that is why, even though the ultimate source of the atom bomb is more likely Satan than God, we, like Eve in the Garden, were only too eager to accept the gift. As Elizabeth Anscombe concluded over 50 years ago:

Weapons are now manufactured whose sole point is to be used in massacre of cities. But the people responsible are not murderous because they have these weapons; they have them because they are murderous. Deprived of atomic bombs, they would commit massacres by means of other bombs.

The pews of American Catholic churches suffer no shortage of Trumans, but where are our Anscombes today?

Posted by Scott P. Richert

Scott P. Richert is the executive editor of Chronicles and the author of the monthly column “The Rockford Files.”

7 Reasons To Nuke The USA

Feb 23, 2007

By Yamin Zakaria

According to the doctrine of pre-emptive strike which the US has adopted since 9/11, it too can be subjected to a pre-emptive nuclear strike, as it poses a threat to other peaceful nations of the world. The US has a sordid track record for using such weapons against civilians and it has constantly maintained a large stockpile of such weapons of mass destruction, and continuously develops them. There are additional reasons to nuke the US, however I have decided to highlight only seven, which I have listed below.

This is partly for brevity and I hope it might have some resonance with the Zionist-Christian Fundamentalists, especially the nutty ones, as number 7 has significance in the Bible. Also, they are constantly yearning for the Armageddon, and nuking USA may only speed up the process, so for a change I might have these Christian-Zionists on my side! The Halleluiah brigade would probably jump up, waving their arms in the air whilst claiming to be speaking in tongues, proclaim that the good Lord says: bring it on, nuke the US for their sins! Perhaps, I would also have the communists and their variants to concur with me, as nuking the leading capitalist nation by non-state actors would seem like initiating a 21st century explosive revolution by the powerless proletariats against the capitalist class!

Before anyone screams mass murder, they ought to consider that their judgments will rest on the identity of the victims and the perpetrators. If it is the ‘terrorists’ (non state-actors, freedom fighters, Iraqi resistance etc) nuking the US, it will be depicted as terrorism and mass murder; conversely if the US uses such weapons, it will be defensive measures in the guise of a pre-emptive strike to eliminate potential threats incurring lots of collateral damages. Like the collateral damages inflicted on a massive scale when the Atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither were military targets and by this time Japan was already on its knees with no Air Force and its Navy almost annihilated. Perhaps one day some objective historian might call that an act of terrorism! Let me now list the 7 reasons to Nuke the USA.

1) The US was established on the blood of 70 million Native Americans. Their lands were stolen. Since the US leadership considers it right of the Jews to occupy Palestine as they lived here over 2000 years ago, then the Native Americans can also argue back only 500 years and have their lands returned to them. So a valid ground to repatriate the European colonizers, if they refuse they can be herded into camps, subjected to a trail of tears. Alternatively they can be nuked out of existence for resisting, as well as retribution for the brutal killing of their ancestors.

2) Consider the crimes against the Africans, their enslavement, oppression and lynching for centuries, which led to millions perishing. An irony of the declaration of independence by the Founding Fathers of the US, who stated that all men were created equal, whilst Afro-Americans were subjected to such brutality which continued for many decades. They have the right seek retribution (including nuclear strike) against the descendents of the criminals who have not paid them any compensation.

3) During the Spanish-American war at the turn of century, Philippines was colonized, and at least a 250,000 Filipinos were killed, then the country was turned into a brothel for the US soldiers, and it continues to be used in that manner. We don’t find Billy Graham and his ilk lecturing about the sin here. Nor do we find the voices for women’s rights; I suppose if they covered up instead of spreading their legs to the US soldiers then it would be cause for alarm! The Filipinos have the right of retribution for the carnage and rape.

4) The killing of the innocent Vietnamese populations and supporting monsters like the Pol Pot led to millions of Cambodians being killed. They too have the right of retribution and a nuclear strike would serve as deterrence for future attacks by the US.

5) The ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians through arming the Zionists, and the genocide against the Iraqis from 1991 onwards are good reasons to nuke the US and halt the massacre and oppression. A bully always think twice when it gets a punched by one of its victim. The only reason why the US has not used nukes against the Islamic world because it fears nuclear reprisal, as Muslims do not believe in turning the other cheek, for that matter neither do the Christians!

6) Using the various financial institutions, and bribing corrupt regimes, the US has exploited the economic resources for its own benefit, bringing misery to millions around the world. Nuking the US would halt these forms of oppression, and a new economic order is likely to prevail after it is crippled permanently by nuking it.

7) At present everyone is speculating the use of nuclear weapons against Iran by the US or through its proxy Israel. A pre-emptive strike would make the US and the Zionists think twice, as the American and Israeli masses might appreciate what it means to use such weapons. I doubt they would have the appetite for more. For the Iraqis and the oppressed around the world they are already dying, their situation is unlikely to get any worse than it is.

Using the principles of free speech I have expressed the case for nuking the US and I am sure others would add to the above list. My opponents would try and gag me under the pretext of promoting terrorism, of course that is because I am advocating that Americans are terrorized in order to restrain the beast amongst them. Giving them a taste of their own medicine would make the US masses actually realize what foreign policy, collateral damages etc really means! In contrast, the numerous times calls have been made to nuke Iran, Mecca, North Korea etc goes unnoticed, of course that would not be promoting terrorism but upholding free speech. Is this not double standard? Of course not as it depends on whose standards you are using as a yardstick!

Although I have made the case for nuking the US but I would oppose the use of such weapons, a nuclear war would lead to everyone losing out. Mass murder on such a scale would bring misery to all sides. Hence, I would favor a genuine nuclear-free world and not a nuclear-free Iran only! Likewise a nuclear-free Middle East and not a nuclear Israel with nuclear-free Arabs. The only justification for using such weapons would be one of last resort of self-defense, which the Iranians, Iraqis and Palestinians and others might resort to given the constant US and Israeli aggression against them.

Now consider this scenario, a Caliphate is established in the Middle East that has unified the Islamic world, it’s armed with nuclear weapons. No doubt it would be competing with the US in the international arena. Who is more like to use such weapons? Foreign policy of the Caliphate is Jihad, which is the spread of Islam, using nukes to annihilate entire section of population, would defeat that central objective of spreading the message of Islam. Nukes and Jihad does not go hand in hand unless it is entirely for defensive purpose.

Where as the US as a Capitalist nation is a far better candidate as it: has a track record for using such weapons; it seeks to maximize its interests at any cost, so annihilating other races fits with its philosophy and morals, and it has a strong record for committing genocide on a massive scale in order to exploit natural resources and enforce hegemony.

They scream peace, but what they mean is war; they shout freedom but what they mean is enslavement; they shout democracy but what they mean is democracy for its multinationals. The Holy Quran describes such people whose words contradict their deeds: “And when it is said unto them: Make not mischief in the earth, they say: We are peacemakers only. Are not they indeed the mischief-makers? But they perceive not. (2:11-12)”

Yamin Zakaria (http://www.iiop.org) - Mumbai, India