Paul Craig Roberts | ukwatch.net

Petraeus testimony may signal Iran attack

tim — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 12:33:58 +0000

On April 5, the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the U.S.-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from Gen. David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a U.S. attack on Iranian military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”

The neocon lackey Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the U.S. governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the U.S. must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”

Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3, the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.”

All Skelton knows is what the war criminal Bush regime tells him. If Iran really does have all these connections, then it behooves Washington to cease threatening Iran and to make nice with Iran in order to stabilize Iraq and extract the U.S. from the nightmare.

Reporting from Tehran on April 4, Reuters quotes Mohsen Hakim, whose father, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, an ally of the Maliki U.S. puppet government in Iraq: “Tehran, by using its positive influence on the Iraqi nation, paved the way for the return of peace to Iraq and the new situation is the result of Iran’s efforts.”

Instead of thanking Iran and working with Iran diplomatically to restore stability to Iraq, the Bush regime intends to expand the nightmare with a military attack on Iran. Crocker was quick to dispute Hakim’s report that Iran had used its influence to end the fighting in Basra. Crocker alleged that Iran had started the fighting. The absurdity of Crocker’s claim is obvious, as even the neocon U.S. media reported that the fighting in Basra was started by the U.S. and Maliki in an effort to clear out the Shi’ite Sadr militias. Most experts saw the attack on Sadr for what it was: an effort to remove a potential threat to the U.S. supply line from Kuwait in the event of a U.S. attack on Iran.

Crocker alleges that the rockets dropping on the Green Zone during the Basra fighting were made in 2007 in Iran. As should be obvious even to disengaged Americans, if Iran were to arm the Iraqi insurgency, the insurgents would have modern weapons to counter U.S. helicopter gunships and heavy tanks. The insurgents have no such weapons. The neocon lie that Iran is the cause of the Iraqi insurgency is just another Bush regime lie like the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaeda and the lie that the Taliban in Afghanistan attacked the U.S.

The Bush regime will tell any lie and orchestrate any event in order to “finish the job” in the Middle East.

“Finishing the job” means to destroy the ability of Iraq, Iran, and Syria to provide support for the Palestinians and for Hezbollah in southern Lebanon against Israeli aggression. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Syria might simply give up and become another American client state. With Iraq and Iran in turmoil, Israel can steal the rest of the West Bank along with the water resources in southern Lebanon. That is what “the war on terror” is really about.

The entire world knows this. Consequently, the U.S. and Israel are essentially isolated. The U.S. can only count on the support that it can bribe and pay for.

At the NATO-Russian summit in Bucharest, Romania, on April 4, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “No one can seriously think that Iran would dare attack the U.S. Instead of pushing Iran into a corner, it would be far more sensible to think together how to help Iran become more predictable and transparent.”

Of course it would, but that is not what the warmonger Bush wants.

Perhaps the British government has derailed the plot to attack Iran by leaking in advance to the Telegraph the disinformation Cheney has prepared for Petraeus and Crocker to deliver to the complicit U.S. Congress Tuesday and Wednesday. On the other hand, the U.S. media is likely to bury the real story and trumpet Petraeus’ claims that Iran has, in effect, already declared war on the U.S. by sending weapons to kill U.S. troops in Iraq.

By next Thursday we will know from how the Petraeus-Crocker dog and pony show plays in the U.S. Congress and media whether the Bush regime will commit yet another war crime by attacking Iran.

Evil is as Evil Does

Alex Doherty — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:52:25 +0000

Compared to the current Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s former president Muhammad Khatami is regarded in Western foreign affairs circles as a moderate. When Khatami visited the US in September, he called on the US and Iran to stop verbally assaulting each other in the interest of dialogue that could build trust and eliminate the frictions between the two countries. Khatami said that the precondition for dialogue was “to eliminate the language of threat.”

In an attempt to “resolve conflicts by talking, rather than by aggression,” the venerable Scottish University of St. Andrews invited Khatami to the United Kingdom for an honorary degree, followed by a speech at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. However, a spanner was thrown into the works by two Iranian exiles, who claim to have been unlawfully imprisoned and tortured in Iran during the period of Khatami’s presidency. Under Section 134 of Britain’s Criminal Justice Act of 1988, torture wherever committed in the world is criminal under British law and triable in the UK. Thus, Khatami might still be arrested as he tours the UK in the interest of opening communication.

If Khatami can be arrested in the UK for torture, how does British Prime Minister Tony Blair escape arrest for the torture of Afghans and Iraqis by coalition forces? Why are not US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Richard Cheney, and President George W. Bush arrested when they visit the UK?

Does the British law excuse Anglo-Americans from its reach? Does it exclude government officials while they are in office and pursue them only when they have become private citizens?

Or are we witnessing the operation of the neoconservative assumption that there is one rule of law for the US and its allies and another rule for countries that do not support the neocon agenda? Neocons maintain that whatever the US and its allies or puppets do in the interest of US hegemony is defensible and permissible but is a crime if any other country does it.

When the president and vice president of the United States publicly defend and advocate torture and ram torture legislation through the US Congress, it is hypocrisy for the US to condemn others for torture.

Perhaps Americans don’t notice, but the rest of the world does see the double standard applied when Saddam Hussein is put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity, while US, UK, and Israeli government officials commit far greater crimes by illegally invading countries, targeting civilian populations, and torturing detainees.

Considering the enormous bloodshed and destruction of civilian lives and infrastructure in Afghanistan and Iraq by US and UK troops, why do British left-wing academics and human rights activists want to help the neoconservatives in the US and UK spread the war to Iran? Helping to spread war is what the British left is doing when they agitate for the arrest of Khatami while leaving Labour Party PM Tony Blair free to commit more crimes against humanity. Could it be that the two Iranian exiles are acting as neoconservative agents to block any possible rapprochement with Iran? This is not a wild speculation in view of the role Iraqi exiles played in deceiving the the American public and making false accusations against Iraq that Bush used to justify his invasion.

The Iraq and Afghanistan invasions have turned out to be a catastrophe for the US and UK as well as for the Iraqis and Afghans.
Only a totally deranged political leadership would want to spread the catastrophe to Iran.

According to a BBC news report (October 30), British private security firm personnel—mercenaries to some—outnumber British soldiers in Iraq six to one. A British charity group accuses PM Tony Blair of “allowing mercenary armies to operate completely outside the law.”

In Britain it is no longer permissible to hunt foxes, because it is “cruel and inhumane,” but it is perfectly alright for private mercenaries and British soldiers to murder Iraqi and Afghan men, women, and children for the sake of Anglo-American-Israeli hegemony in the Middle East.

Saddam Hussein was overthrown and indicted, and Iraq largely destroyed, in part because Saddam is “an evil man who tortured political opponents.” Evidence of US torture of Iraqis is all over the Internet in vivid photos. According to Amnesty International, “Adequate safeguards against torture and ill-treatment are not in place in Multinational Force detention facilities, and thousands continue to be held without charge or trial.” The president and vice president of the US advocate torture not only of Iraqis but also of everyone declared, correctly or incorrectly, by some US government official to be a “terrorist suspect.”

Why are not Bush, Cheney and Blair on trial? Their crimes dwarf any that could possibly be attributed to Khatami.

The only possible answer is that “might makes right.” Yet, Bush, Cheney and Blair parade around draping themselves in moral justifications for their inhumane deeds and despicable acts.

The fact that Americans tolerate crimes against humanity by their own leaders is evidence that Americans are exceptional only in their hubris.

__Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is author or coauthor of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolutin (Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous scholar journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been awarded the U.S. Treasury’s Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor Robert Mundell. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com __

Lies and Official Lies

Alex Doherty — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 11:55:49 +0000

The BBC reports (Nov. 17) that two former British government employees have been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act.

The Official Secrets Act is useful for protecting the British government from accountability. Anyone who reveals wrongdoing by government officials can be charged under the act.

The two men are charged with leaking a harmless memo, “Iraq in the Medium Term,” that expresses British Foreign Office doubts about US tactics in Iraq. The real crime is not the leak but her Majesty’s government’s continuing support for a policy that the British government knows to be illegal and bulging with war crimes. It is Prime Minister Tony Blair and his ministers who should be facing charges.

As the publication by the London Times (May 1, 2005) of the super secret Downing Street Memo (July 23, 2002) made clear, prior to the US invasion of Iraq the head of British intelligence returned from meetings in Washington to tell the British cabinet that the Bush administration first made the decision to invade Iraq and then manufactured the “intelligence” to justify the decision.

The British government knew in advance that the invasion was wrong. Members of the British cabinet were concerned that British participation in an act of naked aggression would expose British government officials to war crimes charges. Nevertheless, Blair insisted that the UK had to support Bush. Little doubt but Blair was concerned that otherwise his political retirement would not be secured with US corporate directorships.

Consequently, the US and UK governments invaded a country for reasons that were different from the fabricated reasons used to make the case to the public. Thus did the highest officials in the two governments commit a plethora of crimes.

Under the Nuremberg standard, it is a war crime to initiate military aggression.

It is a criminal act both in the US and the UK to commit military forces to action under false pretenses.

Many aspects of the conduct of the war are criminal. Torture, murder of civilians, corruption in contracts. Prosecutors could build a list of charges against President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard Cheney, Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Prime Minister Blair.

In England it is not Blair who is on trial for participating in what he knew was a wrongful act that has resulted in thousands of deaths.
It is not the crimes committed in secret that get punished. The people who are punished are the ones who leak memos that reveal wrongdoing has occurred.

Blair may escape punishment for his treachery to the British and Iraqi people. Bush, however, may not. One of the neocon architects of the illegal invasion, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, has been indicted on a peripheral issue. Another of the neocon architects, Douglas Feith, is being investigated by the inspector general of the Department of Defense at the insistence of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Senate Intelligence Committee. Feith is suspected of overseeing the task of creating the false intelligence.

Bush’s public support has plummeted. A majority of Americans believe Bush lied about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and now they doubt his integrity. Trapped in their lies, Bush and Cheney are lashing out at critics, proving once again the truth of Samuel Johnson’s 18th century observation that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Rep. John Murtha (D, Pa.), a former marine, has had enough of the senseless killing, maiming, and expense of the Iraq war, which he termed “a flawed policy wrapped in illusion.”

Murtha, a strong supporter of the US military, has realized along with General George W. Casey that US occupation, not terrorism, is the driving force behind the Iraq insurgency.

On November 17 Murtha declared: “We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interest of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region.”

A new CNN/USA Today Gallup poll shows that the American public agrees with Murtha. Fifty-two percent of respondents believe all US soldiers should be withdrawn immediately from Iraq or over the next 12 months. Only 38 percent believe the troops should remain in Iraq.

The neocon architects of the war believed that the “cakewalk” invasion of Iraq would flow seamlessly into the overthrow of the Syrian and Iranian governments, making the Middle East safe for whatever policy Israel wished to pursue. Instead, the invasion has poisoned Muslims against America and created chaos and instability that play into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

The Bush administration believed that the euphoria of a “cakewalk” conquest would prevent the nonexistence of weapons of mass destruction from becoming an issue. Success would mask the lies, and the issue of accountability would not arise.

Success, however, was never in the cards. Congress has caught on, and pressure is mounting to bring our troops home. The determination of the Bush administration to discredit all critics resulted in illegal acts and Libby’s indictment. The prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has announced the formation of a new grand jury to continue the investigation of illegal acts by Bush administration high officials.

As events unfold, we must keep in mind that matters do not end with bringing home the troops and punishing the administration officials who blew the cover of a covert US agent. The worst transgression was the Bush administration’s decision to deceive our nation in order to use a war in Iraq to pursue an undeclared agenda in the Middle East. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld committed treason. They still have not told us the real reason they were so determined to invade Iraq that they used falsified intelligence to justify a war of aggression. We must find out their real agenda and hold them fully accountable for their crimes.

If low level British government employees are to be punished for leaking a memo that had no adverse consequences except for the reputation of Blair and his cabinet, the monsters who started a war that has killed and maimed tens of thousands must be held accountable.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com