Bush and Cheney have less than two years to go in their current role and want to go down in the history books as the heroes of the Pax Americana, as the men who managed to conquer the Middle East and its oil, as the men who took full-spectrum dominance seriously, while in their own country booking successes through exorbitant profits for the military-industrial complex and the realization of radical legislation. The prelude was long and the path was full of obstacles, but the goal of a third great war - a war with Iran - is increasingly within sight. Dan Plesch in The Guardian sums it up in one sentence: 'All the signs are that Bush is planning for a neocon-inspired military assault on Iran'.
'Americans don't have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush's "surge" speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East', writes Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Ronald Reagan. 'Commenting about the briefing on MSNBC after Bush's nationwide address, NBC's Washington bureau chief Tim Russert said "there's a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue — in the country and the world — in a very acute way"', writes Robert Parry.
Given the presence of four American submarines off the coast of Iran, Eduard Baltin, former commander of the Russian fleet, reasons that the U.S. is planning to attack Iran. Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, himself a presidential candidate for 2008, says: '"The President is clearly trying to provoke Iran," he said, adding that the Bush administration is "treading on the thinnest ice it has ever been on".' ING Wholesale Banking warns in their report [PDF] Attacking Iran that the financial markets could be in for 'a heavy shock' in the event of a preemptive attack on Iran. The report is practical as well; under the heading 'Top trades in the event of an attack on Iran', advice for buying and selling can be found, such as: 'Buy Oil and Gold, Sell industrial commodities'. Meanwhile the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is letting it be known that he disposes over the same devotion as his adversary Bush: '"Today, with the grace of God, we have gone through the arduous passes and we are ready for anything in this path," state-run television quoted Ahmadinejad as saying Thursday'.
Speculation over the beginning of the attack on Iran
In reference to the American raid on an Iranian consulate in Irbil, Northern Iraq, in which five Iranians were taken into custody, John Pike of Global Security points to the presence of two aircraft carriers in the Gulf (other warships are steaming in that direction) and to the surge-speech by George W. Bush, in which he announced that Patriot missiles would be deployed in member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), like Kuwait and Saudi-Arabia. 'Iran has denounced the Patriot deployment as part of U.S. plan to turn Arab countries into a front line of protection for Israel', writes Associated Press. Bush: 'We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.' Pike speaking to CNN: '[...] It's looks to me like the United States is, at least, raising its capabilities in preparation for possible military confrontation with Iran."' Pike considers it a strong possibility that this confronation will take place this year, and has even published a 'Countdown time line' with potential dates on which an attack is likely. In Pike's opinion, February of 2007 is a genuine possibility for a strike on Iran. February is also the month in which Ahmadinejad will be announcing progress with their nuclear program, and will also mark the end of the sixty-day period given to Iran in UN resolution 1713 [PDF] to bring an end to their nuclear program. On February 21st, the IAEA will deliver a report on Iran, something which Israel and the U.S. will again be able to seize upon when pointing to Iranian negligence.
The editor-in-chief of the Arab Times is expecting an attack before April: 'U.S. might launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, Kuwait-based daily Arab Times released on Sunday said in a report. The report, written by Arab Times' Editor-in-chief Ahmed al-Jarallah citing a reliable source, said that the attack would be launched from the sea, while Patriot missiles would guard all Arab countries in the Gulf.' The Arab Times is basing its opinion on only one source. ING Wholesale Banking writes [PDF] in the preface to their report on Iran: 'We outline a scenario in which Israel attacks 5 or 6 of Iran's nuclear facilities in late February or March 2007, with strikes that may be completed within hours, days or at most weeks.'
What could also hasten an attack on Iran are two divergent realities, namely that the announced Tor-M1 air defense system is now being delivered to Iran, and that Bush's comrade-in-arms Tony Blair will be stepping down this year. In a recent announced that he wants to make more money available for the British army.
Banks putting Iran under pressure
The latest news doesn't portend anything good, but those who read between the lines can see that other preparations are also being made. Comparable to an extent with the No Fly Zone War, which preceded the latest war against Iraq, Iran is being softened up in advance: 'While people are concerned with Iraq and the gathering armada in the Persian Gulf, United States has been quietly carrying out a not so covert economic war against Iran', writes Dr. Abbas Bakhtiar. 'The attack on Iranian economy started in earnest in early 2006. United States began putting considerable pressure on international banks and financial institutions to cut their ties with Iran.
Countries also were pressured to reduce their economic contact with Iran. [...] Governments, companies and financial institutions are under intense pressure to terminate all dealings with Iran. But so far Iran has managed to sustain, albeit with great difficulty, its oil industry and financial institutions functioning.' Little by little banks are severing their ties with Iran: '"The reason: oil transactions are in dollar assets. To the extent that any banks have to convert their assets into dollars, they must use U.S. facilities and can be subject to U.S. sanctions", says Stuart Eizenstat, former American Under Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs to Michael Hirsh, who writes: 'Recently the Iranians have countered, threatening to do business in Euros, but one by one, European banks are falling under U.S. pressure as well. On Wednesday The Wall Street Journal reported that Commerzbank, Germany's second largest, will stop handling dollar transactions for Iran—making it the last European bank to agree to do so.'
Anti-Iranian propaganda
An argument often used against Iran concerns the aggressive pronouncement by its leader Mahmoud Ahmadinjehad that he would like to wipe Israel off the map. Jonathan Steel, columnist for The Guardian, has subjected this statement and the translations thereof to further investigation. He has inquired with the BBC, among others. Steel: 'As a result of my inquiry and the controversy generated, they [the BBC] had gone back to the native Farsi-speakers who had translated the speech from a voice recording made available by Iranian TV on October. Here is what the spokesman told me about the "off the map" section: "The monitor has checked again. It's a difficult expression to translate. They're under time pressure to produce a translation quickly and they were searching for the right phrase. With more time to reflect they would say the translation should be "eliminated from the page of history". [...] So there we have it. Starting with Juan Cole, and going via the New York Times' experts through MEMRI to the BBC's monitors, the consensus is that Ahmadinejad did not talk about any maps. He was, as I insisted in my original piece, offering a vague wish for the future.' Steel makes it clear that Ahmadinejad expressed a wish for a different government in Israel, not the destruction of Israel; 'He was not making a military threat'. The Jewish community in Iran isn't itching to flee either: only 152 of the 25,000 responded to calls from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Then there is also the statement by Ahmadinejad in which he denies the Holocaust, that the Holocaust would be a myth. Kein Krieg! checked into it and it appears that Ahmadinejad is critical of the exploitation of the Holocaust. So the subject of his feelings on this is not the Holocaust itself, but rather what he sees as the exploitation thereof. From his statements it would be more proper to infer that he acknowledges the Holocaust - not that he denies it. This is the complete inverse of his words, which was corrected by Kein Krieg!, but has already done its propagandistic job in the minds of the public at large. And speaking of propaganda: 'The American Jewish Committee took out a full page ad [PDF] in The New York Times showing Iran in the center of concentric circles, including all the Middle East and beyond, asking: "Can anyone within range of Iran's missiles feel safe?"' Ex-Premier and leader of the Likud party Benjamin Netanyahu: "The year is 1938 and Iran is Germany," said Netanyahu, reiterating his message from last month in Los Angeles.' Whereby it was noted: 'Except that 2003 was also 1938, when Natanyahu said the same thing about Iraq. [...] And while he's calling Mahmoud Ahmadinjad Hitler these days, in the past he had bestowed that honor on Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat.'
Cheney is operating on the same wavelength as Netanyahu: '"So the threat that Iran represents is growing," he [Cheney] said, in words reminiscent of how he once built a case against Mr. Hussein', writes The New York Times with subtlety.
Criticism of the neoconservative plans for Iran
Should it come to war, then the advice of Paul Craig Roberts, the former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Ronald Reagan, could end up being heeded. He is pleading for the impeachment of Bush as a way to prevent the war. Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich, a presidential candidate for 2008, is threatening impeachment if Bush declares war on Iran. The criticism by Roberts is in line with that of Republican Rep. Ron Paul, who warns that Bush could order a 'Gulf of Tonkin type situation', i.e. a false-flag operation, as an excuse to attack Iran. The Republican Senator Chuck Hagel: '"I will do everything I can to stop the president's policy as he outlined it (last) Wednesday night"', who together with two Democrats and a Republican has introduced a resolution opposing the plans of President Bush. The White House even dragged Al Qaida into it in order to take the sting out of the criticism. Bush: 'Asked if Congress could stop him from surging 21,500 troops into Iraq, Bush on 60 Minutes brushed aside Congress as irrelevant. "I fully understand [the Congress] could try to stop me from doing it. But I've made my decision. And we're going forward." Asked if he had sole authority "to put the troops in there no matter what the Congress wants to do," Bush replied, "In this situation I do, yeah."'
Republican Rep. Walter Jones is determined to carry through on his resolution H.J. Res 14: 'Our constitution states that--while the Commander in Chief has the power to conduct wars--only Congress has the power to authorize war', to which The Nation adds: 'Such a basic expression of the separation of powers should be obvious. But with the Bush Administration, one never knows.' The Wall Street Journal sees the seething criticism of Bush's plans as well and writes: 'Of more concern to U.S. lawmakers is the potential that these U.S. actions against Iran could escalate. Under one possible scenario, U.S. forces could cross into Iran or Syria in pursuit of suspected insurgents or their allies, or use alleged Iranian activities inside Iraq as a pretext for a wider assault on Iran. The fear is that any such military activities could ignite a wider conflict." The potential for sparking a wider conflict is great," said Trita Parsi, an Iran analyst and president of the National Iranian American Council in Washington. "I think that if we're going for a confrontation with Iran, the pretext will be Iraq."' Nicholas Burns sees it from a different perspective: 'Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said the administration is seeking to counter Iranian provocations across the region as part of a broader strategy. "Iran needs to learn to respect us," he said. "And Iran certainly needs to respect American power in the Middle East."'
War against Iran: Bush and Cheney have nothing to lose.
The decisions that Bush announced in his speech followed the replacement of the generals who were critical of some of the Bush policies, John Abizaid and George Casey, and John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence. This makes it clear that the neoconservative wind, after all the scandals and the dramatic turn of events in the war in Iraq, hasn't died down yet. Mainstream critic Keith Olbermann writes [video]: 'Only this president could look out over a vista of 3,008 dead and 22,834 wounded in Iraq, and finally say, "Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me" - only to follow that by proposing to repeat the identical mistake ... in Iran.' He compares Bush to the drunk who, beaten to the ground, asks who the next one is that wants a beating.
Bush and Cheney are again determined to defy the criticism in order to carry out an almost endless War against Terrorism: '"This is an existential conflict," Cheney said. "It is the kind of conflict that's going to drive our policy and our government for the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. We have to prevail and we have to have the stomach for the fight long term', says Cheney. War is not a means but an end in itself. Insurgents in Iraq aren't the problem, but those who oppose the war certainly are. But those critics are out of the way now: The critical generals have been replaced and the voice of the people along with the the opinions of the soldiers in Iraq are being ignored; discussions with Iran and Syria are being rejected; Patriot missiles are on their way and could intercept an Iranian counterattack following an Israeli and/or American attack; the warships in the Gulf could respond to these attacks by bombing Iraq with full force; the announced troop escalation in Iraq could eliminate Iran's potential trump card - attacks on Americans in and around the Iraqi Green Zone; the Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Olmert (following the debâcle in Lebanon) are doing very poorly in the opinion polls, thus a spectacular attack by Israel, followed by America, could likewise render spectacular results for the status of both heads of state. Bush and Cheney have taken a beating, but they have not been defeated. Moreover, they have nothing to lose.
The Coming War Against Iran - Part 1 - 14
http://www.deepjournal.com/p/7/a/en/407.html Impeachment: The Case in Favor |
| | | Approximately a year ago, I wrote in this magazine that President George W. Bush had committed high crimes and misdemeanors and should be impeached and removed from office. His impeachable offenses include using lies and deceptions to drive the country into war in Iraq, deliberately and repeatedly violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on wiretapping in the United States, and facilitating the mistreatment of US detainees in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act of 1996. Since then, the case against President Bush has, if anything, been strengthened by reports that he personally authorized CIA abuse of detainees. In addition, courts have rejected some of his extreme assertions of executive power. The Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees, and a federal judge ruled that the President could not legally ignore FISA. Even Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's recent announcement that the wiretapping program would from now on operate under FISA court supervision strongly suggests that Bush's prior claims that it could not were untrue. Despite scant attention from the mainstream media, since last year impeachment has won a wide audience. Amid a flurry of blogs, books and articles, a national grassroots movement has sprung up. In early December seventy-five pro-impeachment rallies were held around the country and pro-impeachment efforts are planned for Congressional districts across America. A Newsweek poll, conducted just before election day, showed 51 percent of Americans believed that impeachment of President Bush should be either a high or lower priority; 44 percent opposed it entirely. (Compare these results with the 63 percent of the public who in the fall of 1998 opposed President Clinton's impeachment.) Most Americans understand the gravity of President Bush's constitutional misconduct. Public anger at Bush has been mounting. On November 7 voters swept away Republican control of the House and Senate. The President's poll numbers continue to drop. These facts should signal a propitious moment for impeachment proceedings to start. Yet House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment "off the table." (Impeachment proceedings must commence in the House of Representatives.) Her position doesn't mean impeachment is dead; it simply means a different route to it has to be pursued. Congressional investigations must start, and public pressure must build to make the House act. This is no different from what took place during Watergate. In 1973 impeachment was not "on the table" for many months while President Nixon's cover-up unraveled, even though Democrats controlled the House and Senate. But when Nixon fired the special prosecutor to avoid making his White House tapes public, the American people were outraged and put impeachment on the table, demanding that Congress act. That can happen again. Congressional and other investigations that previously found serious misconduct in the Nixon White House made the public's angry reaction to the firing of the special prosecutor--and the House response with impeachment proceedings--virtually inevitable. Early in 1973, once it appeared that the cover-up might involve the White House, the Senate created a select committee to investigate. The committee held hearings and uncovered critical evidence, including the existence of a White House taping system that could resolve the issue of presidential complicity. The Senate also forced the Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Watergate. Other committees looked into related matters. None of the investigations were prompted by the idea of impeachment. Still, they laid the groundwork for it--and the evidence they turned up was used by the House impeachment panel to prepare articles of impeachment against Nixon. The same approach can govern now. Senate and House committees must commence serious investigations that could uncover more evidence to support impeachment. The investigations should ascertain the full extent of the President's deceptions, exaggerations and lies that drove us into the Iraq War. (They can simply in effect resurrect Republican Senator Howard Baker's famous questions about Richard Nixon: "What did the President know and when did he know it?") Congress should also explore the wiretapping that has violated the FISA law, the President's role in mistreatment of detainees and his gross indifference to the catastrophe facing the residents of New Orleans from Katrina. Investigations should also be conducted into Vice President Cheney's meetings with oil company executives at the outset of the Administration. If divvying up oil contracts in Iraq were discussed, as some suggest, this would help prove that the Iraq War had been contemplated well before 9/11, and that a key motivation was oil. Inquiries into Halliburton's multibillion-dollar no-bid contracts should also be conducted, particularly given Cheney's ties to the company. White House documents about Katrina that have not already been turned over to Congress should be sought to document further the President's failure to discharge his constitutional duty to help the people of New Orleans. Our country's Founders provided the power of impeachment to prevent the subversion of the Constitution. President Bush has subverted and defied the Constitution in many ways. His defiance and his subversion continue. Failure to impeach Bush would condone his actions. It would allow him to assume he can simply continue to violate the laws on wiretapping and torture and violate other laws as well without fear of punishment. He could keep the Iraq War going or expand it even further than he just has on the basis of more lies, deceptions and exaggerations. Remember, as recently as October 26, Bush said, "Absolutely, we are winning" the war in Iraq--a blatant falsehood. Worse still, if Congress fails to act, Bush might be emboldened to believe he may start another war, perhaps against Iran, again on the basis of lies, deceptions and exaggerations. There is no remedy short of impeachment to protect us from this President, whose ability to cause damage in the next two years is enormous. If we do not act against Bush, we send a terrible message of impunity to him and to future Presidents and mark a clear path to despotism and tyranny. Succeeding generations of Americans will never forgive us for lacking the nerve to protect our democracy. Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman is the author of The Impeachment of George W. Bush. George W. Bush must be impeached along with Puppetmeister' Dick Cheney....but, first: IMPEACH ALBERTO GONZALES!  Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the nation's top law enforcement official, has authorized war crimes, dismissed the Geneva Conventions, redefined torture to allow most types of torture, helped establish military commissions that deny defendants the right to a fair trial, claimed the U.S. Constitution does not provide the right to habeas corpus, and defended violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
This week, leading bloggers inspired by John Dean proposed impeaching Gonzales as the first step towards impeaching Bush and Cheney. Urge your Representatives to Impeach Alberto Gonzales:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/94 Time to clean house...time to take the garbage out! Edging Impeachment Back Onto the Table |
| | | The news from former vice presidential chief of staff "Scooter" Libby's trial on charges of obstructing a federal investigation -- particularly the revelation that Vice President Dick Cheney wrote a memo that effectively confirms his intimate involvement in strategizing about how to counter the inquiry into the Bush administration's politically-motivated outing of CIA operative Valarie Plame -- should slowly but surely edge the prospect of impeachment back onto the table from which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi removed it. Cheney is expected to testify in the Libby trial and, if a federal jury rejects his testimony as less than credible, that would seem to create an appropriate opening for members of the House who take seriously their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution to entertain a discussion of impeaching the vice president. Intriguingly, Cheney almost found himself in the middle of the discussion this week. Prior to CNN personality Wolf Blitzer's testy-if-not-particularly substantive interview with the vice president on Wednesday, the network's resident rabble rouser, commentator Jack Cafferty, presented a reasonably favorable feature on a move by New Mexico state Senators Jerry Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, and John Grubesic, D-Santa Fe, to get that state's legislature to petition Congress to impeach both Cheney and Bush. The New Mexico impeachment initiative, one of several currently moving forward in state legislatures around the country, is designed to force members of Congress to take seriously the increasingly-popular demand that the president and vice president be held to account for misleading Congress over the Iraq war, supporting torture, engaging in illegal spying on U.S. citizens and using their offices to punish critics. "I am an American citizen that believes that the Constitution is a sacred document and that the Bush administration clearly does not share this sentiment," explains Grubesic, while Ortiz y Pino says, "We're simply doing what all elected officials should be doing. That is, listening to the voice of the people and trying to carry it out as best we can." The New Mexico legislators have taken their cue from Thomas Jefferson, who in a manual of congressional procedures written more than two centuries ago affirmed that state legislatures could petition the House to impeach federal officials. The third president explained in Section 603 of his Manual on Parliamentary Practice and Rules of the House of Representatives, a volume that is still referred to by House leaders for precedents and guidance, that: "there are various methods of setting an impeachment in motion": 1) By charges made on the floor by a member of the House; 2) By charges preferred by a memorial filed by a House member; 3) By charges contained in a Resolution introduced by a House member; 4) By a message from the President; 5) By charges transmitted by a State legislature, or a grand jury; 5) By facts developed and reported by an investigating committee of the House." Most of the media and the political class has been inclined to neglect -- or in some cases ridicule -- efforts by state legislators to move the impeachment process along. But U.S. Rep. Tom Udall, a Democrat who represents much of New Mexico, expressed respect for the initiative. "These legislators speak for many of my constituents," explains Udall, who says he plans to talk with supporters of the impeachment resolution and closely monitor its progress. Cafferty was similarly respectful. "[Although] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said impeachment is quote, 'off the table' not everybody is so sure about that," explained Cafferty. "Two New Mexico state senators have introduced a resolution calling on Congress to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. The measure accuses Mr. Bush and Cheney of misleading Congress about the war in Iraq, torturing prisoners and violating Americans' civil liberties through the domestic spy program. One of the sponsors told a crowd of supporters 'We created a ripple. Your voice is going to turn it into a tidal wave hopefully.' Well the way it works is that a state of course, cannot mandate impeachment of a president but the impeachment charges can be forwarded to the House of Representatives. The newspaper in Santa Fe, 'The New Mexican' reports the measure already is running into trouble even though Democrats control both chambers of the state legislature, and that's because no Republicans support it. Senate leaders have assigned it to three different committee hearings, meaning that there are more chances to kill the measure before it ever makes it to a vote. But the fact that the issue of impeaching a sitting president is being discussed seriously in a state legislature like New Mexico's speaks volumes." Cafferty deserves a lot of credit for breaking the silence on impeachment. Unfortunately, Blitzer failed to take the next step. How fascinating it would have been if, finally, a broadcast interviewer had asked Cheney: "Why do you think so many Americans believe you should be impeached?" It's likely that Cheney would have dismissed that particular question. But would it not have been illuminating to watch his reaction if Blitzer had followed up with another query: "Do you think it might have something to do with the mounting evidence that you were involved in a conspiracy to thwart a federal investigation into efforts by your office to punish a critic of the administration -- the sort of action that, if I'm not mistaken, formed the basis for one of the articles of impeachment against your old boss Richard Nixon?" John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent, has covered progressive politics and activism in the United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. NEW MEXICO CAN HELP IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY A state legislature can compel the U.S. House to begin impeachment proceedings with the help of just one Representative:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/resolutions New Mexico State Senators Gerald Ortiz y Pino and John Grubesic will introduce a resolution to do just that on January 23rd, the same day Bush delivers the "State of the Union." To support and stay informed about this and similar efforts around the country, sign this petition:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/petition Please thank: Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino: jortizyp@aol.com
Sen. John Grubesic, Rules Committee Vice Chair: john.grubesic@nmlegis.gov Please ask these Rules Committee Members to cosponsor: Sen. Linda Lopez, Rules Committee Chair: linda.lopez@nmlegis.gov
Sen. Cisco McSorley: cisco.mcsorley@nmlegis.gov
Sen. Dede Feldman: dede.feldman@nmlegis.gov Send them a message something like this (change and expand as you like):
Please cosponsor, along with Senators Ortiz y Pino and Grubesic, the resolution to petition the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. If we go into the next presidency having established that a president can lie us into war, spy on us in violation of the law, detain without charge, and torture, we will be throwing away the democracy we've struggled to keep and expand for over 200 years. We all have a solemn duty to work for the impeachment of men who have made our executive branch of government into a monarchy. You are in a position to play a key role in making this happen. Please do the right thing. Make the choice you would want your great-grandchildren to be proud of. More information: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/nm __________________ YouTube Impeachment Campaign Get a video camera or a cell phone that records and make your own, personal appeal to YOUR Representative for Impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Please title it like this so that it gets the most play:
End War - Impeach Bush & Cheney 4 Peace, (your name and state postal code here)
Example: End War - Impeach Bush & Cheney 4 Peace, Mikael in MN YouTube allows you to watch, share, and post videos to your site. You don't need a YouTube account (called a "channel") to view videos, but you do need one to post your own videos. To set up your own video "channel" visit http://www.youtube.com/signup To watch videos posted by AfterDowningStreet, visit: http://www.youtube.com/afterdowningstreet To watch videos posted by others or to post your own, go to the AfterDowningStreet YouTube group: http://www.youtube.com/group/afterdowningstreet To find videos not posted to group, search for the tags: impeach, impeachment March and Lobby in Washington on January 27th, 28th, and 29th 
Come to Washington, D.C., on January 27. Join in the march for peace being organized by United for Peace and Justice , and impeachment events on January 28th being planned by Progressive Democrats of America . Make appointments now to meet with your Congress Member on January 29th to demand impeachment and peace. Get organized with others in your Congressional District . TIP: Buy a dozen or more Impeachment Shirts , bring them to D.C., sell them at a profit, and pay for your trip. _________ Sign Up for Lobby Day Now Register now for the UFPJ Congressional Advocacy Day (lobby day) January 29, 2007 March to the Capitol on J27 -- march into your Rep. and Senators' offices on J29!
Register Here:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/modinput4.php?modin=121 Plan to spend three days in D.C. On Saturday, march. On Sunday, take part in workshops and training sessions on peace and impeachment. Meet with fellow activists from your state and congressional district and prepare for Monday. On Monday, lobby your Congress Member and Senators for two things:
1. No more funding for this war.
2. Investigations of the justification for and conduct of this war. |
|
|
recommend this
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 16
I ask Congress to impeach Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for the following reasons:
COUNT I: Application of Geneva Conventions; Definition of Torture
On 1/25/02, Gonzales wrote a memo to President Bush authorizing the commission of war crimes by claiming the war against terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions."
On 8/1/02, Gonzales commissioned a memo to President Bush which defined "torture" only as an interrogation that causes "injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions." This definition is contrary to The War Crimes Act and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Unusual or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, a treaty ratified by the United States. Although this memo was retracted on 12/30/04, it remained in effect for over two years and authorized an unknown number of acts of torture.
Gonzales knew or should have known that, pursuant to memoranda written by, commissioned or concurred in by him, prisoners in United States custody would be subjected to willful killing, torture or inhuman treatment; and great suffering or serious injury to body or health, in violation of The War Crimes Act.
COUNT II: Military Commissions
Between 9/11/01 and 11/13/01, Gonzales helped draft the Military Order establishing the Military Commissions, signed by President Bush on 11/13/01. This order mandated conduct by members of United States military forces which constitute war crimes under The War Crimes Act.
Gonzales knew or should have known that the Military Commissions, in whose creation he participated, would deprive prisoners in United States custody who will be tried before them, of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the Third Geneva Convention and Article 3 common to the Geneva Conventions.
On 1/18/07 Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the U.S. Constitution does not provide the right to habeas corpus, but rather only bars the government from taking that right away (except in the case of rebellion or invasion). This logic would overturn many of the rights that U.S. law has based on the Constitution for over two centuries, as well as overturning rights positively expressed in the Sixth Amendment.
COUNT III: Illegal Domestic Surveillance
Since the inception (date unknown) of the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretap program, Gonzales has defined, condoned, concealed and defended the administration's continued violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution.
On 2/6/06, Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force enacted by Congress on 9/18/01 authorized warrantless domestic surveillance. However, the secret programs may have been launched earlier, the AUMF did not grant the President the right to violate FISA and the Fourth Amendment, and Congress has since amended FISA four times without granting the President those rights. On 1/17/07, Gonzales informed Congress the illegal wiretapping was approved by an unnamed Judge of the FISA Court without providing any evidence that illegal acts had actually ended.
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/94
Senator Pat Leahy led the first real oversight hearings with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who did his best to dodge and weave. Finally Leahy let Gonzales have it, blasting him over the treatment of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was detained and sent to Syria, where he was regularly tortured for almost a year before being released uncharged.
Pat Leahy lays it on gnome Gonzales:
view VIDEO: http://www.democrats.com/gonzales
Urge your Representatives to Impeach Alberto Gonzales:
http://www.democrats.com/peoplesemailnetwork/94
Also the link above that you just have to click on...under:
NEW MEXICO CAN HELP IMPEACH BUSH AND CHENEY
A state legislature can compel the U.S. House to begin impeachment proceedings with the help of just one Representative:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/resolutions
And,
Please ask these Rules Committee Members to cosponsor:
Sen. Linda Lopez, Rules Committee Chair: linda.lopez@nmlegis.gov
Sen. Cisco McSorley: cisco.mcsorley@nmlegis.gov
Sen. Dede Feldman: dede.feldman@nmlegis.gov
(The click on links are above in the article.)
Sheehan, who camped outside Bush's Texas ranch in 2005 after her soldier son was killed in Iraq, will join Newfane resident Dan DeWalt on the tour starting March 2. DeWalt kicked off a movement last year in Vermont to impeach Bush.
Between 30 to 50 towns are expected to have impeachment resolutions on their town-meeting agendas this year and about 50 more could consider the question under the "other business" portion of the meeting, according to DeWalt, who said the movement has taken on a life of its own.
"When we voted to impeach Bush in Newfane last year we inspired a lot of people in Vermont," said DeWalt, referring to the March 2006 town meeting season during which more than a half dozen towns in the state passed the measure. "But this has now become a true grassroots movement in the state."
The tour, which may also feature John Nichols, author of "The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism," will stop in Montpelier, Middlebury, Burlington, Hardwick, St. Johnsbury, Rutland, Springfield, Manchester, Brattleboro and possibly Bradford or White River Junction.
Locations and times are still being decided, but the tour is meant to generate support for the impeachment efforts on the town meeting agendas and to inspire other residents to bring the issue up at their meetings.
"We probably won't even know for a few days just how many towns voted on it," DeWalt said.
Towns that voted for impeachment last year will probably have resolutions calling for the federal government to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq immediately and "take good care of them when they get here," DeWalt added.
Grassroots impeachment efforts in states like Vermont and New Mexico, where the state Legislature is poised to vote on recommending impeachment to the U.S. Congress, will push the issue into the mainstream, said David Lindorff, the co-author of "The Case for Impeachment."
Lindorff, a journalist who believes that Bush and vice president Dick Cheney have committed impeachable offenses, will travel to Windham County on Feb. 3 for book signings in Brattleboro and Bellows Falls.
"Towns sometimes tend to save the big stuff for Washington," he said. "But we have the right to speak our minds on what's happening at every level."
Sheehan was scheduled to appear last summer at a large impeachment event in Brattleboro, but canceled at the last minute to travel to Jordan to meet with peace activists from Iraq, DeWalt said. He said she is dedicated to coming to Vermont now.
DeWalt first met Sheehan last year through filmmaker Michael Moore's Web site, which carries columns by the two activists. DeWalt said he e-mailed her last year about helping the Vermont effort; this year, she called him.
"Impeachment is the quickest way to end the war," DeWalt said.
Rep. David Zuckerman, P-Burlington, is sponsoring an impeachment resolution in the Vermont House, according to DeWalt. Zuckerman could not be reached for comment Thursday, but DeWalt said the bill is being reviewed by the Legislative Council.
Lindorff will be signing copies of his book Feb. 3 at the Common Ground Restaurant in Brattleboro at 1 p.m. and Village Square Books in Bellows Falls at 3:30 p.m. Times and locations for the 10-town impeachment tour will be posted on:
www.vtimpeach.com.
http://www.timesargus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070126/NEWS01/701260380/1002/NEWS01
On January 18 a panel of retired generals testifying on Capitol Hill slammed Bush's surge plan as "a fool's errand." Even the easily bamboozled American public knows the plan will not work. Newsweek's latest poll released January 20 shows that only 23% of the public support sending more troops to Iraq and that twice as many Americans trust the Democrats in Congress than trust Bush.
A majority of Americans (54%) believe Bush to be neither honest nor ethical, and 57% believe that Bush lacks "strong leadership qualities."
Nevertheless, Bush defended his surge plan, telling a group of TV stations last week, "I believe it will work."
Bush is correct that it will work – indeed, the surge is working. We have to be clear about how the plan works. It does not mean that 21,500 more US troops will bring order and stability to Iraq. The surge is working, because it is deflecting attention from the Bush Regime's real game plan.
The real game plan is to orchestrate a war with Iran and to initiate wider conflict in the Middle East before public and military pressure forces the Bush Regime to withdraw US troops from Iraq.
(excerpt) from "Only Impeachment Can Prevent More War" by Paul Craig Roberts
There is a populist movement that is gaining momentum across the nation. We the people are the demanding that complacent politicians, like Nancy Pelosi, get on with the business of holding these criminals accountable for their' numerous crimes during the tenure in office. Nancy may be easily bought off, but, not the American people. It's time to force the issue.
When impeachment hearings began for President Richard Nixon, a scant one in four Americans thought he should be impeached. During the Clinton impeachment farce, support for the president"s removal from office never topped 36 percent. Yet a Newsweek poll taken last fall found that a remarkable 51 percent of the American public felt this president should face impeachment (including 29 percent of Republicans!), and than only 44 percent opposed impeachment.
Many well-intentioned and patriotic Americans, including progressives and liberal Democrats, have expressed opposition to the idea of impeaching President Bush, arguing that it is a diversion from more important issues like ending the war in Iraq, or taking effective action on climate change.
Their concern is understandable, as these are indeed important issues, but they are wrong. Fortunately, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, who knows this, is beginning the impeachment process next week by calling for a hearing to examine one of the president's crimes: abuse of power. Fortunately too, several state legislatures in places as disparate as New Mexico, Vermont and Washington, are considering passing resolutions calling on the House to initiate impeachment hearings.
There are important reasons why this president must be impeached and they include those very urgent issues that people are afraid will be shunted aside by an impeachment battle.
The key reason this president must be impeached is that his offenses against the Constitution and the nation are so serious that the very survival of Constitutional government and the separation of powers on which it is based are at risk.
Let¹s take the war in Iraq. The president clearly lied and tricked both the Congress and the American people into allowing him to invade that country. He and Vice President Dick Cheney carefully cherry-picked half-truths and known falsehoods to lay out as ³evidence² that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons and that he was in league with Osama bin Laden. His White House orchestrated a campaign to damage the reputation of an honest critic, ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had discovered that a key piece of that evidence --some alleged documents from the country of Niger--had been forged, and even outed Wilson's CIA-agent wife. These lies have led directly to the pointless deaths of nearly 3100 American men and women in uniform and to the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Bush also illegally pulled American troops and equipment out of Afghanistan, right at the height of a Congressionally authorized campaign to capture or kill bin Laden and his Al Qaeda organization (fatally crippling that effort), and sent them to the border of Iraq in preparation for his war there.
If this president is allowed to do such things, unchallenged and unpunished, we can expect subsequent presidents to do so in the future. Indeed, many experts and members of Congress believe that Bush is getting close to repeating this criminal behavior himself, this time with an unprovoked attack on Iran. Clearly, in order to stop such abuse of presidential authority and such a second national and international disaster, Congress will have to impeach the president.
Then there's the so-called signing statements. These are the letters--not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution--which Bush and his crony attorneys in the White House and Justice Department claim allow him to invalidate all or part of any bill passed by the Congress. Bush has used signing statements to do this over 1200 time during his presidency, for everything from refusing to accept a Congressional ban on torture to giving himself the power, in clear violation of federal law, to monitor first- class mail.
Once again, if this president is not impeached for this outrage assertion of presidential absolute power, all future presidents will feel free to do the same thing, simply ignoring acts of Congress. The Constitution is crystal clear on this matter: Article I says All legislative powers granted herein shall be vested in Congress of the United States," and Article II says the president shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Note that the Constitution does not say that some legislative powers or most legislative powers are vested in the Congress. It says all. Nor does it say that the president shall execute some of the laws. For Congress to let this blatant abuse of power to go unpunished would be to leave future Congresses as little more than vestigial debating societies.
As for the warrantless spying which the president has authorized the National Security Agency to engage in since the fall of 2001, in blatant violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, here is a case of the president unapologetically violating federal law and committing a felony. He is, here, simply daring the Congress to confront him. So far, they have been too cowardly to stand up to the challenge. And yet, if Bush is allowed to get away with this crime, all future presidents will argue that they too are above the law, and that they may pick and choose what laws they will honor and what laws they will break. No Constitutional system, no democratic system, can long endure under such circumstances.
The same can be said for the president's willful violation of the Geneva Conventions barring torture. It is clear that the president both authorized torture, as defined under the Conventions, and failed to take action to prevent even the most heinous of torture acts, which reached the point of lethality, when they were brought to his attention. These, it must be pointed out, are not merely crimes which violate international law. The US is a signatory (and author) of the Geneva Conventions, and as these have been adopted by the Senate, under the Constitution they have full force of law within the U.S. Furthermore, the Republican Congress in 1996 specifically incorporated the Geneva Code into the U.S. Criminal Code, making it all the more clear that the president's actions inaction prosecuted, if the law is to have any meaning, and that requires, as a first step, impeachment of the president.
There are many other reasons that the president should be impeached--his criminal negligence in sending American troops into battle with inadequate armor, his criminal negligence in failing to plan for the occupation of Iraq, his extreme criminal negligence in failing to act to rescue the trapped and drowning citizens of New Orleans following the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, his refusal to provide evidence requested by the 9-11 Commission (and his administration's lies to that commission), the massive and unchecked corruption in Iraq which has so extravagantly enriched administration campaign contributors, White House corruption linked to the Abramoff and other scandals, illegal use of taxpayer funds for a program of administration propaganda using government agencies, and perhaps an orchestrated campaign of stealing elections, etc. These should all be investigated. Some are easier to document than others, but all deserve a hearing.
Meanwhile, however, it is essential that the key crimes be introduced as bills of impeachment in the House as quickly as possible, so that hearings can begin.
Critics of impeachment have argued that it is pointless to call for impeachment since removal from office would require a vote by two-thirds of the Senate, which is 49 percent Republican. That ignores the impact of truth and fact on a group of politicians who will be looking at 2008 very anxiously. When impeachment hearings began for President Richard Nixon, a scant one in four Americans thought he should be impeached. During the Clinton impeachment farce, support for the president's removal from office never topped 36 percent. Yet a Newsweek poll taken last fall found that a remarkable 51 percent of the American public felt this president should face impeachment (including 29 percent of Republicans!), and than only 44 percent opposed impeachment.
The likelihood is that, once impeachment hearings began, they would have the same impact on Republicans this time around as they had on Republicans in Congress during the Nixon impeachment. That is, as the depth of administration perfidy and criminality was exposed on live television, through the testimony of White House staff talking under oath, honest Republicans facing re-election soon would feel compelled to cut their ties and support for Bush and his cronies. Who knows? Some might even support impeachment for reasons of principle and patriotism as the facts came out.
The real reason Bush must be impeached, though, is that if he is not impeached, this usurper will simply ignore any bills passed by Congress, will act despite any resolutions passed by Congress, and will break any law that he thinks gets in his way. Furthermore, future presidents, Democrat and Republican, will use Bush as a precedent to ignore Congress and break laws themselves.
The real question for impeachment skeptics then, is: "What are you waiting for?"
DAVE LINDORFF is co-author, with Barbara Olshansky, of "The Case for Impeachment: : The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office,"(St. Martin's Press, 2006).
"Long before September 11, before the first inspections in Iraq had started, a small group of influential officials and experts in Washington were calling for regime change in Iraq. Some never wanted to end the 1991 war…
We have assembled on our web site links to the key documents produced since 1992 by this group, usually known as neo-conservatives, and analysis of their efforts. They offer a textbook case of how a small, organized group can determine policy in a large nation, even when the majority of officials and experts originally scorned their views."
There's a documentary entitled, "Hijacking Catastrophe" that points out that the "9/11 terror attacks continue to send shock waves through the American political system. Continuing fears about American vulnerability alternate with images of American military prowess and patriotic bravado in a transformed media landscape charged with emotion and starved for information. The result is that we have had little detailed debate about the radical turn US policy has taken since 9/11.
Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire examines how a radical fringe of the Republican Party has used the trauma of the 9/11 terror attacks to advance a pre-existing agenda to radically transform American foreign policy while rolling back civil liberties and social programs at home.
The documentary places the Bush Administration's false justifications for war in Iraq within the larger context of a two-decade struggle by neoconservatives to dramatically increase military spending in the wake of the Cold War, and to expand American power globally by means of military force.
At the same time, the documentary argues that the Bush Administration has sold this radical and controversial plan for aggressive American military intervention by deliberately manipulating intelligence, political imagery, and the fears of the American people after 9/11.
Narrated by Julian Bond, Hijacking Catastrophe features interviews with more than twenty prominent political observers, including Pentagon whistleblower Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed first-hand how the Bush Administration set up a sophisticated propaganda operation to link the anxieties generated by 9/11 to a pre-existing foreign policy agenda that included a preemptive war on Iraq.
Joining Kwiatkowski in a wide-ranging, accessible, and ultimately empowering analysis of American foreign policy, media manipulation, and their global and domestic implications, are former Chief UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Jody Williams, author Norman Mailer, MIT professor Noam Chomsky, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, defense policy analyst William Hartung, author Chalmers Johnson, and Army Special Forces Master Sergeant Stan Goff (Ret.).
At its core, the film places the deceptions of the Bush Administration within the larger frame of questions seldom posed in the mainstream: What, exactly, is the agenda that drove the administration's pre-war deceptions? How is 9/11 being used to sell this agenda? And what are the stakes for America, Americans, and the world if this agenda succeeds in being fully implemented during a second Bush term?"
"Neocons" believe that the United States should not be ashamed to use its unrivaled power – forcefully if necessary – to promote its values around the world. Some even speak of the need to cultivate a US empire. Neoconservatives believe modern threats facing the US can no longer be reliably contained and therefore must be prevented, sometimes through preemptive military action.
Most neocons believe that the US has allowed dangers to gather by not spending enough on defense and not confronting threats aggressively enough. One such threat, they contend, was Saddam Hussein and his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Since the 1991 Gulf War, neocons relentlessly advocated Mr. Hussein's ouster.
Most neocons share unwavering support for Israel, which they see as crucial to US military sufficiency in a volatile region. They also see Israel as a key outpost of democracy in a region ruled by despots. Believing that authoritarianism and theocracy have allowed anti-Americanism to flourish in the Middle East, neocons advocate the democratic transformation of the region, starting with Iraq. They also believe the US is unnecessarily hampered by multilateral institutions, which they do not trust to effectively neutralize threats to global security.
What are the roots of neoconservative beliefs?
The original neocons were a small group of mostly Jewish liberal intellectuals who, in the 1960s and 70s, grew disenchanted with what they saw as the American left's social excesses and reluctance to spend adequately on defense. Many of these neocons worked in the 1970s for Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a staunch anti-communist. By the 1980s, most neocons had become Republicans, finding in President Ronald Reagan an avenue for their aggressive approach of confronting the Soviet Union with bold rhetoric and steep hikes in military spending. After the Soviet Union's fall, the neocons decried what they saw as American complacency. In the 1990s, they warned of the dangers of reducing both America's defense spending and its role in the world.
Unlike their predecessors, most younger neocons never experienced being left of center. They've always been "Reagan" Republicans.
What is the difference between a neoconservative and a conservative?
Liberals first applied the "neo" prefix to their comrades who broke ranks to become more conservative in the 1960s and 70s. The defectors remained more liberal on some domestic policy issues. But foreign policy stands have always defined neoconservatism. Where other conservatives favored détente and containment of the Soviet Union, neocons pushed direct confrontation, which became their raison d'etre during the 1970s and 80s.
Today, both conservatives and neocons favor a robust US military. But most conservatives express greater reservations about military intervention and so-called nation building. Neocons share no such reluctance. The post 9/11-campaigns against regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate that the neocons are not afraid to force regime change and reshape hostile states in the American image. Neocons believe the US must do to whatever it takes to end state-supported terrorism. For most, this means an aggressive push for democracy in the Middle East. Even after 9/11, many other conservatives, particularly in the isolationist wing, view this as an overzealous dream with nightmarish consequences.
How have neoconservatives influenced US foreign policy?
Finding a kindred spirit in President Reagan, neocons greatly influenced US foreign policy in the 1980s.
But in the 1990s, neocon cries failed to spur much action. Outside of Reaganite think tanks and Israel's right-wing Likud Party, their calls for regime change in Iraq were deemed provocative and extremist by the political mainstream. With a few notable exceptions, such as President Bill Clinton's decision to launch isolated strikes at suspected terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, their talk of preemptive military action was largely dismissed as overkill.
Despite being muted by a president who called for restraint and humility in foreign affairs, neocons used the 1990s to hone their message and craft their blueprint for American power. Their forward thinking and long-time ties to Republican circles helped many neocons win key posts in the Bush administration.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 moved much of the Bush administration closer than ever to neoconservative foreign policy. Only days after 9/11, one of the top neoconservative think tanks in Washington, the Project for a New American Century, wrote an open letter to President Bush calling for regime change in Iraq. Before long, Bush, who campaigned in 2000 against nation building and excessive military intervention overseas, also began calling for regime change in Iraq. In a highly significant nod to neocon influence, Bush chose the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as the venue for a key February 2003 speech in which he declared that a US victory in Iraq "could begin a new stage for Middle Eastern peace." AEI – the de facto headquarters for neconservative policy – had been calling for democratization of the Arab world for more than a decade."
http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html
The neocons and their allies in the Pentagon and vice president's office set the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. As they set their sights on the next target of preventive war and regime change, what the "scholars" at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Iran Policy Committee, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, and other neocon groups are saying about Iran merits attention.
In both the House and the Senate, the large majority of policymakers on both sides of the aisle back the Iran Freedom and Democracy Act, whose unstated but implicit objective is U.S.-guided regime change in Iran. Nothing wrong with freedom and democracy—Iranians themselves clearly want more of both—but lawmakers are once again setting the stage for war, just as they did in the late 1990s when they passed similar neocon-inspired bills calling for the liberation of Iran.
Today, the gathering War Party on Iran is discussing a two-pronged strategy—having the United States and Israel begin preparations for military strikes, while at the same time immediately putting into motion a destabilization strategy involving U.S. support for Iranian dissidents.
Back in the 1980s, the neoconservatives who helped guide the rollback policies of the Reagan presidency didn't use the term "regime change." But the policies they helped put in place—democratization aid to U.S. allies and covert support for "freedom fighters" in Central America, Afghanistan, and Angola—are playing out again in the war on terror. The neocons and liberal hawks are again playing what proved to be a successful strategy.
More alarming still is the easy talk circulating in Washington of missile strikes, bombing, and an expanded U.S. military presence in the Middle East.
Not Just Containment, but "Extended Commitment"
While some neocons are focusing on increasing U.S. democratization aid to media and information projects, others such as Thomas Donnelly, Reuel Gerecht, and Raymond Tanter are talking about military strategies that could advance the war on terrorism in the Middle East.
AEI's Tom Donnelly explicitly links Iran policy to the overall objective of transforming and controlling the Middle East through new military operations, including an expanded U.S. troop presence throughout the region. Donnelly, former top military analyst for the moribund Project for the New American Century (PNAC), was the lead author of Rebuilding America's Defenses, PNAC's 2000 policy blueprint for military transformation.
In an October 2005 essay in the book Getting Ready for a Nuclear-Ready Iran, Donnelly contends that a "nuclear Iran" represents a security threat—not so much because Tehran would use the weapons or pass them on to terrorists, but rather because of "the constraining effect it threatens to impose upon U.S. strategy for the greater Middle East." The greatest danger, according to Donnelly, is that the "realists" will "pursue a 'balance of power' approach with a nuclear Iran, undercutting the Bush 'liberation strategy'."
The scope of U.S. national security strategy extends beyond the "war against radical Islamist networks" to an "extended commitment to reshape the region's political order in a liberal and democratic fashion," says Donnelly. Consequently, "American security strategy requires more than containment or even a 'rollback' of enemies in the greater Middle East; it demands that we establish something more lasting in partnership with local allies. The job for our forces is to create the opportunity for these more representative, liberal, and ultimately stable governments to take root."
In Iraq, this grand strategy means occupying Iraq beyond the time when there is a "return of sovereignty, democratic elections, and a modicum of security." Even if the United States successfully achieves these goals, "it will remain obligated to help a free Iraq defend itself in a hostile region." He warns that U.S. withdrawal is not possible: "There is a substantial 'defer forward' mission that looms after the 'win decisively' is done. And what is true in Iraq is also true on a smaller scale in Afghanistan."
Nuclear Earth Penetrators and MEK Empowerment
Raymond Tanter of the Iran Policy Committee says that one option in Iran would be for the U.S. military to use a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, which the Pentagon still seems interested in developing. The problem that Tanter sees with using these "bunker-busting" bombs to take out underground Iranian nuclear development facilities is not radiation or setting off a world war, but that the United States would come under international criticism for violating the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states. Tanter points out that "such a prohibition might not apply as much to Israel," which is not an NPT signatory. At a press conference in late 2005, Tanter noted, "The United States has sold Israel bunker-busting bombs, which keeps the military option on the table."
Tanter's main mission at the Iran Policy Committee is to have the U.S. government work more closely with the Mujahedin e-Khalq (MEK), which has more than 3,500 militants based in Iraq. "Empowerment requires working with Iranian opposition groups in general and with the main opposition in particular," advises Tanter. He says the MEK and its political front, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, "are not only the best source for intelligence on Iran's potential violations of the nonproliferation regime. The NCRI and MEK are also possible allies of the West in bringing about regime change in Tehran."
Seeing the possibility that a better-financed and -equipped MEK could destabilize the government, Tanter and the Iran Policy Committee have recommended that the State Department remove the cult-like MEK from its list of terrorist organizations and that the U.S. government begin to covertly fund MEK "freedom fighters."
To Bomb, or Not to Bomb
Neoconservative warmongering and grand delusions fill the pages of the Weekly Standard, the flagship magazine established in 1996 by William Kristol, who the next year founded PNAC. In the April 24 issue, Reuel Gerecht discussed military options in the cover story, "To Bomb, or Not to Bomb."
Gerecht, an AEI resident fellow who once directed PNAC's Middle East Initiative, warned: "Those who are unwilling to accommodate [Iran] need to be honest and admit that diplomacy and sanctions and covert operations probably won't succeed, and that we may have to fight a war—perhaps sooner rather than later—to stop such evil men from obtaining the worst weapons we know."
Six years ago, PNAC published a collection of essays entitled Present Dangers, edited by Kristol and fellow PNAC cofounder Robert Kagan, which set forth a radical foreign policy agenda. Typical of neocon thinking, Gerecht equates national security with Israel's security. In his Present Dangers essay on Iran policy, Gerecht wrote: If the Israelis "believe they've got the goods on the Iranians—for example, finding evidence linking them to anti-Israel/anti-Jewish bombings abroad—then they should by all means retaliate as directly as possible. And Washington should do nothing to discourage an Israeli response, but rather let it be known that the United States will aid the Israelis in any way possible to exact vengeance on the terrorists."
If the U.S. decides to attack, it shouldn't rely on precision strikes on selected targets. "If we attack," wrote Gerecht, "the U.S. armed forces must strike with truly devastating effect against the ruling mullahs and the repressive institutions that maintain them. That is, no cruise missiles at midnight to minimize the body count. The clerics will almost certainly strike back unless Washington uses overwhelming, paralyzing force."
For the neocons and their partners in U.S. global reach, talk is cheap and counterproductive. Diplomacy with evil regimes is appeasement, they say. Instead, some of the leading neocons call for a regime-change strategy that involves surrogate freedom fighters and preventive war.
One of the lessons of the Iraq War is that we all should listen closely to what the neocons are saying and planning because, once again, it may be that that they are talking about our future.
Tom Barry is policy director of the International Relations Center, online at www.irc-online.org, and author of numerous books on U.S. foreign policy.
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/rw/3303
Finally...this article from today:
Bush Is About To Attack Iran
Why Can't Americans See it?
By Paul Craig Roberts
"Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc. . . . The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high"
01/27/07 "ICHBlog" -- - The American public and the US Congress are getting their backs up about the Bush Regime's determination to escalate the war in Iraq. A Massive protest demonstration is occurring in Washington DC today, and Congress is expressing its disagreement with Bush's decision to intensify the war in Iraq.
This is all to the good. However, it misses the real issue--the Bush Regime's looming attack on Iran.
Rather than winding down one war, Bush is starting another. The entire world knows this and is discussing Bush's planned attack on Iran in many forums. It is only Americans who haven't caught on. A few senators have said that Bush must not attack Iran without the approval of Congress, and postings on the Internet demonstrate world wide awareness that Iran is in the Bush Regime's cross hairs. But Congress and the Media--and the demonstration in Washington--are focused on Iraq.
What can be done to bring American awareness up to the standard of the rest of the world?
In Davos, Switzerland, the meeting of the World Economic Forum, a conference where economic globalism issues are discussed, opened January 24 with a discussion of Bush's planned attack on Iran. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States and bankers and businessmen from such US allies as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all warned of the coming attack and its catastrophic consequences for the MIddle East and the world.
Writing for Global Research (January 24), General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs and former Joint Chief of Staff of the Russian Armies, forecast an American nuclear attack on Iran by the end of April. General Ivashov presented the neoconservative reasoning that is the basis for the attack and concluded that the world's protests cannot stop the US attack on Iran.
There will be shock and indignation, General Ivashov concludes, but the US will get away with it. He writes:
"Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc. . . . The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high. It does remain unclear, though, whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war. It may take a provocation to eliminate this obstacle (an attack on Israel or the US targets including military bases). The scale of the provocation may be comparable to the 9-11 attack in NY. Then the Congress will certainly say "Yes" to the US President."
The Bush Regime has made it clear that it is convinced that Bush already has the authority to attack Iran. The Regime argues that the authority is part of Bush's commander-in-chief powers. Congress has authorized the war in Iraq, and Bush's recent public statements have shifted the responsibility for the Iraqi insurgency from al-Qaeda to Iran. Iran, Bush has declared, is killing US troops in Iraq. Thus, Iran is covered under the authorization for the war in Iraq.
Both Bush and Cheney have made it clear in public statements that they will ignore any congressional opposition to their war plans. For example, CBS News reported (Jan. 25) that Cheney said that a congressional resolution against escalating the war in Iraq "won't stop us." According to the Associated Press and Yahoo News, Bush dismissed congressional disapproval with his statement, "I'm the decision-maker."
Everything is in place for an attack on Iran. Two aircraft carrier attack forces are deployed to the Persian Gulf, US attack aircraft have been moved to Turkey and other countries on Iran's borders, Patriot anti-missile defense systems are being moved to the Middle East to protect oil facilities and US bases from retaliation from Iranian missiles, and growing reams of disinformation alleging Iran's responsibility for the insurgency in Iraq are being fed to the gullible US Media.
General Ivashof and everyone in the Middle East and at the Davos globalization conference in Europe understands the Bush Regime's agenda.
Why cannot Americans understand?
Why hasn't Congress told Bush and Cheney that they will both be instantly impeached if they initiate a wider war?
Thanks again, Kimberly, for your' interest and your commentary on this very important issue.
You're blowing it, This should be stretched out in smaller pieces, and posted as several articles over a week or so. Got to do the drum beat routine and keep this topic on the front burner. Do it again.
Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 414444 responses
Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
87%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
4.4%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
6.2%
I don't know.
1.9%
Not a scientific survey. Click to learn more. Results may not total 100% due to rounding.