Post by unknownPost by lo yeeOnAnd last time, Feinstein and many of her Democratic colleagues in the
Senate, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Joe
Liebermann (and probably Evan Bayh) all bowed and bowed before the
warrior princess and said amen to the war against Iraq.
Now they are doing the same thing about Iran. It is very hard to
understand why
Surely you can't be this uninformed.
In March 2003, Bush ordered military invasion against Iraq on false
pretenses. The months leading up to that Condoleezza Rice talked up
the yellow cakes and the mushroom clouds.
It has been widely reported, including sources from Der Spiegel, that
Bush has authorized (and the Pentagon has mobilized) striking forces
to attack Iran in March, using tactical nuclear weapons. And now Rice
is rushing the UNSC to vote on Iran before March and talking about a
``window''. It all sounds like deja vu to me.
There is a whole lot more information which all points to Iran having
no smoking gun and Bush and neocons puppets in the Senate wanting to
attack Iran and to keep it third-world, all a part of the PNAC agenda
(see below)!
lo yeeOn
========
No Smoking Gun against Iran
Britain, France, and Germany, who have been heading the diplomacy, say
things are at an impasse.
Iran talks of wanting to maintain dialogue, but it also complains of
big-power bullying. And the tone of the remarks emerging from Tehran
bear little hint of compromise.
There is, of course, no "smoking gun" of evidence against Tehran. It
protests that it is innocent on the nuclear weapons development
charge, but its recent actions have clearly only heightened the
suspicions and unease of many.
In Washington, the word remains that the US will not... take the
military option off the table
But there is also international unease about the potential impact of
economic sanctions on Iran, particularly on the world's fragile oil
market.
# Rice Wants Iran Vote As Soon As Possible - Yahoo! News
In phone calls over the weekend, Rice discussed Iran's recent
nuclear program movements with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan
and several foreign ministers whose countries are members of the
International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors, the U.N.
nuclear watchdog.
The agency has found Iran in violation of an international treaty
intended to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons technology. But
it has not yet voted on whether to refer Iran to the Security Council,
where it could face possible sanctions.
British, French and German foreign ministers last week called for the
agency to hold a special session to vote on the referral.
"I think it ought to be as soon as possible," Rice said. Waiting for
the agency's planned meeting in March, she said, would allow Iran a
window that it could exploit.
"The Iranians will try to take advantage of it to start to throw chaff
and to obfuscate," Rice said.
Rice won't say whether the United States has enough votes for the
matter to reach the Security Council or whether she is confident that
tough sanctions against Iran can be secured thereafter.
Two of Rice's lieutenants were meeting in Vienna and London on Monday
with ambassadors for the agency's board of governors and with European
allies in hopes building support for the U.S. position.
The backing of two major countries who hold veto powers, Russia and
China, is uncertain. China's foreign minister was to attend the
Liberian inauguration but Rice was not expected to formally discuss
Iran with him.
"Whatever the numbers of the vote, I don't think there's any doubt
that people are quite clear that Iran has crossed a threshold," Rice
said.
The standoff with Iran over its nuclear efforts has intensified in
recent weeks with the country's new hardline president growing
increasingly defiant despite mounting international pressure.
Iran has removed U.N. seals at its main uranium enrichment plant,
resumed research on nuclear fuel after a two-year hiatus and, most
recently, threatened to block short-notice U.N. inspections of its
facilities if the country is hauled before the Security Council.
Rice said she doesn't believe that Iran -- a country used to a lot of
trade -- can withstand the kind of isolation that other countries have
faced when referred to the Security Council.
"They're putting a lot at risk here," she said.
The international community, Rice said, has tried to negotiate with
Iran to reach an agreement that would have lessened the nuclear
proliferation risk while allowing Iran to develop nuclear energy.
"The Iranians have done nothing but throw all of this aside," Rice
said. "They're isolated. They are completely isolated."
The United States contends Iran wants to build nuclear weapons. But
Iran claims its nuclear program is intended solely for energy
production and that its ambitions are purely peaceful. However, Iran
also has argued that it has a right to enrich uranium, which can
produce fuel for nuclear bombs.
Rice also reiterated her desire to address the Iran situation
diplomatically, rather than militarily.
"We've said all along the president keeps all of his options, always
keeps all of his options open," she said. "The course that we're on is
a diplomatic course."
===
# BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran nuclear bid 'fault of West'
Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal
Saudi Arabia has said the West is partly to blame for the current
nuclear stand-off with Iran because it allowed Israel to develop
nuclear weapons.
The Saudi foreign minister told the BBC statements made by Iran's
president were "extreme" but that diplomacy was the way to resolve the
crisis.
Prince Saud al-Faisal was giving a rare interview while in London for
a two-day terrorism conference.
He has chosen this visit to call for a nuclear-free zone in the Gulf.
Prince Saud told the BBC that the West was partly responsible for the
current stand-off with Iran over its nuclear policy because, he said,
it had helped Israel develop its own nuclear arsenal.
IRAN'S NUCLEAR STANDOFF
Sept 2002: Work begins on Iran's first reactor at Bushehr
Dec 2002: Satellites reveal Arak and Natanz sites, triggering IAEA
inspections
Nov 2003: Iran suspends uranium enrichment and allows tougher
inspections
June 2004: IAEA rebukes Iran for not fully co-operating
Nov 2004: Iran suspends enrichment under deal with EU
Aug 2005: Iran rejects EU plan and re-opens Isfahan plant
Jan 2006: Iran re-opens Natanz facility
In depth: Nuclear fuel cycle
But when asked how Saudi Arabia would respond if Iran acquired nuclear
weapons, he ruled out joining the nuclear arms race.
He said nuclear weapons benefited no-one and that if Iran were ever to
use them against Israel, it would end up killing Palestinians.
The Saudi foreign minister also called on the UK and other countries
to back a Saudi initiative to set up an international
counter-terrorism centre.
He said progress had been made in tackling al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia
but that his government was concerned about the return of Saudi
militants who had been fighting in Iraq.
Gaining the support of the public was crucial, he said, in winning the
fight against terrorism.
On the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Prince Saud
said he planned to thank Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday for
Britain's role, which he called both constructive and important.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that his country does
not need nuclear weapons.
At a rare news conference in Tehran, Mr Ahmadinejad said they were
needed only by people who "want to solve everything through the use of
force".
The president defended Tehran's recent move to restart nuclear
research, which has sparked international condemnation.
Iran says it has a right to peaceful nuclear technology and denies
that it is covertly seeking to develop weapons.
The US, UK, France and Germany are threatening to refer Iran to the
United Nations Security Council, which could impose sanctions.
Leaders who believe they can create peace for themselves by creating
war for others are mistaken.
Excerpts: Ahmadinejad remarks
But the president said a referral would not end its nuclear plans.
"If they want to destroy the Iranian nation's rights by that course,
they will not succeed," he said.
Tehran has said it will stop snap UN inspections of nuclear sites if
its case is sent to the Council.
The crisis intensified this week when Iran removed seals at three
nuclear facilities, ending a two-year freeze.
'Arrogant rulers'
Mr Ahmadinejad told reporters Tehran pursued an active foreign policy
which sought peace, based on justice.
IRAN'S NUCLEAR STANDOFF (see elsewhere)
Iranian press scorns criticism
He criticised the "double standards" of Western countries which
already had nuclear weapons, and attacked "arrogant rulers" for
causing suffering.
"Leaders who believe they can create peace for themselves by creating
war for others are mistaken," he said.
A few had a "medieval mindset" and sought to deprive Iran of valuable
technology, without evidence of wrongdoing, he added.
Mr Ahmadinejad sparked international outrage with his hardline stance
towards Israel, following his election last June.
He repeated both his attacks and calls for a referendum for
Palestinians to choose their future political fate.
"(Israelis) have no roots in Palestine and almost all are immigrants,"
he said.
"Let the nation of Palestine decide among themselves."
Diplomatic divisions
Western countries are now seeking to persuade other members of UN
nuclear watchdog the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to
agree to refer Iran to the Council.
The Iranians crossed a line by reactivating nuclear facilities the UN
had shut
Albert Arnim, Dresden, Germany
Send us your views
Head-to-head: nuclear crisis
European, Russian, Chinese and US officials are due to meet in London
on Monday, when they are expected to set a date for the crucial IAEA
meeting.
On Friday, US President George W Bush and German Chancellor Angela
Merkel agreed that the crisis should be resolved through peaceful
means.
Washington, Israel and many European powers distrust Iran, partly
because it had kept its nuclear research secret for 18 years before it
was revealed in 2002.
Since last August, Iran has resumed all nuclear activity apart from
enrichment, which can produce fuel for power stations or, under
certain conditions, for bombs.
Tehran has always said it has the right under the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty - which it has signed - to research nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes.
===
By Sarah Buckley and Paul Rincon
BBC News website
Iran has alarmed the international community by removing the seals at
its nuclear fuel research sites - but experts say it is several years
away from being capable of producing a nuclear bomb.
There are two routes to producing an atomic weapon: using either
highly enriched uranium, or separated plutonium, and Iran could pursue
either or both routes.
Isfahan plant
Iran has taken only small steps on the road towards weapons capability
Regarding uranium, Iran has already embarked on the first step of the
purification process necessary to ultimately produce weapons-grade
material.
It has produced reconstituted uranium - what is known as "yellow cake"
- at its uranium conversion facility at Isfahan.
However, the influential London-based think tank The International
Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said in a report in September
that this was contaminated and was not currently useable.
Supposing Iran solves this problem, it then needs to embark on the
process of enriching the uranium.
For uranium to work in a nuclear reactor, it needs only a small amount
of enrichment. Weapons-grade uranium must be highly enriched.
Centrifuges
Gas centrifuges are one way of enriching uranium.
Iran already has 164 centrifuge machines installed at its pilot
centrifuge plant at Natanz, but that is only a fifth of the total it
needs before it is fully operational.
The commercial-scale facility could ultimately house as many as 50,000
centrifuges, according to some estimates.
NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE
Mined uranium ore is purified and reconstituted into solid form known
as yellowcake
Yellowcake is converted into a gas by heating it to about 64C (147F)
Gas is fed through centrifuges, where its isotopes separate and
process is repeated until uranium is enriched
Low-level enriched uranium is used for nuclear fuel
Highly enriched uranium can be used in nuclear weapons
No clear end to crisis
In depth: Nuclear fuel cycle
Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the IISS,
says Iran has another 1,000 centrifuges dating to before it
temporarily suspended enrichment in 2003. But these have not been
tested to ensure they still work.
Tehran might possibly have parts for a further 1,000 centrifuges, Mr
Fitzpatrick told the BBC News website.
Frank Barnaby, consultant for the UK security think tank the Oxford
Research Group, agrees that Iran does not yet have a critical number
of centrifuges in place.
"They don't currently have enough centrifuges working - so far as we
know - to produce significant amounts of highly-enriched uranium or
even enriched uranium. They would need a lot more," he told the BBC
News website.
Even if the plant is made fully operational, it is currently
configured to produce low enriched uranium (LEU) rather than the
weapons-grade highly-enriched uranium (HEU).
So given these limitations, the IISS believes it would take Iran at
least a decade to produce enough HEU for a single nuclear weapon.
Dr Barnaby agrees.
"The CIA says 10 years to a bomb using highly enriched uranium and
that is a reasonable and realistic figure in my opinion," he said.
Plutonium route
Iran could alternatively use plutonium to produce nuclear weapons, but
this route is also problematic for Tehran, analysts say.
Plutonium can be produced as a by-product of fission carried out by
Iran's Russian-built nuclear power reactor at Bushehr.
The IISS says Iran would need to build a reprocessing plant suited to
the fuel used in Bushehr and this would be very technically
challenging.
But according to Dr Barnaby, useful reprocessing could be carried out
over a short period using a suitably equipped chemical laboratory.
Iran is also constructing a heavy-water research reactor at Arak,
which Dr Barnaby says would "very efficiently produce plutonium of the
sort that is good for nuclear weapons."
But this will not be ready until at least 2014, and probably later,
the IISS has said.
===
By Jonathan Marcus
BBC Diplomatic correspondent
Iranian technicians
Western powers suspect Iran's nuclear ambitions are not peaceful
The developing diplomatic row over Iran's nuclear ambitions has
highlighted the question of consistency in US and Western efforts to
halt the spread of nuclear weapons.
Close US ally Israel is widely believed to have an advanced nuclear
arsenal which rarely, if ever, draws any criticism from Washington.
India is quite open about its nuclear weapons programme, but this has
not stopped the Americans from proposing an ambitious programme of
civil nuclear co-operation with the Indians.
So has strategic interest trumped consistency in the non-proliferation
field?
North Korea
Iran has frequently charged that it is being treated unfairly. It
insists that its nuclear ambitions are solely for peaceful purposes.
Iranian experts say other countries have fully-fledged nuclear weapons
programmes, but they do not incur Washington's wrath.
Iran has been far from forthcoming about much of its past nuclear
history - and that is one reason why there is so much concern
One of the great concerns is that Iran could follow North Korea's
route, accepting the constraints of the Non-Proliferation Treaty for
now - and then breaking out once its nuclear programme is sufficiently
mature.
However, North Korea shows some of the limitations of diplomacy in
tackling such thorny non-proliferation issues.
But military options to halt its nuclear programme are almost
unthinkable - just as with Iran.
The onus remains on the diplomats to find a way through this complex
crisis which involves energy policy, security issues and basic
nationalism.
No treaties
So what of Iran's claim of there being double-standards, especially in
Washington?
There is little doubt that both India and Israel have a nuclear
weapons capability.
Both though maintain close ties with the Americans. Israel has a very
close military relationship with Washington and the Bush
administration seems to have thrown initial reservations about India's
nuclear programme to one side and is now eager to step-up nuclear
co-operation, at least in the civil field.
So what price consistency?
In stark diplomatic terms Israel and India are in a different category
to Iran.
Neither India nor Israel, nor Pakistan for that matter - which is also
thought to have a small nuclear arsenal - have signed the
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Thus they are not breaking their treaty obligations in pursuing a
nuclear weapons programme. However, Iran has signed the Treaty and is
bound by it.
Democracies
Iran has been far from forthcoming about much of its past nuclear
history - and that is one reason why there is so much concern.
[Iran is astutely exploiting its legal rights in this - under the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) it can indeed develop a nuclear
fuel cycle under inspection. That is all it says it wants to do.
The counter-argument is that Iran forfeited that right by hiding an
enrichment programme before and cannot now act as if nothing had
happened. It could, this argument runs, buy fuel from well-regulated
suppliers, as others do.
Paul Reynolds]
But diplomacy is not just about observing treaties; it is about
sending the right signals.
And many US arms control experts see the Bush administration's plans
for civil nuclear co-operation with India as driving a coach and
horses through the broader non-proliferation regime.
Viewed from Washington, consistency is not so much the issue as
interests. Israel and India are key strategic allies of the United
States.
They are democracies.
Their arsenals are not seen as destabilising - in fact, it is quite
the opposite.
And Iran, at least for the Americans, falls into a very different
category.
[The West, and Israel, say that Iran cannot be trusted and that it
matters because the technology used to enrich uranium for fuel can
also be used to enrich it further for a nuclear explosion.
If you master one, you master the other. And that would give Iran what
is known as the 'break-out' capability. It could leave the NPT and go
ahead and make a nuclear device.
If that moment came, it would be another decision point for the West -
and for Israel. President Bush has said time and again that he will
not permit Iran to build a bomb. And Israel might not want to wait
that long.
Paul Reynolds]
===
# Iran Bars CNN Over Translation of Remarks - Yahoo! News
By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer 42 minutes ago
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran said Monday it is barring CNN from working in
Iran "until further notice" due to its mistranslation of comments
made by the president in a recent news conference about the country's
nuclear research.
In a speech Saturday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended Iran's
right to continue nuclear research. State media have complained since
the speech that CNN used the translation "nuclear weapons" instead of
"nuclear technology."
The ban by the Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry was read in a
statement on state-run television.
"Due to mistranslation of the words of Ahmadinejad during his press
conference, activities of the American CNN in Tehran are banned until
further notice," the statement said.
CNN acknowledged the mistake.
"CNN quoted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that Iran has the right to
build nuclear weapons," the network said in its report of the ban. "In
fact he said that Iran has the right to nuclear energy. He added that,
quote, a nation that has civilization does not need nuclear weapons
and our nation does not need them. CNN has clarified what the Iranian
president said and apologized here on the air to the Iranians
directly, as well as on the air."
CNN told viewers it had not been officially notified about the ban.
===
U.S., EU Press China and Russia on Iran
By BETH GARDINER, Associated Press Writer 53 minutes ago
LONDON - The United States and its European allies pressed Russia and
China on Monday to support bringing Iran before the U.N. Security
Council, which has the power to impose sanctions over Tehran's
nuclear program.
Representatives of all five veto-wielding permanent members of the
Security Council -- the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and China -- and
Germany met in London.
They were seeking to resolve differences over what action to take
after Iran removed U.N. seals from its main uranium enrichment
facility last week and resumed research on nuclear fuel, including
small-scale enrichment, after a 2 1/2-year freeze.
The move alarmed the West, which fears Iran intends to build an atomic
bomb. Iran claims its program is peaceful, intended only to produce
electricity and it has threatened to end cooperation the U.N. nuclear
watchdog if it is brought before the Security Council.
The United States, Britain, France, Germany and have been pushing for
a referral and the Europeans declared last week that negotiations with
Tehran had reached a dead end.
Russia and China have close commercial ties with Iran and have
resisted referral in the past and differences remained.
In Moscow, President
Vladimir Putin
held out the possibility of a compromise, saying Iran has not ruled
out conducting its uranium enrichment in Russia, an idea that was
floated last year. The plan would ensure oversight so that uranium
would be enriched only as much as is needed for use in nuclear power
plants and not to the higher level required for weapons.
"We have heard various opinions from our Iranian partners on that
issue. One of them has come from the Foreign Ministry -- our partners
told us they did not exclude the implementation of our proposal,"
Putin said after a meeting with German chancellor Angela Merkel. "In
any case, it's necessary to work carefully and avoid any erroneous
moves."
European diplomats have said in recent days there are signs that
Russia, which is deeply involved in building Iranian reactors for
power generation, is leaning toward referral. Putin's comments,
though, seemed to suggest he was still looking for other alternatives.
China, which is highly dependent on Iranian oil, has warned that
hauling Iran before the Security Council would escalate the situation.
The Foreign Ministry in Beijing took a cautious tone.
"China believes that under the current situation, all relevant sides
should remain restrained and stick to solving the Iranian nuclear
issue through negotiations," the ministry said in a statement.
Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice
said the vote on referral "ought to be as soon as possible."
"We've got to finally demonstrate to Iran that it can't with impunity
just cast aside the just demands of the international community," Rice
said Sunday during a trip to Africa.
Speaking before Monday's talks in London, British Foreign Secretary
Jack Straw said the "onus is on Iran" to prove its program is
peaceful. He said the international community's confidence had been
"sorely undermined by a history of concealment and deception" by Iran.
Straw said the dialogue with Russia and China was of "crucial
importance."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman said the
London talks signaled "growing international concern at the behavior
of the Iranian government and at ... the words of the Iranian
president," who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map"
and said the Nazi Holocaust a "myth."
Iranian state radio, meanwhile, reported that the government had
allocated the equivalent of $215 million for the construction of what
would be its second and third nuclear power plants. Iran plans to
build 20 more nuclear plants, and Russia has offered to build some of
them.
Monday's talks aimed to build consensus on what action to take ahead
of an emergency board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
the U.N. nuclear watchdog, expected in February.
The Vienna, Austria-based agency has found Iran in violation of an
international treaty intended to stop the proliferation of nuclear
weapons technology. But it has not yet voted on whether to refer Iran
to the Security Council.
Straw reiterated that military action against Iran is not an option.
He also said sanctions were not inevitable even if the nuclear dispute
is referred to the Security Council, saying other countries had
complied with council demands without the need for sanctions.
In Russia, lawmaker Andrei Kokoshin, a former National Security
Council head, told http://www.strana.ru, a Web site close to the
Kremlin, that "the extreme positions that are present in both
Washington and Tehran are making it considerably harder for Russia to
facilitate a way out of the crisis."
U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign
Minister Sergei Kislyak attended the talks, joined by senior diplomats
from Britain, France and Germany.
Zhang Yan, director of China's Arms Control Department, represented
Beijing, China's Foreign Ministry said. Straw did not attend.
Economic sanctions targeting oil and gas exports are thought unlikely.
Iran is OPEC's second-largest producer and preventing it from doing
business could disrupt the world's energy markets.
Nevertheless, Blair's spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in
keeping with government policy, said the international community would
not be bowed by Iranian threats that economic sanctions could cause
oil prices to jump.
=====
And all this support to attack Iran is part of the PNAC agenda that
the neocons want to get done and their puppets in the US Congress are
secretly supporting.
A PNAC Primer
Bernard Weiner
. . .
"I'm not making up this stuff," I said. "It's all talked about openly
by the neo-conservatives of the Project for the New American Century
-- who now are in charge of America's military and foreign policy --
and published as official U.S. doctrine in the National Security
Strategy of the United States of America."
. . .
In the early-1990s, there was a group of ideologues and
power-politicians on the fringe of the Republican Party's far-right.
The members of this group in 1997 would found The Project for the New
American Century. (PNAC) Their aim was to prepare for the day when the
Republicans regained control of the White House -- and, it was hoped,
the other two branches of government as well -- so that their vision
of how the U.S. should move in the world would be in place and ready
to go, straight off-the-shelf into official policy.
This PNAC group was led by such heavy hitters as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick
Cheney, James Woolsey, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Bill Kristol,
James Bolton, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William Bennett, Dan Quayle, Jeb
Bush,
. . .
The "outsiders" from PNAC are now powerful "insiders," placed in
important positions from which they can exert maximum pressure on U.S.
policy: Cheney is Vice President, Rumsfeld is Defense Secretary,
Wolfowitz is Deputy Defense Secretary, I. Lewis Libby is Cheney's
Chief of Staff, Elliot Abrams is in charge of Middle East policy at
the National Security Council, Dov Zakheim is comptroller for the
Defense Department, John Bolton is Undersecretary of State, Richard
Perle is chair of the Defense Policy advisory board at the Pentagon,
former CIA director James Woolsey is on that panel as well, etc. etc.
(PNAC's chairman, Bill Kristol, is the editor of Rupert Murdoch's The
Weekly Standard.) In short, PNAC has a lock on military
policy-creation in the Bush Administration.
. . .
Here is a shorthand summary of PNAC strategies that have become U.S.
policy.
1. In 1992, then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had a strategy
report drafted for the Department of Defense, written by Paul
Wolfowitz, then Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy. In it, the U.S.
government was urged, as the world's sole remaining Superpower, to
move aggressively and militarily around the globe. The report called
for pre-emptive attacks and ad hoc coalitions, but said that the U.S.
should be ready to act alone when "collective action cannot be
orchestrated." The central strategy was to "establish and protect a
new order" that accounts "sufficiently for the interests of the
advanced industrial nations to discourage them from challenging our
leadership," while at the same time maintaining a military dominance
capable of "deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a
larger regional or global role." Wolfowitz outlined plans for military
intervention in Iraq as an action necessary to assure "access to vital
raw material, primarily Persian Gulf oil" and to prevent the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and threats from
terrorism. (For the essence of the draft text, see Barton Gellman's
"Keeping the U.S. First; Pentagon Would Preclude a Rival Superpower"
in the Washington Post.
2. Various Hard Right intellectuals outside the government were
spelling out the new PNAC policy in books and influential journals.
Zalmay M. Khalilzad (formerly associated with big oil companies,
currently U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan & Iraq ) wrote an
important volume in 1995, "From Containment to Global Leadership:
America & the World After the Cold War," the import of which was
identifying a way for the U.S. to move aggressively in the world and
thus to exercise effective control over the planet's natural
resources. A year later, in 1996, neo-conservative leaders Bill
Kristol and Robert Kagan, in their Foreign Affairs article "Towards a
Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," came right out and said the goal for
the U.S. had to be nothing less than "benevolent global hegemony," a
euphemism for total U.S. domination, but "benevolently" exercised, of
course.
3. In 1998, PNAC unsuccessfully lobbied President Clinton to attack
Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein from power. The January letter from
PNAC urged America to initiate that war even if the U.S. could not
muster full support from the Security Council at the United Nations.
Sound familiar? (President Clinton replied that he was focusing on
dealing with al-Qaida terrorist cells.)
4. In September of 2000, PNAC, sensing a GOP victory in the upcoming
presidential election, issued its white paper on "Rebuilding America's
Defenses: Strategy,Forces and Resources for the New Century." The PNAC
report was quite frank about why the U.S. would want to move toward
imperialist militarism, a Pax Americana, because with the Soviet Union
out of the picture, now is the time most "conducive to American
interests and ideals...The challenge of this coming century is to
preserve and enhance this `American peace'." And how to preserve and
enhance the Pax Americana? The answer is to "fight and decisively win
multiple, simultaneous major-theater wars."
In serving as world "constable," the PNAC report went on, no other
countervailing forces will be permitted to get in the way. Such
actions "demand American political leadership rather than that of the
United Nations," for example. No country will be permitted to get
close to parity with the U.S. when it comes to weaponry or influence;
therefore, more U.S. military bases will be established in the various
regions of the globe. (A post-Saddam Iraq may well serve as one of
those advance military bases.)
5. George W. Bush moved into the White House in January of 2001.
Shortly thereafter, a report by the Administration-friendly Council on
Foreign Relations was prepared, "Strategic Energy Policy Challenges
for the 21st Century," that advocated a more aggressive U.S. posture
in the world and called for a "reassessment of the role of energy in
American foreign policy," with access to oil repeatedly cited as a
"security imperative." (It's possible that inside Cheney's
energy-policy papers -- which he refuses to release to Congress or the
American people -- are references to foreign-policy plans for how to
gain military control of oilfields abroad.)
6. Mere hours after the 9/11 terrorist mass-murders, PNACer Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his aides to begin planning for an attack
on Iraq, even though his intelligence officials told him it was an
al-Qaida operation and there was no connection between Iraq and the
attacks. "Go massive," the aides' notes quote him as saying. "Sweep it
all up. Things related and not." Rumsfeld leaned heavily on the FBI
and CIA to find any shred of evidence linking the Iraq government to
9/11, but they weren't able to. So he set up his own fact-finding
group in the Pentagon that would provide him with whatever shaky
connections it could find or surmise.
7. Feeling confident that all plans were on track for moving
aggressively in the world, the Bush Administration in September of
2002 published its "National Security Strategy of the United States of
America." The official policy of the U.S. government, as proudly
proclaimed in this major document, is virtually identical to the
policy proposals in the various white papers of the Project for the
New American Century and others like it over the past decade.
Chief among them are:
1. the policy of "pre-emptive" war -- i.e., whenever the U.S. thinks a
country may be amassing too much power and/or could provide some sort
of competition in the "benevolent hegemony" region, it can be
attacked, without provocation. (A later corollary would rethink the
country's atomic policy: nuclear weapons would no longer be considered
defensive, but could be used offensively in support of
political/economic ends; so-called "mini-nukes" could be employed in
these regional wars.)
2. international treaties and opinion will be ignored whenever they
are not seen to serve U.S. imperial goals.
3. The new policies "will require bases and stations within and beyond
Western Europe and Northeast Asia."
In short, the Bush Administration seems to see the U.S., admiringly,
as a New Rome, an empire with its foreign legions (and threat of
"shock and awe" attacks, including with nuclear weapons) keeping the
outlying colonies, and potential competitors, in line. Those who
aren't fully in accord with these goals better get out of the way;
"you're either with us or against us."
. . .
For complete article, please visit
Linkname: A PNAC Primer
URL: http://themeridiannews.com/pnac.html
Post by unknown--
"Iran will not be allowed to have nuclear weapons."
- President George W. Bush, 2004
