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WILL BUSH START A WAR WITH IRAN?

Comment by Larry Ross, founder and editor of Nuclear Free Peacemaker New Zealand, December 28, 2006

Also published on "The Peoples Voice"

A number of articles are posted on our website predicting a US war with Iran . And a Google search on this subject showed 104 million articles. Searching "US Nuclear War With Iran" showed 24.7 million articles. Therefore, a lot of very thoughtful people are deeply concerned, and writing about, this subject. And there are many indications that this nightmare will begin soon, just as there were before the illegal US bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq began in 2003.

The present Bush regime has committed multiple war crimes and violations of the US Constitution. Now, with their backs against the wall, with the "Impeach Bush" movement growing, and with Bush's popularity dropping below 30%, the Bush regime may decide their only way out is to resort to even greater crimes---such as escalating the Iraq War and making a preemptive strike with mini-nukes on Iran.

All the signs indicate that Bush will send more US troops to Iraq, and not begin to withdraw as the Iraq Study Group (ISG) recommended [1]. Moreover, the US Congress has passed legislation allowing Bush to wage preemptive nuclear war.

However, what Dave Lindorff [2] and many other US commentators have missed, or skirted, is how Bush might seek to justify his attack on Iran, and thus gain public approval, despite the present antipathy toward more war.

Recall how Bush's popularity soared after both the 9/11 attacks and his retaliatory response with illegal wars on Afghanistan and Iraq ? A large and growing group of eminent American scientists, academics, and experts are certain, based on the evidence, that the Bush regime either engineered the 9/11 attacks or at least knew it would happen and did nothing [3]. The Bush regime's purpose was to give themselves the " Pearl Harbor " they needed to fool, frighten, and mobilize Americans, so they would support the wars the Bush Regime had planned before 9/11. Which is to say these wars were already planned, but Bush needed a convincing excuse that the American people would believe.

The same situation applies today concerning Iran , but more so. The Bush neocons succeeded better than they might have expected with their pre-war deceit about Iraq . So they might be thinking, "Why shouldn't similar tactics and lies work again?"

ABOUT THOSE TACTICS: HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A FALSE-FLAG OPERATION?

This kind of treachery toward one's own people is known as a '"False Flag" operation, and it has been used many times since about the year 1600, and perhaps before. If you Google search "9/11 False Flag," you will get 1.1 million articles. The purpose of a False Flag operation is to justify and then start wars which otherwise could not be justified and would not get popular support [4]. A government creates this phony situation, in which it orchestrates an attack on itself and its people by the selected "enemy."

Hitler reputedly did this at least twice, by orchestrating the Reichstag fire and a border skirmish with Poland , in order to justify the establishment of his dictatorship and his many wars, which culminated in World War II and the deaths of 50 million people.

Historians suspect that the US used this false-flag tactic by sinking its own warship, the USS Maine, in Havana to justify war with Spain over Cuba, and then again in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1965 to justify escalating the Vietnam War, and then almost once again in 1962 with Operation Northwoods [5], a false-flag operation in which a terrorist attack on the US would be staged and blamed on Castro, and which the Pentagon's top brass approved in order to justify war with Cuba. Luckily President Kennedy vetoed the Operation Northwoods plan, and sadly he was assassinated shortly thereafter. 

Given President Bush's track record for mendacity, his Iran war plans, and his declining presidential popularity, it seems unlikely that he would veto a similar plot to create an excuse to launch a pre-emptive nuclear war on Iran .

In fact, a particularly lethal False Flag terrorist attack on the US is the only event that would supply Bush with the public hatred of Iran he needs to jump over the nuclear barrier and win the popular approval he needs to launch a pre-emptive nuclear war against Iran . It would not only earn Bush another soaring popularity rating in the US polls, but would probably create an excuse to push through a new batch of fascist-style legislation (just as Hitler did) which would further suppress domestic criticism and dissent, as well as intimidate the Democrats into rubber-stamping anything he wants.

Of course, the US mass media won't question Bush's decisions, but will support any war he wishes to launch, just as they have faithfully done since 9/11 with his war on Afghanistan , and then his war on Iraq .

WHAT CAN REGULAR PEOPLE DO TO STOP BUSH FROM STUMBLING INTO ARMAGEDDON?

Therefore, what is urgently needed is a large public education campaign on: (1) the trends toward, and dangers of, a war with Iran; (2) precedent-setting False Flag operations that were previously used in history; and (3) how such diabolical techniques may have been used to stage 9/11; and (4) how a False Flag attack could be used as an excuse to launch a pre-emptive war on Iran.

Furthermore, a large-scale education campaign can alert the public as to what Bush may have planned, and how he may try and get away with what could very well be the biggest crime in history. It could be state-sponsored terrorism from which the world may not recover. It could be a terror event that kills millions and spirals into a global nuclear war that could destroy all humankind. I hope people realize just how important this issue is, and become motivated to do something to help prevent it before it happens.

As many progressive writers have quite rightly suggested, one important-yet-easily-accomplished thing the reader can do is to forward this article to as many people and groups as possible. Another step is to research this subject yourself by assessing the articles on our website, on other websites, and the various articles from Google searches. Then discuss this important subject with others in your nation, organize meetings, and lobby politicians against war with Iran . Now. If it begins, it's too late.


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ENDNOTES FOR THIS ARTICLE:

[1] Michael Abramowitz and Josh White's 12-27-06 Washington Post article,"Bush And Security Advisers To Meet Today On Iraq Strategy: Troop Increase Appears More Likely": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/27/AR2006122701826.html

[2] Dave Lindorff's 12-26-06 CounterPunch essay, "Crime Of The Century: Are Bush And Cheney Planning An Early Attack On Iran?":
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12232006.html

[3] http://www.nuclearfree.org.nz/9-11questions.htm

[4] http://www.nuclearfree.org.nz/FalseFlagco.htm

[5] http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/northwoods.html

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Larry Ross is a former American and current citizen of New Zealand, where he is the founding editor of Nuclear Free Peacemaker New Zealand.  Communicate your views, findings and conclusions to him at: nuclearfreenz@lynx.co.nz

We would like to thank Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., the Executive Director of the American Center for International Law ("ACIL"), for circulating this article to a wide network of organisations in America and many other countries. His essays on international law, human rights, civil liberties, politics, theology and ethics have been published by more than 30 websites worldwide.

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Are Bush and Cheney Planning an Early Attack on Iran?

Crime of the Century

By Dave Lindorff, December 24, 2006

Back on October 9, I wrote in The Nation that it looked like the Bush-Cheney gang, worried about the November election, was gearing up for an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, with a carrier strike group led by the USS Eisenhower being ordered to depart a month early from Norfolk, VA to join the already-on-station USS Enterprise. That article was based on reports from angry sailors based on the Eisenhower who had leaked word of their mission.

There was, thankfully, no attack on Iran before Election Day, but it is starting to look like I may have been right about the plan after all, but wrong about the timing.

As the threat of a catastrophic US election-eve attack on Iran started to look increasingly likely, reports began to trickle out of the Pentagon that the generals and admirals were protesting. They knew that the US military is stretched to the limit in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that a war with Iran would be a disaster of historic proportions. To bolster their blocking efforts, the Iraq Study Group, headed by Republican fixer and former Secretary of State (under Bush Pere) James Baker, which had been slated to release its report on what to do about Iraq in January, 2007, pushed forward its report. Baker, together with co-chair Lee Hamilton, went prematurely public with the group's conclusion that the Iraq war was a failure, and that the US should be trying to negotiate with Iran, not attack that country.

That joint effort appeared to have blocked Bush and Cheney's war plan, but the reprieve may have only been temporary.

It now appears that the idea of attacking Iran is again moving forward. The Eisenhower strike force, armed with some 800 Tomahawk cruise missiles as well as a fleet of strike aircraft, and already on station in the Arabian Sea for over a month and a half, has moved into the Persian Gulf. A second ca