Another Quagmire Anyone?
Posted by: Scott at 11:05 am in Current Affairs, Politics, The SoapBoxI guess that we haven’t wasted enough money, goodwill, and lives because of our military actions in the middle east yet. Faux Fox News is reporting that "U.S. Officials Begin Crafting Iran Bombing Plan." I guess spending our hard-earned tax dollars on things like repairing our deteriorating infrastructure, improving our schools, and providing affordable healthcare for all can wait while Bush and his cronies try to take control of Iran’s oil too.
A sane person might ask why on earth would we want to go after Iran when we’re still bogged down with Iraq. A popular reason right-wing pundits like to give is that Iran is helping supply the insurgents in Iraq. Unfortunately, they leave out a very important fact: About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia1. Iran is responsible for less than 10%.
You may remember Saudi Arabia: it’s the country where the Al Qaeda started, Osama bin Laden called home, and fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers claimed nationality. It’s also the country whose government and businessmen invested $1.477 billion to the Bush family, its friends and related businesses2. Now I’m sure that $1.4 billion has absolutely nothing to do with Bush sweeping Saudi Arabia’s role in the Iraq violence under the rug and instead pointing the finger at Iran. Money wouldn’t change opinions or policies in matters of national policy and war, would it?
Anyway, here’s the article from Faux Fox News. They seem to want to hang this as a response to actions by Germany, but I think an attack plan against Iran has been in development for sometime now. Consider the source and take from it what you will.
U.S. Officials Begin Crafting Iran Bombing PlanTuesday, September 11, 2007
By James Rosen
Fox NewsWASHINGTON — A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime, FOX News confirmed Tuesday.
Germany — a pivotal player among three European nations to rein in Iran’s nuclear program over the last two-and-a-half years through a mixture of diplomacy and sanctions supported by the United States — notified its allies last week that the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel refuses to support the imposition of any further sanctions against Iran that could be imposed by the U.N. Security Council.
The announcement was made at a meeting in Berlin that brought German officials together with Iran desk officers from the five member states of the Security Council. It stunned the room, according to one of several Bush administration and foreign government sources who spoke to FOX News, and left most Bush administration principals concluding that sanctions are dead.
The Germans voiced concern about the damaging effects any further sanctions on Iran would have on the German economy — and also, according to diplomats from other countries, gave the distinct impression that they would privately welcome, while publicly protesting, an American bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
- LA Times, 07/15/2007 [↩]
- Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, published 9/28/2004 [↩]
Entries (RSS)
Ugh, I don’t want to read anything from Fox. Yes, I just drop the ‘news’ part.
As is to be expected, Germany said nothing of the sort. The German government does not support increasing the sanctions before the IAEA reports back in November. After that, Germany may support more or stricter sanctions. But the US wants to increase the pressure on Iran at the next UNSC meeting (21st september). As before, the US doesn’t want to wait for inspections to finish.
The biggest reason for not bombing Iran has nothing to do with the damage to the US treasurey and the loss that that represents. Bombs kill innocent people.
Anyone remember the good old days of the early cold war ?? The U.S. was widely seen as a superpower that would take any action it saw fit, with public opinion kept out of the mix. With Viet Nam came the perception by the electorate and the rest of the world that the big boys here needed public approval for acts of war and violence. I beleive one major foreign policy goal of the Bush-Cheney axis is to convince the world that we will act in our “interests”, regardless of public support. This makes remaining in the Iraq war-on-terror for whatever period they see fit an excellent policy statement. And what better constituency to court for solid support than the religious right, who see the revival of the Christian Crusades as their moral duty, and lack basic analytical skills. With this historical image again on the rise, the Iranians certainly would take much greater notice if a rumor began to circulate that we were contemplating unilateral military action. The scary part is this might just be a lot of philosophical hot air and our “leaders” may truly be contemplating a good old fashioned pre-emptive military strike !