Dick Cheney in Sydney earlier in the year, took it upon himself to complain about China's 'military buildup' and their shooting down of an old weather satellite. Cheney wasn't really concerned with any actual threat from China. He was just carrying water for his military industry benefactors, like Lockheed and Boeing who are shopping around Europe for governments willing to buy into their 'missile defense' protection scheme they've mapped out with the military industry executives who've infected the Bush regime even before his ascendance to office.
"Last month's anti-satellite test, China's continued fast-paced military buildup, are less constructive and are not consistent with China's stated goal of a peaceful rise," he said.
Cheney was well aware of efforts reported underway for years to sell missile defense systems in Central Europe which accelerated this year, including a deal with Britain's lame-duck, Blair, to take his country's defence dollars in return for the false security of hunkering his citizens underneath a U.S. missile 'umbrella', hiding from anticipated reprisals from Bush's continuing and increasing militarism.
Even General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said at the beginning of the year in Jakarta that he wouldn't directly tie China's satellite shooting to any threat. "We should not assume anything about the Chinese anti-satellite test (last month) other than they now have the capacity to shoot down a satellite," he told reporters.
What is it then which compels the U.S. State Dept. and the Pentagon to ramp up the peddling of these missile systems to these European countries, unsettling decades of peaceful cooperation with their communist neighbors? There is a familiar theme which accompanies this latest round of fearmongering militarism by the Bush regime. Secretary Rice spelled it out after claiming Russia had nothing to fear from the new, planned expansion of U.S. military influence in their backyard.
"I think everybody understands that with a growing Iranian missile threat," Rice said in Berlin"-- which is quite pronounced -- that there needs to be ways to deal with that problem, and, that we're talking about long lead times to be able to have a defensive counter to offensive missile threats," she said.
Problem with that assessment is that Iran has no intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. continent. Iran's longest range missile is the Shahab-3, which has a target radius of 620 miles. The Pentagon has been claiming for almost a decade that Iran is developing up to three new generations of the Shahab to increase its range. There is absolutely no evidence that Iran even possesses missiles threatening the U.S or has threatened the U.S. with missiles, yet, this entire escalation of concern which has supposedly prompted the Bush regime to step up the hawking of these dubious systems throughout Europe is predicated on their claims of an Iranian threat.
"There are no grounds for deploying the missile defense systems in Europe, Iran doesn't have any missiles with a range of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometers,'' Putin said in a June 1 interview.
It's not enough for the U.S. to illegally invade and occupy a sovereign nation in the face of Russian and Chinese objections, now the Bush regime is intent on pressing their aggression and military posturing against Russia and China's economic ally, Iran, to the point of destabilizing the balance of weaponry in Europe which had allowed the decades-old deescalation of tensions and relative peace to prevail. And, they want us to believe that the target of their own destabilizing aggression is the most pernicious threat.
It suits the Bush regime's short term agenda to isolate Russia and China in hopes of forestalling the coming shift in energy resources away from the U.S. as Russia and China bargain for a bigger share of the world's oil, and have made multi-billion dollar deals with oil-rich Iran, to the consternation of the U.S. and their Saudi benefactors who are desperate to stifle the influence of the Iranian oil on the world market.
The trips Cheney has made to Saudi Arabia this year, the most notable as Bush met with his Iraqi puppet in Jordan, were greeted with appeals from the Saudis for some action against what they claimed was Iranian interference in Iraq. Their message to Cheney was apparently received by Bush as he's ramped-up his rhetoric against Iran in the past year to a degree which would portend imminent war. It all played out into transparent fearmongering against Iran, in concert with the trumped-up UN sanctions restricting Iran's ability to follow through on its trade commitments. His rhetoric was punctuated by accusations he made earlier that Russia was intent on dismantling any democracy they had achieved and threatening its 'democratic' neighbors. But, his criticism was delivered with Iran in mind, more than any concern that Russia actually posed some new threat to the U.S. or Europe.
The Bush regime sees the prospect of Russia's shifting alliances as threats to the U.S. 'national security'. The administration would like nothing more than for Russia and China to be regarded as pariahs in the world community, especially now that their UN influence will likely be a determining factor in Bush's scheme to force even more action against Iran out of the U.N. Security Council. Bush and Cheney (and Rice) would be more than satisfied to isolate Russia, and China with a manufactured pall of suspicion and fear, making oil-producing nations reluctant to do business with Iran out of fear of U.S. retaliation and making existing deals with Iran appear sinister and threatening.
The 'Chinese military buildup' reports from the Pentagon, which surfaced earlier in the year, are old and deliberately released to discredit China, isolating them and their vote in advance of Security Council action against Iran that the Bush regime expected to increase as the deadlines for action on the sanctions already in place approach. The weapon's systems the Pentagon and US analysts have cited are no secret and have been under development for years. There is no surprising new threat.
The Financial Times reported in March 2006 that, "it was unclear what aspects of Beijing's development of its nuclear missile forces had surprised US analysts. The report merely cited information about the introduction of new weapons such as the solid-fueled, road-mobile DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which has been under development for decades.
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