Attacking Iran will be a crime against peace, a war crime. Those conducting military operations will be violating the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions and the Laws of Land Warfare. Prosecution for commission of war crimes is possible.
Why am I talking about attacking Iran? The recent resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon caused many of us who watched the conspiracy to invade Iraq move steadily forward to pay closer attention because Admiral Fallon is a critic of Bush and is adamantly against invading Iran.
The Boston Globe considers “the validity of Fallon’s advice” as it notes that Bush has a “history of stumbling into grievous strategic errors” because he ignores the advice of military commanders. While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates states that he also does not want to invade Iran, President Bush has stubbornly refused to take it off the table and we know that Vice President Cheney has certainly considered the idea.
In 1997, a new conservative Washington think-tank called The Project for the New American Century was established. Vice President Dick Cheney, at the time Chairman of Halliburton, was a founding member. Soon after its founding, The Project for the New American Century produced a White Paper published in September of 2000, which outlines what is required of America to create the global empire they envision. The White Paper expressed the conviction that, and I quote, "Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve; retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region."
End quote.
And I suspect that they don’t care at all that the National Intelligence Estimate which represents the consensus view of 16 US Intelligence Agencies reported on December 3, 2007, that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen.
So, Why Wouldn’t We Be Worried?
Admiral Fallon succeeded Army General John Abizaid and both were against the surge. On November 15, 2006, General Abizaid appeared before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee and said, “It is easy for the Iraqis to rely on us to do this work. I believe that more American Forces prevent the Iraqis from doing more, taking more responsibility for their own future.”
Let’s look closer at the surge. It is interesting to me to discover that the surge is indeed killing fewer American soldiers, but just as many Iraqis are being killed – the death toll is at 2005 levels. Does someone think this is acceptable? Don’t we care about them?
International agencies are reporting Iraqi death tolls as high as one million dead. But these numbers aren’t reported here in the US. My dear friend, Ann Wright, who retired from the US Army Reserves as a Colonel after 29 years, who served in Grenada, Panama, Greece, the Netherlands, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, and Mongolia, who was on the small team that reopened the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in December 2001, and who resigned from the U.S. Diplomatic Corps in March 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War, agrees with the observation written by Peter Oborne from Baghdad for The Daily Mail.
Holding a Bull by its Tail
Ann and Peter both worry that “by arming former insurgents and paying them to swoop sides, the U.S. risks building up heavily armed new militias who could unleash untold terror and blood-letting once American troops pull out” (Peter’s quote). The surge is like the concept of holding on to a bull by his tail; if you let go, everything breaks again. It is also like squeezing a balloon, U.S. personnel are dying in fewer numbers where the surge (the squeeze) is occurring, but the killing is swelling out to the surrounding areas.
The surge is also creating problems with U.S. Army recruitment, Peter Oborne reports. “Former U.S. General Barry McGaffrey warned that “the U.S. Army is starting to unravel. Our recruiting campaign is bringing into the Army thousands of new soldiers who should not be in uniform “– drugs and mental delinquency being the reason.” (Peter Oborne).
Think of it, Americans on the edge being recruited to die for oil. I feel more comfortable saying that now that so many more people with more credibility than I are also saying it: General Abizaid, Retired, “Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that.” New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, “We’ve treated the Arab world as a collection of big gas stations.” Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, “the Iraq War is largely about oil.”
Just look at what the greed of this administration has done to our country. It has devastated our economy. It is said that the attention of the electorate in this election season that is upon us is focused on the economy, and not on the war.
It is said that Americans have become accustomed to the backdrop of the ongoing killings in the war in Iraq as they struggle to make ends meet and deal with financial challenges as food and energy prices soar, as they lose their homes, as they lose value in their retirement accounts, as they can’t afford college, as their schools lay off teachers, as they lose their health care.
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