By Elaine Brower
I.
Clinton and Obama Talk Tough
Recently we have heard the words “obliterate”
come out of the mouth of Democratic Candidate for President, Hillary
Clinton. On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, Clinton appeared
on Good Morning America and with tough talk said:
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will
attack Iran. In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly
consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally
obliterate them.”
Again that evening, she was interviewed
by Keith Olberman on MSNBC’s Countdown
when he asked: “Can you clarify since there was no follow-up
to that which hypothetical Middle East conflicts would incur massive
retaliation by this country and what constitutes massive retaliation?
Her response was:
“Well, what we were talking about
was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran. If Iran does achieve
what appears to be its continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons
and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times.
We used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world
and what I think the president should do and what our policy should
be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking
massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.”
Olberman just let her continue her monologue
totally unchallenged about a nuclear attack, as she said, with the help
of NATO. However, we should not be surprised by Clinton’s hawkish
stance. She voted in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman bill which designates
Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a “terrorist organization.”
In her statement she put out after the vote “The Revolutionary Guards
are deeply involved in Iran’s nuclear program and have substantial
links with Hezbollah.” By designating all of the Guard Corps
as terrorists, it includes actual members of the Iranian uniformed military
service who are conscripts in a regular army. (http://www.washingtonpost.com
In the run up to each primary election
across the country, both Democrats have vowed to defend Israel against
any Iranian attack, but they differ on how to engage the Islamic republic
over its “nuclear” ambitions.
Barak Obama has promised “direct talks” at a leaders’ level
with Tehran and others the United States regards as foes. Iran
should be presented with “carrots and sticks,” the Illinois
senator said. In his response to what Clinton said, Obama continued:
“Talk using words like obliterate
doesn’t actually produce good results”I think the Iranians can be
confident that I will respond forcefully, and it will be completely
unacceptable if they attacked Israel, or any other of our allies in
the region, with conventional weapons or nuclear weapons.”
Obama, while a little more measured in
his speech, did not reject the framing posed to him and said that “all
options are on the table.”
But in direct contrast to his statement
that if Iran “attacked any other allies in the region..”, in August
of 2007, he stated:
“There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000
Americans. They are plotting to strike again . . . If we have actionable
intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf
won’t act, we will.”
Obama was referring to Pakistan, who
is an ally of the United States.
Apparently, the White House was so successful
in obfuscating the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate
Report “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities”
, issued in November, 2007 (http://www.dni.gov/press
nor the Senators sitting on the Armed Services (Hillary Clinton) or Foreign
Relations/Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (Barack Obama), were aware of the findings.
Sadly, both were completely comfortable
to further a talking point created by one of the many Neo-con war cheerleaders
who have far too influential a reach for those who have been so completely
and utterly wrong on a Middle East plan.
II.
Part of US and Iranian History
According to New York Times correspondent
Stephen Kinzer, until the outbreak of WWII, the United States had no
active policy towards Iran. From 1952-53, Iran’s nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq
began a period of rapid power consolidation, which led the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi,
to a brief exile and then into power again.
Much of the events of 1952 were started
by Mossadeq’s nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, now British Petroleum. Established by the British
in the early 20th century, an agreement had been made to share profits
(85% British-15% Iran), but the company withheld their financial records
from the Iranian government. Due to alleged profit monopolization by
the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the Iranian Parliament had unanimously
agreed to nationalize its holding of, what was at the time, the British
Empire’s largest company.
The United States and Britain, through
a now-admitted covert operation of the CIA called Operation Ajax,
conducted from the US Embassy in Tehran, helped organize protests to
overthrow Moussadeq and return the Shah to Iran. The operation failed
and the Shah fled to Italy.
After a second successful operation he
returned from his brief exile. Iran’s fledgling attempts at democracy
quickly descended into dictatorship, as the Shah dismantled the constitutional
limitations on his office and began to rule as an absolute monarch.
During his reign, the Shah received significant
American support, frequently making state visits to the White House
and earning praise from numerous American Presidents. The Shah’s close
ties to Washington and his bold agenda of rapidly Westernizing Iran
soon began to infuriate certain segments of the Iranian population,
especially the hardline Islamic conservatives. Because of their eventual
ascension to power during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Operation Ajax
is considered as one of the worst CIA operation ever.
III.
Iranian attempt to Provide Nuclear Power for Electricity
Starting in the mid-1980s, Iran approached
several nuclear suppliers about the possibility of completing the proposed
“Bushehr-1” facility, in hopes of providing the ever-growing population
of Iran with power for electricity through nuclear plants. After
being turned down by Western European countries, Iran turned to China
and the Soviet Union for nuclear technology. On March 6, 1990, the Soviet
Union and Iran signed their first protocol on the project, stipulating
that Moscow would complete the Bushehr plant and build an additional
two reactors in Iran. The deal was delayed, however, by
technical and financial problems.
The Bushehr nuclear facility is associated
with the city of the same name, but is actually located near Halileh
about 12 km (8 miles) south of Bushehr proper. The site is also the
location of Iran’s Nuclear Energy College. There are approximately
6.8 million people living in that region, this plant being the potential
target of aerial strikes.
Last month, an announcement was made
from Tehran that the first nuclear power plant will be operational within
three months, providing electricity to Iran’s national power grid by
the summer.
Russia started delivering nuclear fuel
to the facility a week ago as part of a compromise effort to alleviate
concerns over Iran’s nuclear intentions while supporting Iran’s right
to a nuclear energy program.
The United States, several European nations
and Israel suspect Tehran has been trying to acquire nuclear weapons,
but Iran denies its nuclear program is for anything but peaceful purposes.
A recent U.S. intelligence summary concluded that, contrary to earlier
suspicions, Iran halted its nuclear weapons development in 2003. http://www.cnn.com/2007
the UN has imposed 3 rounds of economic sanctions against Iran.
Iran also said it “will soon announce
international tender for construction of 19 new 1,000-megawatt nuclear
power plants.” The measure would be “taken in line with”
the parliament’s approval “for generating 20,000 megawatt of electricity
to meet domestic demands.”
IV.
Nuclear “Obliteration; destruction (n.); annihilation, eradication,
elimination, abolition”
So why are the candidates who are running
for the democratic votes talking about “nuclear options?”
Sounds like such a neat little package, just drop a nuclear bomb and
the government of Iran will comply. The definitions above explain
exactly what obliteration means, and by using that word, Clinton, as
well as Obama know exactly what they are talking about.
Unknown to most, and later buried in
classified materials, in August 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney had
instructed STRATCOM
to prepare:
“a contingency plan to be employed
in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United
States… [including] a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both
conventional and tactical nuclear weapons… not conditional on Iran
actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the
United States. “
The reason cited for the attack to use
mini-nukes is that the targets are hardened or are deep underground
and would not be destroyed by non-nuclear warheads. http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib
http://forum.stirpes.net
The Bush administration’s new nuclear
doctrine contains specific “guidelines” which allow for “preemptive”
nuclear strikes against “rogue enemies” which “possess”
or are “developing” weapons of mass destruction (WMD). (2001
Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations
(DJNO)). The document,
revising the existing one from 1995, written by the Pentagon’s
Joint Chiefs of Staff, under the direction of Air Force Gen. Richard
B. Myers, chairman, states:
Summary of Changes: Revision
of Joint Publication 3-12
- Contains discussion
of both strategic and theater and nuclear operations - Covers the purpose of
United States nuclear forces - Revises the discussion
of nuclear weapons use across the range of military operations - Provides an updated
and expanded discussion of nuclear operations - Introduces the joint
targeting cycle process to nuclear operations
The preemptive nuclear
doctrine (DJNO), which applies to Iran and North Korea calls for “offensive
and defensive integration”. It explicitly allows the
preemptive use of thermonuclear weapons in conventional war theaters.
In the showdown with Tehran over its
alleged nuclear weapons program, these Pentagon “guidelines”
would allow, subject to presidential approval, for the launching of
punitive bombings using “mini-nukes” or tactical thermonuclear
weapons.
While the “guidelines”
do not exclude other (more deadly) categories of nukes in the US and/or
Israeli nuclear arsenal, Pentagon “scenarios” in the Middle
East are currently limited to the
use of tactical nuclear weapons including the B61-11 bunker buster bomb.
This particular version of the bunker buster is a thermonuclear bomb, a
so-called Nuclear Earth Penetrator or NEP. It is a Weapon of Mass Destruction
in the real sense of the word. Its utilization by the US or Israel in
the Middle East war theater would trigger a nuclear holocaust.
(http://www.acronym.org.uk/docs
V.
Nuclear Attacks Past and Future
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were nuclear attacks that killed as many as 140,000 people
in Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki by the end of 1945 roughly half
on the days of the bombings. Since then, thousands more have died from
injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by
the bombs. In both cities, the overwhelming majority of the dead were
civilians. These bombs were used by the United States against
Japan, fully aware of the consequences.
The population of Tehran is approximately
12 million, with the current estimate of total population of Iran at
71 million people. “Obliteration” would mean not thousands,
or hundreds of thousands of people, but millions upon millions of innocent
people once again destroyed at the hands of the United States.
The vision of a mushroom cloud analogy
when lobbying for invading Iraq by Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Donald
Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George Bush could become a reality at the
hands of the next democratic president. However, the blood from
that cloud will stain their hands, as well as ours, if we allow this
rhetoric to continue.
Richard Nixon was voted into the presidency
as the peace candidate, and he escalated the war by an increased aerial
assault on Vietnam as well as crossing the borders into Cambodia on
the assumptions that they were “supplying” the NVC or resistance
fighters. However, in that case nuclear weapons were thankfully
not used, although a component of the bombings was “Agent Orange,”
poisoning with devastating effects on all that lived there, as well
as our soldiers.
In conclusion, it is safe to assume that
the presidential candidates are fully aware of the expanded powers not
only under the current presidency, but the procedures relating to warfare
and the new Pentagon. So by invoking the terms “nuclear attack”
they will have the power to do so and that is the reality.
However, a nuclear strike on Iran, or
as stated in the newly updated Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations
(DJNO), a strike on any “perceived
threat” is so illegal, unimaginable and loathsome, that it being bandied
about by Presidential hopefuls for 2008 is completely and utterly unbelievable,
and a continuation of the Bush program into at least the next 4 years.
All of these candidates must be challenged openly and vigorously when
they make these statements which not only effect us, but the rest of
the globe.