On Sunday, Zbigniew Brzezinski had an oped in the Los Angeles Times entitled "Been There, Done That" in which he compares the build-up to the Iraq war with the current hysteria about Iran, and examines the potential consequences of a war on Iran.
There were two interesting aspects to this op-ed.
First, he comes quite close -- but not enough -- to say something which no one in officialdom is allowed to openly acknowledge: The United States is being pushed into this was againt Iran, just as in the war against Iraq, by pro-Israeli lobbyists. Yikes! Shhhh! Don't repeat that out loud!
[T]here are clearly people in the Bush administration who do not wish for any negotiated solution, abetted by outside drum-beaters for military action and egged on by full-page ads hyping the Iranian threat...It is therefore high time for the administration to sober up and think strategically, with a historic perspective and the U.S. national interest primarily in mind.
Who, pray tell, were these "people" that took out these full-page ads and who don't have the "US national interest" in mind? Well Ziggy doesn't want to say it, but anyone who has seen the ads knows. (Hint: It wasn't the Quakers.) However, thanks to a few real journalists that are left, as well as the few brave academics who are willing to speak truth to power, everyone is starting to understand the role of the Israeli lobby in pushing the US to do Israel's dirty work.
But the second thing in Ziggy's oped caught my eye even more:
If there is another terrorist attack in the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there also will be immediate charges that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favor of military action.
At first blush, this paragraph seems simply to be a hypothetical statement ... or is it a prediction? Is Ziggy really saying that there is a liklihood that someone, somewhere will conveniently manufacture such a "terrorist attack" in order to create a pretext for US military attack on Iran, as the Pro-Israeli Lobby wants?
Of course, this sounds paranoid - but not if you know any history: the manufacture of pretexts for war is standard practice. We can start with the the Mexican-American war of 1846 (manufactured border dispute used as a pretext for the US to gain much territory from Mexico) and go to the Spanish-American War of 1898 (accidental sinking of the USS Maine in Havanna harbour used as a pretext to wrestle Cuba and other territory away from Spain) to Viet Nam (non-existent "attack" on the US Navy intelligence ship used as a justification to bomb North Vietnam) to the invasion of Grenada in 1983 (rescue of American medical students who were in no danger until the attack started) and to the First Gulf War (nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.) Some historians claim that the US knew of and provoked the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to justify US involvement in World War II (Day of Deceit: the Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, by Robert Stinnett.) In what became known as the Lavon Affair, Israeli agents placed bombs in American and British sites in Egypt, and tried to blame the resulting explosions on Arabs in order to harm Egyptian's international relations. And according declassified government documents dug up by James Bamford, the US at least considered promoting a campaign of terrorism on US soil which was to be blamed on Castro so as to create a pretext to invade Cuba. (Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency.) All of these events are documented historical facts - they only sound "conspiratorial" to those naive enough to believe that morality has a role in international politics.
And there are some good indications that the US knew about but repeatedly failed to stop the impending attacks on the World Trade Centers. Did you know, for example, that an FBI informer named Emad Salem offered to substitute a harmless substance for the explosive material used by the terrorist in the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, but was instructed by the FBI not to do so?
"Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast. The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor." (Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast, by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times Thursday October 28, 1993)
Why haven't we hear anything more about that issue? Or that FBI field agents repeatedly warned their superiors aout the activities of the terrorists involved in the second attack which occurred on 9-11-2001, but the FBI failed to stop them? Notice how that investigation didn't really go anywhere either? Suspicious? You bet. Carl Camron of Fox News did a series of reports about the role of Israel in the 9-11 attacks. We didn't hear anything else on that either...
So, I have to wonder if the culmination of all this hysteria-mongering by the pro-Israeli lobby for an attack on Iran won't be another 9-11 type incident which this time used to justify a war on Iran instead of Iraq, as Ziggy predicts(?)
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