JOHN BOLTON AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION, II

Column no. 71 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - August 11, 2005,

I published the first version of this column on March 31, 2005.  On the occasion of the recess appointment of Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations by President Bush, it seems appropriate to revisit the subject.  This column is an edited version of the earlier one, with a few additional thoughts.

In re my column of two weeks ago about Iran and nuclear weapons, it seems appropriate to repeat that the Georgites relish talking about “nuclear options” (or is it “nookyulahr opshuns”?). They do this both in the real and metaphorical contexts, as in their plan for ending the possibility of Senate filibusters in re judicial appointments.  (This one may come up again in the context of the Roberts Supreme Court nomination.  Unlike Bolton, he is likeable.  In every other way, he is the ideal, far right-wing Georgite.  For example, his rulings from the bench on the President’s power, claimed by the present Attorney General [!] to amend the Constitution on whim in relation to the Geneva Conventions, show a fascistic trend as least as strong as Bolton’s.)   Cong. Tancredos (R-CA) has talked about “nuking” Mecca in response to another London 7/7-type bombing.  In my column of two weeks ago, which referred back to material I published in this space in February and March, I discussed the possibility of the very real use of nuclear weapons in Iran, apparently now being promoted by Cheney’s office.  As I pointed out then, since US ground forces are in an increasingly parlous state, it appears that the only possible course of US military action beyond “special ops.” with our own and Iranian guerilla troops (not Iranian “terrorists,” of course) would be to use the real “nuclear option.”  Now we have another metaphorical example of Georgite thinking along these lines: the appointment of John Bolton to be Ambassador to the United Nations.

There has been much analysis of the inappropriateness of this particular Bush/neocon choice, given Bolton’s long-standing disdain for the institution and his advocacy over time of a variety of anti-UN measures, including the possibility of quitting the body altogether.  Beyond his views on the UN, the man does not exactly have a reputation as an accomplished diplomat.  To the contrary, two bulls in a china shop seem to be an accurate description of his interpersonal, much less diplomatic, skills.  In conventional terms, then, the appointment seems to be un-understandable, inexplicable.  However, if one starts thinking about what the true Georgite objectives likely are, naming Bolton to the UN makes total sense.  They indeed are symbolized by this appointment.

Bush plaints about “have to fill the vacant post” are (being generous) as disingenuous as are so many other of his statements.  Bolton could not get past the Senate.  There are a number of qualified Republicans who could easily get Senate approval, e.g., Colin Powell. But Bush was absolutely determined to by-pass the democratic process that he tells us over and over again he wants to impose by force in many other parts of the world, to get his man.  Why?  It is unlikely that any of the truly qualified Republicans would agree to play Bush’s UN game for which Bolton is uniquely suited, that is to achieve the destruction of the UN.

The “Bush Doctrine” calls for unrestricted US intervention around the world, using force when, as, and if Bush deems it necessary, unconstrained by any treaty obligations. Based on Presidential whim or other motivations, such interventions do not require -- indeed reject to the political extent possible – multi-lateralism and allied involvement.  The “Doctrine” is a formula for continued and continuous maxi-imperialist aggression by the Georgite-run United States, using the excuse of the week whether true or not.  In such a context, the UN could only be an impediment to carrying out this policy.  At best, then, the US would like to find some way to destroy the UN as we have known it since 1945.  Next best to destruction, which I suppose only people like Bolton and Cheney could seriously imagine happening, would be to make a conclusory case domestically for US departure from that body.

The Georgite anti-UN campaign, let us recall, began in the run-up to the pre-planned Iraq War.  A US Secretary of State formerly held in high regard in many world capitols, knowingly (or perhaps, if he is not as smart as advertised, unknowingly) lied through his teeth on the Iraq reality to the Security Council in February, 2003 (see my TPJ column for March 16, 2004).  Powell showed total disdain for the UN in that performance.  What followed was a supposed campaign to get the Security Council to pass a resolution supporting the invasion.  However, the US put such conditions on the proposed resolution that UN intransigence was virtually guaranteed.  That was the Bush/Blair goal, precisely.  For in fact the US and its puppet, Blair’s UK, did not want any UN participation, at all.  For that would have meant UN involvement in determining war plans and goals and objectives, US/UK military forces under UN command, and UN control of post-war developments.  These were three big sets of no-no’s for the Georgites, who have kept the UN at arms-length in Iraq since then.

Since then, too, the Georgites have kept up the drumbeat of anti-UN propaganda domestically, focusing on five (count them) Congressional investigations of the Iraq oil-for-food program.  (This in a Congress that investigates little else other than as distractions, e.g., the problem of steroid use in major league baseball.)  The UN investigations, of course, have turned out to be all for naught, since the US either knew about or was in the middle of whatever ethical and rules violations and corruption took place.  But once again, we must remember that it is simply unfair to confuse the Georgite constituency with facts.  The anti-UN seeds have been planted and are being cultivated.  Secretary General Kofi Annan already recognizes what is going on as he launches his campaign to make a primary focus of the international body the protection and promotion of human rights, specifically condemning such actions as those embodied by the “USA Patriot” Act.

As Ambassador to the UN Bolton will be an instigator, not a negotiator.  (As Andy Borowitz said in his web-based Report of August 2nd, “Elsewhere, in his first day on the job, United Nations Ambassador John Bolton toured the U.N. building in New York to determine which ten stories would be easiest to remove.”)  Perhaps there will be demands for his departure on the part of some of the smaller countries which he manages to insult with his chestnuts of anti-UN aggression.  The US regime’s domestic clamor to make massive reductions in contributions to the world body will become ever-louder and be echoed with increasing vigor, in the Congress by O’RHannibaugh, and by the rest of the Georgite Privatized Ministry of Propaganda.  There will be possible intermediate outcomes.  But ultimately, I believe that the Georgites will have built their case at home with their constituency, the only place where it counts for them, to quit the UN and of course to expel its headquarters from this country.  To achieve such Georgite objectives is the only scenario that could rationally explain the appointment of John Bolton, a mark of Bush’s desperation as well as his determination to achieve the full agenda of the Republican Religious Right.  Time will tell if I am right on this one.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KARL ROVE SPEECH

Column No. 70 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - August 5, 2005

Presently (or at least as I write this), Karl Rove’s name is entangled with leaks, tweaks, possible law-breaking, possible treason, possible firing, possible resignation, possible impeachment.  However, whether Karl Rove stays in or goes from his present position, whether he is indicted for one crime or another or is not, the Georgite policies that he has done so much to develop, along with the highly effective propaganda organization he has also developed, will remain firmly entrenched.  They will be at the center of the Georgite regime and what it does, both day-to-day and long-term.  Further, if Rove goes, unless it is to prison, he will be very much involved with the regime on an on-going basis, just without an official title, without a White House pass (presumably), and without a government salary.  As to the latter, of course he will be doing much better on his “lobbyist’s” salary or whatever they want to call it that will surely be provided by wealthy Bush-backers.

This column is thus not about the current affaire Rove.  It is about something much more significant: the content and meaning of the speech the man gave to an assembly of the New York State Conservative Party on Wednesday, June 22, 2005.  That speech provided a rare look into both the strategy and the tactics of the Republican Religious Right.  Although one can be certain that Rove did not engineer the current flap over his central role in outing Valerie Plame, funnily enough it bears all the hallmarks of a classic Rove-distraction that he has engineered so many times over the course of the Georgite occupation of the White House.  Although Rove could not possibly have wanted one possible outcome of “PlameGate” so badly that he would put his own head in the noose, it has served to distract attention from that highly significant speech.

Advance warning: this is scary stuff, scarier even than the likely fact that Rove did out Plame, not as an act of revenge (that too, but minor) but as my friend and colleague Michael Carmichael has pointed out in “Some dare call it treason,” http://planetmove.blogspot.com/ and these pages as well, as a warning to future whistleblowers.  “You do it, and we’ll figure out a way to put your lives at stake,” in this case by blowing the cover of a long-time CIA agent and many of her contacts around the world as well, working in the highly dangerous real (as opposed to the Georgite fictional) world of Weapons of Mass Destruction.  (Rove does deal with one type of WMD, extremely well: Weapons of Mass Distraction.)  However, what Rove said in that speech is scary for everyone, not just potential whistleblowers.  Thus if you do not like tales of horror, do not read any further.

I am not going to provide extensive quotes from the speech here.  For those readers not familiar with it, I refer you to articles in the Washington Post of 6/23/05 by Dan Froomkin and 6/24/05 by Dan Balz, and Patrick Martin at the World Socialist website (http://www.wsws.org) of 6/25/05.  The full text was published at the washingtonpost.com on 6/22/05 but may well no longer be there.  In summary, Rove said that “liberals” were wimps on the 9/11 attacks, that “conservatives” were tough on them; that “conservatives” wanted to “summon our national will” and “brandish steel” while “liberals” didn’t; that Howard Dean, Michael Moore, and Moveon.org did not want “to defeat our enemies;” that Sen. Durbin’s (totally correct) charge that the U.S. is using Nazi/Stalinist-type arbitrary arrest/indefinite imprisonment without charges, representation, or trial/routine-use-of-torture tactics in its treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo “put America’s men and women in uniform in greater danger.  No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.”

This was a totally remarkable speech, and will remain remarkable whether Karl Rove stays or goes from his current position, or even if he eventually ends up in prison.  First of all, at least up to this recent flap, Karl Rove, usually the quintessential behind-the-scenes guy, has been appearing in public more often.  The speech was preceded the day before by an appearance with David Gregory on MSNBC and followed on the day after it by an appearance with the right-wing commentator Joe Scarborough, also on MSNBC.  Why should this be happening?  Well, if you were a Georgite would you be happy with the way Bush articulates, or rather is completely inarticulate about, their positions?  These appearances indicate to me that the Bush puppet-masters are beginning to think that their Charlie McCarthy is getting a bit limp and that Edgar Bergen needs to step directly up to the plate.

Second, Rove told flat-out lies.  For example, the TV commercial he said Moveon.org put out right after the 9/11 tragedy simply doesn’t, and didn’t ever, exist.  Lying and misrepresentation have been stock in trade for the Republicans for decades.  Adlai Stevenson once famously said that “if the Republicans would promise to stop telling lies about the Democrats, I will promise to stop telling the truth about them.”  However, here they are coming directly from the White House.

Third, to make this speech Rove appeared before the New York Conservative Party.  Never mind that regardless of what they did in a given general election, it has been on the attack against New York’s Republican governor, Pataki, ever since he was elected.  Rove knows just how his minority-President got to be President, by creating a Republican/Christian Alliance, of which the members of the New York Conservative Party are natural elements.  That is the Georgite base, and Rove was talking to them, not a New York State party (which happens to be the official Republican one) that however, on paper at least, supports abortion rights and (with limits) gay rights.

Fourth, Bush is in political trouble (the War on Iraq, Social Security, gas prices, etc.).  So Rove thinks: “let’s go to the distraction tactic.  Since we cannot use the War, let us go back to what worked for us so beautifully the last time we were in serous political trouble: 9/11.  And now that it starting to fade in memory a bit, we can make up even more things about it than we have done previously.”

Fifth, Rove is now well into demonizing the Georgites’ political enemies.  Over the years, the Republicans have managed to make “liberal” into a dirty word, sort of like “commie” used to be.  Then he conflates “Democrats” (Dean, Durbin) with “liberals”  (Michael Moore, Moveon.org).  Just a turn of phrase, you think?  Hardly.  Ann Coulter made a mint, and a reputation in certain quarters, by writing a book that shows her true believers that “liberal” equals “traitor.”  Treason calls for the death penalty.  According to the way these people think, anyone who disagrees with them is a “liberal,” any liberal is a traitor, and you can easily see where that leads.  It’s one thing for Coulter to say it.  Quite something else for the leading policy formulator and Minister of Propaganda for the Regime to say it: if you are against us, you are a liberal, and liberals are traitors.  Just Ashcroft said the same thing right after 9/11 and the theme was quickly dropped in the face of the then-outcry.  It is now back, with a vengeance.  And what do you do with traitors?  Why lock them up, and then kill them, just like the Nazis did, of course.

Sixth, the speech does give a clear insight into just what Bush’s concept of “freedom and democracy” is.  For starters, it does not include any disagreement over Georgite policy.  But then again, over the gate at Auschwitz is the famous sign with the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei:” “Work Makes You Free.”

Finally, one major state of affairs that the Rove speech was intended to distract attention from, to indeed cover up from the public’s gaze, is the true state of national security under the Georgites. It’s terrible. First, these guys were asleep at the switch when 9/11 happened.  Not that they necessarily could have stopped it like Clinton stopped the 12-airliners plot in 1998 or the Millennium Bomb plot in 2000.  But if they had paid attention to Richard Clarke, the 8/6/01 Presidential Daily Briefing, the Acting Director of the FBI, the FBI’s own counter-terrorism unit for which Ashcroft denied a funding  increase on 9/10/01, and so on and so forth, they might well have.  Bush has not destroyed al Qaeda or even caught bin Laden.  Cheney’s wished-for gas pipeline partners, the Taliban, are back in business in Afghanistan.  The US military is being wasted away in Iraq.  Report after report on a variety of aspects of domestic security (ports, railroads, chemical factories, atomic energy plants) show woeful inadequacies.  The institutionalized violence in U.S. prisons for Muslim captives who have zero rights just creates more terrorists, just as does U.S. support of Sharonist policy in Israel.

There it is, all laid out for us, nice and neat, the Georgite plan for dealing with the opposition, that is, us.  As I said above, it’s scary stuff, ain’t it?

_______________

Junkie:  For those TPJ readers who may find Dr. Jonas’ warnings unimaginable, read this article released last week -- The Iran War Buildup by Michael T. Klare.

Since Dr. Jonas’ article was published, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com has published an article revealing detailed plans by the Bush administration to invade Iran.  Raimondo provides a quote from a recent American Conservative magazine article (not online) authored by Philip Giraldi (emphasis added):

"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA clandestine officer and co-publisher of "Intelligence Brief."  Giraldi is quoted in an interview earlier this year saying:

Some kind of U-S attack on Iran is likely . . . .

Probably the wind has gone out of the sails of the people that would be inclined toward a full-scale invasion after what has happened in Iraq. Iran is after all much bigger and more populous than Iraq. I think basically what we are going to see is an escalating covert campaign. – Voice of America

Dr. Jonas asked the question if the US was prepared to use nuclear weapons in Iran.  It appears that the answer to his question is emerging.

IRAN NUKES, REVISITED (Expanded Edition)

Column No. 69 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 28, 2005

This column is a revisit to a series of short pieces that were run in this space last spring, which were in turn based upon a series of “Shorts Shot” run on our European Editor Michael Carmichael’s “The Moving Planet (Ltd. UK) Blog” (http://planetmove.blogspot.com/) for which I am privileged to be a Contributing Editor.  The topic will, I fear, be with us for quite some time and there are some new developments.  Thus in my view it is worth this revisit, with some editing and additional commentary.

On Monday, November 29, 2004, in "Short Shot No. 27: Iranian Nukes," I wrote in part that at that time not a day seemed to pass without the Iranians changing their position on nuclear weapons development.  One day, they are accepting European proposals for an agreement to suspend it; the next day they seem to be repudiating any agreement.  The U.S. and the Israelis have worked hard to paint the scariest of scenarios were Iran to join the nuclear club, albeit with a few bombs and fairly primitive means of delivering them.  I happen to think that the scariest nation having nuclear weaponry at present is the United States under the Georgites.  It is well known that leading members of and top advisors to the Georgite regime have for some time openly talked about invading Iran.  Since the U.S. ground forces are having such a tough time against lightly armed guerillas in Iraq, “with what is the U.S. going to invade Iran?” one might ask.

Consider the history.  The U.S. is the only country ever to have used nuclear weapons.  Since the time of the Eisenhower Administration (to my knowledge only under successor Republican presidents), the U.S. has actually considered using them again in one situation or another.  In the Iraq war, Georgite sympathizers talked about "nuking" Fallujah.  In his national radio program on June 25, 2005, Paul Harvey, the 87 year-old Disney Corp. (ABC) commentator, questioned why “rifles” were used in Afghanistan instead of the “big one.”  The Georgite program to develop a whole new generation of "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons, designed to get at underground facilities of various kinds, has been receiving on-again, off-again, on-again consideration in the Republican Congress, with the only concern apparently being the cost.  Most recently, the Georgites have announced their interest in starting up a new program to develop enriched plutonium.  Such work has not been done in years.  One wonders just what the purpose of that program would be.

If I were in the Iranian leadership, liberal or conservative, given these facts and given that close-by Israel, presently under the Partition-rejectionist/Palestinians-ejectionist Sharonists, is estimated to have about 400 nuclear weapons, I would want to have them too.  Unless a deal is made, since the Iranian nuclear industry is widely decentralized only a complete takeover of the whole country by the US could prevent Iran from eventually acquiring nuclear weapons.  The deal that the Iranians may be on their way to making with the Europeans and the Russians may be indeed to not acquire them, in return for a solid guarantee of protection against the US.  Perhaps (I noted back in November) this is what the on-again/off-again nature of the public Iranian position is all about, as the various forces maneuver behind closed doors to provide those guarantees to the Iranians.  Stranger alliances have occurred in history.

On December 04, 2004, I followed that commentary with "Short Shot No. 31: Further on Iranian Nukes."  In it I noted that a friend, a very sharp political analyst and a strong anti-Georgite on most issues, had sent me the following comment:

"Steve: If you're really, truly more afraid of George Bush than of the theocrats in Teheran, I'm afraid we don't have anything to say to each other on this topic.  If it's just rhetoric, I think it's ill-judged rhetoric."

I sent him the following response:

"Hi.  Yes, I am more afraid of George Bush and the theocrats/Neocons that are running him than I am of the theocrats in Teheran.  George Bush is rapidly turning our country into a fascist dictatorship.  This is beyond the power of the Iranians to do, nuclear-tipped or not.  The negative impacts of Georgite policy, not only for our country but also for the human species as we know it, are terrifying, in my view.  Whether or not Iran acquires nuclear weapons, I am indeed much more afraid that the Georgite theocratic/Armageddonists, as they become evermore entrenched in power while evermore feeling that on the international stage their backs are against the wall, might use the US nukes than that the Iranians would use theirs."

I never did receive a response from my erstwhile correspondent.  He is obviously a man of his word, that if I stuck to my position, we had nothing further to talk about.

I returned to the subject on February 21, 2005 in "Short Shot No. 48: Going Nuclear in Iran?”  I noted that our Editor/Publisher Michael Carmichael had just published the next item below on The Iran War.  It began:

"Seymour Hersh and Scott Ritter have reported that the US planning for the Iran War is reaching a very advanced stage.  George Bush has already approved a June launch, when the bombing will target strategic sites inside Iran.”  And continuing: ". . . the Defense Department is now revising military plans for a maximum ground and air invasion of the oil-rich nation."

Right above the notice of Michael's item in my email in box that day was the daily bulletin from The Washington Post, which contained this lead item: "Army Having Difficulty Meeting Recruiting Goals.  The active-duty Army is in danger of failing to meet its recruiting goals, and is beginning to suffer from manpower strains like those that have dropped the National Guard and Reserves below full strength, according to Army figures and interviews with senior officers.  (By Ann Scott Tyson, The Washington Post)"

The Georgite maxi-Imperialists must know this.  The US will have nowhere near enough ground forces for any sort of conventional invasion of Iran.  It is having a hard time holding its own against guerrillas in Iraq, much less the large, well organized and well-equipped Army it would be facing in Iran.  It could very well face mass rebellion in the ranks of the Reserves and National Guard, and even the regular forces, including some high-ranking officers (many of whom opposed the Iraq invasion, at least at the planning level) were it to try to mount a conventional invasion of Iran.  Does this mean that the powers that be are planning to go nuclear?

Yes, folks.  That is what I said.  The end of civilization as we know it may be closer than most of us think.

Finally, on February 25, 2005, in "Short Shot No. 49: There He Goes Again," I noted that George Bush was in Europe, talking about Iran and nuclear weapons.  While there, Bush said that he strongly endorsed the European diplomatic option in pursuit of a settlement with the "Moolahs" on the matter of "nookyulahr" weapons (yes, he used those pronunciations in a sound bite heard on All Things Considered, 2/23/ 05).  "Most important," he said.  "Will continue," he said.  "Absolutely the first option," he said.  (He did not say, of course, that his own government would engage in direct diplomacy with Iran on matters of mutual concern, any more than his government did with Hussein's Iraq, or is doing with North Korea, which has repeatedly requested bilateral negotiations.)  Perhaps it is to secure the promise made by the new Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, first reported by Andy Borowitz in his Report of June 27, 2005.  Sounding remarkably counter-factual and counter-rational like the U.S. President so often does, Mr. Ahmadinejad said, not to worry, Iran is building “the most peaceful nuclear weapon ever” (speaking in English and pronouncing the word “nuclear” correctly, to boot).

However, in several previous items in this space, primarily by our Editor-Publisher Michael Carmichael, we have read, courtesy of Scott Ritter, ex-Marine, ex-US Government weapons inspector in Iraq, which Bush has already signed off on a military attack on Iran for June.  Bush's statements on "diplomacy" obviously constitute major lying to the world, right up there with the lying to the world on the reasons for the US invasion of Iraq.  At stake with this newest ultra-Imperialist adventure of the Georgites are the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, to say nothing of the future of Constitutional democracy in the US, and the future of the US economy, to say nothing of the world's economy.  And if they use nuclear (yes, George, that is the correct spelling) weapons, as I suggested they might in my previous Short Shot, well . . .

Which brings us to the present and my present comment.

As is well known, the victor in the recent Iranian Presidential election was former Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  While the open military assault predicted by Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh has not yet taken place, according to Ritter the U.S. assault on Iran has already begun, covertly.  (You can follow Scott Ritter’s work at the Project for the Old American Century (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/), http://www.informationclearinghouse.info, and Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/.  Hey Scott, set up a website, will you?)  If true, this initiative has much in common with the pre-emptive air war that the US and the UK launched against Iraq well before they went to the UN with their “justifications” for “meeting the clear and present danger of that Hussein’s Iraq presented to the world.”  Ritter states that the anti-Iranian government terrorist organization, the Mujaheddin-e Khalg (known as the MEK or MKO in the West) is operating as a strike force under CIA direction, and that the United States is preparing to stage military attacks with U.S. troops from the neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan.

As for the new Iranian President and the possibility of U.S.-Iranian negotiations, the process of demonization of the former, most likely to give the US an excuse not to negotiate with him, has already begun.  He has been identified as a hostage-taker, interrogator, and possible torturer during the Tehran US Embassy hostage crisis of 1979-80 by at least six former hostages.  Iranian authorities are going out of their way to deny this, but one wonders what difference that would make if the Georgites really wanted to negotiate.  Of course, the US does not negotiate with terrorists.  Except.  Except when it is in its interest to do so.

After all, Reagan may well have negotiated with the Ayatollah Khomeini during the 1980 elections, with Bush the First as a major go-between, to defer release of the hostages until after the US elections, which Khomeini did (see the book October Surprise by Gary Sick).  Reagan definitely negotiated with the Khomeini regime to arrange the Iran part of the Iran-Contra scheme to raise money to buy weapons for the Nicaragua contras.  Both sides of the conspiracy were illegal.  Iran was at the time officially designated as a "terrorist state,” by the US, and US aid of any kind to the Contras was specifically prohibited by the Boland Amendment.  So Bush's ideological forbears, including directly his Dad, negotiated directly with the Iranian terrorists when it served their objectives.  As for the present, the Georgites are apparently negotiating with the Iraqi insurgents/terrorists right now (what exactly about, one has to wonder).  But direct negotiations with the government of Iran would not serve their interests now, so the facts be damned.  Let the demonization begin.

History, consistency, and honesty are just inconveniences for the Georgites and their supporters.  On the much more important nuclear question, one still has to wonder, is the use of nuclear weapons already on the Georgite agenda for Iran?  Given their extraordinary track record for secrecy and conspiracy, we may know only when the first mushroom cloud appears over the Elburz, or perhaps the Tagros mountains of that historic land.

_______________

Junkie:  For those TPJ readers who may find Dr. Jonas’ warnings unimaginable, read this article released last week -- The Iran War Buildup by Michael T. Klare.

Since Dr. Jonas’ article was published, Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com has published an article revealing detailed plans by the Bush administration to invade Iran.  Raimondo provides a quote from a recent American Conservative magazine article (not online) authored by Philip Giraldi (emphasis added):

"The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing – that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack – but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA clandestine officer and co-publisher of "Intelligence Brief."  Giraldi is quoted in an interview earlier this year saying:

Some kind of U-S attack on Iran is likely . . . .

Probably the wind has gone out of the sails of the people that would be inclined toward a full-scale invasion after what has happened in Iraq. Iran is after all much bigger and more populous than Iraq. I think basically what we are going to see is an escalating covert campaign. – Voice of America

Dr. Jonas asked the question if the US was prepared to use nuclear weapons in Iran.  It appears that the answer to his question is emerging.

THE DICK DURBIN DISASTER:" A FOLLOW-UP

Column no. 68 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH July 14, 2005

Last week I in this space, I published a lengthy column on what I called “The Dick Durbin Disaster.”  This week I am on vacation, so my column will be (for some readers, I know mercifully) somewhat shorter, but on the same subject: recognizing that we are in a war with the Republican Religious Right over Constitutional democracy.

Last week Stephen Gheen kindly introduced my article with the following words [slightly emended]:

“Dr. Steven Jonas authors an article today that [puts in bold letters] the problem that threatens the vitality and reemergence of the Democratic Party.  Dr. Jonas frames the issues with simple perfection: ‘Do we want to win?  Do we really want to restore and preserve our precious constitutional democracy and above it, the Rule of Law?  [If we do], the first thing we have to do is recognize that there are sides in this battle and then recognize who is on which side.’  [In his column] Dr. Jonas draws the sides and provides some critical [recommendations] for Democrats.”

Over the years since 9/11 and the Georgites’ response to and use of it to undertake in earnest their long planned full assault on Constitutional democracy in the United States, I have occasionally thought of a union song from the 1930s by a woman named Florence Reese.  Although we in the upper middle-class, left-wing, Depression/New-Deal Era households of the type in which I grew up, in New York City had not-too-much in-depth knowledge of, and certainly no direct experience with, the events, or even the type of events, to which it referred, the song was a staple.

The song was about the situation in the coal-mining county of Harlan, Kentucky that came to be known as the “Harlan War,” during which the county came to be known as “Bloody Harlan.”  The “J.H. Blair” referred to in it was the local sheriff who, after he had his men violently break up a local meeting of the National Mineworkers Union, famously said: “The Red revolt in Harlan County has been crushed!”  For a further brief history of the period, I refer you to http://www.carlestes.com/bloodyharlan.html.

Let me share with you the lyrics of that song, which often bring tears to my eyes when I think of them, and do now as I write this.  Will we need to have a book entitled Cry the Beloved Country written about our glorious land too?  For me, these words just resonate so well down to our own time, sadly on so much larger a scale.

“They say in Harlan County there are no neutrals there You’ll either be a union man or a thug for J.H. Blair.

“Chorus: Which side are you on? Which side are you on?

“My daddy was miner and I'm a miner's son And I'll stick with the union 'til every battle's done.

Come all you good workers, I have good news for you I'll tell of how our union has come in here to dwell.

“Chorus: Which side are you on? Which side are you on?”

“Oh workers can you stand it? Oh tell me how you can; Will you be a lousy scab or will you be a man?

“Chorus: Which side are you on? Which side are you on?”

Don't scab for the bosses, don't listen to their lies Us poor folks haven't got a chance unless we organize.

“Chorus: Which side are you on? Which side are you on?”

In defense of the Constitution, there are only two sides.  Just as on the slavery question, there is no middle ground.  You are either for it, or agin’ it, as they would say in the hills of Kentucky, and North Carolina too, for that matter.  The only question now is: is our side going to organize for its defense and protection before it is destroyed by the Republican Religious Right, lead by the Georgites, and win the battle through organizing and electoral politics?  Or will we have to fight for its Restoration after they have completed the campaign of total destruction leading to theocratic fascism they are currently engaged in?

THE DICK DURBAN DISASTER

Column No. 67 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - July 7, 2005

A moderate rises on the floor of the nation's legislative body, one that is dominated by conservatives.  He notes with anguish that his nation has begun to treat imprisoned enemies in a manner that many consider to be inhumane.  He uses as his source a member of one of the national security services who has seen first-hand what is going on.  He is particularly critical of the personnel who are carrying out the inhumane treatments.  He compares them to those who did similar things in the Soviet Union.  The events of which he speaks have been widely reported upon, from a variety of sources, not just the one he cites, and not in the official media.  Members of the government and the official media that support it immediately and ferociously attack him.  The attacks on him for "demeaning our young men and women" become so vicious that he eventually apologizes for his remarks, even though it is well known that they were right on target.

So let us see.  What is the setting, what is the facility and program, and who is the cast of characters here?  The Senate, Dick Durban, Guantanamo, the Patriot Act, Dick Cheney, the Fox”News”Channel?  Well, yes.  And was Dick Durban right?  Well, yes.  The process of arbitrary arrest, with the arrestees not being told of any charges against them, not being provided with either legal representation or trial, with the claim being made that because they were a “danger to the nation” they could be held indefinitely, that is just what happened in Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union.  Conditions in and the treatment of prisoners held at Gitmo bears many similarities to the situation in Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union, as well.  To illustrate the point, and to bring the Nazi-Georgite comparison into even sharper focus, specifically, let us note that the setting for such a speech and what happened subsequent to it laid out above could easily have been the following.

The German Reichstag shortly after the passage of the Enabling Act could have been the setting.  The Act gave Hitler and his designees the power to arrest anyone deemed a "terrorist" and then imprison them indefinitely without charge, representation, or trial, just on his own say-so, just as the Patriot Act does for Bush.  The person rising could have been one of the few centrists left in that body, say a member of the Catholic Center Party just before it joined up with the Nazis.  The facility and program could have been the first concentration camp set up by the Nazis in March 1933, at Dachau, to house political prisoners labeled as "terrorists" by the regime, arrested arbitrarily without charges, and etc.

The attacker could easily have been Joseph Paul Goebbels, the Nazis' chief propagandist, just as Cheney is for the Georgites.  And then there was the national Nazi Party newspaper, the Volkischer Beobachter, the Fox”News”Channel of its day.  "How dare you," they would all say, "compare our brave young men and women [members of the SS] with the barbarians of the Bolshevik monsters?  You could not possibly be more un-German if you tried.”  And they would hammer this message home day after day, never, ever, ever dealing with the substance of the charges, known most widely (although in Germany not reported by any of the media, and this is an important difference, giving us some hope for the future) to be absolutely correct.

Sen. Durban was thus more right than he likely knew.  What then, is the "disaster" of this episode?  He attacked the Georgites the wrong way.  He focused on the guards personally, or at least focused on them enough to allow the Georgites to treat everything he was saying about what is going on at Gitmo and elsewhere in the gulag and what went on in Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union, as an attack on our "fine young men and women."  Sen. Durban should have been focusing on the powers the Patriot Act gave the President to arbitrarily arrest and imprison forever, if he so pleases, anyone he labels as a "terrorist."  He should have been focusing on the presidentially sanctioned policy that not only condones torture but also encourages it.  He should have been focusing on how both types of Presidential action violate the Constitution.

He should have made it clear that in referring to Nazi Germany he was referring to all the totally abhorrent things that went there for years, well BEFORE the Holocaust got underway, AND that were certainly very important enabling factors in its development.  He then should have referred to the prison guards at Gitmo and elsewhere as victims of this policy, forced to act in ways that every true American rejects as totally abhorrent to our traditions of fairness, justice, and Constitutional government.  (Remember the "we were only following orders" SS refrain if any of the U.S. war criminals ever come to trial somewhere.) The Senator should have counter-attacked strongly, demanding a discussion of the reality of the situation, exposing the Georgites for what they do over and over again, killing the messenger so that they can avoid dealing with the message.  Apologize?  For getting the facts right, but not phrasing them in quite the right way?  Never should have happened.

Dick Durban's heart was in the right place.  What he said was absolutely correct, historically.  However, we face a very determined and highly skilled enemy, just as intent upon destroying American Constitutional democracy as the Nazis were intent on destroying German Constitutional democracy.  All of us opponents of the regime are going to have to hone our skills of verbal attack/counter-attack and searing debate to a much higher level, if the atrocious violence and seared landscape of theocratic-fascism and a resultant Second Civil War are not to be visited upon the nation of the United States of America.

Addendum

Shortly after the famous “Karl Rove Speech” of June 22, 2005, in which he reintroduced with a vengeance the Bush Policy Doctrine of “you’re either for us or against us” and “anyone who disagrees with me is aiding and abetting the enemy,” I received an email letter from John Kerry.  (I will be dealing in detail with the major significance of the Rove Speech in my column next week.)  I reproduce it here in part.  It is a prime example of exactly how not to deal with the Georgites.  Sen. Kerry said:

“Just hours after learning about an outrageous speech delivered by Karl Rove, President Bush's most senior advisor, I went to the Senate floor -- and I spoke from my heart.  I want to share those words with you -- not as a Democrat or Republican, not as a liberal or conservative -- but as an American.”

Sorry, John, Rove is right.  There is a difference, a big difference, between liberals and Democrats and those who call themselves “conservative,” (“reactionaries” or Republican Religious Rightists” are much better terms).  Our side, our Congressional representatives included, have to recognize that before it is too late.  The Georgites are the enemies of Constitutional democracy.  They make that clear over and over again.  You do not combat that by saying “we are all in this together.”  Kerry went on to say:

“[L]ook again at what Karl Rove said: ‘(P)erhaps the most important difference between conservatives and liberals can be found in the area of national security.  Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.’”

Yes indeed, John, Rove lied through his teeth about the facts of who said what about whom, and who did what in response to the 9/11 tragedy (which the Sen. later mentioned).  But then Sen. Kerry went on to say further:

“I hope you will join me right now in signing an open letter to the President urging him to thoroughly reject Karl Rove's purposeful attack on the patriotism of those who dare ask the tough questions that best protect American troops. . . .  This is not the first time that Karl Rove and other White House officials have sought to divide America in ways that make it harder to keep our country safe and our democracy strong.  But, it should be the last.  That's why I ended my speech with a call on President Bush to fire Karl Rove.”

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Bush would not fire Karl Rove in a million years.  He agrees with everything Rove says.  Everything he says is reflected every day in Bush’s words and deeds.  (Actually, since it is highly likely that Rove runs Bush rather the other way ‘round, Bush couldn’t fire Rove if he wanted to.)  Leaders like Kerry must stop dealing with Bush as if he were a) above the battle, b) not an integral part of the enemy of Constitutional democracy, c) not joined at the hip with Karl Rove (and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld), d) someone who can be appealed to by our side, and e) someone who can be appealed to on the basis of reason.

Wake up, John, and all of the other Democratic leaders who do the same thing.  Bush is not above the battle.  He is leading the other side.  Instead of appealing to him to do something about the latest outrage coming from a member of his Administration, with the brush of the outrage, paint him all over with it.  “This is what Karl Rove said.  This is what Karl Rove charged.  This is what Karl Rove thinks of “freedom and democracy.”  And Karl Rove is the President’s man.”  Do we want to win?  Do we really want to restore and preserve our precious Constitutional democracy and above it, the Rule of Law?  The first thing we have to do is recognize that there are sides in this battle and then recognize who is on which side.

This column is based in part on my Short Shot No. 67: “The Dick Durban Disaster,” that appeared at http://planetmove.blogspot.com/on Thursday, June 23, 2005

WHY ALL OF THIS REPRESSION ABROAD?

Column No. 66 By Steven Jonas, MD, MPH - June 23, 2005

In this space, we have talked about Georgite repression abroad and Georgite development of the instruments for repression at home.  This column is another in that series.  According to an article by Peter Maas entitled "The Way of the Commandos" that appeared in The New York Times Magazine on May 1, 2005, US authorities in Iraq have organized an Iraqi "counter-insurgency" force that looks and acts much like the "counter-insurgency" force that the Reaganites organized in El Salvador in the 1980s.  Funnily enough, it is made up of Sunni Moslems who were among Saddam Hussein's crack troops, going after other Sunni Moslems who may or may not have been in the same commands.  However, money does buy loyalty, especially when there are not too many jobs to be had by ex-Saddamite soldiers.

The tactics?  According to Maas very similar to those used in El Salvador: summary execution, torture, indefinite imprisonment without specific charges and certainly without trial, holding family members responsible, destroying homes, and so on and so forth.  On whose watch was this effort organized?  Why on none other than that of the third American Pro-Counsel in Iraq, John Negroponte.  He just happened to be the US Ambassador in El Salvador when the "dirty war" against the "leftists" (which led to an estimated 70,000 deaths, mainly civilian) was being carried out there.

There was the scathing report from Human Rights Watch on the Abu Ghraib-Guantanamo­Afghanistan-"secret locations" U.S. international gulag (http://www.hrw.org/,scroll down to the "United States"), followed by the equally scathing report from Amnesty International (http://www.amnestyusa.org/) that focused principally on Guantanamo Bay.  The HRW report came out, to little notice in the US, just after most of the top chain-of-command officers connected with the Abu Ghraib horror had been exonerated by the Army.  (The Amnesty report received much more attention, because, quite unusually for them, the White House with their attack dog Cheney leading the way, chose to respond to it.)

The one exception to the exoneration of the senior Abu Ghraib commanders was Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the only female in the group, who got off sometime earlier with a relative slap on the wrist.  Of course the top, top officials responsible for setting the overall policy, the current US Secretary of Defense and the Attorney General and the President who signed off on their directives, never even were investigated in this country.  The Republican Congress is, after all, much too busy investigating the UN "oil-for-food scandal" and steroid use in Major League Baseball.  (Talk about WMD, Weapons of Mass Distraction.)  The Human Rights Witch report also appeared at the time a group of grunts directly involved with Abu Ghraib have confessed to or been convicted of participation in abuses.  One wonders if some future Secretary or State will have on his/her resume participation in the cover-up, as did a recent occupant of the first in relation to the My Lai Massacre.

An outcry has occurred, even in major media sources in the US (see the Amnesty International website) over the Guantanamo Bay scandal of the denial of any rights at all to those prisoners held there (to say nothing of how they are being treated, starting with routine sensory deprivation (Newsday, June 15 2005, cover), many of whom seemed to have been rounded up randomly.  In response, Sec. of Defense Himmler, I mean Rumsfeld, had this to say (News day, June 15, 2005, p. A5): "[The United States] does not want to be in the position of holding suspected terrorists any longer than is absolutely necessary.  But as long as there remains a need to keep terrorists from striking again, a facility [Guantanamo] will continue to be needed.”  You think that I am going over the top in using the words Rumsfeld and Himmler in the same sentence?  It is just the term that the Nazis used as they rounded up political opponents from the git-go of their regime.

And why will Guantanamo Bay in particular be needed?  Listen to Deputy Attorney General J. Michael Wiggins, who works for "The Geneva-Conventions-are-Quaint-and-We-Can-Just­-Ignore-Them-Even-Though-They-Are-Part-of-the-Constitution" Attorney General Gonzalez: "It's our position that they [the prisoners at Guantanamo] can be held in perpetuity.”  He makes this statement because, dear readers, under the U.S. equivalent of the German Nazi Enabling Act, the Patriot Act, it is all perfectly legal in these United States at this time.  They can be held in perpetuity because the President has designated them as "terrorists.”  Under the Patriot Act, which the President is so desperate to have made permanent, once that designation is made, persons held have no legal rights.  That the Supreme Court said a year ago that they do is meaningless.  The Georgites just ignore that ruling.  But then again, doing such things is part of the Georgite definition of "freedom and democracy."

By the way, the whole library records thing and the Patriot Act is a smokescreen.  The Georgites just gave Republicans in Congress something to hide behind, to "compromise on.”  The real stuff in the Act is the destruction of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments by the President, acting on his own authority.

Why, then, is all of this going on?  Why is torture being developed to a fine art among US forces?  Why is the US involved in organizing and supporting death squads once again?  Does it have anything to do with fighting terrorism, a worthy fight indeed?  Well, there does not seem to be any evidence of that.  Other countries, like Spain, are reeling in terrorists without resorting to these kinds of tactics.  As for death squads, they may have worked well, after the 70,000 deaths, primarily against civilians in El Salvador.  However, in Iraq, against other former Saddamite thugs, when most of the non-Kurdish people of the country just want the U.S. to leave, could the Death Squad strategy be useful?  Not likely.

My guess is that there is a long-range plan in operation here.  I think that the neo­-reactionaries/theocratic fascists know what they are doing.  The bulk of the Georgite program for constant war abroad, destruction of all government at home except for the instruments of repression and support of corporate power, and religious oppression at home is being kept secret from the American people.  They could hardly win elections on their real platform.  However, as their program becomes more and more obvious, opposition and then resistance to it, even given the totally gutless DLC-dominated Democratic Party, is going to become more widespread.

Eventually they are going to have to employ some very violent, very vicious tactics at home to suppress it.  What is going on here, against a group of poor Muslims, some of whom may have been terrorists (who could be dealt with, of course, by the conventional US civilian anti military justice systems which provide legal rights), but many of whom simply seemed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?  In my view, strategy development, technique perfection, target practice, facilities design experiments, and training for personnel, for what they will eventually turn on us here, on a much larger scale.  There is simply no other explanation for what the Georgites are doing.

The Patriot Act has given them the legal tools to do this, as I have said more than once in this space.  The attack on the independent judiciary, led by the likes of DeLay, Frist, and their close comrades-in-arms like James Dobson and Pat Robertson, becomes stronger every day.  A recent Act of Congress has given the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, unprecedented and totally unconstitutional powers to violate Federal statutes in a whole variety of areas from the awarding of contracts to voiding child labor and civil rights laws pertaining to his responsibilities, on his own volition.  And so, prepare for Georgite violence.

To undertake that kind of violence you have to have the systems and personnel in place, ready and able to carry it out.  Ergo, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, "detention in perpetuity" (without charges, without access to legal counselor the courts), and the Iraqi Death Squads.  In addition, who is running the "intelligence" side of the operation?  None other than John Negroponte of El Salvador and Iraqi Death Squad fame, who now just happens to be the top dog for all US intelligence forces, domestic and foreign.

I must say that I think that the charge that the presently foreign U.S. international prison system for people held in this manner constitutes a "gulag" is totally unfair.  "Concentration camps" would be a much more accurate description.  In pre-war Nazi Germany the concentration camps were set up (starting on the night of January 30, 1933 just after Hitler had become Chancellor, even before the passage of the Enabling Act) precisely to imprison "terrorists" (as the Nazis called them in the beginning) in perpetuity, without legal rights.  The Nazis used the concentration camp system, on German territory, to spread their terror and consolidate their power, long before they added the Death Camp (mainly outside of Germany) and slave labor (both inside and outside of Germany) features to it.

It is so ironic.  In the Time magazine article on the new Star Wars movie, it says, "Under Darth Sidious, the Sith Empire will shred and swallow up the fragile Republic .... Over the galaxy, the silence of repression will fall.”  Why is it that we are so good at talking about repression when it is in the past or in the movies, but not when it is staring us in the face?

Note: This column is based in part on my Short Shot No. 59: George Bush's United States, May 2005-05-09, that appeared recently at http://planetmove.blogspot.com/.