Five Easy Pieces to Iran

By Reg, Contributing Editor, TvNewsLIES.org
http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=658

The Jigsaw to Armageddon

Yeah, folks, you can bet the ranch: we’re going in. I’ve heard all the arguments from the nay sayers, so let that go. We’re going in.

This is déjà vu time, for sure, as we look back on the months before Shock and Awe, when so many of us tried to warn the nation about the coming catastrophe in Iraq. But those of us who shouted went unheard and those of us who marched in protest went unseen. Yet in the end we were right on the mark.

And so, we’ll try again. This time, we’ll set out five easy pieces of a doomsday jigsaw puzzle that easily can be assembled if you take the time to do so. As in any such puzzle, the separate parts might be interesting, but not significant in themselves. But once assembled, the full picture emerges, where none could be seen before.

Each piece of this puzzle contains disturbing evidence that Bushco intends to unleash a massive, and possibly nuclear attack on Iran in the very near future. Examined separately, the pieces might seem unsettling but not calamitous. But when all of the pieces are viewed in correct perspective, when they interlock to form a complete picture, the final image is undeniable:

The puzzle we have pieced together reveals a very frightening picture: It is very plausible that in a very short time, most assuredly before the next presidential election, the murderous men in charge of US foreign policy may unleash Armageddon on us all.

Five Easy Pieces:

PIECE ONE: The Neocons.

• Between 1997 and 2000, the founders of the Project for a New American Century laid out their plans for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the need for US military domination of the Middle East.

• In a 1996 letter to President Bill Clinton, they wrote: The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

• In 2000, their treatise on Rebuilding America’s Defenses stated that… the United States must retain sufficient forces able to rapidly deploy and win multiple simultaneous large-scale wars…

• In a letter to President George W. Bush immediately after 9/11, they wrote:…even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power…

• And after the 2000 theft of office, more than a dozen members of PNAC, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and others, assumed high level positions in the Bush administration. To this day, many of the PNAC neocons continue to be largely responsible for formulating American foreign policy.

PIECE TWO: The Warning

• On February 1st, 2007, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on Iraq that attracted little public attention and that received hardly any mainstream media coverage. Testifying before the committee was Zbigniew Brzezinski, the prominent political scientist, geostrategist and statesman who had served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter

• A long time critic of the war in Iraq, Brzezinski referred to the Iraq invasion as “…a historic, strategic, and moral calamity…undertaken under false assumptions, [and] undermining America’s global legitimacy.” But far more important than this characterization of Bush’s ‘war of choice’ was his unmistakable warning about what was in the works.

• The official transcript of Brzezinski’s testimony includes this devastating warning:

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Was anyone listening?

PIECE THREE: Getting Ready

• An ominous segment of the PNAC treatise states that….the preferred weapon for punitive raids is the cruise missile, supplemented by stealthy strike aircraft and longer-range Air Force strike aircraft. Carrier aircraft are most useful in sustaining a campaign begun with missiles and stealth strike aircraft, indicating that a surface action group capable of launching several hundred cruise missiles is the most valuable naval presence in the Gulf.

• On February 25th, 2007 a journalist for the British newspaper The Telegraph reported from on board the USS Eisenhower en route to the Persian Gulf. In an article entitled “American Armada Prepares to Take on Iran,” Damien McElroy described the carrier as “Four and a half acres of American power in the Arabian sea,”

• On June 13, 2007, news services reported that  another carrier had joined  other U.S. carrier groups in Gulf. The nuclear-powered USS Enterprise, which became part of a rotating carrier presence in the region,  is the longest naval vessel in the world and carries carries 66 aircraft.

• And, for icing on the cake, - on September 10, 2007 the US announced it’s intentions to build a military base on the Iraq-Iran border.   According to the report, “The push also includes construction of fortified checkpoints on the major highways leading from the Iranian border to Baghdad and the installation of X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors at the only formal border crossing between Iran and Iraq.”

Do the math.

PIECE FOUR: Nuclear madness

• Background: The first of the three documents which made up the post 9/11 U.S. nuclear posture was delivered to the. Congress by the DOD in January, 2002. Titled the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the document authorized the potential use of nuclear weapons “…in various contingencies, including against non-nuclear weapons states and in response to conventional weapons.”

• In other words, this official declaration of US military policy states that the United States may use nuclear weapons as it would any other weapon.

• Reality check: On September 5th, 2007, six nuclear warheads on cruise missiles were “mistakenly” carried on a flight from North Dakota to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Please, please, for the sake of this nation and the world, try to understand the significance of this ‘accidental’ move. Larry Johnson raises a very vital question in his article at TMP CAFÉ. He explains that Barksdale AFB is not simply a landing field. Rather, it is a major jumping off point for US operations in the Middle East, and wonders whether this story might not have been leaked by military personnel concerned about plans for staging a nuclear attack against Iran.

• Johnson writes: What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on?

What the hell, for sure. Someone was willing to violate the long standing cold war treaty that prohibited the transporting of armed missiles by air.

Wonder why.

PIECE FIVE: The Hype

• We’ve all been there and done that. In 2002 we had the White House Iraq Group writing copy for the complicit corporate media to sell the war to a terrified and vulnerable public It worked then, and may well work again as a new campaign is under way to beat the drums for a new war.

• At TvNewsLIES.org we thought an attack against Iran would begin sooner, but apparently the thugs in Washington still have some glitches to work out. But it’s time to get the lap dogs in the media to soften up the public for a new adversary. Bush/Cheney/PNAC has run out of bogey men for the moment, and it’s getting too close to an election which might just take away their momentum.

• How about this: The August 23rd, 2007 issue of New Yorker Magazine ran a story saying that Dick Cheney has given orders for a “a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day.” The campaign purportedly will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, Murdoch’s new acquisitions - FOX and the Wall Street Journal - as well as the PNAC mouthpiece, Weekly Standard, and other media outlets. “It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves,” claims the reporter, and is “designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained.”

• The information came from Barnett Rubin, a well known and highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University who received corroboration concerning the accuracy of the piece from someone at a neocon think tank.

Watch for it and see where it goes this time around

Placing the Pieces

Let’s see, now. Is it possible to piece together these five puzzle pieces and end up with a lovely picture of peace and harmony in the world? Sure it is. On the other hand, is it not only possible, but far more probable that the image on the completed puzzle board will actually be one of horrific disaster?

At this moment, I don’t really care whether or not anyone out there has bought into the official story of 9/11 or not. I really don’t care if you are convinced that anyone in power in the United States could actually orchestrate an attack on his or her own people.

I do care, however, that someone with decades of experience in government and a first hand look at the inside machinations of foreign policy has publicly warned us that …a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran.”

I do care that Presidential Directive 51, issued in May of 2007 gives George W. Bush full charge of every existing government agency in the event of any occurrence he personally deems ‘catastrophic.’

I do care that the Five Easy Pieces presented in this article include vital information that is factual and well documented and undisputed, yet are not considered newsworthy by our failed media.

I do care that the pieces appear to fit together easily, and that the image that is emerging scares me to death.

You might want to put the pieces together on your own and see what happens.

Peace and tranquility or Armageddon. You decide.
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Note: Most sincere kudos to Webster Tarpley whose extraordinary talk at a recent meeting of 9/11- Ready for Mainstream inspired this article. His documented and detailed analysis of the danger of an imminent US attack on Iran has been incorporated into this simplified but equally dire warning.