Building a case, any case, against Iran

[buzzsaw_23]

Sep 14, 2005


COMMENTARY
Building a case, any case, against Iran
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi

The British think tank, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), has just released a new study on Iran's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) - "Iran's Strategic Weapons Programs - A Net Assessment" - declaring with much fanfare that Tehran is five years or so from developing nuclear bombs.

How history repeats itself. One is reminded of the IISS's previous "strategic dossier" on Iraq in 2002, which became Paul Wolfowitz's bible in the Washington neo-conservatives' crusade to rationalize their planned invasion.

Indeed, the IISS's website still features the photo of Wolfowitz, the then deputy secretary of defense, with the write-up that he "refers to Iraq's 'Strategic Weapons Program - A Net Assessment'." The date was September 2002, a few days before secretary of state Colin Powell made his now infamous speech at the United Nations Security Council, pounding on the table and insisting that Iraq had an active WMD program in "advanced stages", referring

to, among other things, the findings by Great Britain about the menace of Iraq's WMD.

Two years and a costly military occupation of a sovereign Arab nation exacting more than 100,000 civilian casualties and untold suffering later, Powell has reportedly admitted in an interview that his UN speech was "a blot on my record". Such frank admissions, albeit late and ineffectual, are indeed rare in the United States and, unfortunately, even rarer in Great Britain, as one would have hoped that the "objective" and "dispassionate" experts at the London think-tank would perhaps issue a single statement retracting their exaggerated claims about Iraq's WMD.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GI14Ak02.html

[political_invader]

1. Cheney and his cronies don't care they are just looking for a reason

To bomb Iran. IMO it is to send a message to China, However no one forget Cheney's `Guns of August' http://www.larouchepub.com/pr_lar/2005/lar_pac/050727guns_august.html
or for a timeline:http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3232iran_timeline.html

Cheney is Satan himself with that little Demon Rove as his side kick.

[Amonester]

2. What? Iran has a lot of that costly poison called oil? /sarcasm nt