* Bush and Cheney: All Dressed up and no Place to Go *

2007-12-17

Richard Moore

____________________
But something happened on the road to war. On December 3,
Michael McConnell, Director of the National Intelligence
Council, dropped a political bomb.

Where does all this leave the warmongering Neocon crowd?
They are scurrying in all directions with op-eds in far
right media to discredit the U.S. Intelligence Community,
trying to rekindle the flames of war against Iran. This a
crowd that revolves around the pro-Israel Lobby in the U.S.,
led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),
and by some Washington-based pro-Israel "think-tanks" such
as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). They have been
pushing for an illegal attack against Iran, using nuclear
arms, for years.

For the time being, cooler-headed individuals have prevailed
over the ideologues and the warmongers.
____________________

Friends,

I'm pleased to finally see a semi-mainstream analysis that puts the recent NIE 
report into the correct context. As newslog readers may recall, my own analysis 
after two days was along the very same lines:
"Bush Insists Iran Remains a Threat" - Is he losing control? (Dec 5)
http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?id=1360&lists=cyberjournal

Tremblay brings in the Israeli connection, and I hope that is instructive to 
those of you who believe that Israel is the tail that wags the USA dog. The 
neocons were given free reign for a few years, and the Israeli lobby has been a 
great ally of their agenda, but we can now see that the real power behind the 
curtain in America is of a quite different character. Israel is useful as a 
destabilizing agent in the Middle East -- which is why it was established -- but
it is entirely secondary to American interests, as perceived by that clique that
owns and manages the 'land of the free'.

My only disagreement with Tremblay is where he says 'cooler-headed individuals' 
have prevailed 'FOR THE TIME BEING'. In fact they have ALWAYS prevailed and will
continue to prevail. Cooler heads they are, but no less warmongering. They 
simply play a deeper game. The neocons served their purpose, and believed 
themselves to be the masters of the universe, but they were at all times on a 
leash, as is the state of Israel.

rkm

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Original source URL:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7615
[many links in original to references]

Bush and Cheney: All Dressed up and no Place to Go

By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Global Research, December 16, 2007

"The leader whose thinking process most resembles [Adolf] Hitler's is our own 
president. ‹Like Hitler, (George W.) Bush's ideological beliefs have blinded him
to reality, and like Hitler, he seems impervious to advice that conflicts with 
his beliefs."

Charley Reese

"When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and 
there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or 
other, in order that the people may require a leader. "

Plato, (428/427-348/347 B.C.), ancient Greek philosopher

"If the war is enlarged in the next 20 months to include Iran‹ if that 
happens‹for the next 20 years the United States is going to be bogged down in a 
war which spans Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and then you can forget 
about American global leadership."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter

For many months, the Bush-Cheney administration and its Neocon allies in 
Congress and in the media have been inching toward a fresh new war against Iran,
possibly using nuclear weapons, under the same flimsy pretext that it had used, 
in 2003, to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iraq. The military gear 
had been positioned, with three full armadas in or around the Gulf of Hormuz, 
and the propaganda machine was running full time to persuade the American people
that a state of perpetual war was in their interests.

But something happened on the road to war. On December 3, Michael McConnell, 
Director of the National Intelligence Council, dropped a political bomb. His 
office‹in close collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the
fifteen other U.S. Intelligence agencies, regrouped under the umbrella of the 
United States Intelligence Community (IC)‹issued a devastating report about the 
veracity of the claims made for months by the Administration that Iran was 
actively engaged in developing a nuclear arms program. The National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) report said, "We judge that in the fall of 2003, Tehran halted 
its nuclear weapons program....We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not
restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007." The Director of the US 
National Council issued also a most unusual statement, saying that "the decision
to release an unclassified version of the key judgments of this NIE [report] was
made when it was determined that doing so was in the interest of our nation¹s 
security. The Intelligence Community is on the record publicly with numerous 
statements based on our 2005 assessment on Iran. Since our understanding of 
Iran¹s capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this 
information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available." In other 
words, even if the Intelligence Community felt that the disclosure would 
undermine a key Bush-Cheney policy, they were ready to go public with the 
damaging report for the sake of national interest.

The very claim of a nuclear Iran has been used by President George W. Bush to 
push to the limit, at the United Nations and in Congress, to obtain some cover 
for a bombing campaign against Iran. In fact, as recently as October 17, the 
American president had used the apocalyptic term of a possible "World War III," 
even raising the specter of a nuclear holocaust, to draw the darkest picture 
possible if Iran was not prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons, thus ending 
Israel's nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Vice President Dick Cheney has 
also claimed that Iran had a "fairly robust new nuclear program," and that had 
to be stopped by all means. Indeed, for months, the person in the Bush 
administration who most wanted a hot conflict with Iran has been Vice President 
Dick Cheney.

Well, it turns out that both Bush and Cheney knew, at least since last August, 
that the Director of National Intelligence had concluded that Iran had abandoned
its nuclear arms program as far back as 2003, four years earlier. The report had
the effect of pulling the rug out from under any plan for a preemptive attack 
against Iran that the Bush-Cheney administration intended to implement in the 
near term. This was good economic news. Immediately, the price of oil receded 
from its lofty level around $100 a barrel, an indication that the market had 
factored in some probability of supply disruptions early in 2008.

Left naked, Bush is now uttering lies and absurdities. First, there was his 
claim that he had "only learned of the new intelligence assessment" the week 
before, when it is a fact that the President is briefed every morning by the 
Director of the United States Intelligence Community (IC). Quickly, National 
Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman 
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, contradicted him. Hadley said that "Bush 
was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had 
halted its weapons program." And Senator Rockefeller confirmed that "the 
president knew, even as he was saying 'World War III' and all that kind of 
stuff." And, second, Bush professed about not being deterred by mere facts: "The
[National Intelligence Estimates that Iran has no nuclear weapons program] 
doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the 
world‹quite the contrary." I don't know which of these two statements undermine 
the most President Bush's credibility, if there is any left.

Where does all this leave the warmongering Neocon crowd? They are scurrying in 
all directions with op-eds in far right media to discredit the U.S. Intelligence
Community, trying to rekindle the flames of war against Iran. This a crowd that 
revolves around the pro-Israel Lobby in the U.S., led by the American Israel 
Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and by some Washington-based pro-Israel 
"think-tanks" such as the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). They have been 
pushing for an illegal attack against Iran, using nuclear arms, for years. They 
have all the reasons now to be displeased. They have used their enormous 
influence within the Bush-Cheney administration and within the leadership of 
both Congressional parties to attack Iran, and all these efforts seem to have 
been made for nil.

Indeed, the Israel Lobby, led in Congress by Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Ind-Conn.), 
has been strongly influencing some prominent so-called Bush Democrats to join in
the war frenzy against Iran. As its point-man in Congress, Senator Joe Lieberman
(Ind-Conn) has been calling for the U.S. bombing of Iran every other week, 
dutifully doing the round of Sunday morning public affairs TV shows. The Neocons
have not been deterred by the fact that bombing another country without 
provocation is an international crime of high order. According to the Nuremberg 
Charter, it is even a crime punishable by death.

So far, all U.N. resolutions about sanctions against Iran have been specifically
framed under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving the use of armed 
force." It is most doubtful that China and Russia, two Security Council members,
will ever accept a resolution that would impose sanctions against Iran under 
U.N. Article 42, which allows the use of military force "to restore 
international peace and stability," now that official American intelligence 
assessments state that there is no Iran nuclear arms program. The United Nations
is not going to serve as cover for military operations against Iran.

And the U.S. Congress, especially the non-neocon Democrats, will be increasingly
reluctant to give the Bush-Cheney administration a blank check to launch a war 
against Iran. Last September, the U.S. Senate came very close to handing the 
Bush-Cheney administration a blank check for military strikes against Iran, when
75 Senators voted in favor of the so-called Kyle-Lieberman non-binding 
resolution. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), along with Senate Majority Leader 
Harry Reid (D-NV), voted in favor of the resolution. This was counteracted last 
November 1, by 30 U.S. Senators, none of them Republican, led by Senator Jim 
Webb, from Virginia, who sent a letter to President George W. Bush stressing 
that the Administration did not have the legal authority to attack Iran without 
congressional approval.

In the past, Senator and presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) 
has even accused Bush of playing down the threat of a nuclear Iran and has 
called for swift action at the United Nations to impose sanctions on the Iranian
government. Similarly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ostensibly capitulated 
to Bush, after having attended AIPAC's annual meeting, stripping from a war 
finance bill the provision that would have forced Bush to go to Congress before 
launching an attack on Iran.

Now, with the NIE report officially out, it will be increasingly difficult for 
the Democratic leadership in Congress to pussycat with the Bush-Cheney 
administration regarding any future unprovoked aggression against Iran.

Last February, Admiral William Fallon, the head the Central Command (CENTCOM), 
expressed strong opposition to an administration plan to increase the number of 
carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf from two to three, and he vowed 
privately there would be no war against Iran as long as he was chief of CENTCOM.
And last June, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General 
Mohamed ElBaradei said that an attack on Iran over its refusal to freeze 
programs that could make nuclear weapons would be "an Act of Madness.''

For the time being, cooler-headed individuals have prevailed over the ideologues
and the warmongers. As a result, the planned Bush-Cheney-Lieberman war against 
Iran has been sidetracked. With the subprime financial crisis scheduled to pick 
up steam in the first half of 2008, it is good news that a fabricated 
geopolitical crisis has so far been avoided. The main question now is to ask 
whether Bush and Cheney have the gall to ignore the official intelligence report
and invent new lies to justify a war against Iran. Stay tuned for more on this 
incredible saga.

---

Rodrigue Tremblay is professor emeritus of economics at the University of 
Montreal and can be reached at  •••@••.•••

He is the author of the book 'The New American Empire'
Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.
Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/
Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at:

www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of 
the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on 
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