Speaking Out

Speaking on Jim Lehrer's PBS NewsHour on October 1, 2007, presidential candidate Mike Gravel, former senator from Alaska, denounced the September 26 Senate resolution which designated the Iranian Guard a terrorist group. Indeed Seymour Hersh, writing in "The New Yorker," October 8, 2007, notes that the Bush administration keeps changing excuses for war and is now planning strikes against the Iranian army. Just as the excuse for war with Iraq kept changing from WMD (non-existent), to links to 9/11 (non-existent), to spreading democracy (read spreading civil war leading to break-up of Iraq), excuses for war with Iran now are also changing.

Apparently Americans don't buy the notion that the incipient Iranian nuclear energy program is an imminent US threat, so now the excuse is changing to a charge that Iran is meddling in our occupation. General Petraeus, a big supporter of escalating our involvement in Iraq's civil war, in which we are fighting both Shiites and Sunni's, (Petraeus expects we will be there as long as ten years), is now the point man on talking up Iranian interference. Of course there is no evidence that the Iranian government is involved, and arms smuggling is omnipresent from all sides, not just Iran.

Mike Gravel, however, hit the nail on the head. He pointed out that Senator Joe Lieberman was the sponsor of the infamous October 2002 resolution giving President Bush a blank check for war with Iraq. Lieberman also sponsored this recent Senate resolution on Iran, and Gravel said that AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, put Lieberman up to it. The Israel Lobby is railroading us into another unnecessary, unwinnable, and unending war. Although all Muslim nations, including Iran, would accept the Arab League Peace Plan, thus negating all potential threats to Israel, the Israel Lobby prefers wars. One wonders how many of ithe Lobby's financiers are war profiteers. At any rate, it's clear they have zero loyalty to America and care even less about America's future.