Monday, June 09, 2008

War With Iran, Part 4

Now that Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee, the war-mongering US Israel Lobby knows it may only have until early January to pressure the Bush administration into bringing about another unnecessary war, also, of course, on false pretenses. John McCain, the Republican nominee happily sings "Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," but Obama vows to meet not only with leaders who are our friends, but also with leaders from countries such as Iran and Syria.

As outlined in The Iraq Study Group Report, meetings with Iran and Syria are necessary to produce stability in Iraq. Obama plans to withdraw from Iraq, whereas McCain says he wouldn't mind staying there 100 years. McCain ignores the fact that our presence as a foreign occupying force serves to produce instability.

Meanwhile a long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report documents the fact that Bush and Cheney misrepresented and exaggerated intelligence to the American people in order to sell their unnecessary war with Iraq. (My word for this is lying.) For instance, as noted in a The New York Times editorial 6/6/08, Cheney stated 8/29/02 that there was no doubt Saddam was amassing WMD to use "against our friends, against our allies, and against us." Yet the Senate report found that "there was no evidence that Mr. Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, and the intelligence community never said there was." It's clear that just as this administration concocted evidence to railroad us into an unnecessary war with Iraq, it is now concocting evidence to railroad us into an unnecessary war with Iran.