Bush scares me shitless

"I can predict that the historians will say that George W. Bush recognized the threats of the 21st century, clearly defined them, and had great faith in the capacity of liberty to transform hopelessness to hope, and laid the foundation for peace by making some awfully difficult decisions." George W. Bush, January 4th, 2008 Interview for Israel's Channel 2

I must confess to being a mite fearful of late, fearful for my class, my fellows throughout the world and for whom I hold no ill feelings. It’s like those crazy days when Reagan rattled his nuclear sabre at the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when I was first married and had a baby daughter; in the days when it was advised that the best way to survive a nuclear blast was to remove the doors from your house and lay them at a 60 degree angle to a wall, piling pillow cases filled with soil from your garden against the outside, thus creating your very own shelter – the days when I lived on the top floor a fucking block of flats, for Christ’s sake!

And It’s people like George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condi Rice and John Bolton, the US Ambassador to the UN and the rest of those war mongering bastards that cause this fear. I cursed their kind a quarter of a century ago and I curse them still.

Despite the claim from the IAEA that there is “no evidence of a nuclear weapons program or any diversion of nuclear material [in Iran],” the masters of war are hell bent on making the case that another Middle East conflict will be necessary. It matters not that an IAEA inspection team have meticulously searched Iran’s nuclear sites, the case is being made in Washington, and promoted by the US media, that Iran is an aspiring nuclear power with its cross-hair sites trained on the US.

Nobody in Washington seems concerned that the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate reported in November of last year: “Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons programme as of mid-2007…We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear programme…Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons programme suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005”.

Even as the NIE was doing the rounds in Washington, Bush’s language was belligerent in the extreme, with talk about “world war three”,

Oh, I’m fearful alright, fearful because I can honestly see these blood thirsty maniacs in Washington ordering “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes on Iran. No way will they make an attempt to invade the country and fight battles the old fashioned way, hand to hand.

Cheney recently ranted on about “meaningful consequences” if Iran forged ahead with its legitimate nuclear enrichment programme. Bush has reiterated those very words in the last few days. Rice, ever keen to raise the stakes, says: “We face no greater challenge from a single country than Iran… This is a country that seems determined to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community that is determined that they should not get one.”

And despite the fact that there is as much evidence for Tehran’s desire to build atomic bombs as there was for Saddam to lob a missile at the west within 45 minutes, Bush has been in the Middle East for the past week stirring up the shit, trying to build an Arab alliance that will sanction the bombing of Iran. Israel is already as keen as hell for war.

Speaking yesterday in the UAE, Bush said that Iran is threatening the security of the world, and that the United States and Arab allies must join together to confront the danger "before it's too late." Bush said: "Iran is today the world's leading state sponsor of terror. It sends hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world while its own people face repression and economic hardship at home. It seeks to intimidate its neighbours with ballistic missiles and bellicose rhetoric. It defies the United Nations and destabilises the region by refusing to be open and transparent about its nuclear programmes and ambitions."

Any critic of US foreign policy could easily have levelled those same words at the US and backed them up with sound evidence. I know could easily.

Bush continued: "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf, and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late."

Earlier that day in Bahrain, U.S. Vice Adm. Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which patrols the Gulf, informed Bush that he took it "deadly seriously" when an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three U.S. Navy vessels near Iranian waters.

This timely, though bullshit, incident happened on the eve of Bush’s visit to the Middle East, with the Pentagon claiming Iranian patrol boats had threatened to attack and blow up US naval vessels in the Straits of Hormuz, The Pentagon even released a recorded radio message - “I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes.” - and it was reported the ship’s commander was a split second from opening fire on the Iranian patrol boats. However, new information over the past three days has emerged that suggests that the incident did not involve such a threat and that no US commander was on the verge of firing at the Iranian boats.

Serious damage to the US version of the incident was the video released by Iran last Thursday showing an Iranian naval officer on a small boat hailing one of three ships. The Iranian commander is heard to say, "Coalition warship 73, this is Iranian navy patrol boat." He then asks for the "side numbers" of the US warships. A voice with a US accent replies, "This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters." It is now apparent that the Iranian message released by the US was a fake. What, the US war machine fake intelligence? Never!

I think that few, if any, politicos, believed the official version when they heard about it, seeing this as another “false flag”, the type that has been hoisted by the US in the past and in order to justify military aggression. And as if Iranian seamen would be so stupid as to attack a US naval vessel spark such bloodbath in their own country! I myself forecast such a “false flag”! incident and I sincerely believe there will be another.

Roger Bybee, at Znet writes:

“The US hostility toward Iran remains so intense that when European nations and the US developed a package of incentives to steer Iran off its nuclear course, the US "insisted that all language addressing Iran's security interests be removed," as Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, former National Security Council staffers, wrote in a New York Times op-ed (12/11/07)

“…The Bush Administration has repeatedly proven itself not only impervious to, but utterly dis-interested in hard evidence like the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. The Bush Administration now sees itself as bolstered by the illusory success with the "surge" in Iraq, although only 38% of Americans believe it has improved conditions, according to a CBS/New York Times poll conducted Dec. 5-9.

“But based upon the continuing ferocity of post-NIE statements by Bush and Gates, don't be too surprised by a "faith-based" US strike against Iran before George W. Bush leaves office. “

Over on Information Clearing House, William H White sees another dimension to a war with Iran – namely the pretext to enforce a state of national emergency in the US, and the link highlighted below is well worth following up:

“Assuming a decision to attack Iran, given weather and other logistical concerns, combined with attention to the domestic political schedule, the timing would likely be within two to three months or early fall.

“Should this occur, the potential for destabilizing domestic and foreign consequences increase substantially, approaching near certainty. This nominally unattractive and reckless gamble would fit Bush's character as well as the pattern of his governance. Also, this is his last shot, with a chance to create conditions in the Mideast that lock in future policy options, as he has in domestic policy with a massive deficit. Given the consequences, he would attack not only his foreign enemies, but at the same time strike at his domestic foes under the cover of the resulting emergency.

”The later the attack on Iran comes, or a significant response from Iran, the more likely it would be combined with or be followed by a formal declaration of a national emergency, possibly affecting US national elections. The result would be a de facto coup d'état.

”Finally, to further assess its likelihood, ask the question: who is to stop him? Not Congress; not the courts; not pubic opinion nor the press. The only chance, however slight, of stopping Bush would rest almost entirely with the British government, if Parliament became aware of the plan prior to the commencement of hostilities.”

I can’t help but feel there is a lot more than comes across in that opening quotation from Bush –“awfully difficult decisions”!

At the end of the day, Bush, like me and hopefully most readers of this bog is a class warrior, the big, big difference being that we fight on different sides of the class divide and with diametrically opposed interests. Whereas the class conscious are all for peace and harmony and ending waste and want and war, Bush and the clique he represents see profits everywhere, are after ‘full spectrum dominance’ and the freedom to go about their business without criticism from any corner. For workers everywhere, we will see any attack on Iran as an out and out atrocity, a catastrophe for humanity of mammoth proportions; for Bush it will be simply another “awfully difficult decision.”