11/11/2011
This century began with hopes
of lasting peace as the threat of a nuclear MAD (Mutual Assured
Destruction) came to an end. Only one superpower was left; and in its
hands, the peace that could prosper. But no sooner had the new century
limped through toddlerhood that this lone superpower staged a “false
flag” operation against its own people.
Supposedly to avenge the
three-building 9/11 World Trade Center “terror attacks,” the US pounded
heavily on the medieval nation of Afghanistan in order to flush out the
attacks’ alleged mastermind, Osama bin Laden. But it was too small a
war.
In his 2002 State of the Union Address, then US President
George W. Bush lashed out against the “Axis of Evil,” shattering all
dreams of world peace. The following year, his country attacked another
nation (Iraq) under the pretext of securing Saddam Hussein’s “Weapons of
Mass Destruction” (WMD), which scenario turned out to be a “Weapon of
Mass Distraction.”
Ten years later, and with $1.2 trillion spent,
30,000 civilian casualties (including disproportionate number of
children and women); 20,000 Taliban and 2,700 coalition forces’ deaths
in Afghanistan; 650,000 (according to a Lancet study) to 1.5 million
dead Iraqis; mounting Pakistani civilian drone killings; and an
expansion of the conflicts into Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, now coming to
be known as the new colonial resurgence, there is no end in sight to the
Western powers’ 21st Century wars.
The peoples of the world
should take heed: There is planning for all these wars and more to come.
This was already detailed in the 1990s by US neoconservative think
tank, PNAC (Project for a New American Century), which drafted the plan
“Rebuilding America’s Defenses” that called for a “New Pearl Harbor” to
justify US military resurgence.
The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (Nato), a military alliance against a bygone Soviet regime,
then shifted its support to US military aggression and went off to
start its own adventures in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya, with current US
President Barack Obama “leading from behind.” The whole of Africa is now
even threatened by the US’ own Africom (Africa Command) as
interventions in Sudan, Somalia, Uganda and Yemen loom.
Even the
much ballyhooed “Arab Spring” was a component of the plan with Arab
Spring NGOs and “civil society” now shown to be funded by the National
Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House, and trained in Serbia’s
CANVAS (Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies), with
experience in the Balkanization of Serbia.
Now, Egypt is far more
repressive than ever, with sham elections bringing in worse dependency
on the West, as in Tunisia and Libya. Then there’s the US-Israeli thrust
through Syria and then Iran.
The drums of war against Iran have
been beaten for years now. Previous IAEA (International Atomic Energy
Agency) heads, though, from Hans Blix to Mohamed El Baradei, have never
given credence to claims of Iran’s nuclear capability for military use.
But
suddenly, with a new Japanese nuclear watchdog chief who was
aggressively lobbied for by the US, the agency is now producing a
“laptop” of weapons of mass distraction.
The latest came in 2004
when “a mysterious figure handed over to the CIA a laptop he had
purloined from an Iranian technician, purportedly working at a nuclear
plant in Iran. (It was) said to contain pages and pages of top-secret
information in English detailing Iran’s lust for attaining technical
knowhow to produce nuclear payroll for Shahab III missile” — this,
according to Iranian scholar and author Ismael Shalabi on the Center for
Research on Globalization Web site.
Furthermore,
“non-proliferation expert Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation
says the biggest loophole in the claim is the crude manner in which the
laptop documents were constructed… (with reports indicating that) ‘some
of the view graphs were done in Power Point, which suggested to me that
the program was not terribly sophisticated.’ Another fault… is that the
documents were written in English, a language barely used in official
Iranian documents, let alone in documents of such paramount sensitivity.
In 2005, the US officials briefed the IAEA of the contents of the
documents, but they declined to provide the IAEA officials with any
actual documents. In 2008, a battle ensued between IAEA chief Mohamed El
Baradei and George W. Bush… (as El Baradei) thought Iran should be
given a fair chance to see at least some of the invisible documents”
(Inter Press Service, Dec. 9, 2006; New York Times, Dec. 4, 2007). But
the US would not oblige.
According to a cable released by
WikiLeaks in October 2009, “(Yukiya) Amano (current IAEA chief) reminded
(the US) ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make
concessions to the G-77 (the developing countries group), which
correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he
was solidly in the US court on every key strategic decision, from
high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged
nuclear weapons program.”
Furthermore, “Amano recently delivered,
reporting that Iran had carried out activities ‘relevant to the
development of a nuclear explosive device’ with ‘evidence’ provided by
‘more than 10 member states as well as its own information’ which turns
out to be the US ‘laptop of WMD.’”
All these remind us of Bush’s
infamous “Sixteen Words” in his 2003 State of the Union speech: “The
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Those 16 words
were about the Niger “Yellow Cake” Colin Powell said before the UN that
Saddam obtained for his WMDs. After, the CIA sent US Ambassador Joseph
Wilson to Niger to investigate and found the allegation to be false, the
US eventually had to admit that Saddam had no WMDs. It was a barefaced
lie told to 300 million Americans and 6 billion people of the world.
We
have an obligation today to inform our fellow human beings of this new
US lie for war — this “laptop Weapon of Mass Distraction.” We must take
our role seriously as peacemakers and stop the warmongers-for-profit
from destroying more than they already have. A war on Iran will raise
oil to $300 per barrel that would devastate our already suffering
nation.
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(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111111com5.html
