William Wordsworth wrote sometime in the 1800's:
The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers...
I remember the quote from school some 50 odd years ago - so hopefully it is right.
But the point is that it so true of us today. We are all pre-occupied with spending, with self, and not with what is really happening.
What is really happening is that Dick Cheney and his buddy, George, are moving the world ever closer to not just another war, which would be bad enough, but a nuclear war.
And whether Iran is good, bad or indifferent, nuclear is not an option in my book. Nor is another unprovoked first strike on another country.
Here is what Paul Craig Roberts
has to say about it. (He was the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury during Reagan's time in the WH). Its worth reading the whole article...
The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United
Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on
Iran.
If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If
there were a shred of integrity left in American political life,
perhaps a third act of naked aggression--a third war crime under the
Nuremberg standard--by the Bush Regime could be prevented.
On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited a high-ranking security source: "The
latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military
preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran."
According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that
the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran’s
military infrastructure in the near future."
The chief of Russia’s general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last
November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US
aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans."
On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper
Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi
newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney’s visit with
the kingdom’s rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national
plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may
affect the kingdom following experts’ warnings of possible attacks on
Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactors."
And Admiral William "there will be no attack on Iran on my watch"
Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing
the way for Cheney’s planned attack on Iran.
The Iranians don’t seem to believe it, despite the dispatch of US
nuclear submarines and another aircraft carrier attack group to the
Persian Gulf. To counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to
an attack, the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US
bases and Saudi oil fields.
Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party,
and the American people have paved the way for Cheney’s long-planned
attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US
government’s explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats’
refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for
lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching
an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.
If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did
with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with
anything. And Bush and his evil regime have.
Hitler launched World War II with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack"
on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a group of
Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station in Germany.
Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more true than the Bush Regime’s claim that "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."
Hitler’s lie failed, because his invasion of Poland, which began the
next day allegedly in reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously
been planned for many months.
Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient
civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the
Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to
have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime’s case against Iran is
based on the Bush Regime’s desire to deny Iran its rights under the
treaty.
The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly
reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons
program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other
Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are
resisting the American occupation.
If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two
weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict:
missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled
grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have
these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of
artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and
cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.
Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The
civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electricity, water
and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is
everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no
economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi
family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US
invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed
country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of
lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush
Regime’s lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.
In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest
village from the air. America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars
against the civilian populations.
Just as the world could not believe Hitler’s next horror and thus
was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot
believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based
on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.
Iran’s only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the
first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil
fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the
Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi’ites and moving them
to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as
the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr’s Iraqi
Shi’ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi’ite
rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.
It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward
war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media,
and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with
which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated
provocation.
On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation"
to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler’s planned attack
against Poland, Cheney’s attack on Iran has long been in the works.
On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders,"
many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters
would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after
using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.
Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."
Gadhafi asked, "Where is the Arabs’ dignity, their future, their very existence?" If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."
Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East.
