- Last Friday, Dick Cheney was in Saudi Arabia for high-level
meetings with the Saudi king and his ministers. On Saturday, it was
revealed that the Saudi Shura Council -- the elite group that implements
the decisions of the autocratic inner circle -- 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," one of the kingdom's leading
newspapers, Okaz, reports. The German-based dpa news service relayed
the paper's story.
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- Simple prudence -- or ominous timing? We noted here last
week that an American attack on Iran was far more likely -- and more
imminent -- than most people suspect. We pointed to the mountain
of evidence for this case gathered by scholar William R. Polk, one
of the top aides to John Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and to
other indicators of impending war. The story by Okaz -- which would
not have appeared in the tightly controlled dictatorship without
approval from the top -- is yet another, very weighty piece of evidence
laid in the scales toward a new, horrendous conflict.
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- We don't know what the Saudis told Cheney in private
-- or even more to the point, what he told them. But the release
of this story now, just after his departure, would seem to be a clear
indication that the Saudis have good reason to fear a looming attack on
Iran's nuclear sites and are actively preparing for it.
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- II. A Nuclear Epiphany in Iran?
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- And they certainly should be bracing themselves. A U.S.
attack on Iran will come suddenly, and if it is indeed aimed at destroying
Iran's nuclear capabilities -- a "threat" being talked
up again with new urgency by both Cheney and Bush lately -- it has the
potential for unimaginable consequences. As we noted here in a previous
piece:
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- Twelve hours. One circuit of the sun from horizon to
horizon, one course of the moon from dusk to dawn. What was once
a natural measurement for the daily round of human life is now a
doom-laden interval between the voicing of an autocrat's brutal whim and
the infliction of mass annihilation halfway around the world.
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- Twelve hours is the maximum time necessary for American
bombers to gear up and launch an unprovoked sneak attack a
Pearl Harbor in reverse against Iran, the Washington Post reports.
The plan for this "global strike," which includes a very viable
"nuclear option," was approved months ago, and is now in operation.
The planes are already on continuous alert, making "nuclear
delivery" practice runs along the Iranian border, as Sy Hersh
reports in the New Yorker, and waiting only for the signal from President
George W. Bush to drop their payloads of conventional and nuclear weapons
on some 400 targets spread throughout the condemned land.
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- And when this attack comes either as a stand-alone
"knock-out blow" or else as the precusor to a full-scale,
regime-changing invasion, like the earlier aggression in Iraq
there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no hearings, no public
debate. The already issued orders governing the operation put the
decision solely in the hands of the president: he picks up the phone,
he says, "Go" and in twelve hours' time, up to a million
Iranians could be dead.
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- This potential death toll is not pacificist hyperbole;
it comes from a National Academy of Sciences study sponsored by the
Pentagon itself, as The Progressive reports. (Although Bush's military
brass like to peddle the public lie that "we don't do body counts"
of the enemy, in reality, like all good businessmen they keep precise
accounts of their production outputs: i.e., corpses.) The Pentagon's
NAS study calibrated the kill-rate from "bunker- busting" tactical
nukes used to take out underground facilities such as those which
house much of Iran's nuclear power program.
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- Another simulation by scientists, using Pentagon-devised
software, was even more specific, measuring the aftermath of a "limited"
nuclear attack on the main Iranian underground site in Esfahan, the
magazine reports. This small expansion of the Pentagon franchise
would result in stellar production figures: three million people killed
by radiation in just two weeks, and 35 million people exposed to
dangerous levels of cancer-causing radiation in Afghanistan, Pakistan
and India. Bush has about 50 nuclear "earth-penetrating weapons"
at his disposal, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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- Nor is the idea of a nuclear strike on Iran mere "liberal
paranoia." Bush himself pointedly refused to take the nuclear
option "off the table" this week. But what's more, Bush has
made the use of nuclear weapons a centerpiece of his "National Security
Strategy of the United States," issued last month, The Progressive
notes. While reaffirming the criminal principle of "pre-emptive"
attacks on perceived enemies which may or may not be threatening
America with weapons they may or may not possess, Bush declared that "safe,
credible and reliable nuclear forces continue to play a critical role"
in the "offensive strike systems" that are now a key part
of America's "deterrence. "
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- In the depraved jargon of atomic warmongering, a "credible"
nuclear force is one that can and will be used in the course of ordinary
military operations. It is no longer to be regarded as a sacred taboo.
This has long been the dream of the Pentagon's "nuclear priesthood"
and its acolytes, going back to the days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For
decades, a strong faction within the American power structure has been
afflicted with a perverted craving to unleash these weapons once
more. An almost sexual frustration can be discerned in their laments
as time and again, in crisis after crisis, their counsels for "going
nuclear" were rejected often at the very last moment.
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-
- To justify their abberant desire, they have relentlessly
demonized an ever-changing array of "enemies," painting
each one as an imminent, overwhelming threat, led by "madmen"
in thrall to pure evil, impervious to reason, fit only for destruction.
Evidence for the "threat" is invariably exaggerated, manipulated,
even manufactured; this ritual cycle has been enacted over and over,
leading to many wars but never to that ultimate, orgasmic release.
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- Now, this paranoid sect has at last seized the commanding
heights of American power...they have found a most eager disciple
in the peevish dullard strutting in the Oval Office. Under their
sinister tutelage, Bush has eviscerated 40 years' worth of arms control
treaties; officially "normalized" the use of nuclear weapons,
even against non-nuclear states; rewarded outlaw proliferators like
India, Israel and Pakistan; and is now destroying the last and most
effective restraint on the spread of nuclear weapons: the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
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- The treaty guarantees its signatories such as Iran
the right to establish nuclear power programs in exchange for
rigorous international inspections. But Bush has arbitrarily decided
that Iran whose nuclear program undergone perhaps the most extensive
inspection process in history must end its lawful activities. Why?
Because the country is led by "madmen" in thrall to pure
evil, impervious to reason, who one day may or may not threaten America
with weapons they may or may not have....
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- So the NPT is dead. As with the Geneva Conventions and
the U.S. Constitution, it now means only what Bush says it means.
Force of arms, not rule of law, is the new world order. The attack
on Iran is coming...The obvious, murderous insanity of such a move in
no way precludes its implementation by this gang as their invasion
of Iraq clearly shows.
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- The nuclear sectarians have waited decades for this moment.
Such a chance may never come again. Will they let it pass, when with
just a word, in just twelve hours, they can see their god rising
in a pillar of fire over Persia?
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- http://www.chris- floyd.com/ content/view/ 1463/135/
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