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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17834.htm
If You Think Bush Is Evil Now, Wait Until He Nukes Iran
By Paul Craig Roberts
06/06/07 "ICH " -- -- The war in Iraq is lost. This fact is widely recognized
by American military officers and has been recently expressed forcefully by Lt.
Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq during the first year
of the attempted occupation. Winning is no longer an option. Our best hope,
Gen. Sanchez says, is to stave off defeat, and that requires more
intelligence and leadership than Gen. Sanchez sees in the entirety of our
national political leadership: I am absolutely convinced that America has a
crisis in leadership at this time.
More evidence that the war is lost arrived June 4 with headlines reporting:
U.S.-led soldiers control only about a third of Baghdad, the military said on
Monday. After five years of war the US controls one-third of one city and
nothing else.
A host of US commanding generals have said that the Iraq war is destroying the
US military. A year ago Colin Powell said that the US Army is about broken.
Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn says Bush has piecemealed our force to death. Gen.
Barry McCafrey testified to the US Senate that the Army will unravel.
Col. Andy Bacevich, Americas foremost writer on military affairs, documents in
the current issue of The American Conservative that Bushs insane war has
depleted and exhausted the US Army and Marine Corps:
Only a third of the regular Armys brigades qualify as combat-ready. In the
reserve components, none meet that standard. When the last of the units reaches
Baghdad as part of the presidents strategy of escalation, the US will be left
without a ready-to-deploy land force reserve.
The stress of repeated combat tours is sapping the Armys lifeblood.
Especially worrying is the accelerating exodus of experienced leaders. The
service is currently short 3,000 commissioned officers. By next year, the
number is projected to grow to 3,500. The Guard and reserves are in even worse
shape. There the shortage amounts to 7,500 officers. Young West Pointers are
bailing out of the Army at a rate not seen in three decades. In an effort to
staunch the losses, that service has begun offering a $20,000 bonus to newly
promoted captains who agree to stay on for an additional three years.
Meanwhile, as more and more officers want out, fewer and fewer want in: ROTC
scholarships go unfilled for a lack of qualified applicants.
Bush has taken every desperate measure. Enlistment ages have been pushed up
from 35 to 42. The percentage of high school dropouts and the number of
recruits scoring at the bottom end of tests have spiked. The US military is
forced to recruit among drug users and convicted criminals. Bacevich reports
that wavers issued to convicted felons jumped by 30 percent. Combat tours
have been extended from 12 to 15 months, and the same troops are being deployed
again and again.
There is no equipment for training. Bacevich reports that some $212 billion
worth has been destroyed, damaged, or just plain worn out. What remains is in
Iraq and Afghanistan.
Under these circumstances, staying the course means total defeat.
Even the neoconservative warmongers, who deceived Americans with the promise of
a cakewalk war that would be over in six weeks, believe that the war is lost.
But they have not given up. They have a last desperate plan: Bomb Iran. Vice
President Dick Cheney is spear- heading the neocon plan, and Norman Podhoretz
is the plans leading propagandist with his numerous pleas published in the
Wall Street Journal and Commentary to bomb Iran. Podhoretz, like every
neoconservative, is a total Islamophobe. Podhoretz has written that Islam must
be deracinated and the religion destroyed, a genocide for the Muslim people.
The neocons think that by bombing Iran the US will provoke Iran to arm the
Shiite militias in Iraq with armor-piercing rocket propelled grenades and with
surface to air missiles and unleash the militias against US troops. These
weapons would neutralize US tanks and helicopter gunships and destroy the US
military edge, leaving divided and isolated US forces subject to being cut off
from supplies and retreat routes. With America on the verge of losing most of
its troops in Iraq, the cry would go up to save the troops by nuking Iran.
Five years of unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israels recent
military defeat in Lebanon have convinced the neocons that America and Israel
cannot establish hegemony over the Middle East with conventional forces alone.
The neocons have changed US war doctrine, which now permits the US to
preemptively strike with nuclear weapons a non-nuclear power. Neocons are
forever heard saying, whats the use of having nuclear weapons if you cant
use them.
Neocons have convinced themselves that nuking Iran will show the Muslim world
that Muslims have no alternative to submitting to the will of the US
government. Insurgency and terrorism cannot prevail against nuclear weapons.
Many US military officers are horrified at what they think would be the worst
ever orchestrated war crime. There are reports of threatened resignations. But
Dick Cheney is resolute. He tells Bush that the plan will save him from the
ignominy of losing the war and restore his popularity as the president who
saved Americans from Iranian nuclear weapons. With the captive American media
providing propaganda cover, the neoconservatives believe that their plan can
pull their chestnuts out of the fire and rescue them from the failure that
their delusion has wrought.
The American electorate decided last November that they must do something about
the failed war and gave the Democrats control of both houses of Congress.
However, the Democrats have decided that it is easier to be complicit in war
crimes than to represent the wishes of the electorate and hold a rogue
president accountable. If Cheney again prevails, America will supplant the
Third Reich as the most reviled country in recorded history.
Paul Craig Roberts wrote the Kemp-Roth bill and was assistant secretary of the
Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall
Street Journal editorial page and contributing editor of National Review. He is
author or co-author of eight books, including The Supply-Side Revolution
(Harvard University Press). He has held numerous academic appointments,
including the William E. Simon chair in political economy, Center for Strategic
and International Studies, Georgetown University, and senior research fellow,
Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has contributed to numerous
scholarly journals and testified before Congress on 30 occasions. He has been
awarded the U.S. Treasury's Meritorious Service Award and the French Legion of
Honor. He was a reviewer for the Journal of Political Economy under editor
Robert Mundell
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