In-the-know neoconster Bill Gertz wrote recently that "Iran is poised to begin producing nuclear weapons." For perspective, and illustrating a classic American policy contretemps is paragraph six on North Korea’s existent "capability to produce nuclear weapons with a yield of roughly a couple of kilotons TNT equivalent.” This latter statement was based upon North Korea’s actual nuclear test in May 2009. But what is the former statement based upon? Recurring neocon snuff dreams that feature Iran as star victim.
Gertz is reporting from a report written by Winpac, the CIA Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center. Remember Iraq’s import of some aluminum tubes and what Colin Powell said to the UN and the world in February 2003 about them? Winpac is the dumb and dumber subset of the CIA that insisted (in spite of widespread US intelligence agency internal dissent, and the facts) "Iraq intended the tubes to be used in centrifuges that would enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear weapon."
Winpac "never budged from their [insanely stupid] analysis," stubborn and wrong to the bitter end. Except, it wasn’t the end, and I suspect, not bitter at all.
The Gertz report follows escalating murmurings and rumbling on Iran, no doubt geared in part as a cyclical appeasement of Israel’s ruling coalition that Washington, D.C. truly loves it above all others, foreign and domestic, and in part to appease those Congresspersons who may be worried that future Obamacare and its budget busters won’t interfere with the ongoing Obombacare of the military-industrial complex, and its demand for bunker-busters.
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Who can doubt that government will take care of itself first and foremost? Any and all perceived threats, as we have seen with recent outrageous confections created by government paranoiacs, will result in swift government action, and hefty charges of illegalities on the "evildoers." Too bad the majority of Americans (in and out of trailer parks) who vehemently opposed and oppose industry and banking bailouts, the black-box decision-making of Federal Reserve, and national healthcare mandates can’t get that kind of swift government response regarding their concerns.
But who is Winpac? Their website says it "studies the entire spectrum of threats, …and [provides] intelligence support to US nonproliferation, threat reduction, and arms control efforts. This provides end-to-end analysis of weapons systems from their development until they are no longer a threat to the US and our Allies. Perhaps Winpac is staffed with all those runner-ups in beauty contests who wanted world peace! Never mind. Beauty queens would probably do a better job of actually looking at the intelligence, and getting maps out to people.
Winpac served admirably during the Bush 43 years as neocon shock troops and leakers of data bits to Middle East war friendly media, stoking an unwarranted and unjust war against Iraq, a war that continues to this day as Iraqis refuse to completely relinquish autonomy and submit to us peacefully. The type and content of information being reported for the past 15 months in state media (and what is not reported) on Iran’s capabilities, ambitions, and rights tells me these same shock troops are still on the job. Have neocon provocateurs retained their appointments or made permanent their positions within the CIA, and in particular Winpac?
Well — I don’t know, but I expect they did. I would be extremely shocked, shocked, to find that they didn’t. What I do know is that the career path of another "civil servant" who has been in the news recently, Mike Furlong, is all too typical. There is a segment of the population that seeks to lord it over others, and play great games with other people’s money without fiscal or moral or even political accountability, all while waving flags and getting that warm rush of self-righteous superiority spiked with false altruism. This is the very essence of government employment, and Mike Furlong has snorted the stuff for many decades.
Mike was an Army officer, then a contractor working for several parasitical defense budget feeders, then a high-ranking civil servant (Special Executive Service) just in time to ride out the Bush era and continue his efforts under Generalissimo Obama. Lil’ Mike got in trouble recently because a supposed information operation he was running in Afghanistan may have actually been killing people in addition to changing their minds.
Imagine that — an information op that ends up getting people killed. Sounds like just about every war and a not a few pre-war, post-war and inter-war activities of the U.S. government since gaining independence from the King George III. Hmmm.
As I wander fruitlessly over the net to find out who Winpac really is and why they are saying the things they do, I see that overnight, the U.S. Navy has fired a Trident missile somewhere out of Saudi Arabia. The Trident can carry nukes (well, what can’t these days) but the assessment of what this is about seems split between demonstrating a military capability we’d like to sell the Saudis before their oil runs out, or a marker for the Iranians that now "We really really, really, really have you surrounded!" with permanent, if poorly managed, military bases and ships. It’s Washington sign language to a fellow centralized, broke, and paranoid government that we are prepared to "defend ourselves and our centralized, broke and paranoid allies."
Perhaps, little Winpac, "our" entire foreign policy, and increasingly "our" domestic policy isn’t ours at all. The government and government beneficiaries are lining up in anxious opposition against the much larger, much more creative and decentralized populations that existentially threaten its comfortable, profligate and power-wielding existence. This is the real reason that ragtag and brokedown militias, tea partiers, entrepreneurs, raw milk drinkers and libertarian thinkers of every stripe are obsessively feared by the state, and state media.
It’s been said that the Americans can be sheeplike. I have a few sheep, and they are not as easy to lead and herd as their reputation implies. Furthermore, they are interested in everything and never forget a face. I suspect the government already knows what I have only recently discovered, and I must say, it puts a smile on my face and a spring in my step!
