Facts Don't Countby
Charley
Reese As everyone can see, the National Intelligence Estimate that stated Iran has no nuclear-weapons program and hasn't had one for the past four years has not affected George W. Bush. He still wants to present Iran as a dangerous country and to cripple the country with sanctions. What this tells you is that facts and truth have no relevance at all to Bush. That makes him a truly dangerous president. He and Dick Cheney really should be impeached, although that will not happen because Congress is full of cowards. The American people have a right to expect a fact-based foreign policy. What they get from Bush is a foreign policy based on a secret agenda and perhaps, God forbid, even mental fantasies. I suspect the secret agenda has to do with oil, but no one on the outside really can know what worms are roiling about in Bush's and Cheney's brains. Is Iran a dangerous country? Iran hasn't invaded another country in more than 100 years. It hasn't threatened to invade another country. The much-publicized statement about wiping Israel off the face of the map was a mistranslation. The Iranian president really said that the Zionist state would pass away like the Soviet Union. Furthermore, Iran has no intercontinental ballistic missiles, no nukes to put on them if they existed and none of the logistical means to support an invasion. As for Iran's support of Hezbollah and Hamas, you should note that both organizations existed a long time before the U.S. got around to labeling them as terrorist organizations. In fact, neither is a terrorist organization. Al-Qaida is a terrorist organization because its only agenda is to kill people it considers as enemies. Hezbollah is a Lebanese patriotic organization with a widespread social, political and welfare operation. It fought the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, and, if intelligence can be believed, it fought us when we occupied a portion of Lebanon. Hamas similarly has a wide program of education and welfare. It has a small military wing that has occasionally used suicide bombers against the Israelis. Hamas opposes Israeli occupation, which is something we should also do. Just because an organization that has no airplanes or artillery employs suicide bombers doesn't mean it's a terrorist organization. God knows our Army and Air Force have killed thousands more civilians than Hamas. The number of Israelis killed by Palestinians is very small in comparison with the number of Palestinians killed by Israelis. Both organizations should more accurately be classified as guerrilla organizations opposing occupation by the most powerful military force in the Middle East. Their quarrel with Israel should not concern us. They represent no threat to the U.S. As for Iran, it has a legal right to enrich uranium to provide fuel for its nuclear reactors. Bush, who has demonstrated that he has no real interest in nuclear nonproliferation or even disarmament, demands as a precondition for talks that Iran stop what it has a legal right to do. That is unacceptable to the Iranians and should be to the American people. If the U.S. had told the Soviet Union that a precondition for any talks was dismantling the Soviet missile force, there never would have been any talks or treaties. There probably would have been a nuclear war. All wars are started by political leaders, and all wars are destructive of human life and civilization itself. Just read a little history and look at the political idiots who caused World Wars I and II. What a gargantuan waste of life and treasure those two fiascoes were.
December 11, 2007 Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years. © 2007 by King Features Syndicate, Inc. |
As
silly and ridiculous as Bush often appears, it is extremely dangerous
to have a muddled-thinking, ignorant man in the White House. He
controls far more destructive power than he is capable of using
in a sane and proper way.
