Gareth Porter’s new book, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, documents how government bureaucrats have been fabricating the story of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. I have not read the book, but David Stockman says it is a “Must Read.” Here are reviews by Philip Giraldi and Sheldon Richman with further info by Richman here. And here is the Introduction provided exclusively by Mondoweiss.

Now, whenever I hear some of the reactionary talk radio personalities getting into the “Iranian threat,” the “Hitler of Eye-ran” and so on, I am amazed by their apparent gullibility in believing government bureaucrats’ propaganda, and their acting hysterically about the Iranian “threat.” But with all the threats against Iran made by Israelis, the U.S. government and by other Americans such as John Bolton and Duncan Hunter, one might understand a little why Iran would want to arm up, IF they were ever doing so.

While some Israelis have themselves been engaging in various fear-mongering propaganda, such as in this fear-mongering film dramatizing an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, the stupid Iranian regime are not helping their side with their own propaganda such as this animated film which also depicts nuclear war against Israel.

In my own personal view, what further worries me are those Christian Zionists, the “Armageddonists,” who really believe that we are in the “End Times,” and that there will be huge disasters such as earthquakes, famines, war and terror. But there are zealots who actually want all that to happen, as when it’s all over they will be “saved” in their Rapture. Regarding how these particular Zionists view Jews, they apparently believe that during such “End Times” the only way that Jews will be saved is if they convert to Christianity and believe in Jesus Christ as The Lord and Savior. (Have you heard this?)

Here is a rather thorough article on the recent history of Christian Zionism and its relationship to U.S. foreign policy, a more succinct article as well, and a recent one by Giraldi.

A further concern I have is with some Israeli government bureaucrats and militarists. Seymour Hersh’s 1991 book, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, revealed a lot about Israel’s own nuclear arms program, and that book was over 20 years ago. According to Wikipedia, “Hersh includes two quotations from Israeli leaders. He writes that a ‘former Israeli govt official’ with ‘first hand knowledge of his government’s nuclear weapons program’ told him: ‘We can still remember the smell of Auschwitz and Treblinka. Next time we’ll take all of you with us’  ^… And he quotes then Israeli defense minister Ariel Sharon as saying: ‘We are much more important than (Americans) think. We can take the Middle East with us whenever we go’.”

Notice how all the ones making all these threats on all sides are not businessmen and capitalists, but bureaucrats! One can conclude that what really needs to go is that one institution which encourages such reckless belligerence.

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