[HCCN] FW: Iran

[Dick Atlee]

Judith Robbins wrote, On 2/10/12 6:45 PM:
> A message from Veterans for Peace
> Don’t be Suckered into Another War

For those interested, here's a letter I wrote that appeared in this 
week's MDIslander (regrettably with the links deleted), as a followup to 
a piece by Moorhead Kennedy outlining the whole unseemly history of 
US/British/Russian nefarious involvement in Iraq:

------------------------------------------------------------
I am grateful to Moorehead Kennedy (and the Islander) for his letter 
laying out the real history behind Iran's suspicion and antipathy 
towards our country. His letter has appeared at a time when we are 
experiencing the same false fear-induced drumbeats about Iran that we 
did ten short years ago about Iraq.

Some, though not I, might forgive us for "forgetting" our CIA's 1953 
overthrow of democracy in Iran -- heck, it was sixty years ago! And for 
"forgetting" even our loving embrace and support of Saddam Hussein in 
his attack and bloody eight-year war against Iran in the 80s -- heck, 
that was thirty years ago!

But it was less than ten years ago that we were hearing detailed claims 
about non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, claims aided by 
Hussein's belligerence and intransigence, but which could be seen to be 
phony by any thinking person aware of what weapons inspectors and others 
with expertise in the field were saying at the time.

You'd think our short-sighted ability to look back and learn from 
history would at least extend back ten years. But no. Now we are 
believing analogous claims about Iran, helped, of course, by their 
president's belligerence and intransigence, but which, like the claims 
about Iraq ten years ago, are contradicted by our intelligence agencies 
and actual perusal of what weapons inspectors are saying.

The latest International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran came 
out in November, apparently contradicting its previous report that there 
was little evidence Iran was doing any more than what it has a perfect 
right to do as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. It 
certainly seemed that something new must have come up.

Enter Seymour Hersh, an investigative reporter for The New Yorker, who 
has contacts at all levels of governments, international agencies, and 
the military. In a NY blog entry on November 18 (http://nyr.kr/upJDXF), 
he highlighted two important facts about the new IAEA report.

First, as pointed out by a number of officials, the IAEA had been saying 
that, as of 2003, Iran had essentially abandoned its nuclear weapons 
program, except for "computer modeling and few other experiments" and 
that much of the existing suspicion was based on the contents of a 
laptop of uncertain origin supplied by a Western intelligence agency. 
All of this was widely known among security professionals and 
journalists. In an interview (http://bit.ly/vUvb2j), Hersh said about 
the new IAEA report that "there were maybe 30 or 40 old items, with only 
three things past 2008, all of which are—they—many people inside the 
IAEA believe to be spurious, not very reliable fabrications."

Secondly, he explained what had really changed between the two reports. 
When Egyptian Nobel-prize-winner Mohamed ElBaradei left the IAEA in 
2009, after heading the agency for a dozen years, the U.S. pushed hard 
to replace him with a Japanese right-wing official. He was marginal -- 
it took six ballots to elect him, and cables released by Wikileaks show 
him thanking the U.S. and saying he shares their views completely.

In addition, Hersh describes (see the interview) how the U.S. Joint 
Special Operations Command has been making an incredible 
James-Bond-style on-the-ground high-tech effort to find evidence that 
there are hidden weapons-related sites in Iran, and to disprove the IAEA 
camera findings showing that there has been no diversion of any enriched 
uranium. And they have come up with nothing.

In short, we are seeing the same phoniness that echoed through 2002. And 
we don't seem to learn. Not from recent history. Not from 30 years ago. 
Not from 60 years ago. Thanks to Moorehead Kennedy and Seymour Hersch 
for pulling the wool from of our eyes. If we still don't get the 
picture, it's our own tragic fault.

Dick Atlee
Southwest Harbor