Accuse, Invade, Repeat
10/16/06 11:05
I’m going
to see if I can pick up Scott Ritter’s new
book
Target Iran today.
This one is a must read for me. He’s the former Iraq
weapons inspector who was so harshly criticized prior
to the invasion for saying that the administration’s
WMD claims were false. Pretty much everything he was
saying at the time about Iraq turned out too be true,
so I think it’s important to listen to what he has to
say about Iran today.
One thing he is saying now (based on a couple of interviews I’ve heard him give) is that dubya and company are using the same strategy for Iran that they used for Iraq. Essentially that strategy is to continually make unsubstantiated accusations about weapons programs and keep escalating the breadth and extent of these (perhaps imaginary) weapons programs until it’s eventually common knowledge throughout the trailer parks of Amurka that they exist and must be dealt with. It puts the accused country in the untenable position of having to prove a negative. How can Iran prove to dubya’s satisfaction that they are not producing nukes? Iraq wasn’t able to do it with weapons inspectors on the ground for four months prior to the US invasion, so I’m doubtful that anything Iran says or does is going to work.
I remember back in 2002-2003 being baffled at how the mainstream media made a pariah out of Ritter for speaking truth to power before the invasion. They helped Rush and Hannity et al take a guy who had spent a good deal of time in Iraq looking for WMDs and had reached the conclusion that they weren’t there, and make him out to be some kind of left-wing moon-bat secretly working for Clinton’s penis.
According to Ritter, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is producing nuclear weapons. And how did he reach this conclusion? He went to Iran and did some research, interviewing Iranians and visiting facilities. What a novel approach.
One thing he is saying now (based on a couple of interviews I’ve heard him give) is that dubya and company are using the same strategy for Iran that they used for Iraq. Essentially that strategy is to continually make unsubstantiated accusations about weapons programs and keep escalating the breadth and extent of these (perhaps imaginary) weapons programs until it’s eventually common knowledge throughout the trailer parks of Amurka that they exist and must be dealt with. It puts the accused country in the untenable position of having to prove a negative. How can Iran prove to dubya’s satisfaction that they are not producing nukes? Iraq wasn’t able to do it with weapons inspectors on the ground for four months prior to the US invasion, so I’m doubtful that anything Iran says or does is going to work.
I remember back in 2002-2003 being baffled at how the mainstream media made a pariah out of Ritter for speaking truth to power before the invasion. They helped Rush and Hannity et al take a guy who had spent a good deal of time in Iraq looking for WMDs and had reached the conclusion that they weren’t there, and make him out to be some kind of left-wing moon-bat secretly working for Clinton’s penis.
According to Ritter, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is producing nuclear weapons. And how did he reach this conclusion? He went to Iran and did some research, interviewing Iranians and visiting facilities. What a novel approach.
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