Who Is Lying?
A very nice CNN article, Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of ‘stampeding’ to war with Iran
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski likened U.S. officials’ saber rattling about Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions to similar bellicose statements made before the start of the Iraq war.
“I think the administration, the president and the vice president particularly, are trying to hype the atmosphere, and that is reminiscent of what preceded the war in Iraq,” Brzezinski told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” on Sunday.
In October 2002, five months before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was toppled for what the United States said was his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush said, “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
No evidence was found that Iraq was then pursuing such weapons.
Earlier this month during a televised speech about Iraq, the president said, “Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region.”
However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that “insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests.”
…Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter, said he is not sure how to interpret Iran’s intentions. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes.
“I think it’s quite possible that they are seeking weapons or positioning themselves to have them, but we have very scant evidence to support that,” he said. “And the president of the United States, especially after Iraq, should be very careful about the veracity of his public assertions.”
But Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser and secretary of state under President Nixon, appeared not to doubt Iran’s alleged ambitions.
“I believe they are building a capability to build a nuclear bomb,” Kissinger told CNN. “I don’t think they’re yet in a position to build a nuclear bomb, but they may be two or three years away from it.”
…During the “60 Minutes” interview, Ahmadinejad denied claims by the administration that Iranian weapons are being used against American troops in Iraq.
“We don’t need to do that. We are very much opposed to war and insecurity [in] Iraq.”
Ahmadinejad said U.S. officials are blaming his country for problems caused by the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“American officials, wherever around the world that they encounter a problem which they fail to resolve, instead of accepting that, they prefer to accuse others,” he said. “I’m very sorry that, because of the wrong decisions taken by American officials, Iraqi people are being killed and also American soldiers.”
He added, “If they accuse us 1,000 times, the truth will not change.”
Ahmadinejad also said Iran has no use for an atomic bomb.
“If it was useful, it would have prevented the downfall of the Soviet Union,” he said. “If it was useful, it would [have] resolved the problem the Americans have in Iraq. The time of the bomb is passed.”
“I believe they are building a capability to build a nuclear bomb” – this sounds an awful lot like “weapons of mass destruction program-related activities,” Hank. Does smelting metal constitute the beginning of this “building a capability?” Are you saying that we don’t know of anything that is actually related to building a bomb, but they are manufacturing wrenches that could be used to assemble a bomb?
To an objective outsider reading these comments who sounds like the warmongering whako, Ahmadinejad or Kissinger?
Understand that Ahmadinejad is a follower of the most extreme of all of Iran’s ayatollahs, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi, and is moderate in nothing, but he is intelligent and knows how to stay on message.
For more on Ahmadinejad stop by Dr. Cole’s place for Let Slip the Dogs of War and Demonize Ahmadinejad for the hors d’œuvre [the entre is at Salon], then to Bark Bark Woof Woof for desert and read How Dare He! which excerpts Scott Adams’s post, A Feeling I’m Being Had at Dilbert.blog.
6 comments
<doggerel_whoring> And of course when you’re done with all that, you’ll need a dose of my parody, which like Henry himself is getting rather long in the tooth: I Wonder Who’s Kissinger Now. </doggerel_whoring>
(Oops. The old 341st Bomber Group site has at last let me down. The MIDI of the original song is no longer there. Indeed, the site is no longer there. Try here for a really very respectable MIDI piano arrangement.)
Let me guess. Your filter blocks em-eye-dee-eye.
Actually, MIDI is fine, it’s the address of that link. That host was the bane of my existence for two weeks from multiple sites so I flagged “three legs” dot com.
I wish people would just shut-up about Ahmadinejad because US attacks on him just helps him by frustrating the moderates in Iran. They can’t attack him for incompetence and other problems without being called traitors and lackeys of the US.
The guy’s job description is waving, cutting ribbons, and attending foreign functions. He has some power over dog walking and dress codes [that is not a joke, dog walking], but no other real power. If you read people who watch Iran, they get really annoyed that the West doesn’t bother to look at the organizational chart of the Iranian government to see who actually runs things.
Until then he needs an image consultant so he looks less like someone standing in line at a soup kitchen. He’s taking looking like the common man too far.
It seems to me that all those guys, from the symbolic “leader” who does his job by speaking against the U.S. and looking like a TV stereotype of a junior member of the mob, to the guys behind the scenes who wield real power, gain more influence (at least in the region) every time Bush or some clueless Republican member of Congress throws rocks at them for domestic political purposes.
These problems are completely avoidable. I can hardly wait until we have adults in charge again.
No problem on the three-legs site block. The only page I ever reference is that one, and then only when I parody some old-timey song, and usually only on my own site. This was a one-time problem; don’t change anything.
The Iran watchers have said that more people in the West than Iran know who Ahmadinejad is. Of course, the real power is held by clerics and they don’t want to talk or deal with anyone who isn’t a cleric speaking Farsi or Arabic.
We are backing the wrong people in Iraq and attacking the wrong people in Iran. This is such a mess.