[BRIGADE] PJB: Return of the War Party
Published: Fri, 02/27/09
Return of the War Party
By Patrick J. Buchanan
"Real men go to Tehran!" brayed the neoconservatives, after the
success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on
Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the
fruits of our Cold War victory.
Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great
goal: an American war on Iran. It would be a mistake to believe
they and their collaborators cannot succeed a second time. Consider:
On being chosen by Israel's President Shimon Peres to form the new
regime, Likud's "Bibi" Netanyahu declared, "Iran is seeking to
obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our
existence since the war of independence."
Echoing Netanyahu, headlines last week screamed of a startling new
nuclear breakthrough by the mullahs. "Iran ready to build nuclear
weapon, analysts say," said CNN. "Iran has enough uranium to make a
bomb," said the Los Angeles Times. Armageddon appeared imminent.
Asked about Iran's nukes in his confirmation testimony, CIA
Director Leon Panetta blurted, "From all the information I've seen,
I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."
Tuesday, Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy, a front spawned by the Israeli lobby AIPAC, was given the
Iranian portfolio. AIPAC's top agenda item? A U.S. collision with
Iran.
In the neocon Weekly Standard, Elliot Abrams of the Bush White
House parrots Netanyahu, urging Obama to put any land-for-peace
deals with the Palestinians on a back burner. Why?
"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader struggle
in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli withdrawals
now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian terrorists but to
Iranian proxies."
The campaign to conflate Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria as a new axis
of evil, a terrorist cartel led by Iranian mullahs hell-bent on
building a nuclear bomb and using it on Israel and America, has
begun. The full-page ads and syndicated columns calling on Obama to
eradicate this mortal peril before it destroys us all cannot be far
off.
But before we let ourselves be stampeded into another unnecessary
war, let us review a few facts that seem to contradict the war
propaganda.
First, last week's acknowledgement that Iran has enough enriched
uranium for one atom bomb does not mean Iran is building an atom
bomb.
To construct a nuclear device, the ton of low-enriched uranium at
Natanz would have to be run through a second cascade of high-speed
centrifuges to produce 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HUE).
There is no evidence Iran has either creat
ed the cascade of high-speed centrifuges necessary to produce HUE
or that Iran has diverted any of the low-enriched uranium from
Natanz. And the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors
retain full access to Natanz.
And rather than accelerating production of low-enriched uranium,
only 4,000 of the Natanz centrifuges are operating. Some 1,000 are
idle. Why?
Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, believes this is a signal
that Tehran wishes to negotiate with the United States, but without
yielding any of its rights to enrich uranium and operate nuclear
power plants.
For, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, none of which signed the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all of which ran clandestine
programs and built atom bombs, Iran signed the NPT and has abided
by its Safeguards Agreement. What it refuses to accept are the
broader demands of the U.N. Security Council because these go
beyond the NPT and sanction Iran for doing what it has a legal
right to do.
Moreover, Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads U.S. intelligence, has just
restated the consensus of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate
that Iran does not now possess and is not now pursuing a nuclear
weapons program.
Bottom line: Neither the United States nor the IAEA has conclusive
evidence that Iran either has the fissile material for a bomb or an
active program to build a bomb. It has never tested a nuclear
device and has never demonstrated a capacity to weaponize a nuclear
device, if it had one.
Why, then, the hype, the hysteria, the clamor for "Action This
Day!"? It is to divert America from her true national interests and
stampede her into embracing as her own the alien agenda of a
renascent War Party.
None of this is to suggest the Iranians are saintly souls seeking
only peace and progress. Like South Korea, Japan and other nations
with nuclear power plants, they may well want the ability to break
out of the NPT, should it be necessary to deter, defend against or
defeat enemies.
But that is no threat to us to justify war. For decades, we lived
under the threat that hundreds of Russian warheads could rain down
upon us in hours, ending our national existence. If deterrence
worked with Stalin and Mao, it can work with an Iran that has not
launched an offensive war against any nation within the memory of
any living American.
Can we Americans say the same?
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jb-return-of-the-war-party/
SOURCE: http://buchanan.org/blog/2009/02/pjb-return-of-the-war-party/