Escalating the Groundwork
And the drums get ever louder…
This past Sunday was the fifth anniversary of a very significant speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars made by Vice President Dick Cheney. For the speech could be seen as setting the tone for the rhetoric that would eventually lead the US to war with Iraq.
Up until that point, much of the rhetoric centered on Saddam’s support of terrorism. But even with 9/11 in our not too distant memory, this rationale wasn’t enough to scare the public into supporting a military confrontation. So the Bush administration tried a new tact and decided to play on the fears of many of nuclear annihilation. After Cheney’s address, other members of the Bush administration from the President on down coached their statements in those terms whenever discussing the need to confront the threat that Iraq posed. President Bush and and then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice famously invoked the subtle imagery of “mushroom clouds” to make their case for war.
Five years and a debacle of a war later, the Bushies have dropped the subtlety.
In his speech about Iraq to the American Legion today, President Bush warned that allowing Iran to pursue “technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.
Now one might be willing to pass this off as the rantings of a lame duck president looking for an excuse to make bold but ultimately toothless threats. But we ignore this at our peril. For when viewed in the context of recent reports, one wonders if this speech will come to be seen as the 2007 equivalent of Cheney’s VFW speech that set the stage for war.
And the drums get ever louder…
More from Larisa, Michael, and Larry Johnson.
(X-posted at The Xsociate Files)
It is certainly not at all clear that Iran is working towards developing nuclear weapons or even has any interest in nuclear weapons. But let’s assume for arguement’s sake that they are in fact doing so.
Iran has had many well documented difficulties keeping their centrifuges going and enriching uranium even to the 3-10% purity needed for nuclear power generation, let alone the 90% + purity needed for nuclear weapons. But let’s also assume that they will overcome their technical difficulties and the many more issues they will face in the further enrichment steps at some point in the future.
Let’s assume that they will divert all of the uranium they generate in their nuclear power program to weapons use without anyone noticing and are able to develop a nuclear weapon or two in the next 5 to 10 years.
Iran has not attacked another country in an awfully long time, but let’s assume that they will change this pattern too, and for the first time in nearly 200 years attack another country.
Let’s assume they use nuclear weapons in this attack … both of their nuclear weapons, and the weapons actually work.
That still wouldn’t make it a nuclear holocaust, it would only lead to the destruction of Iran!
Same as it ever was… The war drums may barely be audible, but they are there nonetheless. Iran is now a threat to reckoned with in the minds of the neocon bent on ruling the earth. Let us hope that cooler heads prevail.