The Globe and Mail is peddling World War III: Will Canadians buy a war with Iran as easily as Americans bought Iraq?

http://www.chycho.com/?q=node/1335

The following article, “A plan to attack Iran swiftly and from above” by Paul Koring published in the November 22, 2007 issue of The Globe and Mail is an attempt to convince Canadians that a war with Iran is legitimate, and that it will have minimal consequences.

What sane human being would read this article and not feel anger, sorrow, and the putrid smell of a neoconservative agenda to sell a war, a Nuclear World War.

This propaganda piece disguised as a juvenile analysis of the possible events leading up to and following a war with Iran has been written for the sole purpose of selling us World War III. It is nothing less and nothing more.

Let’s read between the lines, fill in the blanks, and analysis this vile attempt to sell us death and destruction for money.

Mr. Koring writes:

“No one is predicting a full-blown ground war with Iran. The likeliest scenario, a blistering air war that could last as little as one night or as long as two weeks, would be designed to avoid the quagmire of invasion and regime change that now characterizes Iraq. But skepticism remains about whether any amount of bombing can substantially delay Iran’s entry into the nuclear-weapons club.”

In reality, if Iran is attacked, the ground war will not only be in Iran but across the globe. An attack on Iran is an attack on 1.2 billion Muslims, less the few thousand-installed puppet leaders and their paid bodyguards. The majority of the world knows this. It is only those who continue to read, watch, and believe corporate mainstream media who remain hypnotized.

Iran has continuously denied having a secret nuclear weapons program. Even CNN in its interview of Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program (video). Experts in and out of United States government have said that there is “no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program”. How is it possible then, that in the body of this article, Mr. Koring does not even once address this issue? How is it possible that in an article discussing a possible war with Iran, in the most prestigious newspaper in Canada, there is not even a mention that under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has an ’Inalienable Right’ to Nuclear Energy.

As for the war lasting “one night or as long as two weeks” - a newborn on the day of the attack will have grandchildren before they see an Iran Pandora’s Box closed. Iraq, which is a substantially smaller military campaign compared to what Iran will be, has been predicted to last between 10 to 50 years by two of the highest ranking generals in the United States military. Iran will last substantially longer and will be immensely larger.

Mr. Koring continues:

“…other Western leaders are openly warning that bombing may be needed.”

Which western leaders is Mr. Koring refering to? The same ones that supported Iraq, such as Stephen Harper, or those that planed it, such as Goerge Bush, Dick Cheney, and Tony Blair? This is an extremely important question to ask since in the last week alone, three devoted US allies have distanced themselves from the United States, two of which have stated that they will be withdrawing their combat troops from Iraq.

Who will be left holding the bag when a war with Iran turns into a bigger disaster then Iraq: a war which has produce over 4 million refugees representing approximately 20% of the refugee population in the entire world? Who will provide shelter for all these people? According to the data available for Iraq, it will not be the countries that started the war.

More from Mr. Koring:

“Bombing Iran would be relatively easy. Its antiquated air force and Russian air-defence missiles would be easy pickings for the U.S. warplanes… But the fallout, especially the anger sown across much of the Muslim world by another U.S.-led attack in the Middle East, would be impossible to calculate.”

Iraq has already produced over 1 million civilian deaths due directly to the US invasion. Bombing Iran would result in tens of millions more. How “easy” does Mr. Koring believe the killing of millions of Iranians to be? As to the fallout, it would be at least an order of magnitude more devastating then Iraq, specially considering that Iran is an Observer country in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and has recently signed the Caspian Sea Alliance agreement.

Do we as Canadians, and for that matter, do our American neighbours, actually believe that Russia and energy strapped China will stand idly by and allow an ally country to be attacked, and their economies devastated? Does anyone actually believe that the SCO will allow one of its observer countries to be attacked by a Western power?

“Bombing Iran would be relatively easy” is definitely NOT how things will be Mr. Koring.

Mr. Koring even presents misinformation:

“Israel has twice launched pre-emptive air strikes ostensibly to cripple nuclear programs. In both instances, against Iraq in 1981 and Syria two months ago, the targeted regimes howled but did nothing.”

This is one of the most telling statements in Mr. Koring’s piece. Syria has never had a nuclear program, and US intelligence reports confirm this. “According to current and former intelligence sources, the US intelligence community has seen no evidence of a nuclear facility being hit. US intelligence ‘found no radiation signatures after the bombing, so there was no uranium or plutonium present,’ said one official, wishing to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject. ‘We don’t have any independent intelligence that it was a nuclear facility — only the assertions by the Israelis and some ambiguous satellite photography from them that shows a building, which the Syrians admitted was a military facility.’”

Israel tried to make the nuclear reactor argument stick but failed. Even The Jerusalem Post published an article in which an “Israeli nuclear expert” refuted the claims that a nuclear reactor was the target. “Tel Aviv University chemistry professor Uzi Even, who worked in the past at Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, said satellite pictures of the site taken before the Israeli strike showed no sign of the cooling towers and chimneys characteristic of reactors. The absence of telltale features of a reactor convinced him the building must have housed something else.”

How is it that Mr. Koring takes the ‘official’ word of Israel as fact, and states, without providing any of the disputed evidence to the contrary, that Syria had a nuclear program? What is Mr. Koring’s real agenda? Is he trying to justify bombing another nation on the sole “assertions by the Israelis”? Is he not aware that according to the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal, Israel committed War Crimes by attacking Syria. Was this a simple error on his part or was he conveniently ignoring some of the facts? More importantly however, why did the Globe and Mail chose to publish this blatant misinformation?

Mr. Koring shows his naivete:

“Attacked and humiliated, Iran might be tempted, as Mr. Ahmadinejad has suggested, to strike back, although Iran has limited military options…

“Despite continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has ample air and naval power to strike Iran. In addition to nuclear installations, other likely targets include ballistic missile sites, Revolutionary Guard bases, and naval assets.”

As for Iran having limited options to strike back, I quote Gwynne Dyer, one of the most respected military analysts in the world, from one of his recent articles, “Bush’s hawks size up Iran”:

“So what will happen if Cheney & co. get their way? The Iranian regime will not collapse: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now unpopular due to his mishandling of the economy, but patriotic Iranians would rally around even him if they were attacked by foreigners. What will collapse, instead, is the world’s oil supply and the global economy.

“Maj.-Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, explained how that would be accomplished in a speech on August 15, though he made no direct reference to the U.S. threat. ‘Our coast-to-sea missile systems can now reach the length and breadth of the Gulf and the Sea of Oman,’ he said, ‘and no warships can pass in the Gulf without being in range of our coast-to-sea missiles.’ In other words, Iran can close the whole of the gulf and its approaches to oil tanker traffic, and if the U.S. navy dares to fight in these waters it will lose…

“The U.S. can bomb Iran to its heart’s content, hitting all those real and alleged nuclear facilities, but then it runs out of options–whereas Iran’s options remain very broad.

“It could just stop exporting oil. Pulling only Iran’s three-and-a- half million barrels per day off the market, in its present state, would send oil prices shooting up into the stratosphere. Or it could get tough and close down all oil-tanker traffic that comes within range of those missiles–which would mean little or no oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, or the smaller Gulf states either. That would mean global oil rationing, industrial shutdowns, and the end of the present economic era.

“It’s very doubtful that U.S. air strikes could find and destroy all the missile launchers–consider how badly the Israeli air force did in south Lebanon last summer–so Iran wins. After a few months, the other great powers would find some way for the United States to back away from the confrontation and let the oil start flowing again, but the U.S. would suffer a far greater humiliation than it did in Vietnam, while Iran would emerge as the undisputed arbiter of the region.

“Many, perhaps most, senior American generals and admirals know this, and are privately opposed to a doomed attack on Iran, but in the end they will do as ordered. Vice-President Cheney and his coterie don’t know it, preferring to believe that Iranians would welcome their American attackers with glad cries and open arms. You know, like the Iraqis did.”

There were those who warned us that we were walking into disaster with Afghanistan. There were those that tried to stop us from marching into Iraq. This time around, will we listen to those that predict Armageddon with Iran, or do we believe the old proverb, Third Time Lucky?

The mainstream media in the United States was able to sell Americans a war that has resulted in over a million innocent civilians deaths, that will cost the United States of America an estimated $3.5 trillion through 2017 which American citizens will have to pay for with their tax dollars, a war which does not seem to have an end in sight, and is in the process of destabilizing an entire region on this planet.

Through this type of misinformation, will the mainstream media in Canada be able to sell Canadians a war with Iran? How delusional are they to think that we will even consider such a thing?

I believe that it should be mandatory for all articles discussing the future possibility of an attack on Iran to print the number of casualties and the monetary cost of the present wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Maybe by knowing how many people we have killed and how much money we have spent, we will think twice about starting another war on the whim of our murderous leaders and the ‘reporting’ of our corporate media.

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