Category Archives: WMD

UPDATED: Sarin On Syria? (Boobus Americanus Rides Again)

Iraq, Just War, Media, Middle East, War, WMD

A sudden flood of assertions by our media asses that President Bashar Assad is about to poison “his people” with the Sarin nerve agent sounds as credible as Colin Powell’s WMD multimedia presentation to the UN, to justify the invasion of Iraq.

You are wont to read, for example, that “A senior U.S. official told Fox News” that Syrian forces were loading bombs with “components of sarin gas.”

No names, no specifics.

Sarin on Syria is probably the Obama Administration’s casus belli for a ground invasion.

DEBKAfile’s anonymous military sources, via RT, report that, “The USS Eisenhower, an American aircraft carrier that holds eight fighter bomber squadrons and 8,000 men, arrived at the Syrian coast yesterday in the midst of a heavy storm, indicating US preparation for a potential ground intervention. …[The] Terminal High Altitude Air Defense [THAD] system and … the AEGIS system, which counters missiles that can reach outside the atmosphere,” are allegedly “aboard the USS Eisenhower.”

UPDATE (Dec. 7): When a ruse to get Americans to go along with war works, use it again, and again, and again. WMD got the US “safely” into Iraq. “Safely,” because, aside from a marginalized few (this one, for example), Boobus Americanus asked very few questions, and still cares not a whit about the legitimacy of maiming and killing hundreds of thousands Iraqis and Americans, and bankrupting our country.

The “blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids” may be set to ride again.

“There are no confirmed reports that Damascus is preparing to use chemical weapons in the ongoing Syrian conflict,” confirms the UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

And a reminder for members of the booboisie: Endless are the reasons to dismantle the U.N., but stalling one of the US’s wars of aggressive is not one of them. (Read “U.S.: GLOBAL GOVERNOR?” before joining the thread on Facebook.)

Onward to Iran!

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, Military, War, WMD

The following is from this week’s column, “Onward to Iran!”:

That acts of war and elections often coincide should come as no surprise. It’s unfortunate, but electability in fin de siècle America still hinges on projecting bully power around the world—an American leader has to aspire to “protect” borders and people not his own, and if they refuse his advances, he should be prepared to bomb them to kingdom come.

Having used the American military to particularly great political effect—the barefaced Barack Obama may be preparing to blast Iranians with something even “better” than the BLU-82, Bush’s weapon of choice.

Elections are not the only cause for war.

Perverse as this may seem, in its ongoing, reflexive efforts to maintain power and metastasize, the media-military-industrial-congressional complex can’t help but motivate for war.

Thus, out of the blue, in January of 2012, before things had heated up with Teheran, the Anglo-American press reported a military milepost. The Pentagon was working on a “13.6 ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).” It “is the deepest penetrating ‘bunker buster’ currently in the U.S. arsenal,” swanked the DailyMail Online, “designed to take out fortifications built by Iran to hide their alleged nuclear weapons.”

Correlation is not causation, but the case for hitting Iranian installations has since hardened into dogma.

According to the MailOnline, the work on this big boy began because the Pentagon had “identified” a deficit in the US’s military capabilities: “officials believe [the current arsenal] is not capable of destroying Iran’s fortified underground facilities.”

Essentially, the premise for the MOP project was that American men and matériel should be capable of reaching all corners of the world.

Since the president’s reign of terror abroad began, the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value. Or so boasted Fareed Zakaria, CNN’s inane, wishy-washy correspondent, who represents the media’s voice of moderation in the ramp-up to war with Iran.

Like all fixtures of mainstream media, the Zombie Zakaria has an appetite for destruction. …”

The complete column is “Onward to Iran!”

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The Chalabi Times Hoping Not to Repeat Iraq Disgrace

Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, UN, War, WMD

As I pointed out in 2005, Judith Chalabi Miller, the Gray Lady’s prized reporter, shilled for the Iraq war over the pages of the New York Times, like there was no tomorrow. The Bush White House, together with a wily Iraqi exile named Ahmad Chalabi, friend to the neoconservatives, fed the voracious birdbrain with misinformation and lies about WMD. The NYT and Miller, as much as FoxNews and its hot-for-war hotties, promoted the immoral, illegitimate, baseless war on Iraq.

Whereas the Times was prone to see faces in the clouds during the delirium of destruction in Iraq, it is now attempting to cleave to the facts about Iran.

“American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. …Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies. … Iranian officials maintain that their nuclear program is for civilian purposes. ” [NYT]

Ali Asghar Soltanieh, a nuclear scientist and Iran’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), speaks reasonably to his country’s need to produce radio isotopes for pharmaceuticals, a product of the nuclear industry. However, the US prefers to increase the burden and isolation of the Iranian people with sanctions. Pure evil and plain counterproductive.

Facts did nothing to sway the U.S. from attacking a prostrate, Third World nation, with no navy or air force, whose military prowess was a fifth of what was smashed in the Gulf War. Rationalizing these war crimes with lies post invasion became de rigueur in the major media.

Similarly, facts will not forestall an American assault on Iran. In the early days, Iraq had provided “documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD.” I recall the derision and mockery with which the Bush administration and its hangers-on greeted what turned out to be the only truthful document in the sad saga of Iraq.

Updated: Maddow, McVeigh And The Militia

Federalism, Homeland Security, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Reason, Terrorism, WMD

The excerpt is from “Maddow, McVeigh And The Militia,” now on WND.COM:

“Rachel Maddow’s gayness (and goggles) is the most interesting thing about her. What I’m trying to say here is that the MSNBC TV host has a mundane mind, which, rest assured, will insert and assert itself during an upcoming special presentation, “The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist.” ….

A far more interesting choice for presenter of the forthcoming MSNBC feature on McVeigh would have been the brilliant belletrist Gore Vidal.

Like Maddow, Vidal (aged 83) is a gay leftist. Unlike Maddow, he manages to dazzle with his original insights. (Unfashionably, Vidal has also poked fun at assorted anal activists and at all manner of “vulgar fagism.”)

Vidal “became a supportive correspondent of Timothy McVeigh,” and considers McVeigh “a true patriot, a Constitution man.”

Gore Vidal is rare in recognizing the legitimate federal insults to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that motivated McVeigh to commit his crime. He is also unique, on the Left and Right, in acknowledging that McVeigh was not a rube, but a thoughtful man who had fought for his country and was familiar with its foundational principles and documents.

As the most able counsel for the defense (McVeigh’s), the iconoclastic octogenarian would have given his viewers something to mull over; mundane Maddow will not. …

The complete column is “Maddow, McVeigh And The Militia.” Read it on WND.COM.

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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Update (April 16): Inferring motivation, or psychologizing about the reason Vidal respected some of McVeigh’s arguments are species of ad hominem. I avoid them, for the most; I don’t take them seriously when others make them. In fact, that’s MSNBC’s stock-in-trade; impute motivation (“racism” always) to your foe and attack him based on assumptions about his inner workings, rather than deal with the facts and merits of his argument.

So, our (much-welcomed) commenter claims Vidal had a homoerotic fixation with McVeigh, and therefore everything he claimed to respect in McVeigh is not credible. That line of reasoning is illogical.

A quote from McVeigh:

I think it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We’ve gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that’s where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced.

I agree with that. And if a “stormtrooper” agrees with the above statement, then consider that a stormtrooper, McVeigh and I agree about the statement. Other than to argue in circles, so what?!