Striking Iran is peaceful

Israel's Deputy PM Shaul Mofaz has reached the Orwellian peak by calling for the head of International Atomic Energy Agency leader Mohamed El Baradei, stating that

"the Egyptian...had endangered world peace by neglecting Iran's nuclear programme."

Of course, it is more of a ploy, falling in line with Likudnik thinking, that dissenters either have a choice to join their ranks or be broken. With Iran being played up as the next Boogeyman out there ready to wreak havoc on "world peace", our friends are willing to strike at them for the sake of peace (without seeing the irony of making war to have peace). Naturally, El Baradei has been a thorn in every hawk's side by his findings that Iran still has no weapon, and the fact that if they do choose to proliferate, it takes them almost a decade to do so. But with Pakistan in an imbroglio, concerns about their weapons are still considerably less so than Iran's non-existent ones (or Israel's couple of hundred in their arsenal).

And who else is going to piggyback (or initiate) this attack? Why none other than our neighbour to the south, who has mobilised Iran attack plans.

"US defense officials have signaled that up-to-date attack plans are available if needed in the escalating crisis over Iran's nuclear aims, although no strike appears imminent.

The Army and Marine Corps are under enormous strain from years of heavy ground fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, the United States has ample air and naval power to strike Iran if President Bush decided to target nuclear sites or to retaliate for alleged Iranian meddling in neighboring Iraq.

Among the possible targets, in addition to nuclear installations like the centrifuge plant at Natanz: Iran's ballistic missile sites, Republican Guard bases, and naval warfare assets that Tehran could use in a retaliatory closure of the Straits of Hormuz, a vital artery for the flow of Gulf oil."

Tactical air strikes: haven't we been here before (as well as forged intelligence to suit our means)? Iraq has been blundered but that does not mean they cannot redeem themselves in Iran. After all, things have not changed one bit, have they. Here's Vice President Dick Cheney trying to withhold a report that is not to Washington's liking.

"A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program, and thus make the document more supportive of US Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public."

So we're back into an old loop. Bombing nations for peace. Weapons when there are none. Leaving out key findings to support the militant cause. Deriding old realists when they do not follow the script. And a sign of things to come.

"If the NIE includes both dissenting views on key issues, a campaign of selective leaking to news media of language from the NIE that supports Cheney's line on Iran will soon follow, as well as leaks of the dissenting views by his opponents."

Hubris at its best.