| Weekend
Edition
December 8 / 9, 2007
Lies
Upon Lies
When
Will Bush Come Clean?
By PAUL
CRAIG ROBERTS
The
recent disclosure that the latest National Intelligence Estimate
concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapon program several years
ago, assuming Iran ever had such a program, has caused consternation
among neoconservatives, right-wing Israeli government officials,
and Bush regime ranks.
Members
of the right-wing Israeli government have denounced the NIE finding
as contrary to Israel’s interests. Former Bush regime official
John Bolton accused America’s intelligence agencies with conspiring
to discredit President Bush with politicized intelligence. According
to Bolton, it is US intelligence agencies, not the neoconservatives,
who have their “own agenda.” President Bush has promised
to continue his threats against Iran regardless of the NIE finding.
The
NIE finding puts Bush on the spot by bringing US intelligence up
to speed with the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose director
has repeatedly reported, as he did on December 4, that “the
agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program
or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran.”
Bush
has been trying to work up an attack on Iran based on a non-existent
nuclear weapon program. When asked how he could be threatening World
War III with a nuclear-armed Iran when US intelligence (and the
International Atomic Energy Agency) cannot find evidence of an Iranian
nuclear weapons program, Bush said that “nobody told me”
about the new finding.
Absurd
say intelligence officials. The White House has known about the
finding for six months while Dick Cheney tried to suppress the NIE
finding. Neocon National Security Advisor Steve Hadley even lied
to the press that the NIE finding was new and that’s why Bush
didn’t know about it.
The
unasked question is: What is the real reason the Bush Regime is
so determined to attack Iran? We now know for certain that the reason
has nothing whatsoever to do with Iranian nukes any more than the
US invasion of Iraq had to do with Iraqi nukes. What is the real
reason that is driving the Bush Regime to seek to overthrow with
military invasions the only MIddle Eastern states that are not US
puppets or dependents?
Until
we have the answer to this question, we cannot know why the Bush
regime wasted two administrations and $1 trillion at the minimum
in order to kill and maim civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Bush’s
insane wars have seen the US dollar plummet in value, the price
of oil skyrocket, American’s soft power destroyed, and the
hardening of opposition to the US worldwide.
What
has been gained by these extraordinary sacrifices?
How can the American people and their representatives in the two
parties in Congress tolerate a criminal executive branch that uses
lies and deceit to lead them into illegal wars for secret reasons?
Surely,
no one believes that Bush invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein had
weapons of mass destruction, or that Bush and Cheney were working
up an attack on Iran because the executive branch did not know of
the intelligence findings of its own agencies.
The
invasion of Afghanistan also remains unexplained. The Taliban are
not Al Qaeda and had nothing to do with 9/11 even in the official
version of that event. Bush clearly did not invade Afghanistan in
order to capture Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, who escaped scot
free. The Bin Laden/Sept. 11 rationale for Bush’s wars has
completely disappeared.
Osama
and 9/11 were never more than public excuses for a pre-determined
agenda.
Why
do the US media and the investigative committees of Congress have
no interest whatsoever in finding the agenda behind Bush’s
wars?
How
can Americans be a free people living under a rule of law when the
president can commit the country to catastrophic wars on the basis
of deception and escape all accountability?
And
Bush has the chutzpah to call on Iran to “come clean”
about its nuclear program or face diplomatic isolation. When is
Bush going to “come clean” and tell us the real agenda
behind his lies, deceptions, and wars?
Paul
Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in
the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.
He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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