Stichting Laka

Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Iran in the crosshairs/How to prevent Washington’s next war (2008)

Auteur	Bennis, Cavanagh, Hassen
Datum	februari 2008
Classificatie	5.16.0.00/08 (IRAN)
Voorkant

Introduction

Washington watched as 2007 came to a violent and inglorious end. U.S. wars raged 
in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S.-backed Israeli occupation suffocated Palestinians, 
U.S.-allied governments in Pakistan and Kenya faced national explosions over false 
democratization and stolen elections, and U.S. corporate-driven poverty and resource 
wars ravaged Africa. Powerful forces in the United States had already begun to 
critically reassess what they saw as the diminishing value of the Bush 
administration's reckless global interventionism.

By the end of the year, that elite divide-with the Bush White House increasingly 
isolated and discredited-had shown up in a leaked story of how Bush's CIA hid and 
then destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogation-by-torture of detainees in 
the so-called "global war on terror." There was an explosive story documenting how 
Bush's billions of dollars in "anti-terrorism" military aid to Pakistan had completely 
failed to stabilize that war-wracked country. (1) Another leak exposed damning views 
that the United States and its allies were losing the war in Afghanistan, the invasion 
and occupation that were supposed to shine as Washington's "good war"-the war that 
no one could criticize because of September 11. (2)

But the most important evidence of the split within the powerful elites came with 
the release of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (NIE) on December 3, 
2007. (3) The NIE, reflecting the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence 
agencies, made clear that Iran did not have a nuclear weapon, did not have a 
program to build a nuclear weapon, and was less determined to develop nuclear 
weapons than U.S. intelligence agencies had earlier claimed.

How could anyone now claim there was any legal or moral pretext for threatening 
Iran? But somehow the release of the NIE did not stop Washington's talk of war. 
The day after the NIE was released the Washington Post headline read, "U.S. Renews 
Efforts to Keep Coalition Against Tehran." (4) The White House, the President, and 
especially the Vice-President, all continued ratcheting up the rhetoric. In fact, the 
president had been told of the NIE's overall conclusions months earlier, back in the 
summer of 2007.

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