Iran: The War Drums are Beating Louder
This past week, on Tuesday, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New
York to address the General assembly at the United Nations. The day before, on
Monday, he was invited to speak at Columbia University. The Iranian President
was greeted by throngs of protesters.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger had pledged to quiz Ahmadinejad on subjects such as human rights, the Holocaust
and Iran’s nuclear program. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the past has vowed to wipe Israel off the
face of the Earth, and has denied that the Holocaust ever happened. In fact,
earlier this year he hosted a Holocaust deniers forum
that included, among other visitors, David Duke, the former Grand Wizard for
the Ku Klux Klan. It was a Who’s Who of racists and bigots.
Columbia President Lee Bollinger said it was a question of
free speech and academic freedom.
“It’s extremely important to know who the leaders are of
countries that are your adversaries. To watch them, to see
how they think, to see how they reason or do not reason. To see whether
they’re fanatical, or to see whether they are sly,” Bollinger told ABC’s “Good
Morning America.”
I guess Bollinger doesn’t follow the news much, because if
he did, he would know how Ahmadinejad thinks, he
would know how he reasons and more importantly he would know how he does not
use reasoning.
The visit to the college in my opinion was nothing more than
a chance to give one of our enemies a tool to use as
propaganda back in Iran and in the Middle East.
Also this past Tuesday, President Bush addressed the United
Nations general assembly, but he barely mentioned Iran – probably as a snub to
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
who was present.
Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism (followed
by Saudi Arabia, but that’s another story). He supplies the Palestinian terror
organization Hamas with weapons and money; he also supplies weapons and money
to the terror organization Hezbollah in Lebanon.
He supplies weapons such as IEDs (Improvised Explosive
Devices) to the Shiites in Iraq who use then to kill Americans. He supplies
IEDs to the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and they in turn use them to
kill Americans.
In my opinion, Ahmadinejad should
have been thrown in jail the moment he set foot on American soil.
One of the main contentions between Iran and the United
States is Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb. Iran says their program is strictly
for electricity and they are not trying to build a bomb.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors
have said that Iran has built facilities that are meant to enrich Uranium and
produce plutonium, which is used for nuclear bombs. Europe last year offered to
supply the nuclear material needed for producing electricity, which could not
be weaponized, but Iran turned them down.
By Iran turning down Europe’s offer to produce electricity
with nuclear material provided by Germany and monitoring the facilities, is a
pretty good indicator that Iran has other plans.
Because of Iran’s refusal to stop its pursuit to enrich
Uranium, earlier this year the United Nations imposed further sanctions against
Iran. But Russia and China have watered down the sanctions and nothing has
really changed with Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
This past year there has been a lot of saber rattling from
both Bush and Ahmadinejad. If you recall earlier this
year the Iranians seized fifteen British sailors and marines in the Persian
Gulf.
Back in January of this year, President Bush gave a speech
to the Nation to announce his surge of 21,500 troops into Iraq; in that same
speech Bush also said that he is sending in some Patriot Missile Systems and
another Aircraft Carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf.
The mention of the Patriot Missile Systems was missed, over
looked, or simply ignored by the main stream media. Think about it, the Patriot
Missile System is designed to shoot down incoming missiles. But the Sunnis, the
Shiites and al-Qaeda don’t have any missiles; Iran does.
In that same speech, Bush said he was sending in a second
Aircraft Carrier battle group. These two battle groups are joined by British
Navy Battle groups.
Plan
B
Alexis Debat, Director of
Terrorism and National Security at the Nixon Center, said earlier this month
that the Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200
targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in
three days.
The US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick
strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the
entire Iranian military,” Debat added.
Debat
was speaking at a meeting organized by The National Interest, a conservative
foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had
concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the
reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very
legitimate strategic calculus”.
Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire
nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be
ready to attack if the Americans back down.
Vice President Dick Cheney has been pushing for a US attack
against Iran’s nuclear facilities and, by all reports,
Bush has not been willing to pursue this course. But as Bush gets closer to the
end of his presidency it would seem that he is reconsidering because of Iran’s
continued advance to acquire a nuclear weapon, and Bush has said that he will
not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb.
So, Bush has painted himself into a corner. He has made his
pledge against allowing Iran to make a bomb, and he feels that his replacement
in the White House may not have the guts to stop them.
The clock is ticking on Bush’s presidency, our Air Force and
Navy are positioned, the Pentagon is ready to go within twenty four hours of
Bush giving the green light, and it would seem that all systems are a go.
The War Drums are
Beating Louder.