Obama Right In Targeting Iran Deal Opponents As Warmongers

As I've written multiple times, I'm not afraid to deliver kudos to the Prez when he's right on an issue, and brickbats when he's wrong (as on the TPP). In this case, he was right yesterday to go after the Iran nuclear deal opponents and basically paint them as warmongering agitators. He was emphatically correct in asserting there is only "one alternative:" to the deal and that is war - of some form - at some stage.

The Reeptard warmongers can deny it all they want but they're either lying or insane.  In this regard, evidently both John McCain and Lindsey Graham took umbrage at Obama's strong remarks and said in a joint statement (WSJ, today, p. A4):

"It is particularly galling to hear the President try to defend his nuclear agreement with Iran by claiming its critics also supported  the war in Iraq".

Ironic, isn't it - that both McCain and Graham actually DID support the war in Iraq.  And Graham, to be sure, has stated clearly that if people vote him in as President (a classically stupid move that's comparable only barely to voting for Trump) he would make plans to go to war with Tehran. So there you have it. Two peas in a warmonger pod (recalling how two years ago, McCain was singing 'Bomb bomb Iran' to the sound of the Beach Boys' hit, 'Ba-Bar- Bra- Ann'. e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPRonG87eKw

Funny, but  war with Iran would not be a cakewalk like the Iraq conflict. Again, all these war mongers so het up to get it on really need to see the 1983 film 'Threads' - which makes 'The Day After' look like a walk in the park.

The other brilliant aspect of Obama's attack speech was in framing lawmaker's decisions on the Iran deal as potentially determining not only their own political fates but the future of a U.S. still recovering from more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq that has now cost more than $4 trillion. Enough to have not only funded a single payer health scheme, but a Mars trip and rebuilding our collapsing infrastructure.

Obama also delivered sound advice to the lawmakers, including on the Demo side, to "worry less about being labeled as weak, and more about getting it right." Sadly, over much of their palsied, poltroon history Dems have been much more concerned about their image and associated "optics" than getting a legislative position right.

Obama's jibes also made Bibi Netanyahu look like the warmonger he really is, itching to bomb Iran to pieces despite HE IS the one with over 200 nukes! And, of course, Bibi already dug himself into that hole with one of his earlier speeches, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/03/is-netanyahu-paranoid-warmonger-yes.html

But the part I loved the best, that had ol'  Mitch McConnell's panties in a twist, is when Obama pointed out the symmetry between the hardliners in both Iran and the U.S. Because just as the hardliners on the Right oppose the deal here, so do the hardliners on the Iranian Right oppose there. Moron Mitch then lost it and fulminated 'How dare the President compares us to those Iranians!" Well, dumb fuck, that 's because you ARE! But like the rest of his GOOPr ilk, he doesn't process the symmetry any more than he does the irony.

The main object for Obama, no matter how the Republicans pout, cry, stamp feet and play the victim, is to get the Dems on board. Once he has the Ds he doesn't have to worry about any votes against the deal by the 'pukes.  This is important, because it isn't just Iran and the U.S. in this deal, we have the UK, Russia, China, Germany and France too. So a defeat would have undesirable implications for all the parties.

Let us hope the Dem Senators pay close attention to Obama's nuclear physicist head of the DOE (Ernest Moniz) and don't stick their head up their asses like the Reepos have!

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/63346/which-u-s-senators-want-war-on-iran

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/63307/obama-s-pragmatic-appeal-for-iran-peace

WHY The Need for so many Military Attacks? It's the Defense Contracts, Stupid!

On the ABC Sunday Morning discussion program with George Stephanopoulos, Mideast  correspondent Martha Radditz noted Obama must proceed cautiously on the Syrian front because he will need another war authorization "in a few months" for an attack on Iran. SAY WHAT?! An attack on Iran? What is this bullshit? How many attacks are we going to be making in the volatile Middle East? Has this country totally lost its fucking marbles?

Actually no, okay let me qualify that! There is method to the madness. The method is that the more conflicts, attacks that can be expedited the more ordinance, bombs, cruise missiles, etc. are destroyed in the process of attacking and hence the more additional ordnance, bombs, cruise missiles etc. have to be manufactured to replace them! Can't have any inventory building up on the defense contractors' shelves, now can we? Oh no! That would mean loss of profits and also, god forbid, that the products already manufactured are sitting there being wasted and unused.  The idea - as with all consumption  - is use, use, USE ....so more have to be manufactured and more paid for!

This is the dirty little secret of our "war" economy highlighted by the key graphic shown above, disclosing how much of the budget the military industrial complex sucks up annually.  Here's another dirty little secret about the "sequester": there are no real cuts to military spending in any absolute terms, but only an estimated "trim down" of roughly 23% in the projected INCREASES in Pentagon spending over the next ten years!

The point here? Contrary to the bloviators' bollocks of "jeopardizing national security", just the opposite is true: the Pentagon base budget will still be larger than it is today by 2021! This necessarily means, given the zero sum resources we have, everyone else will be much poorer. That means an even more shattered and useless infrastructure with crumbling roads, cracking sewer and water mains and collapsing bridges....and a much more likely intolerable domestic environment over all.

Meanwhile, you can just imagine the weapons makers having wet dreams now over this Syria thing. At last a believable excuse has been found in some Youtube images of gassed Syrian civilians to justify firing a thousand Tomahawks at those Syrian bad guys - and letting God sort them out.  He will have to, because there likely will be as much collateral damage - with maybe twice the number as killed in the gas attack, as Syrian forces annihilated.......errrrr.....punished. 

Oh yeah, let's bear in mind it's a "limited strike" maybe a few days at most, maybe 300 or so Tomahawks in all. But what no one is admitting is they will have to go in again if another gas attack takes place, no matter who did it - including al Qaeda operatives trying to snag us into another expensive, long drawn out war. Sounds almost like Oceania in George Orwell's '1984' - endless war, but the purpose of which is not to win...not anything but (in the immortal words of "Goldstein"):

"War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. "

But bear in mind, unstated by Goldstein, is that any kind of war - or even a limited attack as Obama claims he has planned for Syria - has the ancillary purpose of requiring additional stores of munitions, missiles, bombs, etc. to take the place of those destroyed in the attacks - hence means more defense contracts and more profits for the Pentagon-linked parasites who are sucking us all dry. And if more chemical attacks are committed by whatever bad guys? Well, that means we have to go in again and use up more cruise missiles so that when they are blown up, more will need to be made to replace them! And on and on it goes! Since, hell, once in for a penny, we're in for a pound. As long as any sort of "violations of international norms" occur, we will have to come back and bomb the suckers again!

And then, oh yes, a major assault on Iran lies in our future! Think of how those defense contractors must be having orgasmic spasms right now contemplating the new contract bounty from THAT! Hell, maybe 10,000 bombs and cruise missiles will have to be replaced!  And HEY! Since Iranian underground nuclear facilities are fortified with "ultra-high performance concrete" (UHPC) that means the most expensive bombs (at about $5m each) will have to be used!

These, of course, are the Massive Ordinance Penetrators ("MOPS' ), which can break through 60 m of ordinary concrete, but will not necessarily be a walk in the park. That means that an enormous supply will likely have to be available, and also if all those are used up, maybe 1,000 more will have to be made. Oy! Think of the profits!

Well, it is fairly clear who wins in each of these attack scenarios, and hint, hint, it ain't the American people. It will be the MIC and the defense profiteers.

Meanwhile, the American nation is sped into further decline especially if the debt ceiling isn't properly increased next month, but we face yet another showdown.

 Btw, contrary to what some uninformed dummies assert, the 'Commander in chief' is really only a puppet who ultimately must fulfill the will of the militarists who run the Military Industrial Complex.  Their main agenda is consuming the gross domestic product for military use and they will have it done one way or the other.  Read the book, In The Shadow of War, by Michael S. Sherry. JFK's courageous mistake was to buck the militarists by issuing National Security Action Memorandum 263 (to pull all personnel out of Vietnam by 1965), and he paid the ultimate price.

It's Still Stupid to Launch an Attack on Iran

As undercurrents of discontent for Iran's nuclear program continue to bubble to the surface and we behold the Israelis already preparing for Iranian counter-attacks (to a near future bombing raid on Iranian facilities), the fact remains there is no defensible logic which could justify such an attack.

Even leave out for the moment the report in a recent issue of The Economist ('Smart Concrete', March 3rd, p. 89) that recently developed U.S. "bunker buster", 30,000 lb. bombs may not be able to penetrate Iranian underground facilities, fortified as they are now with "ultra-high performance concrete" (UHPC) - this is a nanoscale variation, often incorporating oxides of titanium or zirconium. Other variants have used polypropylene fibers and quartz flour (known as 'fume') to attain the same effect, according to the piece.

In other words, attacking Iranian facilities using these Massive Ordinance Penetrators ("MOPS' ), which can break through 60 m of ordinary concrete, will not necessarily be a walk in the park. And if not for the U.S., it won't be for Israel either, unless they do something reckless like using tactical nukes - the basis for the horrific nuclear war flick, 'Threads', e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/03/anxious-to-start-war-with-iran-see-this.html

But there are other reasons to refuse to be cajoled into a costly, maybe super-costly, war. One of them is Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. All it has are highly enriched fuels which could be used for reactors. The U.S. Intelligence community has already twice concluded there is no evidence that Iran has committed to any decision to make a nuclear weapon. So, are we now again, to be pushed into a 3rd conflict - like the specious one in Iraq based on ridiculous claims of them getting "yellowcake" - abetted by a 'dog and pony' show before the UN?

Meanwhile, London's International Institute for Strategic Studies concurred.

There is also a major fault in the logic that if Iran goes nuclear it'll set off a nuclear arms race in the region. We have examples that counter such reasoning. When North Korea went nuclear, neither Korea or Japan followed suit. And when Israel went nuclear, neither Egypt or Saudi Arabia followed suit.

Also, comparing attainment of nukes to India and Pakistan doesn't wash, since we've seen both those countries go to war three times in 30 years yet nukes weren't used. In fact, one could argue that since going nuclear they've been more restrained, somewhat analogous to the basis for "mutually assured destuction" (MAD) that existed between the U.S. and Soviet Union during the Cold war.

Neither does the argument that any nukes "might fall into the hands" of terrorists make sense. After all Iran has endured, including massive sanctions (the latest being cut off from the international electronic banking SWIFT system) how or why would they be so cavalier in allowing their hard won attainments to be usurped by loonies? It is all scare tactics.

Finally, the (mainly) Israeli argument that Iranians are prepared to commit mass suicide if it means the extermination of Israel is hyperbolic babble. (This was the claim of the Israeli Ambassador on a recent Bill Maher show). A truer take was offered by Gen. Martin Dempsey on Fareed Zakaria's CNN program some time back, when he referred to Iran as a "rational actor" - that means ultimately invested in survival not self-extermination for a manic, irrational cause (as the Christian fundies are in the U.S. of A., who can't wait for Armageddon to occur and the world's cities vaporized to pave the way for Jaysus' 2nd coming. Oh, and that means all the Jews except 100,000 "chosen ones" vaporized too, though until then these fundie U.S. Xtians are happy to use Israel as the base for their prophecies to unfold!)

As observed by U.S. intelligence specialist, Paul Pillar, in an essay in The Washngton Monthly:

"More than three decades of history show that the Islamic Republic's rulers, like most rulers elsewhere, are overwhelmingly concerned with preserving their regime and their power....in this life and not some future one."

Israel, before it mounts its bombs to attack Iran might want to process that. They also might wish to look again at Principle VI under the Nuremberg laws, passed after the Nazis were brought to heel. Principle VI clearly states:

"The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law: (a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i). "

As for Obama and his administration, he'd be stupid to cooperate in such a violation, leading as it would to even higher spiking oil prices, and very likely an end to his aspirations to get a 2nd term - which I for one believe he deserves.

Anxious to Start a War with Iran? See THIS Film FIRST!

Well, you can hear the saber -rattling again just like in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and occupation. You hear over and over either that the Israelis are poised for a strike on Iran's nuclear sites, or the U.S. is considering assisting them - even with massive "30,000 lbs. TNT equivalent" bunker busters, or the U.S. plans its own invasion. Even no less than Pentagon PR pundit Barry McCaffrey has forecast a U.S. initiated war within 90 days, and already "briefed NBC execs" on such, e.g.:

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/28/gen_mccaffrey_privately_briefs_nbc_execs_on_war_with_iran/singleton/
If there are really and truly so many at the Pentagon or in the Elite punditocracy with a hard-on for war with Iran, I strongly suggest that they back up, cool their sabers off ....and take a good long look at this 1984 movie first:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488

This movie, 'Threads', is about 1hr and 47 mins long, Brit-made but if it doesn't scare the bejeezus out of you, you are either already: a) brain dead, or b) a zombie and amongst the walking dead.

'Threads' is set in the industrial city of Sheffield, UK, and to be sure one needs to get adjusted to the peculiar accent. But once one does, he or she will be granted an inside look at a future none of us want to face. (One U.S. reviewer said that "Threads makes 'The Day After' look like a day at the races".) Having seen both I concur.

Threads is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted but I do think all those yammering for war or confrontation with Iran need to see it and let its message soak in. In fact, I think every critically-thinking red blooded citizen ought to see it, if for no other reason to be motivated to let reps know this thing isn't on - not now or ever. If we could contain the Soviet Union with its 12,700 ICBMs for over 40 years, we ought to be able to contain Iran.

Though based on a hypothetical Soviet-Russian invasion of Iran, which possibility is no longer - since the present day Russians have plowed enormous investment monies into Iran and its reactors, the projected invasion of a U.S. and NATO strike force is accurate to any unfolding future scenario. From the initial strikes on a nuke reactor at Isfahan, to the accidential sinking of the Russian ship Kirov in the Straits of Hormuz, to the accidential exchange of 2 tactical nuclear weapons (with radiation blowing over Pakistan) and the escalation to a full scale nuclear war - with 3,000 megatons exchange (210 megatons on the UK alone) this movie will keep you on the edge of your seat.

It should also give you nightmares and motivate you to scream down all the warmongers in this country with a boner to pick a fight. One might also include the Israelis in this as well, since any attacks by them could easily escalate and generate unintended consequences, especially if the current Russians believe their own interests are threatened. (A Russian Defense Minister already warned two months ago that any "extreme actions" would be met with responses in kind).

This plausibly makes all of us wish to hell our political and military leaders had more brains, or at least as much as JFK had, when he resisted the call from the Joint Chiefs in October, 1962 to bomb and invade Cuba when Castro had 93 IRBMs aimed at U.S. cities.

The last segment - following the timeline after the exchange and when nuclear winter occurs, discloses there are some prices that are simply too much to pay. (As if our vast deficits aren't enough already, to go initiating another ruckus for whatever reason.)

Let us hope our vaunted leaders learn those lessons after watching this film! If they need to, maybe re-run the last 30 minutes several times!