The Criminalization of US Foreign Policy
From the Truman Doctrine to the Neo-ConservativesBy Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, February 5, 2007
1. The contemporary contextThe World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity.
At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable, a nuclear holocaust which could potentially spread, in terms of radioactive fallout, over a large part of the Middle East.
There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration, in liaison with Israel and NATO, is planning the launching of a nuclear war against Iran, ironically, in retaliation for Tehran's nonexistent nuclear weapons program. The US-Israeli military operation is said to be in "an advanced state of readiness".
If such a plan were to be launched, the war would escalate and eventually engulf the entire Middle-East Central Asian region.
The war could extend beyond the region, as some analysts have suggested, ultimately leading us into a World War III scenario.
The US-led naval deployment (involving a massive deployment of military hardware) is taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.
The militarization of the Eastern Mediterranean is broadly under the jurisdiction of NATO in liaison with Israel. Directed against Syria, it is conducted under the façade of a UN "peace-keeping" mission. In this context, the Israeli led war on Lebanon last Summer, which was conducive to countless atrocities and the destruction of an entire country, must be viewed as a stage of the broader US sponsored military road-map.
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3. The Ultimate War Crime: Using Nuclear Weapons in a Conventional War theaterDespite Pentagon statements, which describe tactical nuclear weapons as "safe for the surrounding civilian population", the use of nukes in a conventional war theater directed against Iran would trigger the ultimate war crime: a nuclear holocaust. The resulting radioactive contamination, which threatens future generations, would by no means be limited to the Middle East.
4. The "War on Terrorism": Pretext to Wage WarIn 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM to draw up a contingency plan "to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States". Mass casualty producing events, involving the death of civilians are being used to galvanize public opinion in support of a military agenda. The deaths of civilian are used to justify preemptive actions to defend the American homeland against an alleged outside enemy, who are identified as "Islamic terrorists".
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The presumption was that if such a 9/11 type event involving the deaths of civilians (mass casualty producing event) were to take place, Iran would, according to Cheney, be behind it, thereby providing a pretext for punitive bombings, much in the same way as the US sponsored attacks on Afghanistan in October 2001, allegedly in retribution for the alleged support of the Taliban government to the 9/11 terrorists
More recently, several analysts have focussed on the creation of a "Gulf of Tonkin incident", which would be used by the Bush administration as a pretext to wage war on Iran
5. The Real Objective Of This War Is OilThe oil lies in Muslim lands. The objective is to take possession of the oil, transform countries into territories and redraw the map of the Middle East
War builds a fake "humanitarian agenda". Throughout history, vilification of the enemy has been applied time and again with a view to ultimately justifying war and war crimes.
Demonization of the enemy serves geopolitical and economic objectives. Likewise, the campaign against "Islamic terrorism" (which is supported covertly by US intelligence) supports the conquest of oil wealth. The term "Islamo-fascism," serves to degrade the policies, institutions, values and social fabric of Muslim countries, while also upholding the tenets of "Western democracy" and the "free market" as the only alternative for these countries.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20070201&articleId=4659