Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pelosi. Show all posts

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Kissinger, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Iran's Nuclear Program

Those beating the drum about Iran’s nuclear program should be made aware that the United States has been complicit in the Iranian program since the Ford administration. Then Secretary-of-State, Henry Kissinger offered a ‘strange deal’ to Pakistan that had been formulated by Richard Cheney, Ford’s Chief -of-Staff and Donald Rumsfeld, Ford’s Defense Secretary according to an extremely well-researched and copiously foot-noted book by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark entitled, ‘Deception: Pakistan, the United States and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons’.

While focusing on Pakistan’s nuclear program and the Reagan administration’s turning a blind eye to it and General Zia’s blood-thirsty military rule while recruiting and funding the Afghani Freedom Fighters (better known as the mujahedeen, a.k.a. Al Qaeda), ‘Deception’ references the unlawful proliferation of nuclear technology by the United States to Iran under the Shah.

The ‘strange deal’ that Cheney and Rumsfeld devised and which Kissinger offered to Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan’s Prime Minister (before Zia had him executed), was an effort to persuade Pakistan to forego its plans to pursue a nuclear program. In 1976, Kissinger begrudgingly proposed that if Bhutto terminated Pakistan’s own nascent uranium enrichment project, the United States would arrange to supply Pakistan with its needed enriched materials from a facility, funded and supplied by the US, and based in Iran.

Cheney and Rumsfeld had master-minded the scheme, arguing that Iran – even though awash in oil and gas - would need a nuclear program to meet its future energy needs. This plan was to be the first nuclear deal with Iran and would have been extremely lucrative for US corporations such as Westinghouse and General Electric “which stood to earn $6.4 billion from the project”. (The plan to lead Iran into the Nuclear Age was supported by Kissinger although the offer to involve Pakistan was not to his liking, hence his reluctance to propose the plan to Bhutto.)

Furthermore, according to an article in the Washington Post, written by Dafna Linzer, published on March 27, 2005, confirms “US involvement with Iran’s nuclear program until 1979” which involved “large-scale intelligence-sharing and conventional weapons sales”. The Linzer article goes on to assert that “Even with many key players in common” (editor’s note: such as Cheney and Rumsfeld), “the U.S. government has taken opposite positions on questions of fact as its perception of U.S. interests has changed.”

The compete Washington Post article can be read at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html


Although publicly opposed to President Bush’s hard-line stance on Iran and while favoring diplomacy over force of arms, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, has voiced her dismay over Iran’s nuclear program. It has been reported by Cheryl Biren-Wright at OpEdNews.com that Madam Pelosi stated at a recent event that Iran has received "a lot of technology from China, from Pakistan, probably from Russia and other places…”.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/2/Nancy-Pelosi-Book-Signing-by-Cheryl-Biren-Wrigh-080807-772.html


It would be very surprising, indeed, ludicrous to think Madam Speaker was not aware that the United States – one of those ‘other places’ - had initiated the proliferation of nuclear technology in Iran. Moreover, it is not surprising that Ms Pelosi purposely omitted reference to the US role in the unlawful proliferation of nuclear technology. By avoiding a mention of the US complicity in Iran’s nuclear program, Pelosi avoided the obvious pit-falls of obfuscation and deflected attention to tried and true adversaries past and future; the People’s Republic of China, Pakistan and the Russian Confederation.

Once again, the chickens - hatched by brood hens obsessed with imperial foreign policies - are coming home to roost. What is more, they once again carry nuclear eggs in flimsy baskets.

Post Script: A truly illuminating speech given at the World Affairs Council of Northern California by ‘Deception’ co-author Adrian Levy can be viewed at FORA.TV. http://fora.tv/2007/10/30/Pakistan_and_the_A_Q__Khan_Network

Friday, August 8, 2008

A Summer Reading List for Madam Pelosi

Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi has been telling us over and over on television, on-line and in print that she can find no reason to put the impeachment of George W Bush back on the table. If Representative Pelosi cannot find adequate reason for the impeachment of Mr Bush, then she is simply stupid, blind or both.

Books detailing and documenting the many high crimes and misdemeanors of George W Bush (et al) have been written, published and have made the ‘Best Seller’ lists. Here is but a small sampling that is strongly recommended for Ms Pelosi’s summer reading list:

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush by Center for Constitutional Rights

What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception by Scott McClellan

Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush by John W. Dean

The Constitution in Crisis: The High Crimes of the Bush Administration and a Blueprint for Impeachment by John C. Conyers and Elizabeth Holtzman

A Bird in the Bush: Failed Domestic Policies of the George W. Bush Administration by Dowling Campbell

The Lies of George W. Bush by David Corn

The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America by Eric Alterman and Mark J. Green

United States v. George W. Bush et al. by Elizabeth de la Vega

The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office by Dave Lindorff and Barbara Olshansky

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky

Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values by Philippe Sands

The Impeachment of George W. Bush: A Practical Guide for Concerned Citizens by Elizabeth Holtzman and Cynthia L. Cooper

Impeach the President: The Case Against Bush and Cheney by Dennis Loo, Peter Phillips, and Howard Zinn

The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack L. Goldsmith

Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture (The Terra Nova Series) by David Levi Strauss, Charles Stein, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Gra

Sinking the Ship of State: The Presidency of George W. Bush by Walter Brasch

Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution by James P. Pfiffner

Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution: The Battle over Presidential Power in the War on Terror by Howard Ball

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer

Torture and the Ticking Bomb (Blackwell Public Philosophy Series) by Bob Brecher

Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law by Marjorie Cohn and Richard Falk

Beyond the Law: The Bush Administration's Unlawful Responses in the "War" on Terror by Jordan J. Paust

Empire Burlesque - High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Imperium by Chris Floyd

The Bush Betrayal by James Bovard

The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by Stephen Grey

Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War by Tara McKelvey

Torture Central: E-mails From Abu Ghraib by Michael Keller

Bush and Cheney's War: A War Without Justification by Homer Duncan

Bushit!: An A-Z Guide to the Bush Attack on Truth, Justice, Equality, and the American Way by Jack Huberman

The Twilight of Democracy: The Bush Plan for America by Jennifer Van Bergen

The Unraveling of the Bush Presidency by Howard Zinn

Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh

George W. Bush Versus the U.S. Constitution: The Downing Street Memos and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, Coverups in the Iraq War and Illegal Domestic Spying by John Conyers Jr., Anita Miller, and Joseph C. Wilson

And last but not least…

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi

This should fill up your summer reading list, Madam Speaker. Do us all a favor and ask one of your aides to Google ‘Bush Impeachment’; I got 580,000 hits in 0.28 seconds on August 8th.

Then, Madam Speaker, do yourself a favor: up-date your curriculum vitae and start preparing a defense against own impeachment for gross dereliction of your duty to the Constitution of the United States of America.