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Bush Targets Iran
By Marjorie Cohn
As Congress and the American people protest the travesty Bush created in Iraq, our President is gunning for a confrontation with Iran. Bush is rattling the sabers and opting for gunboat diplomacy by pledging to "seek out and destroy" Iranian networks "providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies" in Iraq. But he has produced no hard evidence that Iran is supplying forces in Iraq with such weapons or manufacturing their own nuclear weapons.
When I say "gunboat diplomacy," I mean that literally. Bush recently sent US warships and Patriot missile batteries to the Persian Gulf and moved US attack aircraft to Turkey and other countries on Iran's borders. US forces stormed the Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and captured six Iranian nationals, and Bush announced he will go after any Iranians he considers a threat. There are also indications the Bush administration would support military action by Israel against Iran.
On Tuesday, the administration stepped up its inflammatory rhetoric. US officials said Iranians may have trained attackers who killed five Americans in Karbala on January 20. They also implicated the Mahdi Army, the militia controlled by Moktada al-Sadr. It's very interesting that the New York Times characterized the focus on Iran and the Mahdi Army as "convenient from the point of view of the Bush administration."
Investigators were stumped at how the attackers, who wore American-style uniforms, secured forged US identity cards and American-style M-4 rifles, and used stun grenades like those used only by US forces. They are also confounded at the way the attackers' convoy of S.U.V.'s gave the impression that it was American and slipped through Iraqi checkpoints. Wednesday's article in the Times cites a theory that "a Western mercenary group" may have been involved. In the past the US government used the CIA to covertly overthrow governments, such as Iran's in 1953 and Chile's in 1973. Could mercenaries now be doing the Bush administration's dirty work?
One of the military proposals calls for the use of bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapons against underground nuclear sites in Iran. That would mean "mushroom clouds, radiation, mass casualties, and contamination over years," a former senior intelligence official told Hersh. A Pentagon adviser said the Air Force would strike many hundreds of targets in Iran, 99 percent of which have nothing to do with nuclear proliferation.
A former defense official who still advises the Bush administration informed Hersh the military planning was grounded in the belief that "a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government." That's the same faulty logic the US government has used to justify its cruel embargo and blockade of Cuba since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
Congress has the responsibility to prevent Bush from attacking Iran. In view of congressional opposition to his war in Iraq, Bush will not likely ask permission to make war on Iran. We can expect Bush to provoke - or even fabricate a la Tonkin Gulf - an incident with Iran and then claim he's responding to Iranian aggression. Senior Pentagon officials reported in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times that Air Force and Navy fighter planes along the Iran-Iraq border may be used more aggressively. Bush will then try to bootstrap the September 2001 and October 2002 congressional authorizations for force in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively into consent to attack Iran.
Offensive military action against Iran would be illegal under the United Nations Charter, which requires that members settle international disputes by peaceful means. The UN Charter is a treaty ratified by the US and thus part of American law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. Under the Charter, a country can attack another only in self-defense or with the blessing of the Security Council. Moreover, the use of nuclear weapons would violate our obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Congress should immediately pass a binding resolution reaffirming the United States' legal obligations and informing the Bush administration that it will not concur in any invasion or military action against Iran, would refuse to approve any funding for it, and would consider actions taken in contravention of the resolution as impeachable offenses.
Marjorie Cohn, MWC News Magazine senior editor, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be published this spring by PoliPointPress.Other articles by this author
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I have read your article on toppic "Bush Targets Iran". I have noticed that you mentioned that six Iranian nationalists were apprehended by the US Forces. There six Iranian nationalists were terrorists and one of the captured was Dr. Abbasi, who is a think thank of Iranian Hezbollah that he has stated publicly that terrorism is a divine act.
Dark clouds are coming, and blood will be shed, and Iran will be liberated from yoke of mullah at high cost or give us the tools to do the job.
Thank you,
Kind regards
Immortal
It is Iranian people's turn to speak the truth and your days are numbered Shahram, Iran will be set free.
I do not respond to people who lie like Shahram, and ignore them because people like Shahram are element of Islamic Republic of Iran and are planing to murder American. Now, in Shahram's respond that Dr. Abbasi "is leader of Iranian Tomorrow Movement which is an anti-Iranian government organization and he resides in USA, CA\". If anyone type sosiran and click on document section will have access to Dr. Abbasi video clip and English transcript.
It is Iranian people's turn to speak the truth and your days are numbered Shahram, Iran will be set free.
You have responded to my comment. For that I thank you.
All I said was that the person which you have mentionted he is an anti-American. pro-Hezbollah. Indeed he resides in America and by his own admission he is against the Iranian government.
I did not condemn nor condone his ideas. How does knowing someone's view make me an element of the Islamic Republic?
Wake up, America, you are being raped by your own; 'terrists' are the least of your worries now....
If you really think that Mullah are innocent and have nothing to do with was is happening in Iran, you are badly mistaken.
And if you think, by preventing war with Iran, the situation is going to improve, you are wrong again.
There will never be a peace in the Middle East as long as Mullahs are in power, and wait until mullahs acquire neculear weapons.
US and more specifically the Bush administration they clearly have no interest in democracy for the region, otherwise they would not blindly support and endorse, Saudis, Israelis and Pakistanis... governments.
Iranian went throught a similar cases in the past.(In 1979 revolution.)
The slogan of the time was anyone would be better then the Shah with little knowledge about Khomeini and his doctrine for the Islamic republic.
This is not about supporting the Islamic Republic, is about protecting the people rights to choose, to decide and even to make mistakes.
There is no evidence to support the Bush administration rhetoric about Iran's plan for developing nuclear bombs. I would wholeheartedly welcome the idea of democracy and freedom for Iranian people even by American, yet sadly to say lack of democracy in Iran does not even come close to those countries in the region which have complete support of The United States.
"Between the two evils when you chose lesser evil at the end what you have still is an evil"
The appalling Bush US and Racist Zionist Israeli promotion of "pre-emptive" nuclear and non-nuclear attack on Iran is HOLOCAUST PROMOTION in keeping with their policies of HOLOCAUST IGNORING (PASSIVE HOLOCAUST DENIAL, HOLOCAUST DENIAL) in relation to the on-going Iraqi Holocaust (2.7 million 1990-2007 excess deaths; 3.7 million refugees) and the on-going Afghan Holocaust (2.2 million 2003-2007 excess deaths; 3.7 million refugees). Iran PRESENTLY has a population of 70 million – three quarters of Iranians, Iraqis and Afghans are Women and Children.
As cogently argued by Professor Marjorie Cohn the Iran War will be ILLEGAL under US Law. Decent Americans should write their Congressman. War criminal Bush should be impeached NOW - ALREADY about 1,500 under-5 year old infants die avoidably EVERY DAY in countries violently occupied by Bush Amerika or its surrogates.
"If the Iranian people really wanted the Mullahs out, they would have made a move by now."
I agree with most of your comment. However Iranian they have made a move and continuing doing so. They just don't want to make the same mistake again and certainly do not want to become another Iraq.
The same story was sold about Iraq being a threat to America, and it was not true. It would be horrid to take any action against Iran. There is no justification for it.
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