You Don’t Know Dick — the “next war” and “code red” … [updated]

Well, this isn’t a pleasant post — we’re talking about Iran, of course — and we need to be vigilant, especially now, as the Bushie administration comes under domestic as well as foreign attack. The first article here sets the tone, Uncle Dick the poster child for the dark ideologies at work … the creator of the bubble that the Dubby inhabits … and tireless in his work. Then there are two bits about military preparedness — speculation from the Independent — and three excellent analyses. All of these articles are Don’t Miss. The topic is too important.

It’s pretty much a no-brainer that the biggest diversion for such massive failure in governance would be a new war — and it’s crazy not to think that these people aren’t planning one. We have all the cookie crumbs to follow — musical chairs in the Joint Chiefs; an ADMIRAL in the top military pool when we’re fighting a ground war; FOUR carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf, now — USS Nimitz, USS Stennis, USS Enterprise, and next week a fourth strike group, the USS Truman will arrive in the Red Sea, within “shoutin’” distance. Israeli newspapers speak candidly about the buildup to war.

We’re not asleep any longer, we’re not so vain and puffed up that we’re confident in America’s might, we suddenly see the shadow behind the curtain — we’re learning. And teaching these rogues what we won’t stand for any more is a matter of being as tirelessly committed to truth as they are to mayhem, as loud and pushy as it takes to get their attention and let them know we’re on to them … so let’s get on it. The only way to keep this from happening, is to continue to discredit the government, demand accountability and keep them so busy at home putting out legal fires and handling public protest, they, themselves, are diverted.

Keep your Vision of their dissolving power, pray that each of their maneuvers hits snags and snafu’s and walls — their last dying gasp can’t be an attack on Iran if they don’t have any breath left. Write Nancy Pelosi a letter and tell her that, with 18 months left in office, just showing them up to be brutes and obstructionists isn’t enough — she’d better get tougher fast, because the angry public isn’t nearly as polite as is she. And it doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to see a “homeland emergency” and a strike on Iran as the opportunity to seize this government under martial law and render her opinion, and ours, moot.

Jude

Update: commentary and article on the Armageddon model, bottom.

You Don’t Know Dick
Les Aucoin, HuffPo
June 28, 2007

It’s surprising that it took so long for Dick Cheney to be seen as the shadowy, macabre figure he has revealed himself to be — a tout of torture, a prophet of preemptive war, and a sorcerer of secrecy (not to mention a wholly self-owned branch of the U.S. government).

Before and after the 2000 election, when Cheney led the vice presidential search — and picked himself — the mainstream media equated his quiet manner and mellifluous voice with a moderate personal nature that happened to embrace orthodox conservatism. This proves they didn’t know dick about Cheney.

I did. Still do.

My epiphany occurred on a May morning in 1987, when Cheney and I found ourselves together in Red Square.

It was a heady era. We had accompanied then-House Speaker Jim Wright and other legislators to Moscow to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, the intriguing new Kremlin leader who offered hope for a thaw in, if not the end to, the Cold War. Even British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the archconservative “Iron Lady,” had announced after meeting the charismatic Gorbachev, “We can do business together.”

On our second morning in Moscow, my friend, U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-WA), and I rose early to jog before the start of a long day of meetings. What could be more indicative of the new US-Soviet era than two U.S. congressmen trotting through Red Square, past Lenin’s Tomb and the Kremlin, without clearance from a party apparatchik?

As we circled in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral for our return, a spectral figure emerged in the distant mist. If someone had said the hunched man in the overcoat was Karla, the ethereal cold-blooded Soviet spymaster in John Le Carré’s novels, you wouldn’t have gotten an argument from me.

It turned out to be not Karla but Cheney, the second-highest ranking Republican in the U.S. House, the senior Republican on the trip, George Bush Sr.’s soon-to-be secretary of defense — and, ultimately, the real-life American version of the funereal Karla.

Steam rising from our sweat suits, Dicks and I were anxious to share our exuberant moment with Cheney. “Imagine, Dick!” Norm exclaimed. “Here we are, standing in the middle of Red Square. What does it make you think?”

Cheney gave a thin smile and replied, “Just that I’m standing on Ground Zero.”

I knew Cheney for ten years as a fellow congressman and for four years when he was defense secretary and I, a member the House Defense Appropriations Committee.

When people ask me to describe Cheney, I say, “morbid.”

This is a man who believes in war (despite — perhaps because — he’s never been in one), feels no moral qualms about making the U.S. an attack-first nation, and subscribed to the nuclear doctrine perfected by Reagan’s defense secretary, Casper Weinberger: “1) to fight a protracted nuclear war; 2) to fight it on a global basis and, 3) to prevail” [emphases added].

Today the war believer — immersed in almost every Bush White House initiative, major and minor — is leading a highly veiled reorganization of U.S. military priorities, downgrading al Qaeda and upgrading nuclear-minded Iran.

Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Seymour Hersh reports that the policy “redirection” rests on the calculation that Iran is, or will become, the more potent enemy of the two. It is also based on the possibility that Tehran will fill the power vacuum created by the near total collapse of Iraqi society — and that Iraq’s predominate Shiite population will align itself with Tehran in building a de facto Greater Shiite Iran. (This is exactly the outcome of the US invasion that many independent analysts predicted, to Cheney’s scorn.)

Influenced by the vice president, Hersh reports, the Bush Administration has infiltrated U.S. Special Forces into Iran to gather intelligence on bombing targets for the four aircraft carrier strike groups poised in the Mediterranean Sea.

I don’t know if Cheney has stood in the Grand Bazaar in central Tehran.

But I know Dick, and I’m sure he has thought of his own name for it.. ++

Third US Super Carrier Task Force Heads To Gulf
DEBKAfile, Rense
6-22-7

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the US naval build-up off the shores of Iran marks rising military tensions in the region, accentuated by last week’s Hamas victory which has endowed Iran with a military foothold on Israel’s southwestern border.

The USS Enterprise CVN 65-Big E Strike Group, the US Navy’s largest air carrier, will join the USS Stennis and the USS Nimitz carriers, building up the largest sea, air, marine concentration the United States has ever deployed opposite Iran. This goes towards making good on the assurances of four carriers US Vice President Dick Cheney offered the Gulf and Middle East nations during his May tour of the region.

The “Big E” leads a strike group consisting of the guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke DDG 51, USS Stout DDG 55, Forrest Sherman DDG 98 and USS James E. Williams DDG 95, as well as the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg CG 64, the SS Philadelphia SSN 690 nuclear submarine and the USNS Supply T-AOE 6.

On its decks are the Carrier Air Wing CVW 1, whose pilots fought combat missions in the Gulf and Arabian Sea during 2006. The Air Wing is made up of F/Q-18 Super Hornet strike craft, the Sidewinders Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-86, the 251st Marine Fighter Attack Squadron MFA, and the Electronic Attack Squadron VAQ 137.

The 32nd Sea Control Squadron VS consists of S-3B Vikings. The Airborne Early Warning Squadron VAQ 3 flies E-2C Hawkeye craft. The Fleet Logistics Support Squadron VRC is based on C-2A Greyhounds.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report Washington is considering deploying the fourth US carrier for the region in the Red Sea opposite Saudi Arabian western coast to secure the three US carriers in the Gulf from the rear as well as the Gulf of Aqaba and Suez Canal. ++

Report: IAF preparing for Iran strike
Jerusalem Post
Jun. 22, 2007

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) has been training on long-range flights, including refueling in mid-flight, in preparation for potential strikes against Iranian nuclear targets.

The training program has been taking place for some time but has only been released for publication Friday, the Ma’ariv daily reported.

Intelligence assessments received by the defense establishment concur that once Iran passes the point of no return in its nuclear efforts, the entire Middle East will enter a frantic nuclear armament race. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are expected to take the lead should such a scenario become reality.

At the end of 2007 the US and Israel are expected to hold a joint assessment to ascertain the influence of economic sanctions against Iran.

A new package of upgraded sanctions prepared jointly by Israel and the US, includes exerting pressure on European governments to cancel US $22 billion in loan guarantees given annually to European companies trading with Iran.

The new package also includes sanctions against banks working with Iran, non-renewal of oil infrastructure in Iran and a long series of economic actions that are meant to seriously hurt the Iranian economy.

Following the end-of-year assessment, Washington will decide how to move forward in the struggle against Iran’s nuclear race.

Members of the international community – the US and Israel leading – are convinced that Iran’s race to enrich uranium is aimed at producing nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic, on its side, insists it is looking for energy sources that would be an alternative to fossil fuels.

Iran has so far remained defiant in face of the demands voiced by the international community that it make its nuclear program transparent to UN-mandated monitoring. ++

Cheney, master of stealth, readies himself for the final act of ‘imperial’ vice-presidency
Leonard Doyle in Washington, The Independent UK
29 June 2007

Operating in the shadows, where he can best achieve his deeply conservative aims, Dick Cheney enjoys the total confidence of President George Bush and is sometimes described as the “Imperial” Vice-President.

Towards the end of every re-elected US President’s second term, the opposition in Congress always smells the opportunity to assert itself. This time the target is Dick Cheney and subpoenas are raining down on his head from the Senate for the release of documents that could implicate him in illegal acts. His record for outflanking his enemies is such that there is little cause for optimism among his opponents who would have him impeached.

Whether giving a green light for the US to torture suspects to the point of “organ failure… or even death”, to rolling back environmental measures, or clearing the way for the invasion of Iraq, Cheney’s fingerprints are all over the most controversial aspects of the Bush years.

After more than six years of his rule, the US is waking up to the reality that it has been a Cheney-Bush affair in all but name and despite being written off on numerous occasions, the Vice-President’s ability to influence events remains unrivalled. Although he is approaching the final months of his career and will never run for office again, more surprises may be in store as he seeks to complete his agenda.

Cheney will have his heart pacemaker installed next month and even with mortality knocking on the door, there is every possibility he will engineer yet another foreign policy surprise, possibly against Iran.

Many have made the mistake of underestimating the office of the vice-president, which Franklin Roosevelt’s vice-president John Garner famously said was “not worth a bucket of warm piss”. Al Gore may have had similar thoughts as he operated in the shadow of Bill and Hillary Clinton for eight long years. Other vice-presidents, such as Dan Quayle, remained a laughing stock through their tenure.

Not Dick Cheney. Using a combination of stealth and extreme aggression to achieve his aims, he is increasingly recognised in as a man of near-unrivaled power. A four-part forensic investigation in The Washington Post this week has provided fresh details of the Vice-President’s elaborate network which he uses to control the presidency.

Three days after the terror attacks of 11 September 2001, it was Cheney, rather than Bush who identified that, from Washington’s perspective, the rules of the game had now changed. In a rare appearance on Meet the Press, Cheney explained that the war on terrorism meant: “We also have to work, though, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world.” As the first suspected terrorists had reached the US prison at Guantanamo Bay it was Cheney who shattered the limits on torturing prisoners. Without bothering to inform the then Secretary of State Colin Powell, Cheney appeared in the Oval Office with an executive order that would enable the US to keep suspects in detention indefinitely without rights.

“What the hell just happened?” Powell exploded. Condoleezza Rice was reported to be “incensed”. But as the former Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal commented in Salon.com yesterday: “Bush never bothered to ask Cheney about their opinions on the executive order or to call them; nor did he seem to care.”

Cheney’s influence seems also to have been under-appreciated by Tony Blair in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former UK Ambassador to Washington, pointed out in his memoir, DC Confidential, that Blair overlooked Cheney’s ability to force Bush’s hand on the timing and conduct of the war. It was the “dryly humorous” Cheney, not Powell and Rice, that Blair needed to influence on the war.

It is the fresh details of Cheney’s secretive and loyal coterie of officials at work that provides the most telling insight into how he pulls the strings of the federal government.

The Post reveals that he has a “man-sized” safe in his office to keep the ordinary working papers out of reach of the National Archives and Records as provided by federal law. When the Archives demanded access to the papers, he tried to abolish the agency for daring to seek access to his documents.

The biggest charge against Cheney is that he has transformed the executive office into one of unlimited and unaccountable power. “Cheney has viewed recent American history as a struggle between the imperial presidency necessary in a brutish world and the naïve, undependable and in some cases disloyal constraints of Congress,” said Mr Blumenthal.

Most of all Cheney seems to ignore public opinion as he seeks to remake the US way of doing business at home and abroad. As he told Fox News last month: “We didn’t get elected to be popular. We didn’t get elected to worry about the fate of the Republican Party.”

What next? His opponents now wonder in the sunset months of the Cheney-Bush Presidency. ++

Iran: The Next War?
Glenn Greenwald, HuffPo
June 24, 2007

The following is an excerpt from Glenn Greenwald’s new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, to be released by Crown Publishing this Tuesday. The book is available now at Amazon.

Reuters, February 23, 2007:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Friday Iran should not show weakness over its nuclear program, a day after Tehran ignored a United Nations deadline to stop nuclear work which the West says could be used for making bombs. “If we show weakness in front of the enemy the expectations will increase but if we stand against them, because of this resistance, they will retreat.”

New York Times, on former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld’s farewell speech to the Pentagon, December 15, 2006:

“A conclusion by our enemies that the United States lacks the will or the resolve to carry out missions that demand sacrifice and demand patience is every bit as dangerous as an imbalance of conventional military power,” Mr. Rumsfeld said in a buoyant but sometimes emotional speech.

The simplistic and moralistic Bush mind-set — by which even the most vexing problems and complex conflicts are reduced to a contest of “strength” in the face of Evil — can perhaps be seen most clearly in the president’s treatment of Iran. Throughout 2006, the president’s Iran policy became mindlessly antagonistic, and was reduced eventually to the point where it was shaped by a handful of absolutist and moralistic premises which bordered on the cartoonish. Bush’s perspective amounts to this:

Iran is governed by Evil leaders. They are the moral and practical equivalent of Hitler’s Nazis. They are intent on regional, perhaps even world, domination. They are so insane and so Evil that they will attack other countries with nuclear weapons even if it means that they would then be annihilated. Particularly if they acquire nuclear weapons, they would pose a grave, imminent, and undeterrable threat to the United States. Their leaders do not fear death, and in fact crave it as a result of their religious extremism. They cannot be negotiated with because they are both Evil and deranged. The only feasible course of action with Iran is to treat it as a Nazi-like enemy, refuse to negotiate, and stop it by any means necessary, which — due to its leaders’ inability to be reasoned with — inevitably requires “regime change,” by military confrontation if necessary.

With those premises bolted into place, the Bush administration has transformed what was — especially after the 9/11 attacks — a rapidly improving and cooperative relationship with the Iranians into a bellicose chest-beating exercise whereby the likelihood of military confrontation of some sort increases every day. The two-dimensional Good vs. Evil framework that the president has applied to a complex and diverse Iran leaves virtually no other alternative.

Most disturbing, there is a great potential for military confrontation between Iran and the United States even if the president does not actively choose to attack. The proximity of Iran to Iraq, and the nature of the president’s rhetoric make an unintentional war — one that is sparked by miscalculation or misperception — increasingly likely.

In December 2006, media reports of increasing U.S. military activity in the Persian Gulf aimed at Iran began to emerge. On December 21, the New York Times confirmed that “the United States and Britain will begin moving additional warships and strike aircraft into the Persian Gulf region in a display of military resolve toward Iran.” The buildup includes “a second aircraft carrier and its supporting ships to be stationed within quick sailing distance of Iran by early next year.”

There is no doubt that these moves were intended to signal to the Iranians (as well as to what the Times describes as “Washington’s allies in the region who are concerned about Iran’s intentions”) that we are capable of an offensive military strike against Iran:

One purpose of the deployment, they said, is to make clear that the focus on ground troops in Iraq has not made it impossible for the United States and its allies to maintain a military watch on Iran.

Throughout 2006, it was unclear whether the president’s increasingly antagonistic rhetoric towards Iran was merely a political ploy to satiate his warmongering political base or whether, notwithstanding our incapacitating occupation of Iraq, the president himself really believed that war with Iran might be inevitable.

But the 2006 midterm elections did not put an end to the president’s militarism towards the Iranians. Quite the contrary, once the elections were over — and even with a clear anti-war message delivered by voters — the president began not only sending signals that he would escalate America’s military commitment to the war in Iraq but also intensify our hostile posture towards the Iranians.
* * *

Prohibited Debates

Just as all of the cartoonish demonization of the evil Saddam precluded a meaningful national debate about the consequences of invading Iraq, so, too, is the president’s embrace of the same caricature of the Iranians precluding meaningful debate about our policy towards Iran. Complex questions that the U.S. must resolve regarding our overall Middle East policy are urgent and pressing. Yet, in a virtual repeat of the debate-stifling war march into Iraq, arguments which treat these matters as nothing more complex than League of Justice cartoons — in which the Good heroes must and will defeat the Evil villains — dominates discourse, ensuring that no meaningful debate occurs.

The fundamental problem is that as a nation we do not actually debate the real issues because they are too politically radioactive, and because the simplistic appeals to Victory over Evil obscure, by design, the genuine limits on American power and the drain these conflicts are placing on finite American resources. The real issue is whether the U.S. wants to maintain its presence and controlling influence in the Middle East and, if so, (a) why does the U.S. want to do that?, and (b) what Americans are willing to sacrifice to preserve that dominance.

But Americans during the Bush presidency have had no significant, constructive discussion of whether the U.S. has any real interests in continuing to exert dominance in the Middle East, primarily because doing so requires a debate about the role of oil and our commitment to Israel, both of which are strictly off limits, as the president himself told us in a January, 2006 speech:

It may be the case that the U.S. should seek to preserve its influence in the Middle East. Perhaps we want to control oil resources or assume primary responsibility for ensuring a steady and orderly world oil market. Or perhaps we want to commit ourselves to defending Israel as the only real outpost of Middle Eastern democracy and/or an ally of one degree or another in protecting our vital strategic interests, if any, in that region.

There are coherent (if not persuasive) arguments, pro and con, for all of those positions, but these issues have been embargoed by social and political orthodoxy, and no examination of them is allowed (if one wants to continue to be heard in the mainstream). So we dance around the real questions and are stuck with superficial and contrived “debates” about what we are actually doing — about all the new Hitlers and the “Evil” we must confront and our need to be Churchill instead of Chamberlain — all of which obscures our choices, our limits and basic reality.

If preserving our dominance of the Middle East is a goal we want to prioritize, then we would need to decide what sacrifices we are willing to bear in order to reach it. We must determine whether and how we will massively expand our military, the increase in indiscriminate force we are willing to accept, and how we are going to pay for our imperial missions. Because as long as we are committed to dominating that region, we are going to be engaged in a long and likely endless series of brutal wars against religious fanatics and various nationalists who simply do not want us there and are willing to fight to the death — making all sorts of sacrifices themselves — to prevent us from dominating their countries.

Yet we lack the willingness — and perhaps the ability — to make the sacrifices necessary to maintain imperial dominion over that region. The president has literally pretended that this is not the case by insisting on our divine entitlement to magical victory over Evil, and depicting those who claim otherwise as people who hate the troops and do not want to win.

The damage done to the United States by the Bush administration over the last six years is truly severe. It is fundamental damage, and it requires much, much more than some tinkering around the edges. America urgently needs to debate and re-examine the core premises of our foreign policy and our role in the world. That, in turn, requires a willingness to transcend the taboos and most sacred orthodoxies and to dispense with the Manichean delusions that have substituted for rational debate.
* * *

The war advocates who unquestionably still have the president’s ear sought to transform the debate (prompted by the ISG Report) over whether we should negotiate with Iran into an argument that Iran is our real enemy. And they believe that Iran is our Enemy not only in Iraq, but generally, and that Iran should therefore be attacked, not negotiated with. Dismissing out of hand these wild-eyed, war-loving elements who are wholly detached from reality is tempting, but they continue to occupy places of high influence with the president (both inside and outside of the White House).

Worse, there are convincing signs that the president is one of them, i.e., that he now irreversibly shares their worldview that war with Islamic Extremism requires a progressive series of wars with various states, the next of which is Iran. Beyond doubt, if the president is convinced that some sort of military action is necessary or even warranted, nothing — not public opinion nor his supposed lame duck status nor the sheer insanity of the proposal — is going to stop him.

Few things have been as disturbing as the president’s now implacable belief – which he has been decreeing with increased frequency — that he is the modern-day Harry Truman, fighting a necessary war even in the face of widespread opposition from weak and blind people in his own country and around the world, but that he is destined to be vindicated by history. And, as he sees it, the more he fights against anti-war headwinds and the bolder he is in the risks he takes, the greater his vindication will be.

By 2007, it was alarmingly clear that geopolitical considerations do not determine what the U.S. will do vis-a-vis Iran. The president’s personality does.

And even if the president and/or his top advisors are less than clear about their intent with regard to Iran, it may not matter. Military build-ups of this sort, plainly aimed at one country in particular, can easily produce miscalculations or lead to unintended provocations. That danger is heightened incalculably when one of the parites to the increasing tensions has 150,000 troops occupying a country that borders the other one.

There are myriad constitutional questions about the type of Congressional authorization which would be required in order for the president to act militarily against Iran. But those would almost certainly be swept aside — as most constitutional dilemmas have been — by an administration that would claim that it already has such authorization either “inherently” or as a result of Iran’s involvement in our war in Iraq. If the president were really intent on war with Iran, it is very difficult to envision Congressional Democrats, or really anything else, stopping him.

When the president declared in early 2002 that Iran was “Evil,” it all but sealed the fate of U.S.-Iranian relations for the duration of his presidency. The president’s Manichean prison precludes him from following any course other than unmitigated belligerence once he embraces that moralistic premise, and indeed, nothing — not a deeply unpopular war in Iraq, nor the stinging repudiation of his policies by the American voters, nor the Baker-Hamilton Commission — has convinced him to change course even slightly with regard to Iran. He placed himself, or allowed himself to be placed, inside the suffocating confines of this Manichean prison, and despite the grave dangers and great harm it has engendered, he appears to have no ability, and worse, no incentive, to find an alternative for the last two years of his presidency. ++

Setting the Stage for the Next War
Scott Horton, No Comment at Harpers Magazine
June 23, 2007

If you’re not concerned about the prospects for another war in the Middle East in the near future, consider that you may be a sleepwalker. There is every reason to be concerned. The prospects are numerous. In the Gaza Strip and the West Bank a brutal conflict has erupted between forces which reflect two different generations of Palestinian radicalism. In Lebanon, foreign intrigue and assassinations continue, sucking Syria, the United States and Israel into one of the region’s oldest communitarian conflicts. The prospects for another summer war in Lebanon, likely involving one or more foreign participants, have to be seen as excellent. Syria itself is in the crosshairs in Washington. Olmert’s Government in Israel, still licking its wounds from last summer’s expeditionary catastrophe, wants to take the temperature down a few degrees and start a dialogue with the Syrians – but this initiative has given the last diehard neocons in Washington a conniption. Then of course we have Iraq, where Washington’s “surge” operations continue without conclusive result as a September deadline draws closer.

And yet none of these conflicts is the coming war that I see looming on the horizon. The coming war pits the United States against Iran. For the dead-ender neoconservatives (and indeed, neoconservatives are by their psychology just the sort of people who make excellent dead-enders), the solution to the current dilemma – a catastrophic failure in Iraq, badly miscast plans in Lebanon, an increasingly angry American electorate – is simple: we need a new war. Nothing focuses the mind and silences the opposition quite like a good little war, they believe. And while times may be difficult for the neocons generally, not to worry – they still have the key man. One man is the “decider” on questions respecting Iran. His name is Dick Cheney. And Mr. Cheney has already reached some key conclusions:

Sanctions are worthless – why after all, when I ran Halliburton, we could always find ways to get around them and have profitable dealings with Iran.

Iran is moving ahead with its plans to emerge as a nuclear weapons policy, is running far ahead of schedule, and will certainly achieve its objectives far ahead of the timeline that those numbskulls over at the National Intelligence Council have worked up

The only solution we can count on is a military solution

Because of the fickleness of the American electorate, the next government will not have the resolve and will to use military force that are the great strength of America under Bush, which counsels in favor of action now

The current hostage crisis (involving five Americans held by Tehran and five Iranians held by Washington) will furnish a perfectly decent causus bellum if managed properly, fed and fanned.

This is not, of course, the realist Cheney of the Bush 41 administration speaking. It’s the Cheney that Brent Scowcroft and numerous others no longer recognize. The post-heart attack, post-microstroke Dick Cheney. The Cheney who’s more than slightly crazy. The Cheney who will make any argument, no matter how absurd, to get where he wants to be. (Witness his claim revealed in the current news cycle, that the vice president is not a part of the Executive Branch – not, at least, for purposes of compliance with oversight about the maintenance and use of classified materials). And the Dick Cheney who is the trusted guide for George W. Bush in all those complicated foreign policy and national security issues that the dauphin-president never really could take the time away from mountain-biking to master.

So let us review how the stage is being set now for a war against Iran. We can say, of course, that war preparations are the essence of every sound military plan – that they should not be viewed as any sort of guaranty. A show of strength may avert war, as one of my Air Force friends correctly says. And to that I can only quote one of my best military analyst friends, who last night had one single word to cover all this: the word was “likely.” “I have come to the conclusion that a major military conflict between the United States and Iran is now likely,” he said. So what, exactly, does “likely” look like?

You might say that the soundest approach in feeling the path to any conflict is simple: “Watch what we do, and not what we say.” So what are the U.S. and the Iranians doing that makes a conflict seem “likely”?

Military Movements. The U.S. deployment of forces into striking range of Iran is now staggering, and largely unremarked upon. America has two carrier strike groups, the USS Nimitz and the USS Stennis, already in the Persian Gulf. Within a day, they will be joined by a third carrier strike group, the USS Enterprise. And next week a fourth strike group, the USS Truman will arrive in the Red Sea, bringing itself into range to support Iran-focal operations. So where does that put us? Four aircraft carriers, 12-16 destroyers, 4-8 submarines, 4-8 AEGIS cruisers, and over 200 strike aircraft. The world has not witnessed such a mustering of naval might since… the invasion of Iraq. And that’s just the naval side of things (though it does help explain the logic behind putting an admiral in charge of CENTCOM). The data on land force movements is harder to secure or track. But all around Iran, preparations have been put in place, including at the “lilypads” that Rumsfeld carefully secured and developed – on Azerbaijan’s Absheron peninsula; outside of Mary, Turkmenistan and in the Turkmen desert; in the Kyrgyz Republic; in Afghanistan; on islands in the Persian Gulf and in Pakistan. One of the distinctive tactical advantages that America will have in this conflict will be the ability to attack Iran from every direction.

Psychological Preparation. The American public must be prepared to support the war. It must understand the nature of the threat from Iran as existential. This will be pursued through a media psy-ops campaign along the same lines as used in the run up to the Iraq war. The stress will be on Iran’s nuclear program and the prospect of Iranian nuclear weapons being used against the United States. Delivery systems are of course a serious problem with this analysis, but don’t expect stories to focus on that. Expect the story to emerge first among the likely suspects. In fact, take the time to pick up and read the current issue of Commentary. I have. It contains a media roadmap. Or just click on this link to watch Norman Podhoretz make the essence of the case for bombing Iran that he states in more detail in Commentary. But stay tuned to Fox News, the Weekly Standard, and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal for the complete psy-ops feed.

The Hostage Crisis. Don’t expect either Washington or Tehran to take any meaningful steps to resolve this crisis. To the contrary: expect the war-parties in each capital to seize upon the five Iranians seized in Arbil and the Americans seized in Tehran as a basis to fan hatred and prepare the public for war. We know from Robin Wright’s reporting at the Washington Post that Condoleezza Rice attempted to defuse the situation by moving ahead on a release of the prisoners in U.S. custody, and that Cheney and Addington checked this move. “There can be no linkage,” they say – both the mullahs in Tehran and the Cheney clique in Washington. Of course not. They will demonize their respective hostages as spies and a threat to their national security. They will claim the hostages are part of a plot against them. Hostages form such a convenient casus belli—they’ve served that role for centuries.

Iran’s Nuclear Program. The suggestion that Iran’s nuclear program constitutes a menace is true. It needs to be grappled with carefully, and studied with detachment. I have a lot of confidence in the ability of American intelligence analysts to do that – if they are freed from the hysteria and persecution of Dick Cheney and his cabal. Yesterday, Iran’s Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi claimed that his country has produced 100 kg of low enriched uranium (LEU) and has 3,000 centrifuges operational. If Pourmohammadi’s past conduct is any guide, these claims are consciously inflated, but not baseless. More likely Iran is on target to achieve what he had claimed sometime before the end of the summer, but isn’t there yet. What does this mean? In practical terms, you would need 800 kg of LEU for a single bomb. This would put Iran on track to have that bomb sometime in 2008, which is well ahead of prior U.S. intelligence estimates.

Given the hyperbole surrounding this issue, however, a good measure of caution is appropriate. While it would be extremely foolish to dismiss the threat potential or its proximity, there is no basis to point to a meaningful threat in the current year – or even before the end of Bush’s term of office. Sober analysis will suggest this is something that requires an aggressive diplomatic approach, coordination with allies and earnest dialogue with Russia. All things that the Bush Administration has done so masterfully in the past.

The Regional Menace. The United States will portray Iran as a force for evil throughout the Middle East and beyond. The core will be claims that Iranian bombs and weapons are wounding and killing American soldiers in Iraq. This is a highly emotive and largely disingenuous argument (indeed, you could say that Russian bombs and weapons play a big role, for instance, and a large part of the explosives used were, as the New York Times documented, seized from stockpiles the U.S. left unguarded in the early months of the occupation). Iran will also be portrayed as the force behind Hizbollah in Lebanon and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

There is certainly some basis for the first claim, but the second is a fraud. Analysts need to consider these accusations, of course, but in light of the clearly articulated objectives of the war-party, they need to be treated with skepticism. And, of course, inside of Iran and throughout the Middle East, Iran will portray the United States as the region’s greatest threat. Iran will point to U.S. military cooperation with Israel as the core of American intervention in the region, and it will point to the tens of thousands of civilian deaths that resulted from a U.S. invasion of Iraq on a now completely disproven pretext. Iran will use the fact of good relations between the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies as a means of destabilizing those nations. And these tactics are all likely to be very effective. In fact, Iran is emerging as a regional hegemon, and it has been empowered in these aspirations by the grossly inept conduct of Dick Cheney and his helpers.

Diplomatic Process. Today, Iran’s head nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani will meet with the European Union’s foreign policy commissioner Javier Solana. No one at this point is pinning any hopes for progress on this meeting. Iran will not offer any meaningful concessions on its nuclear program, and that is, at this point, all that really matters. This will set the stage for a third U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution sometime in August. The third resolution could have considerably more “teeth” to it, asset freezes against Iranian banks, firms and individuals, a formal travel ban, and possibly a ban on government export guarantees. An increasingly tightening sanctions environment could have real consequences for Iran economically, and for its nuclear program. The problem for this approach is, quite frankly, Dick Cheney and his language. He has done more to undermine the diplomatic approach than any single person in world history. As a result of his imprudent rhetoric, the key powers that need to be enlisted in this effort – such as Russia – are intensely skeptical of America’s intentions with respect to Iran.

Still, this is not to say that war is certain. It could still be averted. President Ahmadinejad could decide to resign and pursue a life of quiet introspection. Dick Cheney could decide that pressing health concerns necessitate his retirement from politics and retreat to his plantation on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, for instance. But at the moment, these two men are driving the fate of tens of millions of human beings in the direction of a horrendous conflagration. In the world greatest democracy, there seems no resolve to put a stop to it. And who in Iran still hears the words of that greatest poet of the Farsi (or any other) language, Mawlānā Jalāl-ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī:

Hallaj

Bush Directive for a “Catastrophic Emergency” in America: Building a Justification for Waging War on Iran?
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, IFCH
06/25/07

The US media consensus is that “the United States faces its greatest threat of a terrorist assault since the September 11 attacks” (USA Today, 12 February 2006) The American Homeland is threatened by ” Islamic terrorists”, allegedly supported by Tehran and Damascus.

America is under attack” by an illusive “outside enemy”.

Concepts are turned upside down. War becomes Peace. “Offense” becomes a legitimate means of “self-defense”.

In the words of President Bush:

The intent is to seek a pretext to wage a preemptive war.

A “terrorist attack on America” could be used to justify, in the eyes of an increasingly credulous public opinion, on “humanitarian grounds”, the launching of a major theater war directed against Iran and Syria.

Allegedly supported by Iran, the terrorists are said to possess nuclear capabilities. They are supposedly planning to explode “radiological dispersion devices” (RDD) or “dirty bombs” in densely populated urban areas in the US. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell had already forewarned in 2003 that, “It would be easy for terrorists to cook up radioactive ‘dirty’ bombs to explode inside the U.S. … How likely it is, I can’t say…” (10 February 2003).

The sheer absurdity that Al Qaeda might have advanced capabilities to wage a nuclear attack on America is, nonetheless, pervasive in US media reports. Moreover, numerous drills and exercises, simulating a terrorist attack using nuclear devices, have been conducted in recent years, creating the illusion that “the threat is real”:

History

Consistently since 911, the Bush administration has reminded Americans of the danger of a “Second 9/11″:

“You ask, ‘Is it serious?’ Yes, you bet your life. People don’t do that unless it’s a serious situation.”
(Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, December 2003)

“… Credible reporting indicates that Al Qaeda is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process…
(Former DHS Secretary Tom Ridge, 8 July 2004)

“The enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured yet it is still lethal and planning to hit us again.”
(Vice President Dick Cheney, 7 January 2006)

“We are still a nation at risk. Part of our strategy, of course, is to stay on the offense against terrorists who would do us harm. In other words, it is important to defeat them overseas so we never have to face them here. Nevertheless, we recognize that we’ve got to be fully prepared here at the homeland.”
(President George W. Bush February 8, 2006)

“Our main enemy is al Qaeda and its affiliates. Their allies choose their victims indiscriminately. They murder the innocent to advance a focused and clear ideology. They seek to establish a radical Islamic caliphate, so they can impose a brutal new order on unwilling people, much as Nazis and communists sought to do in the last century. This enemy will accept no compromise with the civilized world ….
(President George W. Bush, CENTCOM Coalition Conference, May 1, 2007)

We’re fighting a war on terror because the enemy attacked us first, and hit us hard. … Al Qaeda’s leadership has said they have the right to “kill four million Americans,… For nearly six years now, the United States has been able to defeat their attempts to attack us here at home. Nobody can guarantee that we won’t be hit again. …
(Vice President Dick Cheney, United States Military Academy Commencement, West Point, New York, May 26, 2007)

In the immediate wake of the invasion of Iraq (April 2003), various national security procedures were put in place which focused on the eventuality of a “Second 911″. These initiatives in the area of Homeland Security outlined the precise circumstances under which martial law could be declared in the case of a second major terrorist attack on America.

Under martial law, the military would take over several functions of civilian government including justice and law enforcement.

A terrorist attack on American soil of the size and nature of September 11, would lead —according to former CENTCOM Commander, General Tommy Franks– to the downfall of democracy in America. In an interview in December 2003, which was barely mentioned in the US media, General Franks outlined a scenario, which would result in the suspension of the Constitution and the installation of military rule in America:

Franks was obliquely alluding to a “Second 9/11″ terrorist attack, which could be used to galvanize US public opinion in support of a military government and police state.

The “terrorist massive casualty-producing event” was presented by General Franks as a crucial political turning point. The resulting crisis and social turmoil resulting from the civilian casualties, are intended to facilitate a major shift in US political, social and institutional structures, leading to the suspension of constitutional government.

It is important to understand that General Franks was not giving a personal opinion on the role of a “massive casuality producing event” in National Security doctirne. His statement very much reflects the dominant viewpoint both in the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security both on the concept of massive casualty producing event as well as how events might unfold in the case of a “Catastrophic Emergency”.

The statement comes from a man who has been actively involved in military and intelligence planning at the highest levels. In other words, the “militarisation of our country” is an ongoing operational assumption. It is part of the broader “Washington consensus”. It identifies the Bush administration’s “roadmap” of war and Homeland defense.

The “Global War on Terrorism” which constitutes the cornerstone of Bush’s National Security doctrine, provides the required justification for repealing the Rule of Law, ultimately with a view to “preserving civil liberties.”

US Northern Command

The Administration’s “Catastrophic Emergency” procedures are intimately related to military planning at the level of the Pentagon. In this regard, the formation of US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) in April 2002 (based at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado) constitutes an important landmark in the evolving relationship between the Military and Homeland Security.

US Northern Command was created as a new command structure with the explicit mandate to defend the Homeland against foreign terrorists.

This mandate is defined in the Pentagon’s “Joint Doctrine for Homeland Security (JP-26)”. Even in the case where the “outside enemy” is fabricated (and this is known at the highest levels of the military-intelligence apparatus), a military coup d’Etat characterized by detailed command military/ security provisions, would become operational almost immediately.

NORTHCOM’s “Command Mission” encompasses a number of “non-military functions” including “crisis management” and “domestic civil support”. Under Northcom jurisdiction, the latter imply a process of “military support to federal, state and local authorities in the event of a terror attack.”

NORTHCOM has a mandate to “defend the homeland” against an illusive “outside enemy” (Al Qaeda), which is said to be threatening the security of America. According to Frank Morales, “the scenario of a military take-over of America is unfolding.” And Northern Command is the core military entity in this takeover and militarization of civilian institutions.

Dick Cheney’s “Contingency Plan”

Following the creation of NORTHCOM in 2002, “Defense of the Homeland” functions -including domestic counter-terrorism and national emergency procedures– have become increasingly integrated into the broader process of military planning by the Pentagon .

This integration should be understood as part of the Pentagon’s preemptive war doctrine, where a presumed or planned attack on the Homeland by “Islamic terrorists” becomes a justification for waging an “offensive” (defined as defensive) war in the Middle East.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were used to wage war on Afghanistan, using the pretext (without a shred of evidence) that the Afghan Taliban government was a “State sponsor” of the 9/11 attacks.

In August 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney is reported to have instructed USSTRATCOM, based at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, to draw up a “Contingency Plan”, “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States”. (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War, The American Conservative, 2 August 2005)

Dick Cheney’s “Contingency Plan” was predicated on the preemptive war doctrine. Implied in the “Contingency Plan” was the presumption that Iran would be behind the attacks.

The Vice president’s instructions were given to USSTRATCOM, which is in charge of the central planning and coordination of major overseas theater wars, rather than to NORTHCOM, whose mandate consists in defending the North American Homeland against terrorist attacks. .

Cheney’s “Contingency Plan” under USSTRATCOM jurisdiction, would draw on the possibility of a “Second 9/11″ attack to prepare for a major military operation directed against Iran, while pressure would also be exerted in the corridors of the United Nations on Tehran, in relation to its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program.

What is diabolical in this 2005 decision by the US Vice President is that the justification to wage war on Iran rests on Iran’s alleged involvement in a hypothetical terrorist attack on America, which has not yet occurred.

“Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections. (Ibid)

The Pentagon’s “Second 9/11″

In early 2006, (former) Secretary Don Rumsfeld approved a far-reaching military campaign plan to fight terrorism around the World, with a view to retaliating in the case of a second major terrorist attack on America. This Pentagon plan was, in essence, an extension of the Second 911 “Contingency Plan” agenda announced by Dick Cheney in 2005.

The Pentagon’s anti-terrorist plan was outlined in three secret documents, of which excerpts were leaked to the Washington Post.

These three documents consist of an overall “campaign plan” plus two “subordinate plans”. The second “subordinate plan” explicitly focuses on the possibility of “Second 9/11″ and how a second major attack on American soil might provide “an opportunity” to extend the US led war in the Middle East into new frontiers:

create both a justification and an opportunity that is lacking today

The presumption of this military document, is that a Second 911 attack “which is lacking today” would usefully create both a “justification and an opportunity” to wage war on “some known targets [Iran and Syria]“.

National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, NSPD-51/ HSPD 20

In May 2007, a major presidential National Security Directive is issued, (National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive NSPD 51/HSPD 20), NSPD 51 / HSPD 20 is a combined National Security Directive emanating from the White House and Homeland Security. It is tailor-made to fit the premises of both the Pentagon’s 2006 “Anti-terrorist Plan” as well Vice President Cheney’s 2005 “Contingency Plan”.

The directive establishes procedures for “Continuity of Government” (COG) in the case of a “Catastrophic Emergency”. The latter is defined in NSPD 51/HSPD 20 (henceforth referred to as NSPD 51), as “any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions.”

“Continuity of Government,” or “COG,” is defined in NSPD 51 as “a coordinated effort within the Federal Government’s executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency.”

NSPD 51 has barely been reported by the mainstream media. There was no press briefing by the White House or by DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, which would be the normal practice, given the significance and implications of NSPD 51. The text of NSPD /51 HSPD 20, announced by the White House is not even mentioned on the DHS’s website.

This Combined Directive NSPD /51 HSPD 20 grants unprecedented powers to the Presidency and the Department of Homeland Security, overriding the foundations of Constitutional government. NSPD 51 allows the sitting president to declare a “national emergency” without Congressional approval The adoption of NSPD 51 would lead to the de facto closing down of the Legislature and the militarization of justice and law enforcement:

NSPD 51 grants extraordinary Police State powers to the White House and Homeland Security (DHS), in the event of a “Catastrophic Emergency”. The Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counter terrorism (APHS/CT), who is slated to play a key role in the eventuality of Martial law, is a key White House adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend.

Foreign Policy Implications of NSPD 51: Role of the Vice President

While NSPD 51 has the appearances of a domestic national security decision, it is, nonetheless, an integral part of US foreign policy. It belongs to a longstanding military national security agenda. Were NSPD 51 to be invoked, Vice President Dick Cheney, who constitutes the real power behind the Executive, would essentially assume de facto dictatorial powers, circumventing both the US Congress and the Judiciary, while continuing to use President George W. Bush as a proxy figurehead.

NSPD 51, while bypassing the Constitution, nonetheless, envisages very precise procedures which guarantee the powers of Vice President Dick Cheney in relation to “Continuity of Goverment” under Martial Law:

In the case of a “Catastrophic Emergency”, NSPD 51 could potentially be used to justify the implementation of retaliatory military action against Iran in accordance with Dick Cheney’s 2005 “Contingency Plan”. If the “Catastrophic Emergency” were to be triggered by a terrorist attack, NSPD-51 could be invoked as “the justification and … opportunity … to retaliate against some known targets” as outlined by the Pentagon in its 2006 anti-terrorist plan.

The broader question is whether the occurrence of this “Catastrophic Emergency ” is actually being planned by the Pentagon, with a view to justifying an attack on Iran.

The Role of the US Military in the Case of a “Catastrophic Emergency”

NSPD 51 would instate martial law under the authority of the White House and the DHS. It would suspend constitutional government under the provisions of Continuity in Government (COG).

The provisions of NSPD 51 are consistent with an existing body of legislation and regulations pertaining to alleged terrorist attacks on the Homeland and the declaration of martial law.

Since 2003, following the invasion of Iraq, Homeland Security (DHS) has contemplated time and again the possibility of a so-called code red alert “scenario” –using a potential or possible Al Qaeda terrorist attack on America soil as a pretext for implementing martial law. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, 2005)

Since 2003, the DHS has conducted several “anti-terrorist exercises” under the TOPOFF (top officials) program. The latter consisted in organizing anti-terror preparedness in a military style exercise with the participation of federal, State and local level governments. Various attack “scenarios” by foreign terrorists using weapons of mass destruction had been envisaged.

Code Red Alert was initially established under the provisions of Homeland Security Presidential Directive-3 (March 2002). Under the existing legislation, a code red alert would trigger conditions for the “temporary” suspension of the normal functions of civilian government. Several functions of civilian administration would be closed down, others could be transferred to the jurisdiction of the military. More generally, the procedure would disrupt government offices, businesses, schools, public services, transportation, etc.

According to (former) Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge (22 Dec. 2003):

“If we go to [code] Red ... it basically shuts down the country."

In which case, a national emergency is declared, Northern Command deploys its forces on air, land and sea. Several functions of civilian government are transferred to NORTHCOM headquarters, which already has the structures which enable it to oversee and supervise civilian institutions.

Code red alert would suspend civil liberties, including public gathering and/ or citizens' protests against the Administration's decision to declare martial law.

The emergency authorities would also have the authority to exert tight censorship over the media and would no doubt paralyze the alternative news media on the internet.

In turn, code red alert would trigger the "civilian" Homeland Emergency response system, including the DHS' Ready.Gov instructions, the Big Brother Citizen Corps, not to mention the USAonWatch and Neighborhood Watch Program which have a mandate to "identify and report suspicious activity in neighborhoods" across America.

The Militarization of Civilian Institutions

NSPD 51 is, in principle, a civilian directive emanating from the Presidency and the DHS.

What would be the involvement of the Military in a martial law situation, following the activation of NSPD 51?

In theory, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 adopted in the wake of the US civil war, prevents the military from intervening in civilian police and judicial functions. This law has been central to the functioning of constitutional government.

Although the Posse Comitatus Act is still on the books, in practice the legislation is no longer effective in preventing the militarization of civilian institutions. (See Frank Morales, Global Research, September 2003)

Legislation inherited from the Clinton administration, not to mention the post 9/11 Patriot Acts I and II, "blurs the line between military and civilian roles", it allows the military to intervene in judicial and law enforcement activities even in the absence of an emergency situation.

In 1996, legislation was passed which allowed the military to intervene in the case of a national emergency (e.g.. a terrorist attack). In 1999, Clinton's Defense Authorization Act (DAA) extended those powers (under the 1996 legislation) by creating an "exception" to the Posse Comitatus Act, which would allow the military to be involved in civilian affairs "regardless of whether there is an emergency". (See ACLU)

Under this 1999 provision, "the mere threat of an act of terrorism would justify calling in military units. That represents a loophole large enough to drive a battalion of army tanks through." (Ibid)

In other words, the Clinton era legislation had already laid the legal and ideological foundations of the "global war on terrorism".

While NSPD 51 is a significant and timely landmark, it is broadly consistent with the pre-existing legislation, with one important exception. NSPD 51 confirms that "Continuity in Government" (COG), while suspending the Constitution, would be carried out under the control of the Presidency.

This distinction is important, in view of mounting opposition within the Armed Forces to the possible use of a "false flag" terrorist attack as a justification for the launching of a broader Middle East war, in which nuclear weapons could be used against Iran.

NSPD 51 largely confirms the "legitimacy" of preexisting procedures and legislation, while also stipulating a central and critical role for the presidency in the case of a "Catastrophic Emergency". In fact, NSPD 51 thwarts the possibility of discretionary actions taken unilaterally by the Military in the case of a national emergency. Broadly speaking, NSPD 51 reinforces the control exerted by the White House, its civilian apparatus as well as its corporate lobby groups.

While COG would result in the militarization of civilian institutions, this process would be under the control of civilian policy-makers, acting on behalf of their corporate sponsors. This civilian policy apparatus, made up of senior NeoCon advisers, with links to the Washington think tanks, Wall Street and the oil giants, is slated to play a key role in the case of martial law.

Whereas the militarization of justice and law enforcement would proceed, the Military would, nonetheless, remain subordinate to a "civilian dictatorship".

War Games and the Militarization of National Emergency Preparedness

Another relevant dimension of the militarization of civilian institutions pertains to interagency collaboration between the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Pentagon in the conduct of military style "catastrophic emergency response" exercises .

This "interagency collaboration" was endorsed in 2006 by the US Congress. FEMA (under the jurisdiction of the Department Homeland Security) was given exceptional powers. A significant budget was also provided to finance an ongoing partnership between FEMA and the US Military.

Northern Command was responsible for establishing links with civilian agencies involved in emergency preparedness (operating under the Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA)).

What has unfolded is an integrated military/civilian outlook on emergency preparedness. A number of civilian agencies now actively participate in the conduct of Pentagon war games. In 2006, FEMA's "catastrophic disaster response" exercise was integrated into the conduct of US Northern Command's "Operation Vigilant Shield 07":

Vigilant Shield 07 was a far-reaching "New Cold War" type war games exercise, directed against directed against (Irmingham) Iran and its Cold war era enemies: Ruebek (Russia), Churya (China), and Nemazee (North Korea). (for further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Theater Iran Near Term, Global Research, February 21, 2007)

In April-May 2007, FEMA together with a number of civilian agencies including the FBI, local and State and private organizations participated in the Pentagon's Ardent Sentry-Northern Edge 07 war games (AS-NE 07), under the helm of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. U.S.

Part of the AS NE 07 war games were directed against Russia. They were held in the vicinity of the Bearing Straits on the immediate borders with Russia's Fareast, These associated exercises in Alaska entitled Alaska Shield also included the participation of Canadian forces. (For further details, see NorthCom.mil Fact Sheet)

Continued Emergency Preparedness

In the months prior as well as following the release of NSPD-51 by the White House on 9 May 2007, emergency exercises have been held, with the support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in several US cities. How to respond in the case of a "Catastrophic Event". Brainstorming sessions involving officials from local, state and federal agencies have met to examine what to do in the case of "Catastrophic Event" or terrorist attack.

On June 2nd, the US was "dominated by screaming headlines and sensationalist broadcast coverage of an alleged plot in New York to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport" (See Bill van Auken, June 7, 2007). In the meantime, the US public has become increasingly skeptical of repeated fake terror alerts:

The problem faced by the government is that the public is growing increasingly skeptical about these cases, with a sizeable portion of the population having concluded that they are trumped up for political purposes. (Ibid)

New Military Appointments; The Firing of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Several key military appointments were made in recent months. Of significance, Admiral. William J. Fallon, was appointed Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in March by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Meanwhile, another major military appointment was implemented, which has a direct bearing on war preparations in relation to Iran. Admiral Timothy J. Keating Commander of US NORTHCOM was appointed on March 26, to head US Pacific Command, which includes both the 5th and the 7th fleets. The 7th Fleet Pacific Command is the largest U.S. combatant command. Keating, who takes over from Admiral Fallon is also an unbending supporter of the "war on terrorism". Pacific Command would be playing a key role in the context of a military operation directed against Iran.(http://www.pacom.mil/about/pacom.shtml)

Of significance, Admiral Keating was also involved in the 2003 attack on Iraq as commander of US Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet.

Admiral Fallon is fully compliant with the Bush administration's war plans in relation to Iran. He replaces Gen. John P. Abizaid, who was pushed into retirement, following apparent disagreements with Rumsfeld's successor, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. While Abizaid recognized both the failures and the weaknesses of the US military in Iraq, Admiral Fallon is closely aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney. He is also firmly committed to the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). CENTCOM would coordinate an attack on Iran from the Middle East war theater.

Moreover, the appointment of an Admiral is indicative of a shift in emphasis of CENTCOM's functions in the war theater. The "near term" emphasis is Iran rather than Iraq, requiring the coordination of naval and air force operations in the Persian Gulf.

The instatement of NSPD 51 in May 2007 was followed barely a few weeks later by the announcement of the "non-renewal of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Peter Pace, who in recent months, has indicated his disagreement with the Administration regarding Iran.

General Pace stated (February 2007) that he saw no firm evidence of Tehran supplying weapons to Shiite militias inside Iraq, which was being heralded by the Bush administration as a justification for waging war on Iran:

General Peter Pace ends his term as Chairman of the JCS in September 2007. Defense Secretary Gates has already announced that Admiral Michael Mullen, U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, has been nominated to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff.

Admiral Mullen's discourse is in marked contrast to that of General Peter Pace. Mullen, who was in charge of coordinating naval war games off the Iranian coastline, has expressed an unbending commitment to "waging" and "winning asymmetric wars", while also "protecting the United States":

Our Navy is fighting the Global War on Terror while at the same time providing a Strategic Reserve worldwide for the President and our Unified and Combatant Commanders.... Simply reacting to change is no longer an acceptable course of action if our Navy is to successfully wage asymmetric warfare and simultaneously deter regional and transnational threats.
(Statement, Senate Armed Services Committee, 7 May 2007)

Admiral Mullen's stance is in line with that of the Bush Administration's key Neo-conservative ideologues. With regard to Iran, echoing almost verbatim the stance of the White House, Admiral Mullen considers that it is "unacceptable that Iran is providing U.S. enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan with capabilities that are hurting and killing U.S. troops." (Inside the Pentagon, June 21, 2007). But on the issue of Iran, the Democrats are on board. There is a bipartisan consensus, expressed by Senator Jo Lieberman:

US Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East War Theater

The use of conventional and nuclear weapons are now part of the same integrated command structure.

The Bush administration has confirmed that it contemplates the possible use tactical bunker buster nuclear bombs to "take out" Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons' facilities. An operational plan to wage aerial attacks on Iran has been in "a state of readiness" since June 2005. Essential military hardware to wage this operation has been deployed. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, Jan 2006 ).

Vice President Dick Cheney' "Contingency Plan" "includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons." (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War , The American Conservative, 2 August 2005). USSTRATCOM would have the responsibility for overseeing and coordinating this military deployment as well as launching the military operation. (For details, Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, Jan 2006 ).

The Bush administration has the full support of its NATO allies and Israel.

US made B61 tactical nuclear weapons have also been deployed in five European non-nuclear states, members of NATO, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany and Turkey. The B61 tactical nuclear warheads under the jurisdiction of these five non-nuclear states, plus Britain are pointed at Iran.

While Iran, which possesses a bona fide nuclear energy program, is the object of potential military retaliation, these five European non-nuclear countries (not to mention Israel), are not considered by the "international community" as a threat to global security, in a clear expression of double standards.

General Peter Pace is known to be opposed to the use of nuclear weapons against Iran:

It would be difficult to wage war on Iran without the firm endorsement of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to Paul Craig Roberts, "[General] Pace had to go so that malleable toadies [Admiral Mullen] can be installed in his place [as Chairman of the JCS]"

Pace's departure removes a known obstacle to a nuclear attack on Iran, thus advancing that possible course of action. A plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons might also explain the otherwise inexplicable "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive" (NSPD-51 and HSPD-20) that Bush issued on May 9. ...

The use of nuclear weapons arouses the ultimate fear. A US nuclear attack would send Russian and Chinese ICBMs into high alert. False flag operations could be staged in the US. The propagandistic US media would hype such developments to the hilt, portraying danger everywhere. Fear of the [Bush] regime's new detention centers would silence most voices of protest as the regime declares its "national emergency." (Ibid)

Concluding Remarks

9/11 and the threat of a second major attack on America are ostensibly part of the building block of the US National Security doctrine. While, the threat of an impending 9/11 type attack by "Islamic terrorists" is a fabrication, extensive media propaganda, supported by covert intelligence operations, has ensured that the "Global War on Terrorism" or GWOT is widely accepted both by the supporters and opponents of the Bush administration.

Visibly based on an outright lie, GWOT has nonetheless gained in legitimacy among America's European partners and allies, which have adopted their own ("copy and paste") anti-terrorist emergency procedures.

Ironically, the Global War on Terrorism is also endorsed by several prominent and authoritative "progressive" intellectuals, who condemn US foreign policy and the Middle East war, while upholding the legitimacy of America's campaign against "Islamic terrorism."

An important segment of the US antiwar movement has a similar stance. While calling for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, it denies the existence of a national resistance movement to the US led occupation: "We are against the US led war in Iraq, but we support the war on terrorism." Not surprisingly, Bush's "Catastrophic Emergency" Directive (NSPD 51) does not seem to have raised much concern within the US Antiwar movement.

Since 9/11, numerous lead stories and Op Eds outlining the nature of the "Global War on Terrorism" have been fed profusely into the news chain. A worldwide Al Qaeda legend has emerged.

Repeated ad nauseam on a daily basis, the GWOT has also become part of a shaky bipartisan political consensus. Despite the blatant contradictions and the political lies, in particular in relation to 9/11 and the possibility of a second terrorist attack, the GWOT is nonetheless accepted by an increasingly skeptical US public opinion.

Behind this diabolical "catastrophic emergency" scenario, which ultimately hinges on the powers of media disinformation and deceit, is a profit driven war.

The spiraling multibillion dollar "defense" budget, which according to independent estimates has reached the trillion dollar mark, is barely acknowledged, nor is the privatization of war itself.

The US military industrial complex which produces the numerous "humanitarian weapons" including the mini-nukes and bunker buster bombs used to go after the terrorists, would be the direct beneficiary of a war on Iran, together Wall Street and the Anglo-American oil giants, which vie to appropriate and privatize the region's extensive oil and gas reserves.

This war is not led by the military but by the civilian corporate interests which lie behind the Bush administration. The military takes orders from civilians acting on behalf of those dominant economic interests.

The Wall Street financial establishment, the military-industrial complex, led by Lockheed Martin, the big five weapons and aerospace defense contractors, the Texas oil giants and energy conglomerates, the construction and engineering and public utility companies not to mention the biotechnology conglomerates, are indelibly behind this militarization of America.

In turn, the Worldwide demonization of Islam is part of this profit driven war. Three quarters of the World's oil reserves lie in Muslim lands. (World Oil 2004, see also Michel Chossudovsky, The Demonization of Muslims and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, January 2007 ).

Vilification of the enemies of America, portrayed as fanatic Islamic terrorists, is part of the Battle for Oil. If the oil were in countries occupied predominantly by Buddhists or Hindus, one would expect that Bush's entire National Security agenda, including the recent "Catastrophic Emergency" Directive NSP 51 would be directed against Buddhists and Hindus.

How to reverse the tide?

The threat of a Second Al Qaeda "Attack on America" is being used profusely by the Bush administration to galvanize public opinion in support of a global military agenda.

Known and documented, the "Islamic terror network" is a creation of the US intelligence apparatus. The "war on terrorism" is bogus. The 911 narrative as conveyed by the 911 Commission report is fabricated.

The Bush administration is involved in acts of cover-up and complicity at the highest levels of government.

Revealing the lies behind 911 would serve to undermine the legitimacy of the "global war on terrorism" which constitutes the main justification for waging war in the Middle East.

Without 911, the war criminals in high office do not have a leg to stand on. Their entire National Security construct collapses like a deck of cards. ++

UPDATE:

Another excellent and thorough piece just in, speaking to this topic as an Armageddon model -- I would add that this is more Dubby's motivation than Cheney's ... George is busy chasing the butterflies in his head right up to some cloud where St. Peter awaits him, but Uncle Dick is more the hardened, brutal Cold War graduate, unwilling to let go the game, who has been brilliantly opportunistic about using the Christocrats to his advantage. Nice collection of the Theocratic major players included ... handy.

Bush, Mideast Wars and End-Time Prophecy
JP Briggs II, Ph.D., and Thomas D. Williams, t r u t h o u t | Special Report
Friday 29 June 2007

- Former US President Thomas Jefferson

President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-of-days plan, according to close observers.

Historians and investigative journalists following the "end-time Christian" movement have grown alarmed at the impact it may be having on Bush's Middle East policies, including the current war in Iraq, the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the strife in Lebanon and the administration's repeated attempts to find a cause for war against Iran.

Many people are aware that Bush is "the most aggressively religious president in American History," as eminent historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described him, (Schlesinger, "War and the Presidency," 143) but most remain without a clue to what this actually means.

One piece of evidence is Bush's funneling billions of dollars to "faith-based" organizations. Faith offices making grants are now so widespread inside government agencies that federal watchdog officials have serious difficulties accounting for how much money has actually been spent. (Goldberg, "Kingdom Coming" 121). Marvin Olasky, a devotee of end-time theology, designed Bush's faith-based welfare concept. See also Goldberg, "Kingdom Coming," 110.

Further evidence is the Bush administration's transformation of the military. Until complaints forced its removal, a religious recruitment video made by a group called the Christian Embassy appeared on the Department of Defense web site. The video included interviews made inside the Pentagon with seven high-ranking military officers, congressmen, other federal officials and even the Christian Ethiopian ambassador to the US about their personal relationship with Christ. Army Lt. General William "Jerry" Boykin made headlines in 2003 when he said he believed America was engaged in a holy war as a "Christian nation" battling Satan. Adversaries can be defeated, he said, "only if we come against them in the name of Jesus." Despite his highly publicized rhetoric, Boykin remains Bush's deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Beneath Bush's benign-sounding words, "faith" and "Christian," lies the deeper reality of the authoritarian, doomsday religious beliefs of the ministers and spiritual counselors that surround him, say experts. Officially he has been at pains to show an openness traditionally expected of an American president. Typical is his assertion in a speech at a National Prayer Breakfast found on the White House website: "There's another part of our heritage we are showing in Iraq, and that is the great American tradition of religious tolerance. The Iraqi people are mostly Muslims, and we respect the faith they practice." However, experts point out the particular brand of Christianity that permeates Bush's environment is anything but tolerant. For example, Bush's own personal minister, Franklin Graham, has called Islam "evil and very wicked." He has said, "Let's use the weapons we have, the weapons of mass destruction if need be, and destroy the enemy."

Respected journalist Bill Moyers says that for the religious figures around Bush "a war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared, but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption." Scholars calculate that the group, which religion author Lynne Bundesen has dubbed "end-time Christians," has up to 40 million followers. Though not all may fully subscribe to the doomsday theology, they are inundated with it in books, megachurches, and on Christian broadcasting stations that reach millions upon millions of the faithful and are almost entirely dominated by end-time preachers. The messages come from "dispensationalists," who believe that true believers are close to the time of being "raptured," or drawn up into heaven by God, in the days before the final battles. They also emanate from various stripes of "dominionists" pushing to erect an American theocracy for the end-of-the-world wars against the anti-Christ. Read "Who Are The End-Time Christians?"

Crosshairs Iran - an Illustration

A potent example of the influence of end-time Christians in the White House developed in early May 2007 when the president invited dominionist James Dobson and 12 or 13 other "family value" ministers for a special meeting. They were called in to discuss the "disturbing threats Iraq, Iran and international terrorism posed to US, Israel and other democracies around the world. Dobson is best known as the founder of Focus on the Family, an end-time lobby. Dobson opposes homosexual rights and abortion, and advocates the "submission of women." He has backed candidates who call for the execution of abortion providers, and works to establish an American theocracy. Dobson was careful not to quote the president in his radio address. He declined a Truthout interview request about his influential relationship with Bush, including what his radio broadcast said involved many meetings in the past with the president. Dobson told his listeners that Bush "appeared upbeat and determined and convinced that his mission is to protect this great nation from those who have threatened us." He said Bush wanted "to let history be his judge for the way he has dealt with this crisis in the Middle East.... He laid out the challenge before us."

The meeting with Bush, said Dobson, inspired an entire week of his radio discussions on radical Islam's impact on America. He said the "general tenor and tone" of his session with the president emphasized "how we are living in very perilous times, and the future generations of Americans depends upon how we rise to that challenge today." He continued: "Iran has promised to blow Israel off the face of the earth, and they have made no bones about that.... They fully intend to wage war with us. They will do it when they have the nuclear and biological weapons to do it."

On the same program, Dobson pointedly discussed the president and the Iranian "threat" with bestselling author and dispensationalist Joel Rosenberg. Rosenberg is an end-time "prophecy expert" who claims he makes frequent visits to the White House to help them "understand what will happen next in the Middle East." He informed Dobson's listeners that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - the latest in a long line of end-time anti-Christ candidates that recently included Saddam Hussein - is "telling people inside Iran that he believes that the end of the world is just two or three years away." Dobson, referring to Ahmadinejad, said: "We didn't take Hitler very seriously either. I just see the parallel. The president, it seems to me, does understand this."

Divine Mission

From the beginning of his presidency, Bush's own messianic statements have been downplayed or dismissed by the mainstream press - uncertain of how seriously to take them and shy of offending the religious feeling of their Christian audience.

In "American Theocracy," historian Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist, explores the question of Bush's professed sense of "divine mission." "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job," the president told a gathering in 2004. Phillips concludes that "the president of the United States may for some years have wandered into what we could describe as a period of personal theocracy, and he may have shaped US policy in the Middle East around a personal and radical interpretation of the Bible." (Phillips, "American Theocracy," XLII)

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey told the BBC World Service in 2002 that he believed the president subscribed to end-time prophecies when "the whole world goes through a difficult time during those days of Tribulation."

Stephen Zunes, Middle East editor of the Foreign Policy in Focus project, observes that "Iraq has become the new Babylon" for Bush. In biblical Revelation, Babylon is the "great whore" representing human sin and corruption that will be destroyed to allow Jerusalem's rise and Jesus's return.

In an unscripted moment talking to the troops in April 2007 - as Iraq descended into chaos and the Democrats pressed him to pull the troops out - Bush seemed to offer a view of biblical Babylon and prophetic Tribulations. He said of Iraq: "It makes me realize the nature of the enemy that we face, which hardens my resolve to protect the American people. The people who do that are not people - you know, it's not a civil war; it is pure evil. And I believe we have an obligation to protect ourselves from that evil."

Paul S. Boyer, professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of "When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture," said in a lengthy telephone interview: "That sounds very much like Bush, kind of inarticulate, but also the workings of his mind are pretty clear. In his first speech after 9/11, he said he would rid the world of evil, which was an extreme evangelical sense of defining the war on terror."

Norton Mezvinsky, a distinguished CSU professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, has also extensively researched the Christian end-time movement and is writing a book on the subject. In an interview in his office, he agreed the president's statement fits with his 9/11 pronouncements. "You knew Bush was saying, he just got the message from God; he finally realized why he was president of the United States." Mezvinsky says, "There's no question that he is and has been influenced by the end-time ideas.... So there is a danger. To what extent? We don't know. The extent that we know is pretty bad."

A spokeswoman for the White House did not respond to nine requests by email and telephone for the president's answers to a series of questions about that influence. But when Phillips's "American Theocracy" came out in March 2006, a questioner at a Bush speech referred to the historian's book and asked whether the president believed in the Apocalypse. The Washington Post reported that Bush stammered and laughed nervously as he responded: "The answer is - I haven't really thought of it that way.... The first I've heard of that, by the way. I guess I'm more of a practical fellow." Phillips writes in the new introduction to his book that Bush then went on with his answer for "four and a half minutes without ever mentioning the Apocalypse, Armageddon, the end-times, or the Book of Revelation." (Phillips, "American Theocracy," XL).

The Israel Connection

One of the most influential end-time Christian ministers with entre to the president is John Hagee. Recently, Hagee updated his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," to highlight a coming war with Iran. It promises: "There will soon be a nuclear blast in the Middle East that will transform the road to Armageddon into a racetrack. America and Israel will either take down Iran or Iran will become nuclear and attempt to take down America and Israel." Hagee claims Iran is producing nuclear "suitcase bombs." In 2006, Hagee assembled a large number of end-time Christian groups into an umbrella organization, Christians United for Israel. When CUFI met for the first time in Washington, Israel had just invaded Lebanon. The British Telegraph newspaper reported that Hagee's "claim of political clout is no idle boast. The president sent a message of support praising him for 'spreading the hope of God's Love and the universal gift of freedom.'"

During the invasion period, www.raptureready.com, the website for those anticipating ascension into heaven before the final battles, excitement mushroomed. Responders thought the war in Lebanon signaled the start of the Tribulations. "This is so exciting," one commenter offered. "I have been having rapture dreams and I can't believe that this is really it! We are on the edge of eternity!" said another.

Meanwhile, other websites noted the curious echo of prophecy from a statement by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that clearly grated on foreign diplomats' nerves: "What we're seeing here are the birth pangs of a new Middle East," she said, even as she refused to call for a cease fire to end the killing and destruction going on in Lebanon. The echo was a core prophetic verse in Matthew: "And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs." Was it a coincidence of language from a woman who has described herself as born again and evangelical? Rice denied any such reference.

Though they give different, sometimes changing "literal" versions of how close the Apocalypse is, end-timers all agree that the establishment of Israeli hegemony over the biblical lands and the rebuilding of the ancient Jewish temple are preconditions for Christ's return. From this belief derives the unwavering support of end-time Christians for Israel. Both dominionists and dispensationalists call themselves "Christian Zionists." End-time Christians (or Christian Zionists) have become Israel's main tourist revenue, shepherding groups to the holy land to see the sites of Armageddon and the Second Coming.

Mezvinsky has extensive contacts within the Israeli government and various conservative Israeli groups, and he is emphatic on one point: although a succession of Israeli prime ministers has courted the American end-timers (the Christian Zionists) and declared them Israel's "greatest friends," the Israelis don't accept the end-time theology one wit. They are also aware that it is anti-Semitic. (For one thing, they interpret the Bible as claiming that only 144,000 converted Jews will be allowed to survive the Apocalypse.) However, Mezvinsky says, the Israelis also know that the end-time Christian Zionists are a lobby that can deliver US support for Israeli hard-line positions on arms, West Bank settlements, negotiations with the Arabs, and Iran.

Neocons and End-Timers

Historians Mezvinsky and Boyer stress that the power of blood-drenched, Satan-versus-God Christian prophecy has merged with another major factor shaping the Bush administration's Mideast policy and the current focus of hostility toward Iran. As president, George W. Bush represents a perfect storm that has blown neoconservative ideology together with the end-time movement. Before 9/11, the neocons envisioned an American global empire supported by newly created democracies friendly to American interests in oil, markets and ideas. But they thought only a Pearl Harbor-type event like 9/11would make mobilizing the country for it possible. The key to this plan was the Middle East. Phillips says that designs on Middle East oil reserves, particularly in Iraq and Iran, were part of the neocon strategy. Notes Boyer, the neocons and end-timers "come at the subject of the Mideast war from different perspectives, but they end up agreeing."

In Bush's speeches, a careful coding of words and phrases also brings the neocon and end-time perspectives together. The president makes "liberty" and "democracy," for example, synonymous with "divine wishes." Read sidebar, "Hidden Behind Coded Language."

But Mezvinksy cautions that many neocon strategists probably think the end-time Christian Zionists "are nuts, but, boy, we can utilize them." Indeed, the thinly concealed disdain some neocons have expressed for the prophetic Christians has fed into the media habit of underestimating end-time influence on the assumption that only identifiable political ideas can shape policy.

Meanwhile, the influence of end-time Christians has burrowed deeply into the American Israel Political Action Committee, AIPAC, the powerful Israeli lobby. At the last AIPAC meeting with a long list of speakers that included Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, "Hagee got the loudest applause of anybody," according to Mezvinsky.

Mezvinsky reports he is increasingly hearing Israelis say that "we want the United States focusing on Iran. Those are people who would like the United States to attack Iran. They realize that, given the involvement in Iraq, there's not the wherewithal to go after Iran." Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has called Iran an "existential threat" to Israel.

This spring, AIPAC, with the help of its end-time supporters, succeeded in removing language from a military appropriations bill that would have required Bush to get Congressional approval before using military force against Iran. So again, Iran policy provides the example - here for how end-time religion, the politics of Israel and neocon strategies converge. And how end-time thinking entangles George W. Bush.

At about the same period that Bush was meeting with Dobson and Dobson was touting a war with Iran, Vice President Dick Cheney, the consummate neocon (no sign on his horizon of end-time religious views), stood on the deck of an American aircraft carrier just off Iran's coast. He warned that the United States was prepared to use its naval power to keep Tehran from disrupting oil routes or "gaining nuclear weapons." But, a Cheney spokesperson cited his remarks on the aircraft carrier, as mentioned word-for-word on the White House Internet site, to suggest there is no warning to use naval power against Iran. The Kuwait Times reported that Cheney had visited the region to forge an alliance among the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Egypt "in support of a possible US strike against Iran over its controversial nuclear program, according to Jordanian politicians and academics." Cheney was apparently unsuccessful, the newspaper said.

When asked about his foreign policy position on Iran, a Cheney spokesperson cited a statement from Cheney: "We hope that we can solve the problem diplomatically. The president has indicated he wants to do everything he can to resolve it diplomatically. That's why we've been working with the EU (European Union) and going through the United Nations with sanctions. But the president has also made it clear that we haven't taken any options off the table." The Cheney aide's references to Cheney statements made no mention about "a strike on Iran."

For probably different reasons, the fascination of Bush and Cheney for war with Iran has been longstanding. Reports say Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's original war plans for Iraq included moving on to Iran within 90 days of securing Baghdad. The plans were later dropped, but they suited both necon adventure for oil and democratization and the violent Christian prophecy that sees defeat of Babylon as a vital step on the path to the return of Christ. (Dubose and Bernstein, Vice 182) Through it all, nuclear bombs convey the awe of an Apocalypse.

In the spring of 2006, Pulitzer prize journalist Seymour Hersh reported Bush had ordered his generals to begin planning for an air assault on Iran's nuclear facilities using "bunker-busting" tactical nuclear weapons. When generals tried to remove the nuclear option from the plans, they were "shouted down," Hersh wrote. Said a former senior intelligence official, "Bush and Cheney were dead serious about the nuclear planning." There were also reports the administration was trying to convince the Israelis to do the bombing.

Then in late February this year, new word came on Bush's Iran war planning. The London Times reported: "Some of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defense and intelligence sources. Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learned that up to five (US) generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack. 'There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,' a source with close ties to British intelligence said. 'There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible.'"

In May 2007, the Inter Press Service reported that Admiral William J. Fallon, who was slated to become the Central Command chief on March 16, had sent a message to the Defense Department in mid-February, opposing any further US naval buildup in the Persian Gulf. The news article said Fallon squelched an administration effort to send a third carrier strike group to the Gulf. That would have brought the US naval presence up to the same level as during the US air campaign against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, the report said. It continued: "A source who met privately with Fallon around the time of his confirmation hearing and who insists on anonymity quoted Fallon as saying that an attack on Iran 'will not happen on my watch.' Asked how he could be sure, the source says, Fallon replied, 'You know what choices I have. I'm a professional.' Fallon said that he was not alone, according to the source, adding, "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box."

Of course, no one knows if the administration will eventually attack Iran. But experts believe that end-time ideas are playing a part in Bush's thinking about a widening war in the region.

End Game

Bundesen's sources within the religious community and in the military around the president tell her that end-timers are "crawling all over the White House and Camp David." These are men who purvey what Hedges calls a "theology of despair" that "feeds dark fantasies of revenge and empowerment." Bundesen says she is not being cynical when she observes that end-time ministers like the late Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Tim LaHaye and James Dobson have used their dark theology to increase their followers, pump up their power and fill their coffers. And it's clear that Bush, in turn, has used end-time Christian leaders and their ideas for political and moral support. So isn't it just about politics?

No. Experts say that whether anybody even believes the violently apocalyptical scenarios shouldn't obscure the stark fact that Bush's policies have emerged in an atmosphere saturated with these dark ideas. Journalist Ron Suskind reported in 2004 that the administration prided itself on not being "reality-based," and the end-time vision may be one way to understand what that pride is about. ++

SIDEBAR 1 - Who Are the End-Time Christians?

Prominent Groups and Individuals

- Roger Williams, originator of either the first or second Baptist church established in America.

There are two major brands of end-time Christians: The "dispensationalists" hold that true believers will be "raptured" into heaven just before a cataclysmic war fought between "left behind" believers and the forces of the anti-Christ. "Dominionist" end-timers hold that the US as a Christian nation will play a special role representing God in the final battles, and dominionists work toward the construction (or "reconstruction") of an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-time plan. The two brands cross over and blend. Collectively they call themselves Christian Zionists to affirm their support of Israel's control over the holy lands (particularly the West Bank, Gaza and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem) because that control is a key prophetic "sign" for the Second Coming of Christ. The commonly used media terms "religious right" and "evangelical" obscure the powerful influence of the apocalyptical and theocratic end-time ideas and blur the fact that not all evangelicals or members of the religious right are end-time Christians. Estimates of the number of the end-timers range from 20 to 40 million. The catalogue below is far from complete.

AIPAC - American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This powerful Jewish lobby is heavily supported by Christian Zionists eager to encourage the Israeli government's control over the holy lands. Middle East experts say AIPAC has accepted the Christian Zionists' support and tried to ignore their apocalyptical ideas because the movement provides Israel with money and influence on US government policy in the Middle East.

The Apostolic Congress - A group affiliated with the United Pentecostal Church developed connections with President Ronald Reagan. Apostolic minister Robert G. Upton claims to be "in constant contact with the White House" under George W. Bush and briefed "at least once a week." Emails obtained by the Village Voice revealed that in 2004, National Security Agency Director Elliott Abrams reassured Apostolic leaders that the Israelis' withdrawal from Gaza did not mean that they were really turning biblical lands over to the Palestinians.

Kenneth Blackwell - An avowed theocrat, lost his 2006 race for governor of Ohio. As Ohio's secretary of state, Blackwell banned reporters from polling places and fostered, then ignored, scores of voting irregularities in the 2004 election. After the election he sought to impose voting regulations that allowed his office to disqualify tens of thousands of would-be voters.

Gen. William Boykin - Declared the US a "Christian nation" battling Satan. Boykin was defended by the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Peter Pace, and has remained in his position.

Christian Embassy - Journalist Chris Hedges describes the group as dedicated to building a "Christian America" and says it has "burrowed deep inside the Pentagon. It hosts weekly Bible sessions with senior officers, by its own count some 40 generals, and weekly prayer breakfasts each Wednesday from 7 to 7:50 a.m., in the executive dining room."

Creation Museum - Petersburg, Kentucky. This $25 million project dedicated to biblical "creation science" features models of Adam and Eve swimming in a river as dinosaurs roam the banks, a scale model of Noah's ark, a dramatic giant screen production of the six days of creation, and a walk through a depraved inner-city alley that depicts "the horrors of a culture that had made man's opinion [and not the Bible's words] the final authority in life."

Paul and Jan Crouch - Televangelist owners of Trinity Broadcasting Network. Paul Crouch has said on his broadcast, "God, we proclaim death to anything or anyone that will lift a hand against this network and this ministry that belongs to You, God."

John Darby - Nineteenth century British churchman who formulated a series of signs for the end of days. Historian Paul Boyer writes that Darby's signs were "wars, natural disasters, rampant immorality, the rise of a world political and economic order, and the return of the Jews to the land promised by Abraham." The 1948 founding of the state of Israel was a key sign in Darby's system and set up the end-time expectation that the last era, or dispensation, had arrived. Darby's scenario was popularized in 1909 by the Scofield Reference Bible, which annotated and explained the biblical passages that contained Darby's apocalyptic signs.

James Dobson - A licensed psychologist, author of numerous books on childrearing and chairman of Focus on the Family. Dobson's program is broadcast on over 7,000 stations worldwide. He is currently one of the most influential figures in the Dominionist movement.

The Federalist Society - According to Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University, "The Federalist Society formed 20 years ago in reaction to the powers the Supreme Court was granting the federal government. It is hostile to civil rights, environmental protections, worker safety laws, a separation between church and state and more. Former president of the Christian Coalition Donald Hodel is a board member. Twenty four of President Bush's top cabinet members and most of his court nominations are members of the Federalist Society. The list includes John Ashcroft, former attorney general; Spencer Abraham, secretary of energy; Gail Norton, secretary of the interior, and Theodore Olson, solicitor general. Other notable members are Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Orrin Hatch, Kenneth Starr."

Jerry Falwell - The recently deceased founder of the Moral Majority believed that a biblical prophecy came true when Israel gained military control of Jerusalem during the Six Day war in 1967. "When that event took place a clock began to tick that signaled the downfall of the great Gentile powers, the last and greatest of which is the United States," he wrote in his 1990 book, "The New Millenium." Wikipedia notes that "the Anti-Defamation League and its leader Abraham Foxman have expressed strong support for Falwell's staunch pro-Israel stand - despite repeatedly condemning what they perceive as intolerance and anti-Semitism in Falwell's public statements."

Franklin Graham - President George W. Bush's personal minister, has called Islam "evil and very wicked." He has said, "Let's use the weapons we have, the weapons of mass destruction if need be, and destroy the enemy."

John Hagee - Major figure pushing for bellicose Middle East policy through his Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Author of a best-selling book calling for war with Iran. He sympathized with the assassin of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzah Rabin on the grounds that it was "an abomination against God" for Rabin to contemplate the transfer of land in the West Bank to the Palestinians.

Benny Hinn - Televangelist and healer, who says that Adam was a superhero who could fly to the moon. Claims one day the dead will be raised by watching the Trinity Broadcasting Network from inside their coffins. Lashes out at critics: "Sometimes I wish God would give me a Holy Ghost machine gun. I'd blow your head off." (Hedges, "American Facists," 172-3)

Dr. James Kennedy - Runs training courses in how to make converts. Hedges has described the techniques as a sophisticated form of mind control. "The goal is not simply conversion but also eventual recruitment into a political movement to create a Christian nation," Hedges wrote in "American Fascists." (59) Kennedy's Center for Christian Statesmanship evangelizes on Capitol Hill. He has worked closely with Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart and Tim LaHaye.

Tim LaHaye - End-times guru, co-author of the wildly popular "Left Behind" series of books describing the rapture of true believers into heaven and a seven-year period of chaos known as the Tribulation for those left behind. Over 60 million copies in print. In video games made from the books, nonbelievers are executed by God-fearing teenagers on the streets of New York City. A recent guest on Glenn Beck's CNN Headline News show, LaHaye excited the Mormon talk host into declaring himself a believer in imminent biblical Apocalypse and the urgent necessity for war with Iran.

Sun Myung Moon - South Korean leader of the Unification Church. Calls for an "autocratic theocracy to rule the world." A long-time patron of the Bush family, especially Bush senior. In 1995, Moon financed the bail-out of Falwell's Liberty University. Moon owns The Washington Times, which claims editorial independence but regularly uses end-time Christian leaders and politicians as key sources. Washington Times reporters often appear as experts on mainstream TV news shows. Moon calls himself humanity's savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.

Rod Parsley - Historian Norton Mezvinsky considers Parsley a rising star in the end-time movement because of his crossover appeal to the African-American community. Parsley describes Allah as a demon spirit and says that Christian American has been mandated to defeat all demons to usher in the reign of Christ.

Erick Prince and the Blackwater Security Army - Prince is CEO of Blackwater, a huge "security firm" with facilities across the US and contracts in the hundreds of millions from the State Department, the Pentagon and domestic agencies. Prince is associated with an evangelical group engaged in the Christian/Muslim conflict in the Sudan, according to author Jeremy Scahill in "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army." Scahill says that Prince, a former Navy Seal converted to a fundamentalist Catholicism, has connections to James Dobson and that "the Prince family was deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy" founded by Tim LaHaye. Hedges thinks Blackwater may become the SS of an intended Christian Fascism and that "we may be further down this road than we care to admit."

Ronald Reagan - A half a dozen times during his presidency, Reagan indicated his conviction that the world would end very soon in a fiery Armageddon.

Ralph Reed - Christian Coalition political mastermind determined to create an American theocracy. Reed told a Virginia newspaper that his political strategy for getting Dominionists elected was, "I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night." (Goldberg, "Kingdom Coming" 14)

Pat Robertson - Founder of the Christian Coalition, 1988 Republican presidential candidate, televangelist and founder of Christian Broadcasting Network seen in 180 countries and broadcast in 71 languages. His show, The 700 Club, immensely popular. Despite strong Christian Zionist positions, Robertson's book "The New World Order" propagated theories about a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, and his statements are regarded by leading Jewish intellectuals as anti-Semitic. Called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and described the war in Iraq as "a righteous cause out of the Bible." Has said there will be a nuclear attack on the US in 2007.

Joel C. Rosenberg - One-time adviser to former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and columnist for the prominent conservative magazine, National Review. Latest best-selling book, "Epicenter: Why the Current Rumblings in the Middle East Will Change Your World," promotes the idea that end-time prophecy is rapidly being fulfilled.

R.J. Rushdoony - His book, "The Institutes of Biblical Law," written in 1973, set the tone for the current surge of the end-time movement. Calls for the creation of a violently repressive Christian state. Argues the American Christians have taken over the role of God's chosen people from the Jews.

Kenneth Starr - Special prosecutor who investigated President Bill Clinton. Member of a dispensationalist church in McLean, Virginia. (Halsell, "Forcing God's Hand," 104)

Southern Baptist Convention - Historian Kevin Phillips describes the SBC as "preeminent in the South, an eight-hundred ton dinosaur in the parlor of American Protestantism, and over the last century the fastest-growing major church in the United States." ("American Theocracy," 149) Dominated in recent years by end-times Christians such as Jerry Falwell. In 2000, former President Jimmy Carter, a third-generation Southern Baptist, and the first president to call himself a born-again and evangelical, severed his ties with the SBC, saying that its "increasingly rigid" dogmas violated the "basic premises of my Christian faith."

Trinity Broadcasting Network - Beamed to 75 countries. Stations in El Salvador, Spain, Kenya and the Middle East. Watched by five million households in the US and millions more overseas. TBN is one of six national television networks controlled by Dominionists, reaching tens of millions of homes. Dominionists also control almost all of the 2,000 religious radio stations in the US. In recent years, sex scandals have plagued TBN owner Paul Crouch and other committed dominionist end-time televangelists such as Ted Haggard and Jimmy Swaggart, though their influence and appeal continue.

Universities With End-Time Leanings

Liberty University - Lynchburg, Virginia. Founded by Jerry Falwell. Ken Ham, a leader in the creationist movement and developer of the Creation Museum is a graduate.

Regent University - Virginia Beach, Virginia. Founded by Pat Robertson. A graduate of Regent's law school, Monica Goodling, came to prominence in 2007 over the US attorney firings. She became the only Department of Justice employee in history to exercise Fifth Amendment rights with respect to official conduct and remain an employee. She later resigned. Regent's website claims 150 graduates of the law school have found jobs in the Bush administration. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is a Regent professor.

Patrick Henry University - Accepts almost exclusively Christian evangelical home-schooled students, of which there are an estimated 1-2 million. The university's founder, Michael Ferris, is a protëgë of "Left Behind" author Tim LaHaye. According to Salon journalist Michelle Goldberg, though the university only began operating in 2000, by 2004 it had provided seven percent of the White House interns, and interns for 22 conservative congressmen. A Patrick Henry graduate works on Karl Rove's staff.

US Congress members - A number of members of Congress, recent and current, have been explicit about their end-time views. High-profile end-time politicians include: former House Majority Leader Tom Delay; former Republican Majority Leader Dick Armey; former Senate Majority leader Tom Frist; current Republican Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell; former House Speaker Dennis Hastert; current Republican presidential candidate Senator Sam Brownback. Before the last elections, 186 members of the House of Representatives had earned an 80 to 100 percent approval rating from end-time Christian groups, including Robertson's Christian Coalition.

Perspectives of Three Christian Journalists

The recent surge of the end-time movement began in the 1980s, its fantastic growth made possible by the internet and cable TV, according to Lynne Bundesen, author of three books about the Bible and a book on prayer. She has written about end-time Christian influence since the Reagan years. In phone interviews, she vividly remembered joining a Christian tour to Israel in 1985 that had an affiliation with Pat Robertson. She went to report on the experience for her syndicated newspaper column. On the trip, she discovered how distant her own sense of spirituality was from the movement. The last stop on the tour was the valley of Megiddo, also known as Armageddon. "The leader said any day now this valley will be filled with blood, and the women said hallelujah, and they all began to cry with joy. With joy. I recall to this day standing on that hill overlooking that valley, feeling very alone in the midst of a group. We've all had that feeling. It's like, Oh, my heavens."

In the 1990s, Bundesen managed a major network of religious web sites that put her in touch with many end-time groups. "I've never heard any one of these ministers quote the beatitudes or any of the healing statements of Jesus. Nor to love thy neighbor as thyself. Their belief is violent and drenched in blood. Jesus Christ as a five-star general." She views the theology as focused on selected biblical passages, on gaining and wielding power and control, and not on forgiveness or tolerance. She proposed "end-time Christians" as a name that more aptly captures the religious orientation of the movement than the names Christian Zionists, dominionists, or dispensationalists. "With this group you get extra credit for bringing on the slaughter of millions. This is the end-time Christian mission, and both President Reagan and President Bush have been part of it."

Bundesen referred to the late Grace Halsell, a distinguished journalist and Green Honors Chair Professor of Journalism at Texas Christian University, who made the point with the title and thesis of her last book, published in 1999, "Forcing God's Hand." The end-time Christians are not content to wait for the apocalypse to happen, Halsell argued; they want to bring it on. Bundesen thinks that individually most followers are at least ambivalent about wishing for the imminent end of everything and that the apocalyptical belief has appeal to many for social and psychological reasons. "Ours is a numbing society. I think if you get numb and there isn't any way out, this is a way out - based on the most important thing that ever happened: the birth of Jesus Christ."

In his book, "American Fascists," Pulitzer prize war correspondent and former Harvard seminarian Chris Hedges gives a bleaker assessment from his own sense of the Christ's message: "Debate with the radical Christian Right is useless. We cannot reach this movement. It does not want dialogue. It is a movement based on emotion and cares nothing for rational thought and discussion. It is not mollified because John Kerry prays or Jimmy Carter teaches Sunday school." (202)

In late 2004, Bill Moyers - journalist, former Lyndon Johnson White House press spokesman and Baptist minister - told a Harvard audience: "I'm not making this up - I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.'" He more recently observed that "even though some critics believe the influence of the religious right is waning as Bush's popularity sinks, many prospective candidates for his job are pledging their allegiance to ... his powerful base" - those same end-time Christians.

SIDEBAR 2 -- Hidden Behind Coded Language

Scholars say the president presents himself as a "born-again Christian" and the public assumes it knows what that means. However, a recent dustup over James Dobson's assertion that former senator and presidential candidate Fred Thompson isn't a Christian illustrates the problems with language in the realm of end-time philosophy. Dobson's spokesman explained, "We use that word - Christian - to refer to people who are evangelical Christians." But there was an additional layer. Some evangelicals are beginning to rebel against the presumption by end-timers such as Pat Robertson and James Dobson that they represent all who call themselves "evangelical." For Dobson, the terms "Christian" and "evangelical" appear to be coded to mean a dominionist end-time Christian. George W. Bush may be using this coding as well.

David S. Domke, associate professor of communication at the University of Washington and author of "God Willing? Political Fundamentalism in the White House," has pointed out how Bush and his speechwriters have regularly employed coded language. This coding communicates to the faithful the president's secret agreement about the construction of an American theocracy and what scholars call an historical "exceptionalism" that ordains the US with a special mission in God's plans. When Bush says, "I believe freedom is not America's gift to the world. It is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman," it requires close attention to penetrate the double think of the message. When the linkages between the Almighty and freedom involve a US mission to democratize the Middle East, then the patriotic ideals pushed by the neocons have merged with the exceptionalism idea of the American theocrats to justify war. (see also Phillips, American Theocracy 206)

Bush's adoption of Martin Olasky's phrase "compassionate conservatism" became a code for channeling federal monies to religious groups that could make conversions and build a theocracy in the US.

There are obvious reasons for Bush to use coded language that avoids specific references to a belief in the type of radical prophetic Christianity shared by his many spiritual advisors and allies. A presidential belief in these highly charged ideas would raise uncomfortable questions about his policies on global warming, helping the poor, healthcare, the role of the UN, debt and deficit, the potential widening of war in the Middle East, or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Bush's facility with religious coded language may have helped in his close - and to many surprising - relationship with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Critics say Blair seriously damaged his own political legacy with his apparently unquestioning support of Bush's Mideast policies. Though it has not been reported on this side of the Atlantic, Blair is considered by many of his own countrymen as "one of the most religious prime ministers in the past century," one web site explains. Britain had its troubles with religious controversies in earlier centuries, and these days the British electorate expects a rigorously secular government. Blair is a member of the Church of England, but attends the Roman Catholic church and may be intending to convert to Catholicism once he leaves office. The National Secular Society in England claims, "Tony Blair has done more to undermine the secular nature of British society than anyone in recent history. But many people haven't woken up to what will be regarded by coming generations as Tony Blair's worst legacy - encouraging single-faith schools." Blair has no obvious connections to end-of-days beliefs. Like Bush's White House, his government offices issue strong statements affirming solidarity with "the vast majority of decent Muslims." But, given his background and behavior, it is not unreasonable to think that Blair has sympathized with the coded political-religious language Bush uses and with Bush's attempt to entwine religion and government. ++

"So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was."
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

One Response to You Don’t Know Dick — the “next war” and “code red” … [updated]

Ron Holland says:

June 30, 2007 at 12:09 am

The Failed London Terrorist Attack Could Happen Here!

Learn what could happen when the United States is hit by another terrorist attack by Islamic extremists that creates an extreme response by Washington in The Final Presidential Executive Order at http://www.swissconfederationinstitute.org/swisspreserve14.htm

This is from a new free online book, “The Swiss Preserve Solution” & how the over reaction dramatically curtails personal, financial, religious and civil liberties in the United States.

Ron Holland is Editor of FreedomFest News at http://www.freedomfest.com/news.htm

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You Don’t Know Dick — the “next war” and “code red” … [updated]

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