Usual Suspects Fabricate “Threat” from Iran; The Unthinkable Now Possible

(3 pieces of recommended reading from Ray)

1. “Slanting the Case on Iran’s Nukes,” by Robert Parry
http://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/21/slanting-the-case-on-irans-nukes/

2. The IAEA’s November Report on Iran: More Confirmation than Revelation, by Greg Thielmann and Benjamin Loehrke

http://www.armscontrol.org/Iran-Nuclear-Brief/Making-Sense-of-the-IAEAs-Latest-Report-on-Irans-Nuclear-Program

3. Pillar on Iran and Richard Cohen

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/paul-pillar/how-liberals-buy-stupid-wars-6033

A former colleague, Elizabeth Murray: “No Room for Smugness on Iran”

No Room for Smugness on Iran

 

Free the Brooklyn Bridge 700: A letter from Ray to the Manhattan D.A.

November 13, 2011

Cyrus R. Vance, Jr.
District Attorney
New York County

Dear Mr. Vance,

I knew your father. When he was secretary of state, I was working for Stansfield Turner. I highly admired your father for resigning on principle after that hare-brained operation fell apart in the desert of Iran. So very few have had the integrity to resign on principle — a major flaw in our body politic, in my view.

We have a good bit in common, including fathers whom we admired. We both grew up in New York City. I’m a half-generation ahead of you, and so perhaps the following expression fell out of favor during your younger years.

But my Dad, even when he became the Chancellor of the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, would dutifully repeat the same words whenever I asked for permission to embark on one of the many dubious adventures being brainstormed (and often executed) by my friends in the Bronx.

“But, Dad, everyone else is doing it.” It was always the same reply: “If all of your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it!?”

Joseph W. McGovern was a stickler for the law (Professor Emeritus, Fordham Law School), but I’m sure he would have had no problem at all with my joining “everyone else” on October 1 in walking onto the Brooklyn Bridge at the tacit invitation of the NYPD.

He would have been shocked to learn of the bait-and-switch circumstances of my arrest. There is no way he would have stood still for such police misconduct.

You know the right thing to do. You learned such basic things at Georgetown, if not at Yale. I learned them at Fordham.

The charges against the 700-plus Brooklyn Bridge-walkers dishonor our native New York. God knows the city has enough trouble without the police being encouraged to act in that way.

You are the last person to need reminding of what is at stake, when the NYPD itself is allowed to think it is above the law.

Yours truly,
Raymond L. McGovern

 

“Real Men Go to Tehran!”

Introductory Note: There I go again — reading the Washington Post before breakfast.

“Clinton cautions Iran on U.S. resolve in Iraq” headlines an article by N.S. Aizenman on who said what on Sunday’s talk shows yesterday.

Aizenman points out that the guests were “pressed by multiple interviewers on … whether the [U.S. troop] withdrawal would open Iraq to greater influence from Iran.” (No coincidence: talking points courtesy of the White House, no doubt.)

Was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blindsided by the question? Hardly. She probably drafted it. In any case, she was well prepared to lead the chorus well into its rehearsals to blame Iran, when Iraq falls apart.

On NBC’s Meet the Press she noted that Iraq’s stability is not ensured. “There will be continuing stresses and threats, as we see in many of the countries we work,” she said. (Hold it a second; “countries we work?”)

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” she included an explicit warning that Iran would be “badly miscalculating,” if it disregarded the substantial continuing U.S. presence in the region in trying to exploit unsettled conditions in Iraq.

Also blowing hard about the menace from Iran was former CIA Director James Woolsey, a dyed-in-the-wool neocon who keeps warning that the U.S. may have no choice but to bomb Iran to halt its “nuclear weapons program.” Five years ago, for example, Woolsey issued this dire warning: “I’m afraid that within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they [the Iranians] could have the bomb.”

Woolsey and Clinton are on a par in the sans-shame department. But in this case the edge goes to Woolsey, an even more openly exuberant Zionist, who has proudly called himself the “anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.”

For those of you who remember the “evidence” adduced to “justify” attacking Iraq, Woolsey was one of the neocons pushing hard the fairy tale about Saddam Hussein trying to get yellowcake uranium from Africa — as well as other fables too numerous to recount here.

I have watched him closely — with wonderment at his zeal and persistence. For instance, long after it had been proven that the yellowcake caper was based on forged documents, Woolsey made a valiant effort to resurrect some credibility for it during a Charlie Rose interview of him and me on August 20, 2004.

I reminded Woolsey that the yellowcake canard had been thoroughly discredited. He totally did not like that, or other things I said, and became so exasperated that he reached for and detonated his favorite weapon of mass destruction: “You’re anti-Semitic,” he blurted out.

But I digress. All I intended to do this morning is post “Switching Focus from Iraq to Iran,” (URL below) a piece I did yesterday after making the mistake of reading the neocon-dominated editorial pages of the Washington Post:

Ray on Washington Post Neocons Pretending to be Worried Sick Over Iran

Switching Focus from Iraq to Iran