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Nearly Fifty Percent of Americans Think U.S. Should Help Israel Attack Iran

July 21, 2008

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
July 20, 2008

Obama and McCain
It does not matter who ends up in the Oval Office, be it McCain or Obama, because the policy toward Iran will be similar, if not identical.

If we are to believe the results of a Rasmussen poll released on July 20, an astounding number of Americans have no problem helping Israel attack Iran. “Forty-two percent (42%) of Americans say that if Israel launches an attack against Iran, the United States should help Israel. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 46% believe the United States should do nothing while just 1% believe the U.S. should help Iran.”

Moreover, once again demonstrating a complete ignorance of history and an absence of rational thinking — predictable, considering most Americans receive their historical and political education from the corporate media — 47% “believe it is at least somewhat likely Iran will try to provoke some form of attack before November in an attempt to influence the U.S. elections.”

In other words, so important is the American election to the Iranians, they will court the sort of chaos and social disintegration currently underway in Iraq to determine the outcome of the American election, an absurdity at best. But then Americans excel at buying into absurdities, the more ludicrous the better.

It does not matter who ends up in the Oval Office, be it McCain or Obama, because the policy toward Iran will be similar, if not identical. If this poll demonstrates anything, it is that the average voter of the sort polled by Rasmussen is effectively brainwashed and believes there is actually some sort of difference between Democrats and Republicans. Apparently, the Rasmussen voter also thinks the United States is at the center of the universe and all other nations pay close attention to our every political move before putting on their shoes in the morning. In fact, this sort of mindless “American exceptionalism” is resented and held in contempt by millions of people around the world.

In a normal, objective, historically accurate, and non-Bushzarro world, the Rasmussen voter would take into consideration the fact the British and the CIA worked directly with royalist Iranian military officers to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq and installed the brutal dictator Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and his SAVAK torturers.

Continued . . .

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Support for U.S. war resisters in Canada

July 17, 2008

By Matt Swagler | Socialist Worker, July 16, 2008 | Issue 676

HUNDREDS OF protesters gathered in front of Canadian consulates in 14 U.S. cities on July 10 to protest planned deportations of conscientious objector Corey Glass and other U.S. war resisters currently seeking refuge in Canada.

Glass, a National Guard sergeant who served in Iraq in 2005, moved to Toronto in 2006 rather than face the prospect of again participating in what he considered “an unjust war.”

“When I joined the national guard,” Glass explained at a May press conference, “they told me the only way I would be in combat is if there were troops occupying the United States…I signed up to defend people and do humanitarian work filling sandbags if there was a hurricane; I should have been in New Orleans, not Iraq.”

{ What you can do:

Contact the offices of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Diane Finley to demand that U.S. war resisters be given asylum in Canada.

Harper’s office can be reached by calling 613-992-4211 or e-mailing pm@pm.gc.ca; Finley’s office can be reached by calling 613-996-4974 and e-mailing finley.d@parl.gc.ca or finled1@parl.gc.ca.

For more information about U.S. war resisters in Canada, and what you can do to support them, visit Courage to Resist or the War Resisters Support Campaign. }

In June, Glass was given deportation orders, set for July 10, prompting the antiwar organizations Courage to Resist, Veterans for Peace and Project Safe Haven to call the emergency protests at consulates across the U.S.

In San Francisco, Courage to Resist was joined by members of the Raging Grannies, Veterans for Peace Chapter 69, American Friends Service Committee, BAY-Peace, the Campus Antiwar Network, Code Pink and the International Socialist Organization. The rally numbered close to 50 participants at its peak.

Shortly after the demonstrations, activists received word that a the Canadian Federal Court had granted Glass a last-minute reprieve, giving him the opportunity to appeal earlier rulings over the next few months, with the hope of remaining in Canada.

Organizer and veteran Adam Seibert explained the role he felt the protests played: “If you don’t have troops, you can’t have a war. The more troops who resist, the easier it is to stop the war–and the more visible public support that exists the easier it is for other troops to resist…Seventy-five percent of Conscientious Objector applications are denied, so for most soldiers resisting is the only option.

Continued . . .

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Iran: The Threat

July 8, 2008

The New York Review of Books, Vol. 55, No. 12, July 17, 2008

By Thomas Powers

At a moment of serious challenge, battered by two wars, ballooning debt, and a faltering economy, the United States appears to have lost its capacity to think clearly. Consider what passes for national discussion on the matter of Iran. The open question is whether the United States should or will attack Iran if it continues to reject American demands to give up uranium enrichment. Ignore for the moment whether the United States has any legal or moral justification for attacking Iran. Set aside the question whether Iran, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently claimed in a speech at West Point, “is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons.” Focus instead on purely practical questions. By any standards Iran is a tough nut to crack: it is nearly three times the size of Texas, with a population of 70 million and a big income from oil which the world cannot afford to lose. Iran is believed to have the ability to block the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf through which much of the world’s oil must pass on its way to market.

Keep in mind that the rising price of oil already threatens the world’s economy. Iran also has a large army and deep ties to the population of Shiite coreligionists next door in Iraq. The American military already has its hands full with a hard-to-manage war in Iraq, and is proposing to send additional combat brigades to deal with a growing insurgency in Afghanistan. And yet with all these sound reasons for avoiding war with Iran, the United States for five years has repeatedly threatened it with military attack. These threats have lately acquired a new edge.

President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are the primary authors of these threats, but others join them in proclaiming that “all options” must remain “on the table.” The option they wish to emphasize is the option of military attack. The presidential candidates in the middle of this campaign year agree that Iran is a major security threat to the United States. Senator Hillary Clinton in the last days of April threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran—presumably with nuclear weapons—if it attacked Israel. Senator Barack Obama dismissed Clinton’s threat as “bluster” in the familiar Bush style but agrees that Iran cannot be permitted to build nuclear weapons, and he too insists that a US attack on Iran is one of the options which must remain “on the table.” The presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, takes a position as unyielding as the President’s: Iran must abandon nuclear enrichment, stop “meddling” in Iraq with support for Shiite militias, and stop its sponsorship of “terrorism” carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Any of these threatening activities, in McCain’s view, might justify a showdown with Iran.

Continued . . .

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