Peace and Justice Post

CommonDreams.org
Published on Saturday, July 14, 2007
By Ralph Nader

Thursday, July 12, 2007’s Washington Post was another day of well-supported headlines chronicling the lawless, incompetent, wasteful, negligent, bumbling and multiple perils to our nation’s security and safety caused by the Bush-Cheney regime.

One headline reads: “U.S. Warns of Stronger Al-Qaeda.” The report by the Bush Administration’s National Counterterrorism Center was titled “Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West.” Safe havens are being established in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan.

In recent days, George W. Bush has told audiences of the growing menace of Al-Qaeda inside Iraq.

There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush’s invasion.

Five hundred billion dollars (and vast bloodshed) later and we are left with the Bush government’s own assessment of Al-Qaeda’s resurgence and spread!

Officials inside and retired generals, diplomats and intelligence specialists outside the Bush government have warned before and after the Iraq invasion of the disastrous consequences of this maneuver. Inside the Pentagon, the U.S. Army personnel, up to four-star Generals, have warned against the invasion but have been muzzled.

Bush’s own CIA director-Porter J. Goss-, General William Casey and others declared that the U.S. military presence was fueling the insurgency in Iraq and Goss added that our presence in Iraq is a magnet attracting more people from other countries to learn the skills of sabotage and terror.

Bush’s own counter-terrorism advisor in the White House, Richard Clarke, wrote in his book, Against All Enemies, that Osama bin Laden must be beseeching Bush to invade Iraq to inflame the Muslim world and generate new recruits.

Nothing-facts, judgment, the destruction of Iraq, the U.S. casualties, the massive drain on the taxpayers, the distraction from the needs of the American people affect this obsessively-compulsed duo in the White House.

Another headline in the Post that day was an assessment by Bush’s CIA chief, Michael V. Hayden that the U.S. installed Iraqi government was unable to govern and that the situation seems irreversible. He added that he could not “point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around.” Those words were conveyed to the Iraq study group on the same day (November 13, 2006) that the Group heard Mr. Bush give an upbeat assessment of that same government.

Bush has been chronically detached from the reality of his own advisors.

Also on page one was this stunner of a sting: “Undercover congressional investigators posing as West Virginia businessmen obtained a license with almost no scrutiny from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that enabled them to buy enough radioactive material from U.S. suppliers to build a “dirty bomb,” a new government [GAO] report says.”

How about that for the Bush’s agency that is supposed to keep the atom in safe hands!

Inside on the Business Page is “Armored Vehicles Chronically Late.” This latest chapter in the Bush’s management by criminal negligence leaving soldiers without adequate body armor for many, many months of preventable fatalities.

The reporter, Renae Merle, writes: “The Pentagon inspector general’s office has found that a program to deliver special armored vehicles to protect military personnel in Iraq from roadside bombs has been marred by delays and questionable contracting practices that may have endangered troops.” “May have”? When such vehicles are not shipped out, soldiers lose their lives and limbs.

If George W. Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara were on those Iraqi roads, wanna bet how fast Laura Bush would get George to focus?

Day after day in the papers and on the television news, the endemic mismanagement of corrupt corporate contracts, flouting of civil liberties, due process of law and inability to get anything done, even in widespread post-Katrina emergencies, produces no accountability, no compelling changes from the Congress, no impeachment proceedings.

Poll after poll shows Bush-Cheney approval ratings below thirty percent. About 70 percent of the people want out of Iraq. And many polls show the public wants the Bush regime to end, believes that Bush does not care for the people like themselves, and that corporations have too much control over their lives.

And not only conservatives are appalled by the gigantic deficits Bush is piling up for future generations of Americans.

This government leaves Americans defenseless when it comes to occupational diseases, medical malpractice, air and water pollution. Bush can’t even police defective or contaminated products pouring into this country from communist China.

Because it has no quorum, his Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is just about powerless to impose civil penalties or otherwise regulate or recall defective products, domestic or imported.

As reported in the useful Loyola Consumer Law Review, Bush has not filled the third Commissioner’s position for over a year which prevents the CPSC from exercising its authority over dangerous products. The agency is in limbo, while injuries mount.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book is The Seventeen Traditions.

Counterpunch.org, July 16, 2007

Impeach Now

Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy

BY PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of “executive orders” that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, “terrorist” events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.

Full article

Source: Huntington Post,

By Dave Johnson

Posted July 16, 2007

People say we should not impeach Bush because it will divert us from getting out of Iraq. I think that approach has things backwards. I think we can’t deal with the problems of Iraq until we deal with getting Bush out. With Bush in place we can’t have a rational debate about the best options for Iraq.

1) I believe that it’s wrong to just pull our forces out of Iraq. We invaded, we destabilized and we destroyed the existing institutions of order. We created the mess there. We created the civil war. We created the threat of regional conflict. So I think it is America’s legal and moral responsibility to provide security for the people of Iraq. And that’s also what international law says. Of course, providing security for the people of Iraq is not going to happen with Bush in office.

(Someone told me this idea is like being raped and then getting a ride to the hospital from the rapist. I can understand the sentiment, but the U.S. is not a person and Iraq is not a person. We and they are a bunch of people all with their own differing needs and interests. Countries have to deal with where things are on a given day, before they deal with where things were on a previous day. In other words, Bush did what he did — but where do we go from here that is best for us and best for them NOW?)

2) It is wrong to blame the Iraqis for what we have done and it would be wrong to abandon them to the mess we made. But the way our forces are being used by Bush just makes things worse. This must change but it will not change with Bush in charge of policy decisions.

3) Suppose we do vote to withdraw with Bush in office? How do you think a Bush administration will execute that withdrawal? Will they do it in a way that makes things better — or much worse? And will they just refuse, necessitating the impeachment I say has to happen first? In other words, we can’t deal with Iraq until we deal with Bush.

4) There is also a national security component. The current situation in Iraq really is making us less safe here. Leaving might only make that worse. This needs to be debated rationally – impossible with Bush in office spouting his focus-group-tested bullshit, designed to put up a smokescreen and distract us from reality.

5) Bush’s propaganda is causing us to doubt terror warnings that may be real. What if our intelligence agencies discovered that al Queda really is getting ready to use a nuke on an American city, for example? We simply can not trust our government right now to tell us the truth. The threat of a terrorist attack is too serious to allow this incompetent, lying gang of criminals to remain in office even one day longer than it takes to get them out.

6) Similarly, Bush’s lies about Iraq have forced us to doubt the claims about threats presented by Iran. But Iran is not Iraq, and their theocratic rulers are not our friends. We need to be able to trust what is being said to us and we can’t with Bush in office.

So I think that the right path lies in a different direction from working to get the troops out. Options beyond the simplistic choice of doing what we are doing now or just leaving need to be discussed. But we are not going to be able to do what is right until we change the national leadership here. We are not even going to be able to properly debate the issues.

Finding the answers to the problems of Iraq begins with solving the problem of Bush.

Source: CommonDreams.org, July 15, 2007

By Cindy Sheehan

Journey For Humanity and Accountability

Today our Journey took us to Ft. Benning, Ga, where the cancer of the School of Americas (WINSEC) is housed. I have written on torture before and I believe that BushCo’s policy of imprisoning people without their basic due process and torturing them is one of the grossest breeches of international and American law and one of the overriding reasons that they should be impeached.

The School of Torture has graduated many egregious violators of human rights like Panamanian drug lord, U.S. CIA employee, and Bush family friend (until he became an enemy), Manuel Noriega. If there is one issue that should unite Americans it should be against torture. Incredibly, we still have neighbors in our communities who believe that torture is correct, humane and valuable. However to say torture is “wrong” is like saying the sky is blue. Torture is inherently wrong. Torture is pure evil. Torture is an abomination. Torture is disordered and demented. Torture is sick, sick, sick!

Most significantly the people who are being tortured in such prison camps as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib were mostly sold to the US Army by bounty hunters and the Northern Aliance. Criminal charges against the prisoners are as rare as the truth in the Bush Regime. Most reasonable people would agree that information gleaned from such awfully brutal means (water-boarding, stress positions, extreme noise and temperatures, sodomy and other sexual humiliation, electrodes on genitalia, etc) is never reliable. I can’t even fathom the sick, sadistic minds of the Bush Regime who not only have authorized and institutionalized this behavior but also refuse to end it and close the camps that have undermined any moral authority the US may have had.

Torture not only dehumanizes the tortured, but the torturer. It hurts my heart deeply to think of our young soldiers carrying out such ruthless acts on other humans who for the most part were in the wrong place at the wrong time and do not know where Osama bin Laden is hiding. Torture only compromises our soldiers’ lives in the field as the US cannot credibly claim any kind of moral high ground if one of our soldiers is tragically captured. The abomination of Abu Ghraib is one of the reasons that the insurgency began on the day Casey was killed in Sadr City, Baghdad. I personally know three men who were illegally and wrongly imprisoned in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib who can testify to the fact that, yes, America does torture and does so with extreme, callous and cold-hearted cruelty.

The Geneva Conventions are clear on prohibiting the use of torture and the 8th Amendment to our own Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. When torture is official policy, where will it end? When George can pick and choose who receives the centuries old right to habeas corpus and who doesn’t, where will it end? Will it end with the “terrorists” in Guantanamo or will it be used here in the USA against those who stand up against tyranny and struggle for our Constitution, freedoms, peace and human rights?

Torture has tarnished the soul of our nation and Congress has done little to restrain BushCo’s Torquemadas and even when a bill is passed restricting the use of torture, George adds a signing statement saying that he is above the law. BushCo is no better than a crime cabal and they must be Consitutionally controlled.

Apparently impeachment is the only remedy for torture and will go a long way to elevating our country’s standing in the international community and to healing our broken nation. Impeachment is not an optional menu item that can be set on a table but a Constitutionally mandated requirement (See section II, Article IV).

Put it back on the table, Ms. Pelosi. We have over a million signatures on petitions demanding that Congress end the misery of our nation and world by impeaching George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Action items: Go to: www.impeachbush.org to sign the petition to impeach Bush.

Go to: www.thecampcaseyinstitute.org for more info on our Journey for Humanity and Accountability or to donate to defray our expenses.

Call Nancy Pelosi’s office (202-225-4965) to tell her to green light impeachment.

Join us in our walk from Arlington Cemetery to Congressman John Conyer’s office for a sit-in for impeachment on July 23rd or organize sit-ins in your Congress Rep’s local office.

Go to Amnesty International to learn more about the issue of torture.

Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is a co-founder and President of Gold Star Families for Peace and the author of two books: Not One More Mother’s Child and Dear President Bush.

Human Rights News

Government Should Open Central Highlands to Independent Observers

(Jakarta, July 5, 2007) – In the Central Highlands of remote Papua province, a region closed to outside observers, police appear to be routinely committing serious abuses, such as extrajudicial executions, torture and rape, with impunity, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Endemic police abuse is deepening mistrust of the national government in Jakarta and potentially inflaming separatist tensions.

The 81-page report, “Out of Sight: Endemic Abuse and Impunity in Papua’s Central Highlands,” is the product of more than a year of research. The report documents daily abuses by police officers and other security forces in the mountainous and isolated Central Highlands area of the Indonesian province of Papua, located on the western half of the island of New Guinea.

A key finding of the report is that the police, particularly BRIMOB officers (Mobile Brigade police, the elite paramilitary corps used for emergencies), are responsible for the most serious rights violations in the region today, although some reports of brutal treatment by Indonesian soldiers continue to emerge.

“Conditions in Papua’s Central Highlands are an important test of how Indonesia’s security forces perform when political tensions are high and regions are closed to outside observers,” said Joseph Saunders, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. “The police are failing that test badly.”

The new report follows Human Rights Watch’s report in February, “Protest and Punishment: Political Prisoners in Papua,” which documented severe restrictions on freedom of expression, assembly and association in Papua.

Many of the police abuses documented in the report were particularly cruel. One man told Human Rights Watch what happened when 12 BRIMOB officers arrested him and some friends for a peaceful independence flag raising:

My teeth fell out. Blood flowed out. I was hit. I was kicked twice and then in the stomach twice again. I was kicked in the nose, the mouth and the teeth. More kicks were ordered and this was repeated. I could not count the number of times. I saw all my friends given the same treatment. Blood was flowing from them and they were forbidden from going to the toilet. They ordered us to swallow our blood. My nose was bleeding. They ordered us to swallow the blood again. I do not know the name of the officer in command. They all punched us, taking turns.

Another man reported being beaten by the police while witnessing the arrest of another person:

I was beaten with the end of a gun on my back, and with fists to my face. My mouth and eyes were smashed and bleeding. I felt dizzy and fell. Straight away I was kicked by five members of the police and BRIMOB. They were all wearing complete official uniforms with guns … I was barely conscious when five members of the police took me into the car. As they were taking me, they punched me to the back three times with rifle butts and then in the car I was beaten with a truncheon.

Human Rights Watch wrote to both the head of the police and the head of the military in Papua asking for information on all of the cases documented in the report, but received no response.

A lack of internal accountability and a poorly functioning justice system mean impunity for perpetrators of abuses is the norm in Papua.

“No one is being prosecuted for the crimes we documented,” said Saunders. “The police are acting as a law unto themselves.”

The Indonesian provinces of Papua and West Papua are closed to outside human rights observers. Journalists have extremely limited access. Many diplomats have told Human Rights Watch that they have little understanding of the situation in the provinces since there is not much independent reporting on conditions there. Reliable information on the remote Central Highlands region is even harder to come by.

Human Rights Watch called on the Indonesian government to open the provinces to independent observers in order to increase the amount and quality of information about conditions there and to allow independent and transparent investigations to take place.

“By keeping the region closed to outside scrutiny, officials in Jakarta are receiving biased and partial accounts of what is taking place,” said Saunders. “Reliable information is essential if officials are genuinely interested in identifying problems and finding lasting solutions.”

For years, the Central Highlands region has been the site of often tense confrontations between Indonesian police and military units and small cells of guerrillas from the separatist Free Papua Movement (Organisasi Papua Merdeka, or OPM). The pro-independence guerrillas have conducted repeated low-level armed attacks against Indonesian security forces, which continue to conduct “sweeping” operations in civilian areas, spreading fear and panic and leading many villagers to flee their homes.

Source: WSWS, July 14, 2007

Amnesty International report on Turkey: failure to punish perpetrators of torture

By a correspondent

A new report published by Amnesty International on July 5, entitled “Turkey: The entrenched culture of impunity must end,” clearly demonstrates that torture, ill-treatment and killings continue to be practiced with impunity by the security forces in Turkey.

The report points out that “the investigation and prosecution of serious human rights violations” committed by the Turkish police and gendarmerie are “flawed and compounded by inconsistent decisions by prosecutors and judges.”

The human rights group called on Turkey to overhaul its justice system. It pointed to the “absence of an independent body which can impartially and effectively investigate human rights violations by state officials and the lack of centralised data collection of human rights violations committed by the security forces.”

The Turkish judiciary and police have been dominated by far-right elements, fascists and Islamists, especially since the September 1980 military coup. The judiciary has become more overtly conservative and reactionary, particularly in cases involving human and minority rights issues. Justice for the victims of human rights violations is often delayed or denied.

Full article

Counterpunch.org

Bastille Day Weekend Edition, July 14 / 15, 2007

 America Leads the Way

The Illegalities of the Iraq War

BY ROBERT FANTINA

In the four years since the United States and its so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq, only one stated goal has been accomplished: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Peace and democracy are simply pipe dreams, the continued fantasies of a deluded U.S. president and his gaggle of yes-men who all choose to remain oblivious to Iraq’s bloody civil war.

In its perpetration of unspeakable terror upon the people of Iraq, the United States and its willing and/or coerced cohorts have violated international law at almost every turn. A few shocking examples are instructive.

In March of 2003, British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith responded to then Prime Minister Tony Blair’s request for input on the legality of the ‘coalition’s’ pending invasion. The U.S. had said that Iraq was in violation of Security Council Resolution 687, passed in 1991. The United Kingdom, Mr. Goldsmith said, believed that this determination could only be made by the U.N Security Council. He commented: “The US have a rather different view: they maintain that the fact of whether Iraq is in breach is a matter of objective fact which may therefore be assessed by individual Member States. I am not aware of any other state which supports this view.”

One can readily deduce from this brief statement that Mr. Blair joined President Bush in his frenzied rush to war despite serious reservations that Mr. Goldsmith had about its legality, and which were made known to Mr. Blair prior to the invasion. Yet the then British Prime Minister, not called the Yankee Poodle for nothing, was willing to ignore the counsel of his own Attorney General and put his reputation, and the lives of thousands of young Britons, on the line as he happily jumped through the hoops Mr. Bush held for him.

Full article

Telegraph.co.uk, July 15, 2007

Bush like Hitler, says first Muslim in Congress

By Toby Harnden in Washington

	Keith Ellison, a convert to Islam, has cultivated a moderate image since being elected last November

America’s first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks.

Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler’s later seizure of emergency powers.

“It’s almost like the Reichstag fire, kind of reminds me of that,” Mr Ellison said. “After the Reichstag was burned, they blamed the Communists for it, and it put the leader [Hitler] of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted.”

To applause from his audience of 300 members of Atheists for Human Rights, Mr Ellison said he would not accuse the Bush administration of planning 9/11 because “you know, that’s how they put you in the nut-ball box – dismiss you”.

Vice-President Dick Cheney’s stance of refusing to answer some questions from Congress was “the very definition of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and dictatorship”, he added.

Mr Ellison also raised eyebrows by telling his audience: “You’ll always find this Muslim standing up for your right to be atheists all you want.”

A convert to Islam who was previously linked to the extremist Nation of Islam, Mr Ellison, 42, has cultivated a moderate image since being elected last November, concentrating on issues such as health and education.

He is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq. But he angered his own anti-war supporters by voting for a budget bill that aims to end the war over the next 18 months. His followers want an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

After his speech was reported, Mr Ellison said he accepted that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 9/11. But his demagogic comments threaten to plunge him in controversy.

Mark Drake, of the Republican party in Minnesota, said: “To compare the democratically elected leader of the United States of America to Hitler is an absolute moral outrage which trivialises the horrors of Nazi Germany.”

Source: Huffington Post, July 14, 2007

By RJ Eskow

This week Joe Lieberman reprised a role he played so well in 2002. He paved the way for another needless and tragic war by outmaneuvering his Democratic colleagues on the Senate floor. This time he forced them to pass an amendment that seems reasonable on the surface, but which lays the groundwork a a new attack that could turn pro-Western Iranians into anti-American terrorists. It passed just as a new poll confirms that the Iranian leadership’s policies are wildly unpopular with their own people.

Lieberman’s 2002 “Rose Garden” appearance with Bush – where he endorsed the authorization for war in Iraq without further changes – destroyed ongoing negotiations to limit the President’s war options that were taking place between Democrats like John Kerry and Republicans like Richard Lugar. (Kerry described that move – a betrayal of genuine bipartisanship – in our 2006 conversation.) Now he’s done it again.

The Lieberman amendment sets the nation up for a Gulf of Tonkin moment – one that can be used to justify military strikes against Iran, with the President reassuring the nation that he has bipartisan support. It was worded in such a way that voting against it would have been political suicide for Senators.

Does that scenario sound familiar?

The amendment sounds reasonable enough on its face. (Text is here.) It asks for bimonthly reports from the military regarding “external support or direction provided to anti-coalition forces by the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran or its agents … the strategy and ambitions in Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran; and …. any counter-strategy or efforts by the United States Government to counter the activities of agents of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Iraq.”

It was a shrewdly worded document. Any Democrat who voted against it would have opened him- or herself up to accusations that of being afraid to face the facts about Iranian involvement in Iraq. And we know that Iran is involved in Iraq in certain ways. After all, it’s been invited there – by the very government our troops are sacrificing themselves to defend. In fact, the Iraqi government is so close to its Shi’ite neighbor that it quickly invited it to open an embassy in Baghdad.

Predictably, the Lieberman measure passed 97-0. But it’s not the reporting requirements themselves that are dangerous – it’s the amendment’s language. It lists a hodgepodge of undocumented and inflammatory accusations before stating that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable and unacceptable act of hostility against the United States by the foreign government in question.” These are words that invite an act of war against Iran, even in the absence of clear evidence of involvement.

The amendment doesn’t just ask for intelligence on Iranian activity. It requires ongoing reports on proactive U.S. efforts against alleged Iranian efforts, placing political pressure on our military to become more active against Iran. Word in Washington is that top military leaders are resisting an attack on Iran, saying we lack the resources. This is a great way to lean on the generals to change their minds.

Meanwhile, a poll of Iranians released by a bipartisan anti-terror group, Terror Free Tomorrow, shows results that will startle casual observers (but not those who follow the Middle East closely). As Director Ken Ballen writes, “80% of Iranians favor Iran offering full international nuclear inspections and a guarantee not to develop or possess nuclear weapons in return for outside aid. Moreover, close to 70% of Iranians also favor normal relations and trade with the U.S.”

“More telling,” Ballen adds, “over 79% of Iranians support a democratic system instead, in which the supreme leader, along with all leaders, can be chosen and replaced by a free and direct vote of the people.”

Terror Free Tomorrow’s only agenda is reducing worldwide terrorism, and the message is clear: An attack on Iran would turn its essentially pro-Western population against us, creating yet another breeding ground for anti-American terrorists. Diplomacy, not war, is the right move now – to avoid war, to promote regime change, and to prevent the further spread of terrorism. Yet war has become more likely, and diplomacy even more improbable, because the Senate was outmaneuvered yet again by Lieberman and his Administration allies.

As in the Soviet sphere, diplomacy does more than just reduce threats to world peace – although it certainly does that. It can also lead to regime change more effectively than violence does. That’s why detente led to the fall of Communism. That’s the lesson of recent history, and the lesson of the last five years is even more stark: Attacking a nation without just cause radicalizes its own people and destabilizes the region. Worldwide terrorism is up dramatically in the last five years, and the original Al Qaeda has become stronger since we invaded Iraq.

It’s time to paraphrase George Santayana: “Those who would ignore current events are doomed to repeat them.” It’s not too late to prevent a disastrous attack on Iran, but time is growing short. And current events may repeat themselves very soon.

RJ Eskow is a writer, business person, and songwriter/musician.

Source: Dissident Voice

By Pham Binh / July 14th, 2007

That’s right. Senate – Democrats – Voted – For – War – With – Iran!

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 97-0 for an amendment written by Joe Bomb Iran Lieberman, whose position on Iran is identical to Dick Cheney’s.

The amendment repeats the flimsy charges made by the Cheney administration earlier this year that the Iranian government is arming Iraq’s Shia militias with explosively-formed projectile explosives that have killed almost 200 American troops and that Shia Iran is giving a safe haven to Sunni extremist Al-Qaeda (even though AQ is blowing up Iraqi Shias left and right). These are the same charges that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Statt, Peter Pace, distanced himself from, claiming that the evidence did not support the contention that Iran’s government either supplied or was complicit in the supply of these weapons to militias in Iraq. (Pace’s will not be renominated for the position, by the way.)

The amendment states that “the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act against the United States,” and demands the government of Iran “take immediate action” to end all forms of support it is providing to Iraqi militias. It also mandates a regular report on Iran’s anti-US activity in Iraq .

Senior Democrat Carl Levin successfully inserted a small change to Lieberman’s text stating that, “Nothing in this section shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to the use of Armed Forces against Iran.” If you’re thinking, “phew! That’ll stop a war on Iran!” think again. The Iraq Liberation Act passed by Congress in 1998 and signed by Bill Clinton had the same text. And we all know the story of how that text stopped the invasion of Iraq .

Charging Iran with killing US troops has nothing to do with the facts. It’s about beating the war drums and trying to convince Americans that in order to “protect our troops” the US must bomb Iran.

The unanimity of the vote is alarming. Hillary and Obama voted for it. Only three sat out on the vote, including Senator Vitt who can’t be bothered to Iran-bash in the middle of his Religious Right-family-values-meets-hookers-and-diapers political meltdown.

During the Vietnam war, it was obvious that the Vietnamese were killing American soldiers with bullets and bombs with “from Russia with love” or “made in China” written all over them. These weapons were delivered by the boatload by Chinese and Russian ships sent their by their respective governments. Yet no one in Congress declared that this was “murder” by “foreign governments and their agents” and even Nixon, rabid anti-Communist that he was, never threatened Russia or China if they failed to “take immediate action” to halt these shipments.

Then again, those governments had armies and nukes powerful enough to do real damage if the US was stupid enough to attack them. These days, the US picks fights with tin pot dictators of impoverished Third World nations (Noriega, Hussein, Milosevic, the Taliban, Kim Jong-Il, Ahmadinejad) while screaming they are “the next Hitler.”

If the war on Iraq was a cakewalk, an attack on Iran would be. It’s got a bigger population, a bigger economy, a fairly strong military, and they’ve probably studied how Hezbollah fought the Israelis to a stalemate last year. The US Navy is so cramped for room to manuever its 130 or so ships in the Persian Gulf that they regularly radio the Iranian navy to notify them about impending ship movements, imagine how it will be once that third aircraft carrier arrives and if Iran fires thousands of missiles at these ships to overwhelm their hi-tech defenses. Plus, Iraq’s Shia won’t take kindly to the mass slaughter of their brethren next door by the same nation that refuses to leave Iraq and funds Israel’s slow motion genocide of the Palestinians.

Make no mistake. The US is on a collision course with Iran. Both Democrats and Republicans are hell-bent on rolling back Iran’s growing power and influence on the region, even if it means a war that will cost thousands or tens of thousands of lives. The vote on Wednesday is just more proof of that.

Pham Binh is an activist and recent graduate of Hunter College in NYC. His articles have been published at ZNet, Asia Times Online, Dissident Voice, and Monthly Review Online. He can be reached at anita_job@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Pham, or visit Pham’s website.