PREPARATIONS FOR IRAN ESCALATE AS IRAQ IS PULVERIZED FURTHER
MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 16 March: Unable
to admit and accept gross mistakes and historic failure the American
modern-day Centurions are marching on determined to rule by brute force
if need be -- all thinly masked by a rhetorical 'democracy' smokescreen
on top of what much of the rest of the world sees as diabolitical
duplicitous imperialistic bloodthirsty cunning. Rather than
seriously reevaluate the reasons for today's increasingly desperate
situation the Americans are instead stepping up their brutalization of
Iraq while most of all preparing for Iran -- and by extension Lebanon
(Hezbollah) and Occupied Palestine (Hamas). Nothing
less than ongoing subjugation and control of the region through a
combination of military force, super technology, CIA ops, gigantic
money expenditures, hated Arab 'client regimes', and Israel of course
is currently underway more than ever -- all disguised from gullible
Americans with simplistic and to say the least dishonest 'democracy'
and 'freedom' rhetoric.
The
Pentagon's Top General, Peter Pace, went public the other evening
obliquely threatening Iran in public with overwhelming U.S. military
force. And the 'doctrine of preemption' is being dusted off and
re-assserted today in imperial Washington in order to provide the
justification for the under-preparation U.S./Israel/NATO strike on
Iran.
All this even as the largest air assault since the Iraqi invasion three
years ago is now underway in occupied under siege Iraq.
Largest Iraq Air Assault Since '03 Invasion Begins
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Associated Press - Mar 16 10:49 AM US/Eastern: U.S.
and Iraqi forces on Thursday launched what was termed the largest air
assault since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, targeting insurgent
strongholds north of the capital, the U.S. military said.
"More than 1,500 Iraqi and Coalition troops, over 200 tactical
vehicles, and more than 50 aircraft participated in the operation," the
military statement said of the attack, designed to "clear a suspected
insurgent operating area northeast of Samarra."
Samarra is 60 miles north of Baghdad. The military said the operation was expected to continue over several days against insurgent targets in Salahuddin province.
Bush Restates Terror Strategy
2002 Doctrine of Preemptive War Reaffirmed
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 16, 2006; 9:42 AM
President
Bush issued a new national security strategy today reaffirming his
doctrine of preemptive war against terrorists and hostile states with
chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, despite the troubled U.S.
experience in Iraq.
The long-overdue document, an articulation of
U.S. strategic priorities that is required by law, lays out a robust
view of America's power and an assertive view of its responsibility to
bring change around the world. On topics including genocide, human
trafficking and AIDS, the strategy describes itself as "idealistic
about goals and realistic about means."
The strategy expands on
the original security framework developed by the Bush administration in
September 2002, before the invasion of Iraq. That strategy shifted U.S.
foreign policy away from decades of deterrence and containment toward a
more aggressive stance of attacking enemies before they attack the
United States.
The preemption doctrine generated fierce debate at
the time, and many critics believe the failure to find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq fatally undermined an essential assumption of the
strategy -- that intelligence about an enemy's capabilities and
intentions can be sufficient to justify preventive war.
In his
revised version, Bush offers no second thoughts about the preemption
policy, saying it "remains the same" and defending it as necessary for
a country in the "early years of a long struggle" akin to the Cold War.
In a nod to critics in Europe, the document places a greater emphasis
on working with allies and declares diplomacy to be "our strong
preference" in tackling the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
"If
necessary, however, under long-standing principles of self defense, we
do not rule out use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty
remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack," the document
continues. "When the consequences of an attack with WMD are potentially
so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers
materialize."
Such language could be seen as provocative at a
time when the United States and its European allies have brought Iran
before the U.N. Security Council to answer allegations that it is
secretly developing nuclear weapons. At a news conference in January,
Bush described an Iran with nuclear arms as a "grave threat to the
security of the world."
In a letter introducing the new strategy
document, Bush also said, "We fight our enemies abroad instead of
waiting for them to arrive in our country. We seek to shape the world,
not merely be shaped by it; to influence events for the better instead
of being at their mercy."
Some security specialists criticized the continued commitment to preemption.
"Preemption
is and always will be a potentially useful tool, but it's not something
you want to trot out and throw in everybody's face," said Harlan
Ullman, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. "To have a strategy on preemption and make it central is a
huge error."
A military attack against Iran, for instance, could
be "foolish," Ullman said, and it would be better to seek other ways to
influence its behavior. "I think most states are deterrable."
Thomas
Donnelly, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who
has written on the 2002 strategy, said the 2003 invasion of Iraq in the
strict sense is not an example of preemptive war, because it was
preceded by 12 years of low-grade conflict and was essentially the
completion of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Still, he said, recent
problems there contain lessons for those who would advocate preemptive
war elsewhere. A military strike is not enough, he said; building a
sustainable, responsible state in place of a rogue nation is the real
challenge.
"We have to understand preemption -- it's not going to
be simply a preemptive strike," he said. "That's not the end of the
exercise but the beginning of the exercise."
The White House
officially released the 49-page National Security Strategy today ahead
of a speech by national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley to the U.S.
Institute of Peace. The White House gave advance copies to The
Washington Post and three other newspapers yesterday.
The
strategy has no legal force of its own but serves as a guidepost for
agencies and officials drawing up policies in a range of military,
diplomatic and other arenas. Although a 1986 law requires that the
strategy be revised annually, this is the first new version since 2002.
"I
don't think it's a change in strategy," Hadley said in an interview.
"It's an updating of where we are with the strategy, given the time
that's passed and the events that have occurred."
But the new
version of the strategy underscores in a more thematic way Bush's
desire to make the spread of democracy the fundamental underpinning of
U.S. foreign policy, as he expressed in his second inaugural address
last year. The opening words of the strategy, in fact, are lifted from
that speech: "It is the policy of the United States to seek and support
democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with
the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."
The strategy
commits the administration to speaking out against human rights abuses,
holding high-level meetings at the White House with reformers from
repressive nations, using foreign aid to support elections and civil
society, and applying sanctions against oppressive governments. It
makes special mention of religious intolerance, subjugation of women
and human trafficking.
At the same time, it acknowledges that
"elections alone are not enough" and sometimes lead to undesirable
results. "These principles are tested by the victory of Hamas
candidates in the recent elections in the Palestinian territories," the
strategy says, referring to the radical group designated as a terrorist
organization by the United States.
Without saying what action
would be taken against them, the strategy singles out seven nations as
prime examples of "despotic systems" -- North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba,
Belarus, Burma and Zimbabwe. Iran and North Korea receive particular
attention because of their nuclear programs, and the strategy vows in
both cases "to take all necessary measures" to protect the United
States against them.
"We may face no greater challenge from a
single country than from Iran," the document says, echoing a statement
made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week. It recommits to
efforts with European allies to pressure Tehran to give up any
aspirations of nuclear weapons, then adds ominously: "This diplomatic
effort must succeed if confrontation is to be avoided."
The
language about confrontation is not repeated with North Korea, which
says it already has nuclear bombs, an assertion believed by U.S.
intelligence. But Pyongyang is accused of a "bleak record of duplicity
and bad-faith negotiations," as well as of counterfeiting U.S.
currency, trafficking in drugs and starving its own people.
The
strategy offers a much more skeptical view of Russia than in 2002, when
the glow of Bush's friendship with President Vladimir Putin was still
bright.
"Recent trends regrettably point toward a diminishing
commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions," it says. "We will
work to try to persuade the Russian Government to move forward, not
backward, along freedom's path."
It also warns China that "it
must act as a responsible stakeholder that fulfills its obligations"
and guarantee political freedom as well as economic freedom. "Our
strategy," the document says, "seeks to encourage China to make the
right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other
possibilities."
To assuage allies antagonized by Bush's
go-it-alone style in his first term, the White House stresses alliance
and the use of what it calls "transformational diplomacy" to achieve
change. At the same time, it asserts that formal structures such as the
United Nations or NATO may at times be less effective than "coalitions
of the willing," or groups responding to particular situations, such as
the Asian tsunami of 2004.
Beyond the military response to
terrorism, the document emphasizes the need to fight the war of ideas
against Islamic radicals whose anti-American rhetoric has won wide
sympathy in parts of the world.
The strategy also addresses
topics largely left out of the 2002 version, including a section on
genocide and a new chapter on global threats such as avian influenza,
AIDS, environmental destruction and natural disasters. Critics have
accused the administration of not doing enough to stop genocide in the
Darfur region of Sudan, responding too slowly to the Asian tsunami and
disregarding global environmental threats such as climate change.