IAN BUCKLEY.Historical Light on Current Aims to Attack Iran

Aug 23, 2018

This article highlights the vitally important role played by former US intelligence officers to prevent ongoing illegal regime changes across the world, presently Iran. Then, to better understand current examples, it explores their historical origins, consequences and possible remedies aimed at prevention.

Many will be heartened by the efforts of courageous highly-informed US citizens to save their country from yet another cruel war. Here I refer to ‘VIPS to Trump: Intel on Iran Could be CATASTROPHIC’ Memorandum to President Trump by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) published in Consortium News. The complete document is available here: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/08/01/vips-to-trump-intel-on-iran-could-be-catastrophic/   , it outlined with excerpts, followed by a brief history sketching the practice’s 500-year mutually-catastrophic effects.

August 1, 2018

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Intelligence on Iran Fails the Smell Test

Mr. President:

As the George W. Bush administration revved up to attack Iraq 15 years ago, we could see no compelling reason for war. We decided, though, to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on the chance he had been sandbagged by Vice President Dick Cheney and others.  We chose to allow for the possibility that he actually believed the “intelligence” that Colin Powell presented to the UN as providing “irrefutable and undeniable” proof of WMD in Iraq and a “sinister nexus” between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.”

Having spelt out the bogus nature of ‘evidence’ used in 2002 to ‘prove’ Iraq’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’ they outline the falsity of like claims about Iran’s alleged plans. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims about Iran: they are based on intelligence exposed as fraudulent several years ago.  Tellingly, Netanyahu waited for your new national security adviser to be in place for three weeks before performing his April 30 slide show alleging that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program.  On the chance that our analysis of Netanyahu’s show-and-tell failed to reach you, please know that the Israeli prime minister was recycling information from proven forgeries, which we reported in a Memorandum to you early last spring.”

Significantly, “In our May 7, 2018 Memorandum we also asserted: “We can prove that the actual documents originally came not from Iran but from Israel. Moreover, the documents were never authenticated by the CIA or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).”  And the fact that “There was a close brush with war with Iran a decade ago.  Bush and Cheney, in close consultation with Israel, were planning to attack Iran in 2008, their last year in office.  Fortunately, an honest National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 concluded that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003, and that key judgment was made public.  Abruptly, that NIE stuck an iron rod into the wheels of the juggernaut then speeding downhill to war.”…..”the Nov. 2007 NIE was was approved unanimously by all U.S. intelligence agencies.” Hence, eventually, how “George W. Bush, in his autobiography, Decision Points, recorded his chagrin at what he called the NIE’s “eye-popping” intelligence finding debunking the conventional wisdom that Iran was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.  Bush added plaintively, “How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

It ends, “Mr. President, we do not know whether a fresh National Intelligence Estimate has been produced on Iran and nuclear weapons — or, if one has been produced, whether it is as honest as the NIE of Nov. 2007, which helped prevent the launch of another unnecessary war the following year.  We stand on our record.  In sum, if you believe that there is credible evidence that Iran has an active secret nuclear weapons program, we believe you have been misled.  And if you base decisions on misleading “intelligence” on Iran, the inevitable result will be a great deal worse than the Bush/Cheney debacle in Iraq.

For the Steering Group

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

‘Regime Change’: Historical Roots and Logical Cure
In today’s nuclear world, either regime changes must go or we will. Following those like Jesus and Adam Smith this can be done, e.g., Smith condemning Europe’s leaders’ feudal-derived evils of cheating their citizens and plundering folks abroad, see  http://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/adamsmith.htm  (e.g., AS_WN, IV.7.166, under, Colonial Trade Competition…., p.19  ; Also, AS_WN.IV.7.38 ). Accordingly, needed is: treat one another equally via fair trade: no monopolies, scams, regime-change plunder or wars over the spoils. However, ignored, feudal practices continued into current times despite repeated depressions and mutually-destructive wars like WW1 and WW2.

Post-WW2 the nuclear-armed US took over as top power bent on resource ownership via regime changes. Recognising such, George F. Kennan warned “…this military-industrial establishment has become a veritable addiction of American society – an addiction from which American society could no longer free itself without the most severe withdrawal pains. Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial complex would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. …”. See Appendix 2, p.52-56 inhttp://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/pages/ian_buckley/Mercantile_Origins_of_the_Western_Worlds_Current_Crises.pdf  Likewise,US General Wesley Clark’s 2007 speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TY2DKzastu8

Plus, articles cited in http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/pages/ian_buckley/The_Wests_Long-failed_Economic_System_-_Where_to_from_Here.pdf  by Jeffrey Sachs’’ and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s, – all supporting Pope Francis’ Laudato Si,  re. intergenerational sustainability, ‘blood-drenched arms traders’ etc.’’

Finally we wish to express our gratitude to both Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and  Consortium News for making available VIPS’ timely Memorandum to President Trump.

Ian Buckley, former medical scientist who has a long-time interest in the origins of wars that have plagued evolving humanity since the attainment of settled agriculture.http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/members/Ian_Buckley.html

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