Enough Spin Already: Bush and Cheney Lied, Iran Didn't

Here's the New York Times frontpage left-hand hed from this morning: "Assessment Jars a Foreign Policy Debate About Iran." Assessment? Jars? Debate? Excuse me?

Here's Gramma Pelosi this morning: "The NIE illustrates the effectiveness of international monitoring and targeted sanctions to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Effectiveness? Targeted? Proliferation? Excuse me?

There were many other - oh I don't know what's a judicious word - deranged? duplicitous? drugged? - reactions this morning to yesterday's devastating NIE - even to my chagrin in these august columns - spinning as no big deal a watershed moment in the so far wretched history of the 21st century America. Not one of them seemed willing to grasp a very large nettle: the axis of evil that has this great nation in its paws, has been lying about Iran at least since August and probably far longer. Has been lying to us, to our allies, to the world. Again. And not just lying but striving with all their might to nuke - or allow an ally to nuke - innocent people who posed no threat to us.

Here are the salient points from the NIE:

We judge with high confidence that the halt (in trying to develop nuclear weapons, not producing them) has lasted at least several years. (Four to be exact, a lifetime in war and politics).

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon. (Or has ever had one).

We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015. (Which Bush - and for that matter Gates - flatly lied about this morning implying that the NIE said they could re-up anytime).

Let's be quite clear how far the men in the White House were willing to go. In the lethal linguistic fog these warmongers and the rightwing quislings who enable them, have plunged us, reasonable people seem to have lost sight of what we're talking about. Nuclear weapons aren't a bigger better version of Daisy Cutters. Nuclear weapons aren't just more bang for the buck. Nuclear weapons are the most cowardly killing devices ever devised by our benighted species. Nuclear weapons are instant genocide. Nuclear weapons are designed to murder as many unarmed noncombatants as possible, by the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Using nuclear weapons - even throwing around the threat to use them - was is and always should be unthinkable. Yet the monsters, yes monsters in the White House were willing to lie through their teeth - again - to get the chance to use them. On innocent people who posed no threat to us.

You say they didn't lie because they didn't have the current NIE? Bullshit. They said they knew that Iran had nuclear weapons, that Iran was about to start World War III. At the barest minimum they knew that was a lie. At the barest minimum they had no evidence to back that up - just as they had no evidence to back up their assertion that Saddam had nukes - yet they said that they did. They said they knew. That's called lying. And they were willing to murder on a monumental scale - again - based on those lies.

In reality - not the barest minimum - it's inconceivable that this intelligence has not been available to them since August, that some of it has not been known far longer. It's inconceivable that Israel which has the most reliable intelligence services in the Mid-East did not develop some intelligence in four long years, that Iran had no nuclear weapons and was no longer even trying to acquire them. It's inconceivable - surely - that if Israel had such intelligence, it would not pass it along. At some point in four long years. To someone in the US power structure.

Waking in New York this morning and reading the responses to this Force Nine news story, I felt as if I should try again to wake myself up. I don't mean that as a figure of speech: it was one of those experiences where you wake up in a dream and then try to really wake yourself up. Reading the New York Times was truly like being a character in a Kafka short story. For a while the world was making no sense. The acceptance of this shattering exposure of duplicity, appeared totally impossible for even well-informed, responsible journalists.

It's plausible that we've reached the point where we just cannot face that Americans, elected Americans, who talk in familiar accents, who grew up in familiar places, who wear familiar clothes and look not terribly unlike us, could be as evil as it increasingly appears George Bush and Richard Cheney really are. Americans simply aren't that evil, are they? They can't be. There must be some good intentions somewhere. But there aren't and there never have been.

And we cannot face the fact that the threat to our security and integrity as a people, is not in Tehran despite the blatherings of its ludicrous (and largely powerless) President, anymore than it was in Baghdad. Nor is it in the gullies, caves, hilltops and villages of the North-West Frontier. Threats from there - hot air and light weaponry - are nugatory compared to one we must now confront.

The threat to America is right here at home, sitting in two chairs in Washington right now, not faces on a screen, not characters in the tawdry television drama we call politics, but two actual human beings, their buttocks warming the leather of their seats, plotting how to cover up their crimes - the ones we don't know about yet - plotting how to avoid accountability for the crimes they can no longer conceal, plotting even now in the fading twilight of their reign of lies, theft and murder, how by any means necessary, they can get still their hands on most of the world's oil and pass the proceeds along to their cronies.

If you won't impeach now Gramma, you're on your way to being as guilty as they. Those who enable high crimes and misdemeanors - including never let us forget, treason - become as culpable as the perpetrators. If you don't impeach now, you will be an accomplice as will be all the others who stand with you - those who voted to declare the nuclear-free armed forces of a sovereign nation 'terrorists' for example, or one of your leading candidates for President who refused to take 'off the table' the 'option' of nuking innocent people who posed no threat to us, just so that she could look as tough as war-criminals.

Enough. This is the moment of enough. This is the moment where we lose or win back what was once and still can be again a great nation. Use the Constitution or lose the Constitution.

Comments

[3party]

At almost any other time in history, this column could be dismissed as hysteria and hyperbole. Not today. Today, what Tony says is absolutely right.

Impeachment is overdue, Gramma! Just because the right wing made a farce of their impeachment, that is no reason to shirk your constitutional obligation on this one. Is Tommy D'Alessandro's little girl going to stand up for what is right?

[3party]

Yes indeed. But why did we have to wait until now to identify the source of the danger?

It really is laughable that Bill Clinton was impeached (unless that cigar was Cuban, of course), while the truly evil bastards who hold the highest offices today carry on unimpeded with the highest of crimes on a daily basis.

[shelbinator]

Uh, Bush and Cheney lied, fine, but that doesn't mean Iran didn't, as your headline claims. Even an abandoned nuclear weapons research program would be a violation of their NPT obligations and they denied (and continue to deny) that such a program ever existed. Don't let your passion for domestic politics make you wax inaccurately about arms control treaties.

[texasborn]

"Use the Constitution or lose the Constitution." Exactly!! We may have already lost it and won't admit it. I see two solutions: 1) Impeachment and prosecution of ALL these scumbags, and 2) Ron Paul.

[mbaty]

Let's hope that this little piece of information stops the Bushites from their plan of bombing Iran. The fact is, they make too much money from war games. And they only have a little time left...so it's good that someone brought up this point, and we should be able to stop any kind of war on Iran. As much as the Dems have conceded, this is crucial: that we don't go to war with Iran; we cannot let that happen. Just like with Iraq, they only need an excuse. Let's hope the big excuse (nukes) is off the table.

[Galvestonians for Dr. Ron Paul]

I would invite all who read this, after you leave your comment to go to Rep. Conyers thread and leave a post on your feelings.
He is listening and all should write to him.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-conyers/setting-the-record-straig_b_75448.html

[DRaymond]

There are some things that I thought I would never say, and this is one of them...

The CIA has done a great service for world peace by telling everybody the truth.

[maizie]

Oh, and did you hear about Terry Hatcher being sued?

Fabulous post. But they have won. They have numbed our minds.

[digitboy]

The US Government is the axis of evil.

Bush, Cheney and the Democratic Congress that refuses to impeach them are the axis of evil.

They can all burn in hell.

[EndAllWars]

What a sad moment for this country.

I don't want to believe that we as a nation are complicit in the crimes of this administration by having reelected them when by 2004 we well knew they had lied us to war. We are complicit for having reelected people who we well knew were going to keep lying us into wars, and they almost did.

[BeyondFatalism]

LOL. I suppose next you're going to try and convince us that Sadaam Hussein didn't have WMD's and didn't plan 9/11?

How stupid do you think we are?

[DrColes]

Lets not lose sight. "Intelligence" is NOT fact it is a "guess" which in history has been wrong; and did it cost us, just look at WWII, Perl Harbor, just one example. Islamic Fascism declared war against the U.S. and all non-Islamic nations. The truth is the truth. Further, deception is a tenet of their religion to non-believers. Why would any free human want to suppress this? http://tinyurl.com/2znnvl

[ADR]

"...A new assessment by American intelligence agencies released Monday concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting a judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb. ..."

The fact still remains:

- Iran was developing nuclear weapons.
- They stopped in 2003. Hmmm... what happened in 2003, I wonder, that they felt they needed to stop?

Also, they haven't admitted that they were, in fact, trying to develop nuclear weapons before 2003. Why? Iran, if fact, is the liar in this case. And what is stopping Iran from continuing the program now?

Why are they enriching uranium when they just need it for peaceful power?

I certainly don't think we should attack Iran. However, you HuffPo libs shouldn't be so naive as to just let this issue go, either.

[JNV]

Carl Rove's lie about Congress' vote causing the Iraq invasion was made in the finest Goebbel's tradition. And like the fine German press, the U.S. media dutifully passed it on.

[fullkelly]

Just one more reason to fire GW. If Bush did not know what was in the last NIE he is at least negligent in his duties. If he DID know what the NIE contained then he has abused his powers of office.
So too have our elected DEM leaders been negligent in their official duties in allowing this madman to continue in his destructive policeis and actions. Both Bush and Pelosi should be removed from office.