Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
April 14, 2010
Tea Party Sarah’s favorite senator, John McCain, wants to “pull the trigger” on Iran.
From CBS and AP today:
Senator John McCain said the United States has been backing away from a brewing fight with Iran, while that country moves ever closer to having nuclear weapons.
McCain opened a Senate hearing Wednesday by saying that Iran will get the bomb unless the United States acts more boldly.
Speaking figuratively, the Arizona Republican says the U.S. keeps pointing a loaded gun at Iran but failing to “pull the trigger.”
McCain, like the vast majority of the district of criminals crowd, does not bother to back up his accusations about Iran with any facts.
Last year U.S. National inteiligence director Dennis Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said Iran has only low-enriched uranium which would need to be refined into highly enriched uranium before it can cobble together a crude nuke.
“It’ll take them 10 to 20 years — at least — to put in 50,000 centrifuges. They don’t even know how to put 100 together and operate them successfully, let alone build that number,” explained David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
In 2007, International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors confirmed through firsthand observation that Iran has over 1,300 centrifuges in operation, nowhere near enough to enrich uranium for a bomb.
Nuclear analysts said Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions at that time. “The Islamic state still lacked the parts and materials to make droves of the highly complex machines, which can spin uranium into fuel rich enough for use in nuclear reactors or atom bombs,” the New York Times reported in April, 2006.
“Iran unveiled a third generation of domestically built centrifuges Friday as the Islamic Republic accelerates a uranium enrichment program that has alarmed world powers fearful of the nuclear program’s aims,” the Associated Press reported earlier this month.
But even with the new technology, Iran will only be able to enrich uranium to 20%. Weapons grade uranium requires 85% enrichment.
“Iran doesn’t have a nuke and is nowhere close to getting one, according to the CIA,” Ron Paul wrote in 2006 as neocons arrayed around the Bush administration began beating the war drums. “If they did have one, using it would guarantee almost instantaneous annihilation by Israel and the United States. Hysterical fear of Iran is way out of proportion to reality.”
During the lugubrious Bush years the neocons pummelled the war drums and demanded Iran be shock and awed in much the same way Iraq was in early 2003. Obama and his coterie of neolibs seem headed in the same direction, albeit with the sort of vacillation Democrats are known for. The neocon invasion and occupation of Iraq has so far resulted in the murder of well over a million Iraqis.
Early on in his presidential campaign, McCain modified a Beach Boys song. “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann during a stop on his “Straight Talk” tour at Murrells Inlet VFW Hall in South Carolina in 2007.
“Iran is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. That alone should concern us but now they are trying for nuclear capabilities. I totally support the President when he says we will not allow Iran to destroy Israel,” he said with the sort of hysterical irrationality mentioned by Paul in the above quote.
Iran has never indicated it plans to attack Israel. In 2006, the Israeli intelligence and anti-Arab and Muslim propaganda front organization MEMRI released a mistranslated speech by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claiming Iran planned to wipe Israel off the map.
Iran said Israel — and more specifically political Zionism — will eventually disappear in the vapor of time. History demonstrates repeatedly that many colonial ventures indeed ultimately fade away.
In 1997, Israel had 400 deliverable thermonuclear weapons, according to research conducted by the USAF Counterproliferation Center at the Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. The number is likely higher today.
Iran has zero nuclear weapons, deliverable or otherwise.
The darling of the Republican Tea Party, Sarah Palin, has suggested bombing Iran is a possibility. Palin said in an interview with Fox News in February that Obama should play the war card if he wants to get re-elected in 2012.
For some reason the corporate media keeps referring to her as somebody who embraces the original Libertarian principles of the Tea Party. Generally speaking, Libertarians follow the advice of George Washington — beware of foreign entanglements.
