Consider mistakes of Iraq before setting sights on Iran

Home News Tribune Online 02/1/07

HASSAN
MAHMOUD
Be Counted

It seems that the warmongering front is cracking. The hawkish Sen. John McCain has accused Vice President Dick Cheney of stirring a "witch's brew of a terribly mishandled war."

Many of the former staunch war supporters are distancing themselves from the president and rushing to support congressional resolutions condemning his plan to send more troops to Iraq.

The two main Iraq war proponents were Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Both surrounded themselves and staffed their offices with so-called war intellectuals (pro-Israel extremists), who schemed to destroy potential Israeli enemies, starting with Iraq, to be followed by Iran and Syria.

A gullible president blindly followed their guidance and plunged the country into unjustified war against the wrong enemy who had nothing to do with 9/11 and had no animosity toward the United States, which supported Saddam in his war against Iran. Rumsfeld visited Saddam in 1983 in a show of support. Sen. Bob Dole, after seeing Saddam, said that he was a leader we could do business with. We supplied him with components of the poisonous ammunition which he used against both Iranians and Kurdish populations.

While this war is destroying Iraq, Bush is neglecting rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina. The $500 billion wasted so far in this unending war would be enough to restore New Orleans, fix Social Security and create health-care insurance for the 40 million uninsured Americans.

We didn't have to send 3,100 of our brave sons and daughters to their deaths in a far away land. We didn't have to cause the loss of 665,000 Iraqi lives and turn 2 million Iraqis into refugees in neighboring countries and displace another 2 million inside their own country.

A latest poll in 25 countries done for the BBC World Service by Globe Scan and the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland showed that nearly 70 percent believe that the American military presence in the Middle East provoked more violence than it prevented.

Astonishingly, according to The New York Times on Jan. 19, Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said: "Toppling Saddam Hussein, despite the current violence within Iraq, removed an eastern front against the Israelis." Does securing the Israeli eastern front justify waging this catastrophic war?

We should be worried about a new adventure in Iran as the Israeli extremists and their supporters in the United States are beating the war drums against Iran for alleged development of nuclear weapons.

On Jan. 19, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sharply criticized the Bush administration's increasing combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003. It's Iraq again.

Last summer, Dick Cheney said that if Iran wouldn't stop its nuclear programs, Israel might take military action against it and let the world clean up the ensuing mess. It was a green light for Israel to act. Recent reports indicate that Israel is training pilots for a mission to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities.

"Be Counted" columnist Hassan Mahmoud is a resident of Westfield.