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Surely you already knew – without reading Scott McClellan's mea culpa – that the Cheney Cabal came to power in January, 2001, determined to firmly establish by any means an American Hegemony, removing or destroying any opposition regimes.
But, how to rationalize to you the absolute necessity for "removing" those pesky regimes? And how to justify to you the use of nukes – if “necessary” – to effect those removals?
Well, within days of the spectacularly successful second attack by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center Towers, the Cheney Cabal had formulated their game plan.
And in his first State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush, already the self-anointed Commander-in-Chief of the War on Terror, outlined it.
After singling out the pesky regimes then in place in North Korea, Iran and Iraq, Bush declared that –
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States.
"In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."
For reasons perhaps known only to Bush, himself, within hours of the Twin Towers coming down, he had directed that plans be drawn up to invade and occupy Iraq.
In August 2003, Walter Pincus and Barton Gellman at the Washington Post revealed to you that the White House Iraq Group had been established by President Bush's chief of staff in August 2002, to essentially "market" to you gullible consumers what was – as we now know, thanks to the Downing Street Memos – Bush's impending war of aggression against Iraq.
WHIG – which met weekly in the White House Situation Room – included the president's political adviser Karl Rove, National Security Adviser Condi Rice, her deputy Stephen Hadley, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, and various congressional-relations and media-relations flacks.
The rationale for the upcoming invasion and occupation of Iraq was to be the (known to be non-existent) threat to you and yours of "mushroom clouds."
Known to be non-existent?
You better believe.
punditman says...As in the case of the lead-up to the war on Iraq, Iran now is being asked to prove a negative. From the above link, we read:
In the case of Iran, Director-General ElBaradei has consistently reported to the IAEA Board that he can find "no indication" that any NPT-proscribed materials have ever been "diverted" to any purpose, military or otherwise.
Therefore, the IAEA Board is acting corruptly, contrary to its own Statute, when it repeatedly requires Iran to essentially "prove" to ElBaradei that it does not have a nuclear weapons program, never had a nuclear weapons program, and does not intend to ever have a nuclear weapons program.
Similarly, the Security Council is acting corruptly, contrary to the UN Charter, when it imposes Article 41 sanctions on Iran without ever making a determination under Article 39 that Iran's IAEA Safeguarded uranium-enrichment program constitutes a "threat to the peace"!
