De Oorlogsstaat 74

De oud CIA-functionaris Ray McGovern schrijft: 'Next Victim: Iran or North Korea?

This may seem a bit quaint, perhaps even obsolete, but it used to be standard procedure to require intelligence before deciding to make war. Unless you have been asleep these past several months, you know that this sequence was reversed in 2002 when the White House ordered intelligence "fixed" to justify a prior decision for war on Iraq.
The question today is whether that war-decision-then-intelligence sequence remains in effect as President Bush's advisers weigh whom to attack next. This is hardly a frivolous question. As the president's poll numbers sink and the embarrassment of Iraq rises, Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and presidential adviser Karl Rove no doubt are trying to choose the best way to enable Bush to polish his favorite image as "war president" in order to stem Republican losses in the mid-term elections this November. There are only two countries left in the "axis of evil." Which will it be: Iran or North Korea?
Needed: Provocations
Earlier this year Iran seemed to have top billing. It has long been next in line as a target for the so-called "neo-conservatives" running US policy toward the Middle East. And Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was obliging with his provocative rhetoric against Israel, rhetoric that Bush was quick to use to assure the world that the US would spring to the defense of our "ally" Israel. Why the quotes around "ally?" Simple: The US has no defense treaty with Israel. This almost always comes as a big surprise to the audiences I address. Now I have come to expect it.
Few are aware that such a treaty was broached to Israel after the 1967 war. But a treaty would have required clearly-defined international borders, and Israel would have no part of that. It turns out that the Israeli government was correct in concluding it could have the best of both possible worlds. Who needs a treaty when the president of the United States keeps referring to a US commitment to spring to your defense? Iran, beware: President Bush believes, or would have Americans believe, that the American Gulliver is tightly bound to Israel and its policies, including its dictum that an Iranian nuclear weapon, or even Iranian knowledge regarding how to build one, is "unacceptable."
North Korea's "provocation" goes beyond rhetoric, as Pyongyang prepares to break its moratorium, observed since 1998, on testing its long-range ballistic missile. North Korea is now estimated to have enough plutonium for a handful of nuclear warheads, which could be mounted on Taepodong missiles. Some say a Taepodong might be able to reach Alaska, Hawaii or even the West Coast.
Well, just let them try. It was precisely against this threat that the Pentagon has invested $43 billion over the past five years, and eleven ground-based interceptors are now based in Alaska and California. Bring ‘em on.
Oops. They don't work? Who says? The Government Accounting Office, citing "quality control procedures" that have not been rigorous enough. The GAO has even considered sending the first nine interceptors back to Boeing for "disassembly and remanufacture." According to the GAO, the Pentagon has yet to prove that the full system works.' Lees verder:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062206R.shtml