Lawrence Davidson of Westchester University has a new piece this morning entitled "Is the US Replaying Iraq in Iran?"
In this article, he makes some disturbing points about the similarities between the rhetoric coming out of Washington in 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq, and the rhetoric being used by the Obama administration now.
For example, the Bush accusations against Iraq were of WMD's that did not exist. The Obama accusations against Iran are of Nuclear weapons that do not exist.
He also offers the perhaps controversial assertion that-
The whole notion that Amadinejad wants to “wipe Israel off the map” is a Zionist propaganda story based on a mistranslated speech.
The article (linked above) is a bit wordy, yet still worth reading.
The other Iran-related news is the story in today's Telegraph on Khamenei's accusation that the USA and UK were behind the suicide bomb attacks on a mosque last week in southern Iran. Twenty-eight people died in that attack and several hundred were wounded. This is not the first bloody attack in Iran by a group called Jundullah, who claim to be fighting for the Sunni Baluchi, some of whom live in Iran, along the border with Pakistan. The rest of the Baluchis live just across the border in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
Now, growing up in the USA, we are accustomed to hearing our nation accused of everything from creating AIDS to assassinating Santa Claus, and we generally shrug off such accusations. In this particular case, unfortunately, it appears that Jundullah did in fact receive about 8 million dollars in aid from the USA under the Bush administration. We can certainly hope that Obama has not continued this unfortunate course, but how many other objectionable Bush-era policies has he left in place?
I find it continuously surprising that, despite a growing deficit in the trillions of dollars, the U.S. continues to hand out billions of dollars in foreign aid every year. The list of just who gets this 'christmas cash' seems to grow every year as well.
ReplyDeleteWith the U.S. economy in a depression (sure, they call it a recession, but the little people know better) which does not seem to have any end the policy of handing out money to others never changes.
What about the growing number of unemployed American citizens? Where is OUR handout? Sure, unemployment benefits have been extended (again), but only for those more recently out of work. What about people who haven't been able to find a job since before the turn of the century?
Current policy seems to be "fuck 'em" we have millions of illegal aliens doing those jobs for less. And don't even get me started on the 'guest worker' program...