From the master, Joseph Heller, comes a passage about a WWII bombardier who has been pushed past the limit and is refusing to fly more missions for his selfish commanding officers, who’ve been, for their own advancement, demanding more missions than they have a right to:

“Won’t you fight for your country?” Colonel Cheney Korn demanded, emulating Colonel Cathcart’s harsh, self-righteous tone. “Won’t you give your life for Colonel Bush Cathcart and me?”

Yossarian tensed with alert astonishment when he heard Colonel Korn’s concluding words. “What’s that?” he exclaimed. “What have you and

Colonel Cathcart got to do with my country? You’re not the same.”

“How can you separate us?” Colonel Korn inquired with ironical tranquility.

“That’s right,” Colonel Cathcart cried emphatically. “You’re either for us or against us.  There’s no two ways about it.”

“I’m afraid he’s got you,” added Colonel Korn. “You’re either for us or against your country.  It’s as simple as that.”

“Oh, no, Colonel.  I don’t buy that.”

Colonel Korn was unruffled. “Neither do I, frankly, but everyone else will.  So there you are.”

Catch-22, p.433

I couldn’t help thinking of this passage when Scott Ritter began his talk at the Ethical Society Friday night by reminding us that just such a technique was the heart of the Bush/Cheney plan to neutralize any opposition to their war fever when we attacked Iraq. Any dissent automatically made one unpatriotic.

The other propaganda ploy they used was painting all Muslims with the same brush. We were shown a dark skinned man with bushy eyebrows and a hooked nose and told to fear him: whether it was bin Laden, Saddam Hussein … or Ahmedinejad. Bush/Cheney/Colonel Korn used American fears to meld all Muslim men with 9/ll, ignoring the distinctions between Sunnis and Shias and counting on the ignorance of most citizens in that regard. Our neoconservative neomilitarist leaders counted on us not to know that our attackers on 9/11 were all Sunnis and that Iraq and Iran, being predominantly Shiite, would hate al-Qaeda.

Few Americans know that Iran was the first Muslim nation to condemn the 9/11 attacks. Few know that Iran, because it hated al-Qaeda for killing Iranian diplomats and their families in Afghanistan, offered not only approval of our invasion of that country, but also “search-and-rescue help, humanitarian assistance, and even advice on which targets to bomb in Afghanistan.”

Furthermore, in May of ’03, Iran offered normalization of relationships  between themselves and the U.S., proposing talks about their weapons program and their support of Hamas and Hezbollah  as well as volunteering to help stabilize Iraq. In exchange they wanted an end to U.S.

“hostile behavior and rectification of status of Iran in the U.S.,” including its removal from the “axis of evil” and the “terrorism list,” and an end to all economic sanctions against Iran.

Bush rejected such diplomacy, continuing to call Iran the greatest terrorist threat in the world. His basis for saying so is that Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy and held our diplomats hostage for 444 days. They were also responsible for the bombing of our Marine barracks in Beirut.

Bush is right too. That did all happen. 25 years ago.

These days, though, the acts of terror originate in Sunni quarters, as a result of Wahabism. In fact, Imam Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two, has said that he wants war between us and Iran so that al-Qaeda can go after the victor.

Still, Bush continues to insist on a nexus between the Sunnis of al-Qaeda and the Shias of Iran. Only a deeply ignorant populace could swallow such nonsense. In the last twenty years, one would be hard pressed to find evidence of anti-American sentiment in Iran. What one can find there is anti-Israeli sentiment.

Iran has supported Hezbollah, and Israel should be concerned. No doubt, Iran feels justified in its support. Iranians remember that Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and that Hezbollah was born in 1985 as a result. But we should remember that those talks Iran wanted with us in May of ’03? They offered “a sweeping reorientation of Iranian policy toward Israel. ”

Ritter’s question, then, was whether Iran’s support of Hezbollah is reason enough for involving us in a war of intervention. Bush defines the problem with Iran as a nail, to which the only solution is a hammer. What he should see, instead, is that the only possible path out of the quagmire in Iraq is cooperation with Iran. That country is our potential ally in Iraq.

An aside: You might find wry comfort in these final agonizing months of Bush stupidity and stubbornness by reading (or rereading) the book that takes such idiots to task on every page: Catch-22. Heller’s portrait of two of the officers makes him look prescient. Colonel Cathcart, good looking and stupid, is the nominal commanding officer, while Colonel Korn, bald and paunchy, intelligent and evil, is really in charge.

There’s this from the conversation about whether Yossarian should fly those extra missions Cathcart wants from him:

“Doesn’t he know there’s a war going on?” Colonel Cathcart, still stamping back and forth, demanded morosely without looking at Yossarian.

“I’m quite sure he does,” Colonel Korn answered. “That’s probably why he refuses to fly them.”

“Doesn’t it make any difference to him?”

“Will the knowledge that there’s a war going on weaken your decision to refuse to participate in it?” Colonel Korn, inquired with sarcastic seriousness, mocking Colonel Cathcart.

“No, sir,” Yossarian replied, almost returning Colonel Korn’s smile. (p.431)

Scott Ritter, speaking at the Ethical Society of St. Louis Friday evening, laid into the Bush administration for its constant lying about Iran. His point was that attacking Iran would be as unnecessary, counterproductive, and crackbrained as attacking Iraq was. Considering that he was the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for seven years and that he argued before the attack there that Iraq had no significant WMDs, he has, at the very least, a 100 percent better track record than President 24 Percent.

Bush’s mantra is that Iran poses the single greatest threat in the world for Americans, and that claim balances on two myths he has promulgated: that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and that Iran is the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the world. Indeed, if Bush’s claims are true, Iran is a terrible threat.

But Ritter deconstructed those claims. Deconstructed? Demolished would come closer. And this posting will show you the rubble of the argument that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.

Ritter asked whether we have a smoking gun about that question. We not only don’t have a smoking gun; we don’t even have a decent circumstantial case.

In 2003, our government claimed that Iran had an ongoing, active nuclear weapons development program. Then, in 2007, we claimed that the program had been halted. Backing down that way was necessary because Bush knew that a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was about to be issued, proclaiming that Iran had no nuclear weapons program.

By preempting the IAEA report, the Bush/Cheney spin machine was able to maintain a scrap of credibility on the issue, while still getting Americans to believe what they wanted them to. Notice: Bush claimed the weapons program had been halted, not that it had never existed. But there was no data to support the idea that it had existed. The very claim that it had been halted implied that it had existed, and Americans accepted that implication.

Now what is true is that Iran had been secretly enriching uranium–for nuclear power plants. Doing so was forbidden because Iran was a signatory to a nuclear nonproliferation treaty. Europeans were concerned when the program came to light. Iran admitted wrongdoing and agreed to suspend its enrichment program for six months so that inspectors could come in and determine that no weapons program was in progress.

At the end of the six months, Iran said it would start its enrichment program again, but European countries, under considerable pressure from the U.S., wanted the halt to be made permanent. Iran wouldn’t agree to that, but it did agree to let the inspectors stay. The inspectors said that all the nuclear material was accounted for and that Iran was in compliance with international law.

Nevertheless, the UN demanded three times that Iran stop enriching uranium, and three times, Iran refused to do so. But what they are doing is in compliance with international law.

Since Iran continued to insist that it had no weapons program, the United States decided to offer proof that it did. What it offered was what Ritter called–with a wry smile–a “magic laptop.” This laptop supposedly revealed what had been secretly going on in Iran.

As an intelligence officer, Ritter was trained to be wary of one magic answer. He reminded the audience, for example, of all the bogus intelligence about Saddam’s WMD that had come before the Iraq war from one source: “Curveball.” This particular magic answer purported to come from the Iranian military and research community. And it was in … English. That piece of information got uproarious laughter.

The laptop was presented at a meeting of the IAEA. Curtains were opened, and there–under a spotlight–it sat. Scientists could see it. But they weren’t allowed to touch it. Computer experts, had they examined it, could have done a great deal to verify its veracity.

But never mind. That would imply that we don’t trust Bush and Cheney.

Ritter asked if these claims of a program–which even if it did exist would be years from fruition–merited getting the U.S. into another war. Think you can answer that question?

Bush’s history alone would make me doubt any claims he made, even without Ritter’s analysis of the case. Why reporters don’t just start laughing whenever Bush makes some pronouncement or has the gall to hand a soldier a medal–it’s beyond my understanding.

From the Wash. U. Peace Coalition:

Where do you go if you want to listen to people who were wrong about Iraq? Well, as Glenn Greenwald details in a recent article, all you have to do is turn on any TV station or read any newspaper. On the other hand, if you’re interested in listening to some of some of the people who were actually right about Iraq before the war, you should check out a couple of upcoming events.

First, former Chief UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq Scott Ritter is going to be in town later this week. Ritter was recently on a panel with Wash U Professor Fatemeh Keshavarz, and told her that he’s been hearing a lot of buzz in the intelligence community that the Bush administration might attempt, against all logic, to attack Iran before leaving office.  

Then, next week, Col. Ann Wright will be in town talking about her new book “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.” Wright was one of three defense department officials who resigned in protest the day before bombing of Iraq began.  Details for the two events are below:

   Friday, April 4, 7:30 PM

   Scott Ritter: “US Attack on Iran?”

   Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton, 63117

Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, including “Iraq Confidential” (2005), “Target Iran” (2006) and his latest, “Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement” (2007.)

   Monday, April 7, 6:00pm

   Col. Ann Wright

   MokaBe’s Coffee House, Arsenal @ Grand Ave, 314-865-2009

The St. Louis Chapter of Veterans for Peace Presents Colonel (Ret.) Ann Wright, co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience. After the talk, Col. Wright will sign copies of her book at Left Bank Books at 7 pm

During the run-up to war in Iraq, Army Colonel (Ret.) and diplomat Ann Wright resigned her State Department post in protest. Wright, who had spent 19 years in the military and 16 years in diplomatic service, was one among dozens of government insiders and active-duty military personnel who protested government actions they felt were illegal. These men and women risked their careers, reputations, and even freedom out of loyalty to the Constitution and the rule of law