A Culture of Violence
A country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace

By Stephen Lendman

Global Research, September 26, 2007

What do you call a country that glorifies wars and violence in the name of peace. One that's been at war every year in its history against one or more adversaries. It has the highest homicide rate of all western nations and a passion for owning guns, yet the two seem oddly unconnected. Violent films are some of its most popular, and similar video games crowd out the simpler, more innocent street play of generations earlier. Prescription and illicit drug use is out of control as well when tobacco, alcohol and other legal ones are included.

It get's worse. It's society is called a "rape culture" with data showing:

-- one-fourth of its adult women victims of forcible rape sometime in their lives, often by someone they know, including family members;

-- one-third of them are victims of sexual abuse by a husband or boyfriend;

-- 30% of people in the country say they know a woman who's been physically abused by her husband or boyfriend in the past year;

-- one in four of its women report being sexually molested in childhood, usually repeatedly over extended periods by a family member or other close relative;

-- its women overall experience extreme levels of violence; an astonishing 75% of them are victims of some form of it in their lifetimes;

--domestic violence is their leading cause of injury and second leading cause of death;

-- statistically, homes are their most dangerous place if men are in them as millions experience battering by husbands, male partners or fathers;

-- for most women with children, there's no escape for lack of means and because male assailants pursue them causing greater harm;

-- adding further injury, its society is often unsupportive; it affords women second class status, privileges and redress when they're abused so many suffer in silence fearing coming forward may cause more harm than help;

-- its children are abused as well; millions suffer serious neglect, physical mistreatment and/or sexual abuse; many get relief only through escape to dangerous streets; they end up alone, more vulnerable and at greater danger away than at home where there, too, families act more like strangers or predators forcing young kids to flee in the first place.

What country is it where things like these are normal and commonplace; where peace, tranquility and safety are illusions; where they're crowded out by foreign wars and violence at home in communities, neighborhoods, schools, throughout the media and in core families. What kind of country glorifies mass killing, assaults and abuse; one that looks down on pacifist non-violence as sissy or unpatriotic, yet claims to be peace loving. It's not in the third world, under dictatorship or controlled by religious extremists. It's the "land of the free and home of the brave, America the Beautiful" where human rights, civil liberties, common dignity and personal safety are more illusion than fact. More on this below.

War As "the Ultimate Economic Shock Therapy"

Mahdi Nazemroaya writes in his August 29 "War and the 'New World Order' " article on Global Research.ca that war is "the ultimate (and most effective) economic shock therapy (that can) change societies and reshape nations," and that America today is embarked on achieving a long-standing vision for "global ascendancy" and supremacy. For the Trilateral Commission of "powerful" US, EU and Japanese "elites," its operative 1973 founding goal was a "New International Economic Order." For George HW Bush it became the "New World Order," and for GW Bush a permanent state of war for global hegemony.

Nazemroaya writes America's "foreign policy is based on economic interests" with military might used to enforce them. He states various US administrations have pursued "An (unbroken) agenda of perpetual warfare and violence (for) global domination through economic means." George Bush's current "war on terrorism" in the Middle East and Central Asia are just "stepping stones" toward that "global order" unipolar Pax Americana vision under which no nation is exempt.

It's nearly always been this way in a nation addicted to war and a culture of violence that's as commonplace at home as in foreign conflicts. It's in our DNA, our schools and reinforced through the media with seductive symbols and slogans glorifying wars for peace, their warriors, and righteousness of waging them. They're packaged as liberating ones, promoting democracy, and spreading the benefits of western civilization.

We're taught our essential goodness and what Edward Herman calls our status as an "indispensable state" that lets us do what no other nation may - wage perpetual wars for an elusive peace in the name of freedom and justice for all we preach but don't practice. We manipulate false notions of exceptionalism and moral superiority giving us the right to spread our ways to others while hiding our darker imperial side delivered through the barrel of a gun. It shames the notion of a "government of the people, by the people, for the people."

Expansionism and Militarism: An American Tradition

Expansionism has always been our way and militarism our method. It's been since winning the West meant taking it from the millions there thousands of years earlier. No matter. "Manifest Destiny" meant a divine right for settlers only to enjoy the nation's "spacious skies....amber waves of grain....and purple mountain majesties....from sea to shining sea." Others already there had to go, and mass slaughter was the method.

Our forefathers loathed Native Indians, and George Washington showed it in his language. He called them "red savages," compared them to wolves and "beasts of prey," and aimed to exterminate the Onieda people who aided him in his darkest hours at Valley Forge. He also dispatched General John Sullivan and 5000 troops against the noncombatant Onondaga people with orders to destroy their villages, homes, fields, food supplies, cattle herds, orchards and then annihilate them and seize their land.

Hitler modeled his "Final Solution" on the "American Holocaust." He targeted Untermenschen (subhumans) and Slavs he called "redskins." We know what happened. Raphael Lemkin called it "genocide" as he first defined it in 1944 to mean:

"the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" that corresponds to other terms like "tyrannicide, homocide, infanticide, etc." Genocide "does not necessarily mean the....destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings....It is intended....to signify a coordinated plan (to destroy the) the essential foundations of the life of national groups" with intent to destroy them. Genocidal plans involve the disintegration of....political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion....economic existence, personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and" human lives.

Throughout our history, it's been our way, and since 1990, three US Presidents waged genocidal war in Iraq to erase the "cradle of civilization" and remake it in our own image. Two and a half million are dead and counting from it, the country is plagued by out-of-control violence, one-third of its people need emergency aid, millions go hungry, and a once prosperous nation is now a surreal lawless occupied wasteland with few or no essential services like electricity, clean water, medical care, fuel and most everything else needed for sustenance and survival. That's the ugly face of "genocide" in real time.

Native peoples were its earlier victim. Puritans saw them as "brutes, devils" and "devil-worshippers" in a godless, howling wilderness filled with evil spirits and "dangerous wild beasts." They were targeted for removal as settlers moved west. They cleansed the land through violence, bloodletting and 40 Native Indian wars from 1622 - 1900 to win the West, North and South. Wars became our national pastime, and we've waged them like sport ever since in an endless unbroken cycle.

We fought four imperial ones as well from 1689 to 1763 with England, France, Spain and Holland. Throughout the period, numerous settler outbreaks and insurrections arose that were also put down along with dozens of riots. Then there were the major wars we know by name. First was the American War of Independence (or Revolutionary War) from 1775 - 83. A minority of colonists supported it, little changed, and the outcome repackaged Crown rule under new management.

The so-called War of 1812 (to early 1815) was more about American expansionism than Brits impressing our seamen. "Manifest Destiny" then became a catch phrase when Jacksonian Democrats proclaimed it in 1845 as the nation's "destiny" for all the land "from sea to shining sea." It was packaged as a noble mission, propagated as ruling orthodoxy, and used to justify other acquisitions.

We then headed south of the border from 1846 - 1848 in what Mexicans called "la invasion estadounidense" that easily self-translates as the US invasion. It was our Mexican War that began after the annexation of Texas and ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. It forced Mexico to cede half its country to avoid losing it all in what's now Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and parts of Wyoming and Utah. The country is still cursed the way former Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, meant when he said: "Poor Mexico, so far from God, and so close to the United States." Today that holds for all nations with a rogue superpower on the march and liberty and justice nowhere in sight.

Nor was it earlier when wars had similar aims as now with one exception. The Civil War from 1861 - 1865 was sort of a family squabble. Some squabble. Before it ended, it was our bloodiest ever. Three million were in it and over 600,000 died at a time the total population was 31 million, including 4 million slaves. That was double the battle deaths from WW II when 12 million fought from a population of 132 million, and if the same proportionate number had perished it would have been around 2.5 million.

Next came the Spanish-American War against Spain. In 1897, Theodore Roosevelt (as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and later 1906 Nobel Peace Prize laureate) wrote a friend...."I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one," and the next year it began. We won, they lost and America had its coming out party on a world stage. A half century later, we control much of it, want the rest, and plan, as a birthright, to take it as disdainfully as our forefathers.

The war with Spain was quick and little more than a skirmish for three and a half months. It was our first offshore imperial foray netting us control of Cuba as a de facto colony for starters. Following the war, Congress passed the Platt Amendment in 1901. It granted us jurisdictional right to intervene freely in Cuban affairs and ceded Guantanamo Bay (as a coaling or naval station only) to the US in perpetuity (provided annual rent is paid) unless later terminated by mutual consent of both countries. It was just the beginning.

We also took the Philippines (slaughtering 200,000 of its people), Hawaii, Haiti, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Samoa, assorted other territories later and the Canal Zone from Colombia to fulfill Theodore Roosevelt's dream to link the Atlantic and Pacific with a canal across its isthmus.

Woodrow Wilson was reelected in 1916 on a campaign promise: "He Kept Us Out of War." He lied. He wanted war and established the Committee on Public Information under George Creel in 1917 to get it. It turned a pacifist nation into raging German-haters, America declared war in April, 1917 and was in it until it ended in November, 1918. This writer's dad fought in France and returned unharmed. The US empire was on a roll.

Today, mainstream historians perceive Wilson as a liberal Democrat. He was quite opposite, and his imperial record alone proves it. He occupied Haiti in 1915 beginning 20 hellish years for its people until Franklin Roosevelt withdraw US forces in 1934. He sent US troops to Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and in 1914 invaded Mexico, occupying its main seaport city of Veracruz. It was a dress rehearsal for WW I and might have become a full-scale war had Wilson not pulled US forces out ahead of the greater conflict he aimed for in Europe.

The defining event of the 20th century was WW II from which the US emerged the only dominant nation left standing. We became the world's unchallengeable superpower as though we planned it that way, which we did. From it emerged our "imperial grand strategy" under the Truman Doctrine as well as a plan for US global military and economic dominance. The Cold War began with "containment" the policy. The US empire was on a roll and would never look back.

US Imperialism Post-WW II

When the Cold War ended in 1991, George HW Bush's Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz were tasked to shape a new strategy that emerged in 1992 as the Defense Planning Guidance or Wolfowitz Doctrine. It was so extreme, it was kept under wraps, but not for long. It was leaked to the New York Times causing uproar enough for the elder Bush to shelve it until the neoconservative think tank Project for a New American Century (PNAC) revived it in a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century." It was an imperial plan for global dominance for well into the future to be enforced with unchallengeable military power. It became the blueprint for the "war on terror" and all the hot ones planned to wage it.

WW II was more a beginning than an end to war. The US kept Korea and Vietnam divided and targeted independent-minded leaders. It was part of our imperial designs on East Asia that included containing Soviet Russia as well as China. It led us to incite civil wars in Korea and Vietnam expecting both times to prevail but were stalemated in one and lost the other.

North Korea's Fatherland Liberation War began June 25, 1950 when the DPRK retaliated in force following months of US influenced Republic of Korean (ROK) provocations. It ended in an uneasy cease-fire July 27, 1953 and is still unresolved to this day. The North and South are technically at war, the US refuses to negotiate an honorable peace, and 57 years later 37,000 American forces are in the South with no intention to leave.

Korea taught us nothing. Vietnam was next, and now we're embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan with a potentially disastrous war looming against Iran. It proves Ben Franklin right that "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results." Adventurism in Vietnam began under Truman and Eisenhower supporting France. It expanded full-blown under Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon before ending in a humiliating final pullout from the US Saigon Embassy rooftop April 30, 1975.

The 1980s brought more conflict with Ronald Reagan's war against "international terrorism." He invaded tiny Grenada in 1983 against a left-leaning regime for a pro-western one we installed. Scorched earth proxy wars then upped the stakes in Central America, Afghanistan, Africa and the Middle East. We tread lightly nowhere, and these conflicts left hundreds of thousands dead and immiserated in the name of democracy, humanitarian intervention, and the benefits of western civilization by our method of choice - gun barrels blazing.

GHW Bush then followed with Panama his prey. He deposed its leader, then targeted Saddam for the only crime that mattered - disobeying the lord and master of the universe and its rules of imperial management, especially Rule No. 1: We're boss, and what we say goes.

The Gulf war followed with 12 crushing years of sanctions its legacy. They left 1.5 million Iraqis dead and the living devastated. The current cycle of permanent wars began post-9/11 in October, 2001. First came the Taliban with Iraq ahead as the prime target of choice. It's huge oil reserves made it the most sought after real estate on earth with a plan to seize them simple at its core - a bold new experiment to erase a nation and create a new one by invasion, occupation and reconstruction for pillage. It would transform Iraq into a fully privatized free market paradise with blank check public funding for profit but none for Iraqis for essential needs, a sustainable economy or critical local infrastructure.

It's been a disaster with the toll on Iraqis horrific - an inferno of uncontrolled violence throughout the country with new British O.R.B. independent polling data estimating 1.2 million Iraqi deaths since March, 2003 on top of the 1.5 million others since 1990. The war is now longer in duration than WWs I or II and will likely exceed the latter one in inflation-adjusted cost before it ends. It's not in sight thanks to a complicit Democrat-led Congress that's long on theater but short on action it can take but won't. Allied with the administration, it flaunts public demands to end the war, bring home the troops, and will shortly accede to another Bush supplemental request for billions more in funding.

Public sentiment might be stronger if Jeff Nygaard's June, 2007 Z Magazine article titled "The Secret Air Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan" got wider play, so here's hoping this article gives it some. He explained US Central Command Air Forces (CENTAF) posts its daily "airpower summaries" online that makes for horrifying reading "aside (from) the blatant propaganda." Nygaard explained "relentless" air attacks against Iran and Afghanistan have gone on for years - on average 75 - 100 each day against both countries. It's a huge unreported story in the dominant media. The death toll is unknown, he says, "but a reasonable estimate" is between 100,000 - 150,000 in Iraq alone, and it's anyone's guess in Afghanistan. That's on top of all other war-related deaths estimated in both countries.

Further, these attacks exclude "guided missiles and unguided rockets fired....cannon rounds (and) munitions used by some Marine Corps and other 'coalition' aircraft or any of the Army's helicopter gunships (plus) munitions used by the armed helicopters of the many 'private (mercenary hired gun) security contractors' flying their own missions in Iraq." If the true human toll were known, it might be shockingly above the most gruesome current estimates and growing daily.

The public has a right to know this, and Congress is obligated to find out, tell them, cut off all funding and end two illegal wars of aggression. Instead, Democrats and Republicans back a further administration aggression against Iran in spite of silenced high level opposition to it. It may come from two large nuclear-armed US carrier strike groups conducting provocative exercises near Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf and Eastern Medditerranean.

Washington makes no secret it wants regime change in Iran, and time is running out for the Bush administration to get it. For months, covert black operations have been ongoing inside the country. It's aimed to incite internal ethnic and political opposition, and CIA operatives have also been sending Baluchi tribal warriors from neighboring Pakistan on terror raids into neighboring Iranian areas. Now 350 British forces have been provocatively sent from Basra to the volatile Iranian border, and the Pentagon announced it's building a US base and fortified checkpoints nearby as well. General Petraeus also implied to Congress he'll act inside Iranian territory to stop its "proxy war" against US Iraqi forces. In the meantime, Iran claims Washington backs Israeli-trained Kurdish Party for Free Life (PJAK) as well as Arab, Azeri and Baluchi incursions inside their territory to undermine its leadership, provoke a response, and provide cover for a US attack.

Without a touch of irony, US Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qumi held four hours of face-to-face talks in Baghdad in May that was the first official bilateral meeting between the countries in almost three decades. It amounted to nothing more than the usual US duplicity that pointed to what's now happening and likely to escalate. Earlier, George Bush demanded and will soon get harsher US-imposed sanctions through the Iran Counter-Proliferation Act of 2007 that's designed to strangle the country economically. He earlier signed off on a commitment of economic destabilization through media-driven propaganda, now heightened, as well as manipulation of Iran's currency and international transactions. That, in turn, just prompted Tehran in response to demand foreign energy companies do business in euros and yen.

So far, it's anyone's guess what's ahead with war a real possibility. The Bush administration is pounding Iran with menacing claims of meddling in Iraq and covertly advancing a nuclear weapons program despite having no proof of either. Whatever's planned could be devastating to the region (and world economy if oil shipments are disrupted), and the kinds of options being considered may cause dire unintended consequences if the worst of them involving nuclear weapons are used.

Bill Clinton's 1990s Balkan wars took their toll earlier at a time most people shamefully bought the US-led NATO propaganda of a good war against a demonized enemy and a well-intentioned intervention to remove him. It divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention that provided cover for naked imperialism. Most observers on the left got it wrong and still don't know NATO (meaning the US) committed illegal aggression to expand into Central and Eastern Europe.

The Balkan wars kept predatory capitalism on a roll for more new markets, resources and cheap exploitable labor by the same ugly methods of choice - wars, subversion or coercion with "uncooperative" leaders like Slobadon Milosevic playing fall guy. He ended up abducted to the Hague and hung out to dry by the ICTY US-run kangaroo court that silenced him (like Saddam in Baghdad) so his secrets went to the grave with him.

So much for democracy in a nation stained by a near-unblemished record of illegal aggression throughout its history and in every post-WW II conflict fought. The only exception was the so-called 1991 Gulf war. It was authorized, as required, by the Security Council but only through bribes and coercion. The US public opposed it until a lot of Kuwaiti government PR massaging turned it around, and the rest is history.

The Harmful Effects of Imperialism at Home

The price at home has been high as well with democracy here just as fake as wherever we leave our imperial footprint. Ordinary Americans are the losers. Repressive laws and crumbling social services are their reward for patriotism. Then there's the military and what's diverted to fund it. Annual Pentagon budgets are soaring with the FY 2008 DOD one calling for an astonishing $648.8 billion plus an additional $147.5 billion war supplemental and around $50 billion or more now requested. The final total will likely top out over $850 billion with the usual pork factored in and Congress ready to authorize whatever more is needed.

Then come the 16 US spy agencies and their secret off-the-books budgets. CIA, NSA and the others get tens of billions more without accountability. The CIA is an especially out-of-control, rogue agency accountable only to the President. Post-WW II, it began intervening throughout the world covertly and overtly. No dirty trick is off the table, and CIA invented their fair share of them. It uses them spying, fomenting and supporting wars, deposing foreign heads of state, and now they're in play on US soil against American citizens. Noted academic and administration critic, Chalmers Johnson, calls the agency "the president's private army" serving in the same capacity as imperial Rome's praetorian guard.

The agency is secret and lawless, unaccountable to the public, Congress or the courts with intelligence gathering a sideline operation at most. Since it was created in 1947, but especially now, CIA has an appalling record of toppling democratically elected governments, assassinating foreign heads of state and other key officials, propping up friendly dictators, and now snatching targeted individuals for "extraordinary rendition" to secret torture-prison hellholes from which many won't emerge or ever get justice.

It takes lots of cover-up and myth-building to create the illusion America wants peace, is "beautiful," and respects the law and rights of people everywhere. The truth is quite opposite abroad and at home where essential needs go unmet and violence is a way of life.

It recently showed up in the newly launched Global Peace Index's (GPI) ranking of 121 nations. It was prepared by the Economist Intelligence Unit, an international panel of peace experts from peace institutes and think tanks, and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. It aims to "highlight the relationship between Global Peace and Sustainability (stressing) unless we can achieve" a peaceful world, humanity's major challenges won't be solved. GPI ranked nations by their relative internal and external "peacefulness" using 24 indicators. They include its:

-- military expenditures as a percent of GDP and number of armed service personnel per 100,000 population;

-- number of external and internal wars including the estimated number of deaths from them externally and internally;

-- relations with other countries;

-- respect for human rights;

-- potential for terrorist acts;

-- number of homicides per 100,000 population including infanticide;

-- level of violent crime;

-- aggregate number of heavy weapons per 100,000 population and ease of access to small arms and light weapons;

-- number of jailed population per 100,000 population; and

-- number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 population.

The US was a shocking 96th in the overall rankings - to the naive and innocent, that is. Norway, New Zealand and Denmark scored best in that order while Iraq ranked lowest followed by Sudan and Israel, that should be a wake-up call for its supporters.

Violence in America - A Way of Life at Home and Abroad

This article began with a snapshot account of our violent history and culture. So much is in our communities and homes that it's easy selling foreign wars to people used to settling disputes confrontationally, not calmly. It may start with bloody noses in school yards or playgrounds. It's then made to seem commonplace in films and on prime time TV where assaults, violent crime, murder and even torture are everyday forms of entertainment. Then there's sports. The most popular ones involve contact, often brutal, with one played on ice once described as a fight with occasional hockey breaking out.

Television features sports of all kinds, the more violent the better. Studies show nearly every home has at least one TV set, and 54% of children have their own in their bedrooms. They spend 28 hours a week on average watching, double the time spent in school, so they learn more about life through the media than anywhere else. Before age 18, the average American child sees 200,000 acts of violence on TV including 16,000 murders, and studies show homicide rates doubled 10 - 15 years after television was introduced.

They also link the following potential adverse effects to excessive media exposure:

-- increased violent behavior;

-- impaired school performance;

-- increased sexual activity and use of tobacco and alcohol; and

-- decreased family communication among other negative influences unrelated to violence.

A National Television Violence Study showed two-thirds of children's programming had violence, three-fourths of it went unpunished, and most often victims weren't shown experiencing pain. Even more disturbing, the study identified nearly half the violence children see is in TV cartoons. They're most often portrayed in humor with victims hardly ever experiencing long-term consequences. There's more:

-- Unsurprisingly, it's no different on the big screen as film studios produce entertainment for theater viewing and at home.

-- There's a great, but unmeasurable, amount of different types of violence online, including pedophile cyber-seduction on unsuspecting, vulnerable children leading to sexual assaults.

-- Studies show violent video games like Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Mortal Kombat can increase aggressive thoughts, beliefs and behavior both in laboratory settings and real life. They're even worse than TV or films because they're interactive and engrossing. They get players to identify with aggressors since they act like them while playing. These games teach violence. Many young people play them often and parents allow it. It's no wonder they become aggressive and continue the same behavior later as adults for real.

-- Music also teaches violence. The Parents Music Resource Center reports teenagers hear an estimated 10,500 hours of rock music between grades 7 and 12 alone or nearly as much time as they spend in school. Entertainment Monitor reported three-fourths of popular CDs sold in 1995 included profanity or lyrics about drugs, violence and sex with some popular rap artists' music glorifying guns, rape and murder.

With this as backdrop after 500 years of belligerency, it's no wonder violence in the country and attitudes toward it are out of control. The record includes harsh private and government homeland crackdowns against dissidents, labor, minorities, street protesters, rioters, ethnic or religious groups and others plus all the one-on-one confrontations as well. For centuries, violence was monstrous against our Native peoples and nearly exterminated them all. It was used against black slaves as well with whippings, other beatings, rapes, mutilations, forced family separations and even amputations as punishment for runaways. Post-slavery, the pattern continued, mostly in the South, under forced Jim Crow segregation that enforced white supremacy over blacks that played out violently for those "stepping out of line."

A snapshot of recent data on violent crimes provides more evidence. It comes from the Department of Justice (DOJ), other sources, and shows the following:

-- 960,000 violent acts against a current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend and up to three million women physically abused by their husband, male partner or boyfriend annually;

-- in 2001, more than half a million American women (588,490) were victims of nonfatal violence committed by an intimate partner;

-- intimate violence is mainly a crime against women accounting for 85% of these incidences;

-- women are up to eight times more likely than men to be victimized by an intimate partner;

-- in 2001, 20% of violent crimes against women were by intimate partners;

-- up to 324,000 women experience intimate partner violence during pregnancy;

-- women of all races are about equally vulnerable to intimate partner violence;

-- women are up to 14 times more likely than men to report suffering severe physical assaults from an intimate partner;

-- 20% of female high school students report being physically and/or sexually abused by a dating partner and 40% of 14 - 17 year old girls report knowing someone their age struck or beaten by a boyfriend;

-- in a national survey of 6000 American families, 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also abused their children;

-- studies show up to 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence annually;

-- over half a million women report being stalked annually by an intimate partner while 80% stalked by former husbands are physically assaulted and 30% sexually assaulted by that partner;

-- the FBI divides violent crime into four categories: "murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault." It uses the International Association of Chiefs of Police Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program's definition of violent crime as involving force or threat of force. The annual data show these crimes topped one million in 1975 and from the mid-1980s ranged from around 1.5 - 1.9 million annually;

-- since 1975, annual violent crimes of murder and reported rape ranged from around 100,000 - 130,000;

-- Every year over the past century, 10% or more of all crimes committed were violent ones; and

-- More Americans killed other Americans at home than the total death toll from all foreign wars in our history combined.

Violence, of course, becomes ingrained in the culture. It leads to crackdowns against society's least "worthy" victims of state-sponsored repression. It made America the incarceration capital of the world with over 2.2 million in our homeland "gulag" prison system today, a greater number than in China with four times our population and a history of governments not known for gentleness toward those breaking its rules. Here 1000 new inmates weekly join others locked in cages, most for non-violent offenses. They're brutalized by prison guards and other inmates while there and become more likely to exact revenge on release for society's unjust treatment. Many, in fact, do and end up back in prison for longer sentences.

This kind of information and our national predilection for violence isn't taught in schools or explained in the media. Instead we accept the illusion of "American exceptionalism," moral superiority, and innate goodness in a nation chosen by the Almighy to lead the world. That's provided it's by rules made in Washington with people everywhere told accept them, or else. Going to war, we're told, is a last resort choice and one never taken lightly. It's to liberate the oppressed, bring democracy when we arrive, and target "national security" threats too great to ignore. It takes powerful propaganda persuasion convincing people to accept this, but it's made easier if they're already predisposed to violence and receptive to more of it.

Five centuries at home and abroad add up to potent conditioning, but the dangers were less threatening earlier than now. Today's super-weapons make older ones look like toys. They leave no margin of error, and if we slip up we'll endanger what Noam Chomsky calls "biology's only experiment with higher intelligence." Unless we confront the threat to our survival from foreign wars and a violent culture accustomed to them, we face what Albert Einstein and philosopher Bertrand Russell warned 50 years ago saying: "Shall we put an end to the human race, or shall mankind renounce war" and a culture of violence and live in peace because no other way is possible.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Is it possible that Iran is actually goading us into attacking it?  Why would they...unless they thought....is  it possible, no, it can't be...  they might win???

What a thought!  But think about it.   Iran's thinking might be along the line that if we do attack it, they will be justified in letting loose on our troops in Iraq the 60,000 suicide bombers presently on standby.  In addition, our attack will unite  all of  the  presently warring factions throughout the Middle East and ...those of us who survive here at home will have several hundred million arabs gunning for us.  Dead Americans both there and here at home, something many from this part of the world have come to desire since our ill-omened illegal and immoral war with Iraq began.

This is the downright precarious position in which oil-greedy and globalist-inspired Bush and  Cheney and and our proud and arrogant Israeli leaders (not the Israeli people most of whom feel as most American and Iranian people feel: war is not the way)  have placed us.  No, I am not forgetting Mr. Mahmoud,  another world leader with "MASS MURDERER" starting to bleed through his political brand of makeup - but, in all fairness, he did not start this doomsday game in which we are recklessly engaged and, in fact, he is at least honest. He says it out loud: he wants to kills millions of Americans.  Bush and Cheney share his desire to kill millions (of Iranians and not Americans, we hope, Mr. Rockefeller),  but they hide their dreams behind  sociopathic falsehoods.   Yes, Messrs. Bush and Cheney will be immortalized for birthing the demise of most of humanity.  No wonder Bush went religious; he alone knew what he had in mind for us way back at the beginning of what will prove to be his lethal tenure in the White House.  He alone knew we were not going to be the mere victims of armageddon but would, by his hand, be the instrument of it.

The craziness that afflicted Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and the Emperor of Japan was a particularly virulant strand of madness that attacked only men who had wrested their way to the most powerful positions in their respective countries. The symptoms of this disease and its diseased leaders cost the world in excess of 30 million lives in less than one decade. This strand of madness has grown far more powerful since the second world war, however, and this next time around it will cost us too many millions of innocent men, women, and children to count! Must history always repeat itself? Can we do nothing to stop this disease and those infected with it? Will we do nothing to stop this disease?

I note that the symptoms of this lethal disease have long been observable in many of our presidential hopefuls, most notably Mr. Guilani, who blatantly salivates at the thought of his finger being THE FINGER hovering over the red button before coming to rest upon it and thereby earning  recognition as the human who made Bush's and Cheney's dream a reality.  But wait a minute.  They screwed up again, these guys!    How can they become supreme leaders of the globe and still take credit for delivering us into the flames of armageddon?  Are there some secret bunkers in this picture?   Huh, huh?

Let us all pray that Admiral Fallon is not fired by Bush or Cheney or the CFR or the Trilateral Commission as a result of his comment this week that we should be talking diplomacy with Iran and not war, at least until saner and healthier heads prevail  and we can once again dream of being  safely delivered into the arms of tomorrow.

Brian Murphy, AP

Admiral William Fallon, the commander of U.S. military forces in the Middle East, does not believe current tensions with Iran will lead to war and urges greater emphasis on dialogue and diplomacy.

"This constant drum beat of conflict is what strikes me as not helpful and not useful," Adm. William Fallon said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television, which made a partial transcript available Sunday.

Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, wraps up a seven-nation tour of the region on Tuesday that included stops in Persian Gulf countries, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many of the talks with military and political leaders were dominated by worries about expanding Iranian influence and U.S. accusations that Iran is supplying arms and training to Shiite militiamen in Iraq.

"I expect that there will be no war and that is what we ought to be working for," said Fallon during the Friday interview at Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar. "We should find ways through which we can bring countries to work together for the benefit of all .... It is not a good idea to be in a state of war. We ought to try and to do our utmost to create different conditions."

A Fed Panic and a Massive Bailout of American Banks Paid for by the Entire World

By Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay

Global Research, September 21, 2007
thenewamericanempire.com/blog

"Manias, panics, and crashes are the consequence of an economic environment that cultivates cupidity, chicanery, and rapaciousness rather than a devout belief in the Golden Rule." –

Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), British economist

"The job of the Federal Reserve is to take away the punch bowl just when the party starts getting interesting."

William McChesney Martin (1906-1998), Fed Chairman (1951-1970)

"The dysfunctional state of American politics does not give me great confidence in the short run.''

Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman (1987-2006)

The mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. The causes, cures and consequences of such financial catastrophes are most often repetitive. Indeed, such financial collapses are usually the result of the unbridled greed and cupidity of financial operators and of the lack of necessary supervision by public institutions designed to protect the public and the common good. For example, after the October/November 1907 financial crisis in the United States, the idea initially advanced by banker Paul Warburg to establish a partially private and partially public Federal Reserve system of banking was finally adopted, in 1913. The Fed thus became the lender of last resort for banks that find themselves in an illiquid position. It is only after the stock market crash of 1929, however, that the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) was established, in 1934.

But even with institutions and regulations in place, when they are inoperative, corrupt or ill-adapted, financial crises can still occur. And the current financial crisis is there to remind us of this fact.

On September 18 (2007), the Fed showed some panic and announced a larger than expected half percentage point cut in both the Federal funds rate and in the discount rate , and this after having slashed its discount rate by a half point, on August 17, in order to facilitate borrowing by America's largest banks and to facilitate the bailout of their affiliates and other operators, such as hedge-funds, caught in the sub-prime loans crisis. In so doing, the Bernanke Fed is following Bagehot's advice for aggressive discounting in a situation of financial crisis. The only problem is that Bagehot's rule calls for the central bank to lend copiously in times of critical credit stringency ... but at a high rate of interest. By lending to troubled lenders at reduced preferential rates, the Fed is acting as their "government", i.e. subsidizing their risky loans operations and taxing anybody else who holds American dollars. It is not only attempting to make them more "liquid", but also more "solvable" and less likely to fail.

This raises three interesting questions. First, who pays for the bailout of U.S. financial institutions; second, what are the longer-run consequences of the massive bailout undertaken by the Fed; and third, why did the Fed let the financial situation deteriorate to such an extent that an entire sector of the economy is being clobbered and its collapse is threatening the whole economy.

First, we must consider that the U.S. dollar is still a key reserve currency, although loosing ground to the euro, and it is still being held in massive amounts by most central banks in their foreign reserves, and also by private banks, commercial and economic entities and individuals around the world. For example, in early 2007, foreign central banks alone held some two and a quarter trillion in U.S. dollars reserves, which represented about 66 percent of their total official foreign exchange reserves, with a bit more than 25 percent being held in euros.

Since the dollar is loosing its purchasing power, both in absolute and relative terms, central banks and other foreign investors have been "taxed" by the American Fed's policy of benign neglect regarding the dollar. In real terms, the seigneurage tax on foreign holders of the dollar can be measured by taking the difference between the annual rate of depreciation of the dollar vis-à-vis major convertible currencies and the short-term rate of interest on these reserves. For example, if the annual rate of depreciation of the dollar is five percent and the short-term rate of return on U.S. T-bills is four percent, central banks are loosing some $22.5 billion on a yearly basis. Since private foreigners hold more than two trillion in dollar denominated debt, the net annual loss of foreign holders of U.S. dollars can easily reach $50 billion a year. The conclusion is easy to see: Not only have foreigners been heavily financing the large U.S. government's deficits over the last six years, but they are now being called upon to help finance the generous bailout of American financial institutions.

Investors both abroad and in the U.S. know that official inflation figures are tilted on the low side for many people, essentially because they are designed to reduce the weight given in the indexes to goods and services whose prices increase the fastest, but also because housing costs and asset prices are only partly taken into consideration. This could explain why inflation expectations are on the rise, even though official inflation figures do not register an increase in inflation. Too much easy money as experienced over the last few years at first fuel asset inflation, but sooner or later it shows its ugly head in the prices of all commodities and in the prices of all goods and services. With the current drop of the dollar, Americans can be expected to pay more for a lot of items, such as fuel and food. This will translate to a lower standard of living.

Already, the price of gold, the price of oil and the prices of other commodities are on their way up and can serve as inflation bell-weathers. The behavior of long-term interest rates that incorporate inflation expectations is also a good indicator of future inflation. With the Fed printing money and increasing the money supply on a high scale as if it was dropping money from an helicopter, thus the nickname of Fed Chairman Ben "Helicopter" Bernanke, short term interest rates will drop for a while, but long term interest rates will be edging up, unless a deep recession steps in.

Secondly, a massive bailout as the Bernanke Fed has undertaken raises the question of moral hazard present in any massive central bank rescue intervention, after it has failed to properly regulate the risky activities of the banks it supervises. Indeed, by accepting mortgage-backed securities as collateral for huge more or less longer term loans to American banks and brokers, at reduced interest rates, the Fed is in effect rewarding the very institutions which acted the most irresponsibly over the last four or five years, while saving its own face for having failed in its regulatory mission. The message is loud and clear: American financial institutions can indulge in creating "innovative" risky artificial credit instruments, shifting the risks to unsuspecting borrowers and investors while reaping juicy fees and rewards, and when things turn sour, as can be expected, the Fed will come to their rescue and bail them out with cheap and extended loans. That is a good way to carelessly encourage a greedy and out-of-control financial institution to create successive disorderly and disruptive financial crises.

Indeed, the Bernanke Fed is presently taking the pain of the consequences away from financial institutions that acted irresponsibly, and for some, as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has said, which have acted criminally. —This is a clear case of moral hazard.

If old regulations are not implemented or if no new regulations are put into place, such a massive bailout will insure that American financial institutions will continue in the future to pursue the fast buck in creating risky artificial capital, without due regard to the risks involved for small borrowers and small savers, while the Fed will take responsibility for shifting losses partly on itself but mainly to holders of American dollars. In effect, the Fed is suspending market discipline for the big financial players it puts under its protection, while letting market discipline crush small homeowners and small investors who bought now foreclosed houses on shaky mortgages or who invested their savings in fraudulent and risky collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). That is the net result of applying Bagehot's rule only in part.

The third question is why both the Greenspan and the Bernanke Fed did not remove the punch bowl of easy money and easy credit sooner when things began getting ugly in the sub-prime mortgage market during the 2003-2007 period. Why did they appear paralyzed and do nothing? Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has an easy and self-serving explanation. Before 2003, he was afraid of an onset of deflation and that is why the Fed brought its key lending rate to 1 percent (from June 2003 to June 2004) for only the second time in history. He also says that there were too much "global savings" around the world and that is what pushed interest rates down. This is a slight of hands explanation, because if globalization and global savings kept inflation low and term interest down, short term interest rates and money supply increases were under the Fed control at all times. The Fed had no obligation, after 2003, to keep real short term interest rates so negative for so long. Indeed, as the Bush administration was cutting tax rates to enhance its 2004 reelection prospects and was spending money like a drunken sailor in wars waged in remote lands, the Fed should have taken the contrary route to counterbalance the fiscal impetus this created for the macro economy. In other words, it should have taken the punch bowl away. —It did not.

As a consequence, mortgage debt as a percentage of disposable income in the U.S. is at the highest level it has been in seventy-five years, reaching 100 percent, while consumer debt has risen to its highest level in history. All this makes the economy more vulnerable than it has been since the 1929-39 depression. Another consequence of this binge of easy money has been the frenzy of leveraged buy-outs and industrial concentration that we have observed over the last few years.

Finally, let's put the cherry on the cake. Indeed, there is a most disturbing piece in former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's recent Memoirs (The Age of Turbulence) and in the explanations he gave in interviews granted to promote his book, and it is his confession that while he was acting chairman of the Fed he actively lobbied Vice President Dick Cheney for a U.S. attack on Iraq. [If this was the case, it was most inappropriate for a central banker to act this way, especially when he had other things to do than lobbying in favor of an illegal war. Does it mean that Mr. Greenspan was an active member of the pro-Israel Lobby within the U.S. government and joined the Wolfowitz-Feith-Abrams-Perle-Kissinger cabal? It would seem to me that such behavior would call for an investigation.

Indeed, to what extent was the pro-Israel Lobby responsible for the Iraq war and the deficits it generated? Already, polls indicate that forty percent of American voters believe the pro-Israel Lobby has been a key factor in going to war in Iraq and that it is now very active in promoting a new war against Iran. This figure is bound to rise as more and more people confront the facts behind this most disastrous and ill-conceived war. Indeed, how many wars can this lobby be allowed to engineer before being stopped? And, to what extent can the current financial turmoil in U.S. and world markets be traced back to the influence of this most corrosive lobby?

Rodrigue Tremblay is a Canadian economist who lives in Montreal; he can be reached at:
rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com

Visit his blog site at:
www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website:
www.thenewamericanempire.com/

Check Dr. Tremblay's coming book "The Code for Global Ethics" at:
www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/

By Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, September 16, 2007

Quoting official sources, the Western media is now confirming, rather belatedly, that the Bush Administration's war plans directed against Iran are "for real" and should be taken seriously.

"Punitive bombings" directed against Tehran could be launched within the next few months.

The diplomatic mode has been switched off: The Pentagon is said to be "taking steps to ensure military confrontation with Iran" because diplomatic initiatives have allegedly failed to reach a solution.

These diabolical statements come within barely a couple of weeks following the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report. The later confirms unequivocally that Iran's nuclear program is of a civilian nature and that Iran has neither the intention nor the capabilities to develop nuclear weapons:

Article IV (1): These modalities cover all remaining issues and the Agency [meaning IAEA] confirmed that there are no other remaining issues and ambiguities regarding Iran's past nuclear program and activities.

Article IV (3): The Agency's delegation is of the view that the agreement on the above issues shall further promote the efficiency of the implementation of safeguards in Iran and its ability to conclude the exclusive peaceful nature of the Iran's nuclear activities.

Article IV (4): The Agency has been able to verify the non-diversion of the declared nuclear materials at the enrichment facilities in Iran and has therefore concluded that it remains in peaceful use. (IAEA Report, italics added)

At the same token, the IAEA report is a slap in the face for Washington. It confirms the lack of legitimacy and criminal nature of US foreign policy as well as Washington's resolve to violate international law:

"The Bush administration’s abrupt dismissal of last Thursday’s IAEA report is one more sign that Washington has no interest in a diplomatic resolution to its confrontation with Tehran. Following Bush’s bellicose denunciations of Iran last week, the US has reiterated its intention to push for tougher UN sanctions against Tehran this month." (Peter Symond, Global Research, September 2007)

No Public Outcry

Despite the overtly aggressive nature of US statements, these war plans directed against Iran, which in a real sense threaten the future of humanity, are not the object of public concern or debate. A US sponsored pre-emptive war, using thermonuclear weapons, which according to "authoritative" scientific opinion (on contract to the Pentagon), are "harmless to the surrounding civilian population" is simply not front page news in relation to any other trivial topic.

The dangers of a broader Middle East war are downplayed or ignored by the main anti-war coalitions. The proposed use of nuclear weapons in a conventional war theater is not a matter for debate.

Moreover, the planned attacks on Iran and their various devastating consequences are not being addressed by "progressive" civil society organizations including the "Left", which tacitly considers The Islamic Republic as a real threat to human rights. According to Jean Bricmont:

"All the ideological signposts for attacking Iran are in place. The country has been thoroughly demonized because it is not nice to women, to gays, or to Jews. That in itself is enough to neutralize a large part of the American "left". The issue of course is not whether Iran is nice or not according to our views -- but whether there is any legal reason to attack it, and there is none; but the dominant ideology of human rights has legitimized, especially on the left, the right of intervention on humanitarian grounds anywhere, at any time, and that ideology has succeeded in totally sidetracking the minor issue of international law." (Jean Bricmont, Global Research, September 2007)

Background of War Planning

For the last three years, in several carefully documented articles, Global Research has been reporting in detail on US sponsored war plans directed against Iran. These war plans include the preemptive use of thermonuclear weapons against Iran in retaliation for Tehran's alleged non-compliance with the demands of the "international community".

War plans in relation to Iran have been an advanced stage of readiness since mid 2005. Israel, Britain and NATO are part of the US led coalition and are slated to play an active role in the military operation.

The first phase of these war plans was formulated initially in mid-2003, under a Pentagon scenario entitled TIRANNT (Theater Iran Near Term). The military build-up has occurred over a period of more than three years.

In Summer 2006 as well as earlier this year, extensive war games were conducted in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Israeli bombing of Lebanon in July 2006 was an integral part of the broader military agenda. In recent developments, Israel has conducted bombing raids inside Syrian territory visibly in an act of provocation.

Recent official statements by Washington confirm the broad nature of these war plans:

"Senior American intelligence and defense officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, ...

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, ...

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.

A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured.

The intelligence officer said that the US military has "two major contingency plans" for air strikes on Iran.

"One is to bomb only the nuclear facilities. The second option is for a much bigger strike that would - over two or three days - hit all of the significant military sites as well. This plan involves more than 2,000 targets." (quoted in The Sunday Telegraph, 16 September 2007)

US-NATO naval deployments are taking place in two distinct theaters: the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.

In recent developments, it is reported that two aircraft carrier strike groups (USS Nimitz and USS Truman) are en route to the Persian Gulf to join up with the USS Enterprise, which means that there will be, by late September, three carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf.

According to military sources, the USS Kearsarge Expeditionary Strike Group took up position in late August opposite the Lebanese coastline.

The attacks on Iran are now officially supported by America's European allies including France and Germany. France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has called upon France to support the US war on Iran:

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio. Mr Kouchner said negotiations with Iran should continue "right to the end", but an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose "a real danger for the whole world" .(quoted by BBC, 16 September 2007)

Britain is closely involved, despite denials at the diplomatic level. Turkey occupies a central role in the Iran operation. It has an extensive military cooperation agreement with Israel. NATO is formally involved in liaison with Israel, with which it signed a military framework agreement in November 2004.

While the US, Israel, as well as Turkey (with borders with both Iran and Syria) are the main military actors, a number of other countries in the region, allies of the US, including Georgia and Azerbaijan have been enlisted.

There are indications from several media sources that Israel is also in an advanced stage of military preparedness and would be involved in carrying out part of the aerial bombardments. Syria and most probably Lebanon would also be targeted.

Already in 2005, the Israeli Air Force had reached a state of preparedness. Israeli air attacks of Iran's nuclear facility at Bushehr had been contemplated using US as well Israeli produced bunker buster bombs. The attack was planned to be carried out in three separate waves "with the radar and communications jamming protection being provided by U.S. Air Force AWACS and other U.S. aircraft in the area".

(See W Madsen, http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD410A.html

Escalation Scenarios

If this military operation were to be launched, the entire Middle East Central Asian region would flare up.

The war would encompass an area extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier.

In this regard, US military planners have analyzed various "escalation scenarios".

In fact, they expect the war to escalate. In other words, escalation, namely retaliation by Iran is a desired objective. It is part of the military agenda.

"A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the US will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq....

Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces. (Sunday Telegraph, op cit)

Iran Retaliates

The nature of Iran's retaliation should be understood. General David Petraeus, who is responsible for managing the Iraq war theater, has voiced his opposition to an attack on Iran.

"Gen David Petraeus, Mr Bush's senior Iraq commander, denounced the Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq last week as he built support in Washington for the US military surge in Baghdad." (Sunday Tewlegraph, op cit)

General Petraeus is fully aware of the underlying implications for the Iraq war theater. A war on Iran would immediately spill over into Iraq:

Iran is the third largest importer of Russian weapons systems after India and China. In the course of the last five years, Russia has supported Iran's ballistic missile technology, in negotiations reached initially in 2001 under the presidency of Mohammed Khatami.

Iran tested three new types of land-to-sea and sea-to-sea missiles in the context of its "Great Prophet II" military exercises last November. These tests were marked by precise planning in a carefully staged operation. According to a senior American missile expert, "the Iranians demonstrated up-to-date missile-launching technology which the West had not known them to possess."

Tehran has the ability to retaliate and wage ballistic missile attacks against US and coalition facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Gulf states. Israel would also be a potential target, if Israel were to be an active partner in the bombing campaign.

Iranian ground troops could cross the border into Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran's forces total about 350,000 active military personnel as well 350,000 million reservists (Jane's Iran Profile). The Iranian Army disposes of some 2200 tanks. With these capabilities, in terms of military personnel and hardware, Iran could potentially inflict significant losses to US and coalition troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush-Cheney Military Appointments

Several key military appointments were made in recent months which tend to reinforce Bush-Cheney control over the Military. Specifically, these appointments pertain to the positions of Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commanders respectively of USCENTCOM, USSTRATCOM and US Pacific Command. All three commanders recently relinquished their respective positions.

These new appointments are crucial because USSTRATCOM, USCENTCOM and US Pacific Command are slated to play key roles in the coordination and implementation of the Iran military operation, in liaison with Israel and NATO.

1. Joint Chiefs of Staff

In May, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) General Peter Pace was fired ("non-renewal"). General Pace, in recent months, had indicated his disagreement with the Administration regarding both Iraq and the proposed attacks on Iran. General Pace stated (February 2007) that he saw no firm evidence of Tehran supplying weapons to Shiite militias inside Iraq, which was being heralded by the Bush administration as a justification for waging war on Iran:

"[M]aybe that's why he's the outgoing chairman. Maybe that's why they're not renewing him. Because ...He has seen no evidence that Iran is fomenting unrest in Iraq that's causing Americans lives... " (Fox News' Alan Colmes, ox News, June, 13, 2007),

General Peter Pace's term as Chairman of the JCS ends at the end of September. Defense Secretary Gates' chosen successor Admiral Michael Mullen, formerly U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, is slated to replace General Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint chiefs of Staff.

Mullen's discourse is in marked contrast to that of General Peter Pace. Mullen, who was in charge of coordinating 2006-2007 naval war games off the Iranian coastline, has expressed an unbending commitment to "waging" and "winning asymmetric wars", while also "protecting the United States":

"we must ensure we have the Battle Force, the people, and the combat readiness we need to win our nation's wars...

Our Navy is fighting the Global War on Terror while at the same time providing a Strategic Reserve worldwide for the President and our Unified and Combatant Commanders.... Simply reacting to change is no longer an acceptable course of action if our Navy is to successfully wage asymmetric warfare and simultaneously deter regional and transnational threats (Statement, Senate Armed Services Committee, 7 May 2007)

Admiral Mullen's stance is in line with that of the Bush Administration's key Neo-conservative ideologues. With regard to Iran, echoing almost verbatim the stance of the White House, Admiral Mullen considers that it is "unacceptable that Iran is providing U.S. enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan with capabilities that are hurting and killing U.S. troops." (Inside the Pentagon, June 21, 2007). But on the issue of Iran, the Democrats are on board. There is a bipartisan consensus, expressed by Senator Jo Lieberman:

"I want to make clear I'm not talking about a massive ground invasion of Iran,... [but a] strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers" (AP, June 11, 2007)

In June, Secretary of Defense Gates appoints the Commander of USSTRATCOM, General Cartwright to the position of Vice-Chairman of the JCS. Together with the appointment of Admiral Mullen, who is slated to take on his position of Chairman of JCS in October, these two new appointments imply a significant overhaul in the power structure of the JCS

In the meantime, USSTRATCOM is headed, pending Senate confirmation of a new commander, on an interim basis, by Air Force Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler

2. CENTCOM

Admiral. William J. Fallon, was appointed Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) in March by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

Admiral Fallon is fully compliant with the Bush administration's war plans in relation to Iran. He replaces Gen. John P. Abizaid, who was pushed into retirement, following apparent disagreements with Rumsfeld's successor, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. While Abizaid recognized both the failures and the weaknesses of the US military in Iraq, Admiral Fallon is closely aligned with Vice President Dick Cheney. He is also firmly committed to the "Global War on Terrorism" (GWOT). CENTCOM would coordinate an attack on Iran from the Middle East war theater.

Moreover, the appointment of an Admiral is indicative of a shift in emphasis of USCENTCOM's functions in the war theater. The "near term" emphasis is Iran rather than Iraq, requiring the coordination of naval and air force operations in the Persian Gulf.

3. Pacific Command

Another major military appointment was implemented, which has a direct bearing on war preparations in relation to Iran. Admiral Timothy J. Keating Commander of US NORTHCOM was appointed in March, to head US Pacific Command, which includes both the 5th and the 7th fleets. The 7th Fleet Pacific Command is the largest U.S. combatant command. Keating, who takes over from Admiral Fallon is also an unbending supporter of the "war on terrorism". Pacific Command would be playing a key role in the context of a military operation directed against Iran.(http://www.pacom.mil/about/pacom.shtml)

Of significance, Admiral Keating was also involved in the 2003 attack on Iraq as commander of US Naval Forces Central Command and the Fifth Fleet.

It should be understood that these new military appointments tend to consolidate the power of Bush-Cheney in the military, overriding potential dissent or opposition to the Iran war agenda from within the upper echelons of the US military.

It is, however, unlikely that a major military operation would be launched immediately following Mullen's instatement as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and prior to the confirmation of a new USSTRATCOM Commander by the US Senate.

USSTRATCOM's Central Role in Coordinating the Attacks

USSTRATCOM would have the responsibility for overseeing and coordinating this military deployment as well as launching the military operation directed against Iran. (For details, Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, Jan 2006 ).

In January 2005 a significant shift in USSTRATCOM's mandate was implemented. USSTRATCOM was identified as "the lead Combatant Command for integration and synchronization of DoD-wide efforts in combating weapons of mass destruction." To implement this mandate, a brand new command unit entitled Joint Functional Component Command Space and Global Strike , or JFCCSGS was created.

Overseen by USSTRATCOM, JFCCSGS would be responsible for the launching of military operations "using nuclear or conventional weapons" in compliance with the Bush administration's new nuclear doctrine. Both categories of weapons would be integrated into a "joint strike operation" under unified Command and Control.

According to Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, writing in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists,

"The Defense Department is upgrading its nuclear strike plans to reflect new presidential guidance and a transition in war planning from the top-heavy Single Integrated Operational Plan of the Cold War to a family of smaller and more flexible strike plans designed to defeat today's adversaries. The new central strategic war plan is known as OPLAN (Operations Plan) 8044.... This revised, detailed plan provides more flexible options to assure allies, and dissuade, deter, and if necessary, defeat adversaries in a wider range of contingencies....

One member of the new family is CONPLAN 8022, a concept plan for the quick use of nuclear, conventional, or information warfare capabilities to destroy--preemptively, if necessary--"time-urgent targets" anywhere in the world. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an Alert Order in early 2004 that directed the military to put CONPLAN 8022 into effect. As a result, the Bush administration's preemption policy is now operational on long-range bombers, strategic submarines on deterrent patrol, and presumably intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)."

The operational implementation of the Global Strike would be under CONCEPT PLAN (CONPLAN) 8022, which now consists of "an actual plan that the Navy and the Air Force translate into strike package for their submarines and bombers,' (Japanese Economic Newswire, 30 December 2005, For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Nuclear War against Iran, op. cit.).

CONPLAN 8022 is 'the overall umbrella plan for sort of the pre-planned strategic scenarios involving nuclear weapons.'

'It's specifically focused on these new types of threats -- Iran, North Korea -- proliferators and potentially terrorists too,' he said. 'There's nothing that says that they can't use CONPLAN 8022 in limited scenarios against Russian and Chinese targets.' (According to Hans Kristensen, of the Nuclear Information Project, quoted in Japanese Economic News Wire, op. cit.)

USSTRATCOM would play a central decision making and coordinating role in the eventuality of a war on Iran. The administration has demanded USSTRATCOM to elaborate centralized war plans directed against Iran. CENTCOM would largely be involved in carrying out these war plans in the Middle East war theater.

USSTRATCOM's is described "a global integrator charged with the missions of full-spectrum global strike".

USSTRATCOM is in charge of the coordination of command structures under global C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance). "Day-to-day planning and execution [by STRATCOM] for the primary mission areas is done by five Joint Functional Component Commands or JFCCs and three other functional components:"

If Iran Retaliates, the US Could Use Nuclear Weapons

US, NATO and Israeli military planners are fully aware that the aerial "punitive bombings" could lead coalition forces into a ground war scenario in which they may have to confront Iranian and Syrian forces in the battlefield.

Tehran has confirmed that it will retaliate if attacked, in the form of ballistic missile strikes directed against Israel as well as against US military facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf, which would immediately lead us into a scenario of military escalation and all out war.

Iranian troops could cross the Iran-Iraq border and confront coalition forces inside Iraq. Israeli troops and/or Special Forces could enter into Syria.

If Iran were to retaliate in a forceful way, which is contemplated by US military planners, the US could then retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons.

This scenario of using nuclear weapons against Iran has been in the pipeline since 2004. In 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney ordered USSTRATCOM to draft a "contingency plan", which "includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons." (Philip Giraldi, Attack on Iran: Pre-emptive Nuclear War , The American Conservative, 2 August 2005).

In relation to current war plans, Cheney has confirmed HIS INTENTION TO STRIKE IRAN WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

"The vice president is said to advocate the use of bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear sites. His allies dispute this, but Mr Cheney is understood to be lobbying for air strikes if sites can be identified where Revolutionary Guard units are training Shia militias.

Recent developments over Iraq appear to fit with the pattern of escalation predicted by Pentagon officials." (Sunday Telegraph, op cit)

Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization

In May 2004, National Security Presidential Directive NSPD 35 entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization was issued.

The contents of this highly sensitive document remains a carefully guarded State secret. There has been no mention of NSPD 35 by the media nor even in Congressional debates. While its contents remains classified, the presumption is that NSPD 35 pertains to the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in the Middle East war theater in compliance with CONPLAN 8022.

Tactical nuclear weapons directed against Iran have also been deployed at military bases in several NATO non-nuclear states including Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey.

It should be understood that even without the use of nukes, the proposed US aerial bombardments of Iran's nuclear facilities could result in a nuclear Chernobyl type disaster on a significnatly larger scale.

WORLD WAR III SCENARIO:

While the war on Iran is acknowledged by the Western media, it is not front page news.

The broad implications of an impending catastrophe are simply not addressed.

Escalation could lead us into a World War III scenario.

Through media disinformation, the seriousness of a US-led war on Iran allegedly in retaliation for Iran's defiance of the "international community" is downplayed . The objective is to galvanize Western public opinion in support of a US-led military operation, which would inevitably lead to escalation.

War propaganda consists in "fabricating an enemy" while conveying the illusion that the Western World is under attack by Islamic terrorists, who are directly supported by the Tehran government.

"Make the World safer", "prevent the proliferation of dirty nuclear devices by terrorists", "implement punitive actions against Iran to ensure the peace". "Combat nuclear proliferation by rogue states"...

Supported by the Western media, a generalized atmosphere of racism and xenophobia directed against Muslims has unfolded, particularly in Western Europe, which provides a fake legitimacy to the US war agenda. The latter is upheld as a "Just War". The "Just war" theory serves to camouflage the nature of US war plans, while providing a human face to the invaders.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

The antiwar movement is in many regards divided and misinformed on the nature of the US military agenda. In the US, United for Peace and Justice tacitly supports US foreign policy. It fails to recognize the existence of an Iraqi resistance movement. Moreover, these same antiwar organizations, which are committed to World Peace tend to downplay the implications of the proposed US bombing of Iran. More generally the antiwar movement fails to address the existence of a broader Middle East military agenda, a long-war. Its actions are piecemeal, focusing on Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine without addressing the relationship between these various war theaters.

To reverse the tide requires a massive campaign of networking and outreach to inform people across the land, nationally and internationally, in neighborhoods, workplaces, parishes, schools, universities, municipalities, on the dangers of a US sponsored war, which contemplates quite explicitly the use of thermonuclear weapons. The message should be loud and clear: As confirmed by the IAEA report, Iran is not the threat.

Debate and discussion must also take place within the Military and Intelligence community, particularly with regard to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, within the corridors of the US Congress, in municipalities and at all levels of government.

ULTIMATELY, THE POLITICAL LEGITIMACY OF THE ACTORS IN HIGH OFFICE MUST BE CHECKED.

THE CORPORATE MEDIA also bears a heavy responsibility for the cover-up of US sponsored war crimes. It must also be forcefully challenged for its biased coverage of the Middle East war.

For the past two years, Washington has been waging a "diplomatic arm twisting" exercise with a view to enlisting countries into supporting its military agenda. It is essential that at the diplomatic level, countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America take a firm stance against the US military agenda.

WHAT IS NEEDED IS TO BREAK THE CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE, expose the media lies and distortions, confront the criminal nature of the US Administration and of those governments which support it, its war agenda as well as its so-called "Homeland Security agenda" which has already defined the contours of a police State.

The World is at the crossroads of the most serious crisis in modern history. The US has embarked on a military adventure, "a long war", which threatens the future of humanity.

It is essential to bring the US war project to the forefront of political debate, particularly in North America and Western Europe. Political and military leaders who are opposed to the war must take a firm stance, from within their respective institutions. Citizens must take a stance individually and collectively against war.

This article includes a few selected excerpts from my previous writings on US war plans in relation to Iran. For a review of US war plans in relation to Iran, see Global Research's Iran dossier.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization.