The United States of Amnesia: Americans are ready to buy another series of bogus evidence as pretext for war with Iran, as it happened with Iraq
Washington's
hawks are doing it again!
Powell’s
former chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, recently wrote a
piece titled “I Helped Sell the False Choice of War Once. It’s
Happening Again.”
US
Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley spoke at the
Anacostia-Bolling military base in Washington, D.C., in front of
pieces of metal she claimed were parts of an Iranian-made missile
supplied to the Houthis in Yemen, which the Houthis allegedly fired
into Saudi Arabia, on December 14th last year.
Weapons
experts widely criticized Ambassador Haley’s speech , saying the
evidence was inconclusive and fell far short of proving her
allegations that Iran had violated a U.N. Security Council
resolution.
According
to Wilkerson, Haley’s claims were not only inconclusive, they were
also oddly reminiscent of the false claims about weapons of mass
destruction the George W. Bush administration used to sell the public
on the war with Iraq.
As he
explained to Amy Goodman and DemocracyNow!:
When I
saw Nikki Haley give her presentation, certainly there was not the
gravitas of a Powell, not the statesmanship of a Powell, not the
popularity of a Powell. What I saw was a John Bolton. And remember,
John Bolton was her predecessor, in terms of being a neoconservative
at the United Nations representing the United States. I saw a very
amateurish attempt.
I can’t
imagine how anyone could haul some metal in front of the TV cameras
and assert, the way she did, with the details she did—some of which
was false, just flat false—and expect anyone within any expertise,
at least, to believe it.
Look at
her statement about “this could have been shot at Dulles, or it
could have been shot at Berlin.” Had it been shot at Dulles or
Berlin, it would have stopped well short, somewhere in the Atlantic
Ocean or even shorter. These missiles are not long-range missiles.
These missiles are very inaccurate missiles. They have a CEP of
miles. That means that, unlike a US nuclear weapon, which would hit
within a 10-meter circle or less, it would hit within a mile or two
circle. They don’t know where it’s going to hit when they shoot
it. It’s not very accurate, in other words.
So the
things that she was presenting there, she was presenting with a
drama, that even if what she was saying fundamentally was true, that
the Houthis got it from Iran and shot it at Saudi Arabia, it simply
was so exaggerated that one just looks at it and says, “I can’t
believe that the United States is represented by that woman.”
But
nonetheless, these kinds of things, when they’re made visual and
the statements are made so dramatically, have an impact on the
American people. I saw her doing essentially the same thing with
regard to Iran that Powell had done, and I had done, and others, with
regard to Iraq. So it alarms me. I don’t think the American people
have a memory for these sorts of things. Gore Vidal called this the
“United States of Amnesia,” with some reason.
So, we
need to be reminded of how the intelligence was politicized, how it
was cherry-picked, how we moved towards a war that has been an
absolute catastrophe for the region, and even, long-term, for
Israel’s security and the United States’ perhaps, with a deftness
and with a fluidity that alarmed me then. It really alarms me now
that we might be ready to repeat that process.
This
president has so many targets out there that he could avail himself
of at almost any moment, that we have to shudder at the prospects for
war and destruction over the next three years of Donald Trump’s
term.
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