The Neo Con Job

The question has been asked so many times since 9/11 that asking it one more time might seem redundant – why do they hate us? However, one of the answers to this perennial quandary can be found in a report in today’s Washington Post by Dafna Linzer entitled, “Past Arguments Don't Square With Current Iran Policy”. It begins with this devastating exposé:

Lacking direct evidence, Bush administration officials argue that Iran's nuclear program must be a cover for bomb-making. Vice President Cheney recently said, “They're already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy.” Yet Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and outgoing Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz held key national security posts when the Ford administration made the opposite argument 30 years ago. Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium -- the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.

Talk about a 180 – this incredible report further reveals the following:

“It is absolutely incredible that the very same players who made those statements then are making completely the opposite ones now,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Do they remember that they said this? Because the Iranians sure remember that they said it,” said Cirincione, who just returned from a nuclear conference in Tehran -- a rare trip for U.S. citizens now. In what Cirincione described as “the worst idea imaginable,” the Ford administration at one point suggested joint Pakistani-Iranian reprocessing as a way of promoting “nonproliferation in the region,” because it would cut down on the need for additional reprocessing facilities.

After the Iranian revolution toppled the Shah of Iran in 1979, it caused a dramatic reversal in U.S. foreign policy in the region. In fact, the Reagan Administration went on to support Iraq through much of the Iran-Iraq war in the eighties. Hence, we should not be too surprised in the near future, if “newly declassified documents” from that era go on to establish that Reagan Administration officials had sanctioned the supply of the chemical and biological ingredients for Saddam Hussein’s fledgling WMD programs? After all, there is that infamous video from December 20, 1983 showing Donald Rumsfeld, as President Reagan’s special envoy, meeting with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. It’s no wonder comedian Mark Russell had quipped prior to the start of the current war with Iraq, “We know he’s got those weapons of mass destruction… We’ve got the receipts!”

Any wonder why they hate us?