Sun 6 Jul 2008
Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY
The chief foreign affairs reporter for Rupert Murdoch’s The Australian newspaper enthusiastically adds his voice, or should that be Dick Cheney’s voice, to the Australian end of the Murdoch world media campaign now underway for War On Iran. The reporter’s name is Greg Sheridan and he and US Vice President Dick Cheney are old friends. They’ve known each other for 16 years.
Sheridan’s got some news he wanted to share with the readers of Australia’s only national newspaper, and chief distributor of shameless NeoCon propaganda :
There is…between a 30 and 40 per cent chance that the Bush administration will bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities before the end of the year.
Sheridan bases his judgement on, “two weeks of intense conversations I have had with American national security figures.”
He’s been on the phone to Dick Cheney’s office to get his War On Iran talking points. Sheridan got the whole set :
People who know Vice-President Dick Cheney well believe he wants to strike Iran, that he has made a sober judgment that time is running out.
Cheney and Sheridan have been down this road together before, most recently with Iraq. When Cheney visited Australia to spruik War On Iran, he naturally granted his old mate Greg Sheridan an exclusive interview, where Cheney repeatedly pumped his mantras for War On Iran.
Sheridan really, really likes Dick Cheney. Shamelessly so. Some previous Sheridan Cheney gushing :
“…you never find Cheney hiding in the shadows, he’s always in the bright light of the day“
There is something bracing about Cheney’s unrepentant attitude generally…
(Cheney) certainly presents as the very model of sweet reason…
…in person he is avuncular, softly spoken, often deploying a little wry irony.
One of Cheney’s most appealing qualities is that he tells it exactly as he sees it. There is never a trace of ambiguity in what he says…
Cheney told Sheridan back in 2007 that he believes :
…a military confrontation with Iran would be a lesser evil than an Iran with nuclear weapons.
Cheney also points out that 20 per cent of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz and is vulnerable to Iranian military action.
Yes, let’s not forget the oil.
Today, even though, according to Sheridan, “Washington, all the capitals of Europe and Canberra are united in their determination to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons”, waiting to find out of they’ve actually got ‘em may take too long. Remember, according to Cheney, “time is running out.”
Does this sound familiar to you at all?
Sheridan knows the fallout from nuking Iranian non-nukes will shatter the global economy, even more than the War On Iraq did. He knows that almost every oil expert thinks striking Iran will see a barrel leap above $200. And at $200, millions in the West will no longer be able to afford to drive to work. And that’s for starters.
So what to do? What kind of magic fantasy dust have Dick Cheney’s people sprinkled inside Sheridan’s mind?
…the top secret intelligence committee heads of Congress have authorised $400million for covert operations in Iran. This program is designed to gather information about Iran’s nuclear facilities and support opposition, including violence, to Iran’s Government and military.
…two separate national security insiders have confirmed to me that the US has a substantial covert operations effort in Iran.
It’s not so covert anymore, is it Mr Sheridan? Or perhaps that is the idea?
Figures right across the Bush administration routinely describe a nuclear-armed Iran as an existential threat to Israel. Existential here means a serious threat to Israel’s existence. Another national security figure tells me that if Israel really does regard a nuclear Iran as as existential threat, it would have no alternative but to strike.
By using the term existential threat, the Bush administration at the very least is itself legitimising the Israeli strike option.
A nuclear-armed Iran changes the world for all of us. It is the most important issue on the international agenda today.
Yeah, forget about the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, millions in the West rapidly falling into a Third World kind of poverty. Forget about the tens of billions being lost every day on world stock markets, the society-altering rise of fuel and food prices, and the creeping spread of totalitarian societies and dictatorships.
It’s all about Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons.
Surely another war can only work to solve all those other crises. Right?
And what a fantastic foreign correspondent Dick Cheney’s pal is. How thorough he is. Sheridan makes absolutely no mention of Russia’s reaction, or plans for preventive action, to US or Israel strikes on Iran.
The fact that Russia will clearly retaliate if Iran is attacked must have completely slipped his mind.
These people are psychotic.
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