John Bolton [The Mad Motherfucker]: "Bomb Iran!"
John Bolton, the former
US ambassador to the UN,
told Tory delegates today that efforts by
the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran
had failed and that he saw no alternative
to a pre-emptive strike on suspected
nuclear facilities in the country
Did Israel Attack Syria? Or Is It More Propaganda Hype?
He added that any strike should be followed
by an attempt to remove the
"source of the problem", Ahmadinejad
"If we were to strike Iran it should be
accompanied by an effort at regime change
The US once had the capability to engineer
the clandestine overthrow of governments
I wish we could get it back"
Israel's unacknowledged recent air attack on Syria
is about laying the grounds for the new war
Bush wants before leaving office
The political significance of the justifications for the Israeli air strike is that it neatly ties together various strands of an argument needed by the neo-cons and Israel in making their case for an attack on Iran before Bush leaves office in early 2009.
Each scenario suggests a Shia "axis of evil" coordinated by Iran that is actively plotting Israel's destruction.
And each story offers pretext for an attack on Syria as a prelude to a pre-emptive strike -- launched either by Washington or Tel Aviv -- against Tehran to save Israel.
That these stories appear to have been planted in the American media by neo-con masters of spin like John Bolton is caution enough.
As is the admission that the only evidence for Syrian malfeasance is Israeli "intelligence", the basis of which cannot be questioned as Israel is not officially admitting the attack.
It should hardly need pointing out that we are again in a hall of mirrors, as we were during the period leading up to America's invasion of Iraq and have been during its subsequent occupation.
What purpose does the constant propaganda war against Tehran serve?
The latest accusations should be seen as an example of Israel and the neo-cons "creating their own reality", as one Bush adviser famously observed of the neo-con philosophy of power.
The more that Hizbullah, Syria and Iran are menaced by Israel, the more they are forced to huddle together and behave in ways to protect themselves -- such as arming -- that can be portrayed as a "genocidal" threat to Israel and world order.
Van Creveld once observed that Tehran would be "crazy" not to develop nuclear weapons given the clear trajectory of Israeli and US machinations to overthrow the regime.
Equally Syria cannot afford to jettison its alliance with Iran or its involvement with Hizbullah. In the current reality, these connections are the only power it has to deter an attack or force the US and Israel to negotiate.
But they are also the evidence needed by Israel and the neo-cons to convict Syria and Iran in the court of Washington opinion. The attack on Syria is part of a clever hustle, one designed to vanquish or bypass doubters in the Bush administration.
Condoleezza Rice, it emerged at the weekend, wants to invite Syria to attend the regional peace conference that has been called by President Bush for November.
There can be no doubt that such an act of détente is deeply opposed by both Israel and the neo-cons. It reverses their strategy of implicating Damascus in the "Shia arc of extremism" and of paving the way to an attack on the real target: Iran.
Instead a new reality must be created -- one in which the forces of "creative destruction" so beloved of the neo-cons engulf yet more of the region. For the rest of us, a simpler vocabulary suffices. What is being sold is catastrophe.
The Madman of the Apocalypse
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, told delegates at the Conservative Party conference today that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.
Mr Bolton, who was addressing a fringe meeting organised by Lord (Michael) Ancram, said that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was "pushing out" and "is not receiving adequate push-back" from the west.
"I don't think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don't know what the alternative is.
"Because life is about choices, I think we have to consider the use of military force. I think we have to look at a limited strike against their nuclear facilities."
He added that any strike should be followed by an attempt to remove the "source of the problem", Mr Ahmadinejad.
"If we were to strike Iran it should be accompanied by an effort at regime change ... The US once had the capability to engineer the clandestine overthrow of governments. I wish we could get it back."
The fact that intelligence about Iran's nuclear activity was partial should not be used as an excuse not to act, Mr Bolton insisted.
"Intelligence can be wrong in more than one direction." He asked how the British government would respond if terrorists exploded a nuclear device at home. "'It's only Manchester?' ... Responding after they're used is unacceptable."
Mr Bolton, now a fellow at the conservative thinktank the American Enterprise Institute and the author of a forthcoming book called Surrender is Not an Option, was applauded by delegates when he described the UN as "fundamentally irrelevant".
Defending the decision to invade Iraq, he mocked the Foreign Office's "softly softly" approach to Iran's imprisonment of 15 British sailors accused of straying into Iranian waters in April this year.
They were released after Mr Ahmadinejad announced he was making a "gift" to the British people. "They [Iran] got no response from the UK or the US. If you were the Iranian leader, what conclusion do you draw?"
Mr Bolton said he did not really want "to get into the specifics of your own internal politics here" and made no comment on David Cameron's foreign policy. But he said that Gordon Brown's performance under pressure had not been tested and he hoped that Britain would not withdraw from Iraq.
"There is too much of a view in Europe that you have passed beyond history," Mr Bolton told delegates. "That everything can be worked out by negotiation ... Democrats or Republicans, we [Americans] don't see it that way."
However, he praised the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his forthright criticism of Iran in recent weeks.
Raising the spectre of George Bush's "axis of evil", Mr Bolton said that Kim Jong-il's regime in North Korea was akin to a "prison camp" and that he would "sell anything to anyone".
Those who thought North Korea would give up its nuclear capability voluntarily were wrong, he said.
The regime had made similar promises during the past decade. Only reunification between North and South Korea could resolve the problem. That could be achieved "if China were to get serious" and cut off fuel supplies to Mr Kim, but the country feared a reunited Korea.
Mr Bolton told an inquiring delegate that he was not and had never been a neoconservative:
"I'm not even a Reagan conservative. I'm a [Barry] Goldwater conservative. They [neocons] have somewhat - I would say excessively - Wilsonian views about the benefits of democracy."
However, the threat to world peace did not come from neoconservatives but from the perception that "we have passed beyond history", he said.