Lagniappe

 

 

Scott Sullivan: Stop US bootlickers of Iran

Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Under Secretary of
Defense Eric Edelman, who is also the former US ambassador to Turkey, as
well as Cheney's former number three behind Scooter Libby -- these are the
principal US bootlickers of Iran. These three form the nucleus of what
remains of the original Wolfowitz-Libby caucus within the Executive Branch.

This Cheney-Edelman faction, backed up by Richard Perle on the outside,
makes a lot of noise about confronting Iran. In reality, their plan is to
confront Turkey and boost Iran. They want to give Iran nuclear weapons, and
are grooming Iran to take power in Iraq as the US withdraws its forces.

The Cheney-Edelman faction will give Iran nuclear weapons in exactly the
same way they permitted North Korea to keep its nuclear weapons. The US
agreement with North Korea will serve as a template for the US acceptance of
Iranian nukes.

Moreover, the US, without a word of protest from Cheney and Edelman, has not
attempted to interrupt North Korean support for Iran's missile delivery
program. To not move against North Korea and Iran on this front leaves
intact the Axis of Evil and encourages future North Korean support for
Iranian nuclear weapons development.

Finally, much closer to home, Cheney and Edelman have ignored Iran's gains
in Latin America, especially with Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, and Evo
Morales. Cheney and Edelman are turning over South America to Iran and
Chavez,who are making gains in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Argentina. Cheney and
Edelman never travel to South America or utter a word against Chavez and
Morales.

Cheney and Edelman present the greatest threat to US interests in the Middle
East. These two partners want to build Iran into the new regional
superpower at Turkey's expense. Indeed, when Edelman was US Ambassador to
Turkey, he provoked confrontations with Turkey by assisting the Kurds.
During Edelman's time in Ankara in Bush's first term, the Kurds and Iran
became the US's primary partners in Iraq, whereas Turkey became an
adversary.

In this pro-Iran, anti-Turkey approach, Cheney and Edelman, along with the
current US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, as well as Scooter Libby,
to whom Edelman reported while he was working for Cheney, were all inspired
by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. In fact, Wolfowitz,
backed up by Rumsfeld and Cheney, was the architect of the Iraq intervention
in Bush's first term, not Condoleeza Rice.

Wolfowitz was the primary advocate of the US shift in favor of Iran and away
from Turkey. As part of this effort, Wolfowitz sponsored Ahmed Chalabi and
Zalmay Khalilzad. Both are strongly pro-Iran, and Khalilzad is now lined up
to become the next US Ambassador to the United Nations, from which he can
help steer the normalization of US-Iran relations.

In fact, Khalilzad's pro-Iran stance goes back to the time of George Bush's
presidency (senior) when Khalilzad, reporting to Wolfowitz through Scooter
Libby at the Department of Defense, was the policy architect for arming the
Bosnians, Kosovar Albanians, and Croatians in Yugoslavia in tandem with
Iran.

From Wolfowitz's perspective, this liberation policy in Yugoslavia, based on
cooperation with Iran, worked so well that it became the US template for
Iraq policy. From the very first day, Iran was treated as a favored partner
in Iraq, hence Wolfowitz's support for Ahmad Chalabi as well as the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which was based in
Tehran and which to this day is the US's top political partner in Iraq.

So what do these pro-Iran bootlickers want of US policy? The answer is very
simple. They have three objectives. First, they want Iran, in partnership
with the Kurds, to dominate Iraq as the US pulls out. Second, they want Iran
to develop nuclear weapons, and will use the North Korea agreement as a
precedent to achieve this objective, as noted earlier. Third, they want
Turkey destroyed as Iran's great adversary, and are collaborating with Iran
and the Kurds in Iraq to finish off Turkey as a regional power.

In short, if Ahmadinejad, Ayatollah Khamenei, and their Brown Shirt Iranian
comrades, as well as Hugo Chavez in South America, seem to swagger around
these days, they have reason to be confident. With advocates like Cheney,
Edelman, and Wolfowitz on their side, how can they lose? But don't blame
Bush, blame Cheney.

Scott Sullivan is a former Washington government employee. Petroleumworld not necessarily share these views.

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Petroleumworld News 03/01/07

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