Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell unexpectedly blurted out that Iran was seeking to outfit a missile with a nuclear bomb. The comment was based, you guessed it, on credible intelligence and reports of exile groups. But, of course, he did not elaborate. The Washington Post quickly rebuffed Powell’s claim by reporting that he relied upon a single, unverified “walk-
in source”.

This administration must think that we have forgotten Powell's now-discredited show-and-tell before the U.N. Security Council on Iraq's mythical weapons programs early in 2003? After all, this is the "trust us on national security matters" administration.

The goal seems to be to fan the fires of fear yet another time in the U.S. Meanwhile, the rest of the world watched the other day while the U.S. conducted another test of a Minuteman III nuclear missile. Just who is to be feared?

THE U.S. AND ITS ALLIES HAVE MADE THE WORLD A LOT LESS SAFE RECENTLY.
The first reason for saying this is the debacle in still lawless Afghanistan which, despite the ruse of popular elections, is awash in a bumper crop of opium.

"In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger," said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, on the release of the 2004 Afghanistan opium survey. "The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality."

The scale and spread of poppy cultivation are particularly alarming because of the growing stranglehold wealthy traffickers and drug lords hold over farmers and their influence over the economy and government, according to Afghan officials and foreign experts.

The income from production and trafficking of opium in 2004 was estimated at $2.8 billion, equivalent to about 60 percent of the country's legal gross domestic product or more than a third of the total economy, the report said.

Gen. Muhammad Daoud, the recently appointed deputy interior minister in charge of countering narcotics, noted that "87 percent of the world's opium is produced by Afghanistan."

The second reason why the world is less safe today is Iraq. The U.S. military now says it may need as many as 5,000 additional troops to “correct” the unfolding disaster in Iraq. Yet, Senator John McCain has estimated that the total troops needed my be as high as 50,000, reports the Washington Post. As one commentator put it, if the U.S. cannot control the insurgency with its military might, how does it expect an Iraq force to do so? As if in response to this question, the U.S. military now says it will be in Iraq until at least 2010.

Meanwhile, up to 100,000 Iraqis have been killed since this most recent phase of the 14 year long-war against Iraq, 400,000 thousand children are reported to suffering from the extreme form of malnutrition known as “wasting”, and the U.S. is now spending $6 Billion per month in Iraq, monies desperately needed by many in the U.S.  God have mercy.

IRAN
Iran seems to be the next disaster on the agenda. Clearly, the harder the U.S. pushes Iran over its purported nuclear weapons program, the more likely that Iran has the potential to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. In a world where the U.S. recently invaded two of Iran’s neighbor’s in quick succession, there are hawks in Iran who believe in the value of a nuclear deterrent, even if that deterrent is yet incomplete. Just showing that if has mastered key elements of the physics and engineering to make a bomb might be seen as a deterrent. Then again, given the so called intelligence about Iraq’s WMD, one is forced to question just what is going on.

Another question emerges out of this mess. Why would the U.S. push Iran so hard if doing so might push them into developing nuclear weapons, especially since U.S. forces are so overextended? The answer lies in the annual intelligence assessment presented to the Israeli Knesset in July. It says that Iran is Israel’s greatest threat, now that Iraq has been smashed. Apparently, the U.S. can achieve its ends by being a silent partner to Israel’s attack. So we step towards confrontation once again.

Driven by their own ideological certainty that all they do is right, the U.S. administration is once again concocting realities for their own ends. The truth of the matter is that they are creating a series of failed and fragile states running seamlessly from the borders of Pakistan to within spitting distance of the Dead Sea. Osama bin Laden could not have planned it better.

ACTION
1. Write/call President Bush saying that he stop pressuring Iran into becoming a nuclear state, especially in light of the his own efforts to expand the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
President@whitehouse.gov 202-456-1414
2. Reflect on the following quote:
Actions of conscience confirm the link between our fate and that of everyone and everything else on the planet, respecting and reinforcing the fundamental connections without which life itself is impossible.
For the full text see "The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Hope in a Time of Fear", Paul Rogat Loeb,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_112004I.shtml