Documentary: The Secret Government

Excellent documentary made by that bastion of good, old-fashioned American journalism, Bill Moyers, and fascinating on account of how many parallels there are with the Bush administration's 'war on terror', reliance of the 'politics of fear', disdain for Congress, international law and finally the American people. It is also worthy of note how much the situation has declined even since Iran-Contra and how to paraphrase Gore Vidal 'the republic has well and truly been lost'.

Moyers details the formation of a 'secret government' from the end of the Second World war, through the coups in Iran and Guatemala (both of which had catastrophic results in the longer-term), the Bay of Pigs, assassination attempts made against foreign leaders and dignitaries, the Vietnam War and the My Lai Massacre, Watergate and finally Iran-Contra. A dangerous and unaccountable rival to the legislative branch has long been in the ascendancy - the nexus of executive power, the Pentagon and the CIA - with little respect for the law, they are free to carry out whatever they deem necessary in the name of 'national security' and safeguarding the American people against 'foreign threats'. The trend has precipitously worsened since the scandal of Iran-Contra - one only has to look at the total inaction of a pliant, timid and meek Congress in response to the authorization of covert ops against Iran and ongoing flippant brinkmanship that may well provoke a disastrous war to ensue as a direct result.

This is the first part of the documentary:



You can watch the whole documentary here:

http://www.iranian.com/main/blog/sadegh/video-secret-government

If There Was Any Doubt about Where the Pentagon Stands on Iran by Jim Lobe

LobeLog.com

If There Was Any Doubt about Where the Pentagon Stands on Iran

by Jime Lobe

July 3rd, 2008

Excerpt:

It was dispelled Wednesday by Adm. Mike Mullen, who repeatedly made clear that he opposes an attack on Iran — whether by Israel or his own forces — and, moreover, favors dialogue with Tehran. While various media have printed or run excerpts of his press conference, I think it might be useful to post virtually all of his remarks regarding Iran just to illustrate how clear he was:

[In his opening statement, he says] “I will say this, however: My position with regard to the Iranian regime hasn’t changed. They remain a destabilizing factor in the region, and that’s evident and actually more evident when one visits. But I’m convinced a solution still lies in using other elements of national power to change Iranian behavior, including diplomatic, financial and international pressure. There is a need for better clarity, even dialogue at some level.”

[In response to a question about his discussions with his counterpart in Israel during his recent visit there, he says] “Certainly, the concern about Iran continues to exist. And you talk about the nuclear threat. And I believe they’re still on a path to get to nuclear weapons and I think that’s something that needs to be deterred. They are — and I talk about my time up on the border. They are very involved with Syria, very involved with Hezbollah, supporting Hamas. And so the network that they support is also a very dangerous one and a very destabilizing one.”

Read the Full Article Here>>

Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Iran Plan

Excerpt from Gareth Porter's Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Iran Plan, June 11, 2008. Confirms who we always thought was the key architect and advocate of an attack on Iran, the warmonger par excellence, Dick Cheney. Thankfully, the Pentagon of all places stepped in. Incredible that it's come to this, the Pentagon as the voice of reason as regards Bush administration policy.

"Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for air strikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier "launching air strikes at suspected training camps in Iran," citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited air strike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make "a policy decision about how far the administration would go – what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks."

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis."