A Third American War in the Making?

Iran in the Crosshairs

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
CounterPunch

"......Just as the world could not believe Hitler's next horror and thus was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.

Iran's only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi'ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation. On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

Gadhafi asked, "Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?" If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted, "they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."

Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East."