[wvns] Scott Ritter: On the Eve of Destruction

On the Eve of Destruction
by Scott Ritter
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyunderground/

Don't worry, the White House is telling us. The world's most powerful
leader was simply making a rhetorical point. At a White House press
conference last week, just in case you haven't heard, President Bush
informed the American people that he had told world leaders "if you're
interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be
interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to
make a nuclear weapon." World War III. That is certainly some
rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most
capable of making such an event reality.

Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes,
but the president's reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly
uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context.
Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a
reporter's question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles
Bush so. In a way, this makes what the president said even more
disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related
terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of
George W. Bush.

When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations, there was a
jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions needed
to be made and authorization documents needed to be signed. In an
environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position
sought to be the "last man in," namely the person who got to imprint
the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point of
view for the day. Failure to do so could find an inspection or point
of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive
chairman became distracted by a competing vision.

I understand the concept of "imprinting," and have seen it in action.
What is clear from the president's remarks is that, far from an
innocent rhetorical fumble, his words, and the context in which he
employed them, are a clear indication of the imprinting which is
taking place behind the scenes at the White House. If the president
mentions World War III in the context of Iran's nuclear program, one
can be certain that this is the very sort of discussion that is taking
place in the Oval Office.

A critical question, therefore, is who was the last person to
"imprint" the president prior to his public allusion to World War III?
During his press conference, Bush noted that he awaited the
opportunity to confer with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting
with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So clearly the president hadn't
been imprinted recently by either of the principle players in the
formulation of defense and foreign policy. The suspects, then, are
quickly whittled down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen
Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, and God.

Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker who has for the
most part operated "in the shadows" when it comes to the formulation
of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001, following the 9/11
terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy
national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the
"Hadley Rules," a corollary of which is that no move will be made
which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of
the United States.

These "rules" shut down every effort undertaken by Iran to seek a
moderation of relations between it and the United States, and
prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably to Iranian
offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also blocked
the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic
diplomatic initiative, including a normalization of relations with
Israel. The Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious
manner, with the National Security Council becoming involved in the
muzzling of former Bush administration officials who are speaking out
on the issue of Iran.

Hadley is blocking Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security
Council, from publishing an Op-Ed piece critical of the Bush
administration on the grounds that any insight into the machinations
of policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow strengthens Iran's hand.
Leverett's article would simply underscore the fact that the Bush
administration has spurned every opportunity to improve relations with
Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to U.S. interests
posed by the Iranian theocracy.

The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with Hadley's
deliberate policy obfuscation. There is still no official policy in
place within the administration concerning Iran. While a more
sober-minded national security bureaucracy works to marginalize the
hawkish posturing of the neocons, the administration has decided that
the best policy is in fact no policy, which is a policy decision in
its own right.

Hadley has forgone the normal procedures of governance, in which
decisions impacting the nation are written down, using official
channels, and made subject to review and oversight by those legally
and constitutionally mandated and obligated to do so. A policy of no
policy results in secret policy, which means, according to Hadley
himself, the Bush administration simply does whatever it wants to,
regardless. In the case of Iran, this means pushing for regime change
in Tehran at any cost, even if it means World War III.

But Hadley is simply a facilitator, bureaucratic "grease" to ease
policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security
infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about the true intent of
the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. With the Department of
State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground by the
remaining hard-core neoconservative thinkers still in power, policy
formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice
President Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous "Office of the Vice
President."

Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never land of
oversight deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and
legislative checks and balances. With an unchallenged ability to
classify anything and everything as secret, and then claim that there
is no authority inherent in government to oversee that which has been
thus classified, the Office of the Vice President has transformed
itself into a free republic's worst nightmare, assuming Caesar-like
dictatorial authority over almost every aspect of American national
security policy at home and abroad.

From torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or lack of it)
to Iran, Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in
America today. While there are some who will claim that in this time
of post-9/11 crisis such a process of bureaucratic streamlining is
essential for the common good, the reality is far different.

It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this has never
been truer than in the case of Cheney. What Cheney is doing behind his
shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and implementing a
preemptive war of aggression.

During the Nuremberg tribunal in the aftermath of World War II, the
chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson,
stated, "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an
international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing
only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole."

Today, we have a vice president who articulates publicly about global
conflict, and who speaks in not-so-veiled language about a looming
Armageddon. If there is such a future for America and the world, let
one thing be certain; World War III, as postulated by Dick Cheney,
would be an elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity. This
makes the crime even greater.

Sadly, Judge Jackson's words are but an empty shell. The global
community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes a war
of aggression, or even an act of aggression. But that isn't the point.
America should never find itself in a position where it is being
judged by the global community regarding the legality of its actions.
Judge Jackson established a precedent of jurisprudence concerning
aggression based upon American principles and values, something the
international community endorsed.

The fact that current American indifference to the rule of law
prevents the international community from certifying a definition of
criminality when it comes to aggression, whether it be parsed as "war"
or simply an "act," does not change the fact that the Bush
administration, in the person of Dick Cheney, is actively engaged in
the committing of the "supreme [war] crime," which makes Cheney the
supreme war criminal. If the world is not empowered to judge him as
such, then let the mantle of judgment fall to the American people.
Through their elected representatives in Congress, they should not
only bring this reign of unrestrained abuse of power to an end, but
ensure that such abuse never again is attempted by an American
official by holding to account, to the full extent of the law, those
who have trampled on the Constitution of the United States and the
ideals and principles it enshrines.

But what use is the rule of law, even if fairly and properly
implemented, if in the end he who is entrusted with executive power
takes his instructions from an even higher authority? President Bush's
relationship with "God" (or that which he refers to as God) is a
matter of public record. The president himself has stated that "God
speaks through me" (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in
Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004).

Exactly how God speaks through him, and what precisely God says, is
not a matter of speculation. According to Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told him and others that "God told me to
strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to
strike at Saddam, which I did." As such, at least in the president's
mind, God has ordered Bush to transform himself into a modern
incarnation of St. Michael, smiting all that is evil before him. "We
are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call evil by
its name," the president told West Point cadets in a speech in 2002.

The matter of how and when an individual chooses to practice his
faith, or lack thereof, is a deeply personal matter, one which should
be kept from public discourse. For a president to so openly impose his
personal religious beliefs, as Bush has done, on American policy
formulation and implementation represents a fundamental departure from
not only constitutional intent concerning the separation of church and
state but also constitutional mandate concerning the imposition of
checks and balances required by the American system of governance.

The increasing embrace by this president of the notion of a unitary
executive takes on an even more sinister aspect when one realizes that
not only does the Bush administration seek to nullify the will of the
people through the shackling of the people's representatives in
Congress, but that the president has forgone even the appearance of
constitutional constraint by evoking the word of his personal deity,
as expressed through his person, as the highest form of consultation
on a matter as serious as war. As such, the president has made his
faith, and how he practices it, a subject not only of public curiosity
but of national survival.

That George W. Bush is a born-again Christian is not a national
secret. Neither is the fact that his brand of Christianity,
evangelicalism, embraces the notion of the "end of days," the coming
of the Apocalypse as foretold (so they say) in the Book of Revelations
and elsewhere in the Bible. President Bush's frequent reference to
"the evil one" suggests that he not only believes in the Antichrist
but actively proselytizes on the Antichrist's physical presence on
Earth at this time.

If one takes in the writing and speeches of those in the evangelical
community today concerning the "rapture," the numerous references to
the current situation in the Middle East, especially on the events
unfolding around Iran and its nuclear program, make it very clear
that, at least in the minds of these evangelicals, there is a clear
link between the "end of days" prophesy and U.S.-Iran policy.

That James Dobson, one of the most powerful and influential
evangelical voices in America today, would be invited to the White
House with like-minded clergy to discuss President Bush's Iran policy
is absurd unless one makes the link between Bush's personal faith, the
extreme religious beliefs of Dobson and the potential of
Armageddon-like conflict (World War III). At this point, the absurd
becomes unthinkable, except it is all too real.

Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's greatest founders, made the
separation of church and state an underlying principle upon which the
United States was built. This separation was all-inclusive, meaning
that not only should government stay out of religion, but likewise
religion should be excluded from government. "I never submitted the
whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever
in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I
was capable of thinking for myself," Jefferson wrote in a letter to
Francis Hopkinson in 1789. "Such an addiction is the last degradation
of a free and moral agent."

If only President Bush would abide by such wisdom, avoiding the
addictive narcotic of religious fervor when carrying out the people's
business. Instead, he chooses as his drug one which threatens to
destroy us all in a conflagration derived not from celestial
intervention but individual ignorance and arrogance. Again Jefferson,
in a letter written in 1825: "It is between fifty and sixty years
since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the
ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than
the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."

Nightmares, more aptly, unless something can be done to change the
direction Bush and Dobson are taking us. The problem is that far too
many Americans openly espouse not only the faith of George W. Bush but
also the underlying philosophy which permits this faith to be
intertwined with the governance of the land.

"God bless America" has become a rallying cry for this crowd, and
those too ignorant and/or afraid to speak out in opposition. If this
statement has merit, what does it say for the 6.8 billion others in
the world today who are not Americans? That God condemns them? The
American embrace of divine destiny is not unique in history (one only
has to recall that the belt buckles of the German army during World
War II read "God is with us").

But for a nation born of the age of reason to collectively fall victim
to the most base of fear-induced theology is a clear indication that
America currently fails to live up to its founding principles. Rather
than turning to Dobson and his ilk for guidance in these troubled
times, Americans would be well served to reflect on President Abraham
Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered in the middle of a
horrific civil war which makes all of the conflict America finds
itself in today pale in comparison:

"Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God,
and each invokes His aid against the other. … The prayers of both
could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The
Almighty has His own purposes. … [T]hat He gives to both North and
South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense
came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine
attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"

God is not on our side, or the side of any single nation or people. To
believe such is the ultimate expression of national hubris. To invoke
such, if one is a true believer, is to embrace sacrilege and heresy.
This, of course, is an individual right, granted as an extension of
religious freedom. But it is not a collective right, nor is it a right
born of governance, especially in a land protected by the separation
of church and state.

The issue of Iran is a national problem which requires a collective
debate, discussion and dialogue inclusive of all the facts, and
stripped of all ideology and theocracy which would seek to deny
reasoned thought conducted within a framework of accepted laws and
ideals. It is grossly irresponsible of an American president to invoke
the imagery of World War III without first sharing with the American
people the framework of thought that produced such a comparison.

Such openness will not be forthcoming from this administration or
president. Not in the form of Stephen Hadley's policy of no policy,
designed with intent to avoid and subvert both bureaucratic and
legislative process and oversight, or Dick Cheney's secret government
within a government, operating above and beyond the law and in a
manner which violates both legal and moral norms and values, and
certainly not in the president's own private conversations with "God,"
either directly or through the medium of lunatic evangelicals who
embrace the termination of all we stand for, and especially the future
of our next generation, in a fiery holocaust born from the fraudulent
writings of centuries past.

The processes which compelled George W. Bush to speak of a World War
III are intentionally not transparent to the American people. The
president has much to explain, and it would be incumbent upon every
venue of civic and public pressure to demand that such an explanation
be forthcoming in the near future. The stakes regarding Iran have
always been high, but never more so than when a nation's leader
invokes the end of days as a solution.

Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991
and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He
is the author of numerous books, including "Iraq Confidential" (Nation
Books, 2005) , "Target Iran" (Nation Books, 2006) and his latest,
"Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement" (Nation Books,
April 2007).

email: libertyuv @ hotmail.com

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