Loose Lips on Iran Can Sink America

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consortiumnews.com

Loose Lips on Iran Can Sink America

By Ray McGovern
May 5, 2010

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This is a lesson that members of Congress and Washington's media honchos should have learned from the disastrous invasion of Iraq; especially the ones whose lips helped President George W. Bush portray Saddam Hussein as a monster bristling with “weapons of mass destruction.”

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Both then and today, however, it was not just Tarzans who were spoiling for a fight in the Middle East, but some Janes, in particular – Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who was a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee at the time of the Iraq invasion.

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Speaking on the floor of Congress on April 22, Harman said:

“I am often asked to name those countries I think pose the greatest threat to the security of our country and the world. … My answer every time is Iran, Iran, Iran. … Given its myopic obsession with the destruction of Israel … and its implacable, duplicitous march toward a nuclear weapons capability, in my view no other country comes close.”

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To punish Iran for its speculative interest in nuclear weapons, Harman called for sanctions to “cripple Iran’s ability to import refined petroleum products.” (As a Harvard-educated lawyer, she should be aware that, under international law, such a blockade would be an act of war. It also would inflict widespread hardship on the Iranian people.)

But Israel’s right-wing Likud government and America's neocons have identified Iran as the new enemy. So, in line with that assessment, Harman ended her oration thusly:

“Iran with nuclear weapons not only poses an existential threat to Israel; it poses an existential threat to us and to countries everywhere which espouse democratic values.”

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http://consortiumnews.com/2010/050510b.html