from: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell, preface to Animal Farm

Senator Lieberman, Secretary of State Clinton, and former UN Ambassador John Bolton have resumed rhetoric of a United States attack upon Iran. There are two general justifications they speak of to justify war: Iran's "nuclear program" and their threat to Israel. The following is edited from my brief on the current US Wars of Aggression, found here: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/41708. Please use this information in any way helpful to build a brighter future.

“Wiping Israel off the Map”: Wikipedia admits to “controversy” over the interpretation of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s meaning of an October, 2005 speech.[1] However, Wikipedia doesn’t mention the context within which it was spoken to help our understanding. In his speech, Ahmadinejad was discussing how people once thought it was impossible to remove the Shah as Iran’s dictator, but it was done. He then said that people thought the Soviet government and Saddam’s government would never fall. He then quoted Ayatollah Khomeini’s words from speeches he gave encouraging Iran’s persistence to oppose the Shah’s government that translate awkwardly into English as, “erase from the page of time.” Unless Khomeini and Ahmadinejad were advocating for the destruction of their own country, the speech’s meaning is to encourage the Iranian people to persist for change in Israel’s government.[2] Again, please don’t believe me. Look at the evidence; read the speech. If you have Persian friends as I do, talk with them to gain their perspective of the discrepancy between our government and major media reporting of the meaning of the speech and what Ahmadinejad actually said. My Persian friends are understandably outraged by US threats to attack Iran, and frightened that what has happened in Iraq will happen to their friends and families in Iran.

Political leadership from both parties have not corrected this contrivance; rather they use it as an argument to demonize Iran. The US House of Representatives passed a resolution requesting the UN Security Council to charge President Ahmadinejad with the War Crime of inciting genocide.[3] John McCain has twice made public “jokes” about killing Iranians, escalating concern.[4] Senator McCain stated his position on Iran that includes this lie of President Ahmadinejad’s speech:

“The leadership of Iran has repeatedly used violence to undermine Israel and the Middle East peace process. It has trained, financed, and equipped extremists in Iraq who have killed American soldiers fighting to bring freedom to that country. It remains the world's chief sponsor of terrorism and threatens to destabilize the entire Middle East, from Basra to Beirut…It's hard to see what… a summit with President Ahmadinejad would actually gain, except an earful of anti-Semitic rants, and a worldwide audience for a man who denies one Holocaust and talks before frenzied crowds about starting another."[5]

Senator Obama spoke in Israel in July 2008 and seems to endorse this lie, stating that Iran “sponsors terrorism, pursues nuclear weapons and threatens Israel’s existence.”[6] One of President Bush’s advisors and the author of the idea for the troop “surge” in 2007, Fred Kagan, stated on MSNBC on July 23, 2008:

“Well, there’s nothing we can do short of an attack to force Iran to give up its nuclear program. … At the end of the day, the only way that you can make for sure that [a nuclear arm’s race] doesn’t happen is with an attack.”[7]

In apparent complicity in this deliberate misinformation, and perhaps working for war against Iran, the UK’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, stated in his speech to the Israeli Legislature, the Knesset, on July 21, 2008, "It is totally abhorrent for the President of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world."[8]
Mike Wallace of the famed television show 60 Minutes won an Emmy for a contrived interview with President Ahmadinejad in 2006, where Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments encouraging democracy for Palestinians was edited to appear that he was hostile to Israel. You can verify this by watching the brief 5-minute clip for yourself: http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=onNzrNEFs1E&feature=related .
One scenario for initiating war with Iran came from Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor and the National Security Advisor to Senator Obama’s presidential campaign. Brzezinski testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1, 2007:

“A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a ‘defensive’ U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.”[9]

This strategy was echoed by retired CIA Analyst, Ray McGovern, who served under seven US Presidents. McGovern’s comprehensive understanding of intelligence work qualified him as one of the few analysts chosen to present the President’s Daily Brief in morning meetings to Presidents.[10] McGovern states that Israel and/or the CIA have numerous possibilities to attack US interests (known as a false-flag attack), blame Iran, then use the media to stoke public opinion in favor of war.[11]

But why have war with Iran? Next, we take a look at history and motivation. Can’t wait? Read my brief, “War with Iraq and Afghanistan, rhetoric for war with Iran.”