It still comes down to the simple question: why? Why is all this happening? At the moment, the hysteria in Washington is focused upon Iran. See below an excerpt from an article in Der Spiegel of late last week, reporting on the predicted results of a hypothetical, joint U.S./Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites. The apparent lunacy of the Cheney/Bush White House has still not run its course.

The "Neocon" regime in Washington seems fully prepared to set a new milestone in foolishness. Get set for another unnecessary, self-destructive conflict. In the meantime, amazingly, still not a word of caution from the U.S. Congress. Instead, we are witness a few grandstanding mountebanks in favor of further adventurism.

What is behind all this? What is the motivation for those manipulating the front men and for the front men themselves? By "front men" I am referring primarily to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Gingrich, Senators Clinton and McCain. Of this group I repeat my speculation of a few weeks ago: "Do the gentlemen in Washington know what they are doing, and don't give a damn about the negative consequences to the country as a whole and to the world? Perhaps the political, financial and career consequences for themselves individually will be positive, and that is all that matters."

As for the "Neocon" operatives working in the shadows, I wonder if their main concern is not Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program, but instead is the intellectual threat which Iran poses to Israel's foundation. The upstart President of Iran has broached the taboo subject of the Holocaust, because it was the main justification for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine at the end of World War II and was subsequently exploited to the hilt by the Zionists worldwide to do whatever they pleased with the native inhabitants of Palestine.

Iran is proposing an international conference in the Spring of 2006 to explore and investigate the Holocaust from all sides, something which has never happened in the West, because it would not be allowed. Such an event is certainly more dangerous to Israel than a non-deliverable, nonexistent atomic bomb.

On Monday in Vienna an English historian was sentenced to prison in Austria for three years for the thought crime of being a "Holocaust denier". The problem is, David Irving, like the president of Iran, may be a quirky individual, but he is not insane. Irving does not believe the world is flat; nor does he deny that the world is round. Along with a handful of other isolated scholars and scientists in Europe and America, Irving attempted, in a very limited way, to define the scope of the Holocaust, not to deny it. Irving would like to know what actually happened, and what actually did not happen in the course of World War II. He is unsatisfied with the pap regurgitated by the mass media and the establishment historians.

But in the Orwellian world in which we now find ourselves, any deviation from the party line, from orthodoxy, from the received and authorized version of events as it relates to World War II and especially to the Holocaust is, at the very least, unacceptable and, at the worst, a criminal offense requiring imprisonment. To question long-held assumptions and to challenge the official story is a threat to the status quo.

It turns out that the enforcement of this same taboo may also be the real, behind-the-scenes impetus for a war against Iran. In addition, like Iraq, Iran must be punished for being contumacious of the Tel Aviv/Washington overlordship of the Middle East and for setting a bad example. The "Neoconservatives" are in their glory, the "liberals" have been suborned, and the conservatives of the old school have run for cover. Welcome to World War IV.

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SPIEGEL ONLINE - February 16, 2006

The Cost of War--Air Strikes against Iran
Would Kill Thousands

By Yassin Musharbash

Thousands of soldiers and civilians would likely be killed if the United States or Israel were to attack Iran. The strikes would also spark a  lasting regional crisis in the entire Middle East and the risks would be enormous, a new British study warns. Iranians walk past an anti-US mural in downtown Tehran.If the air strikes come, the bombs would fall without warning, dropped from fighter jets stationed in the Persian Gulf and from long-range bombers that would start their sorties in Britain. Their targets: Iranian research reactors in Tehran, nuclear facilities in Isfahan, Natanz, Arak and Bushehr. Research-related facilities at Iranian universities would also likely fall under the sights. The result of a four to five day series of air strikes would likely be thousands of dead Iranian soldiers, hundreds of dead civilians.

That's the scenario for a possible United States-led military strike against Iran's nuclear program described in "Iran: Consequences of a War," a newly released report by British conflict researcher Paul Rogers commissioned by the Oxford Research Group think tank. "A diplomatic solution to the profound differences between Washington and Tehran is still possible, but is becoming less likely," Rogers states in the report's introduction. Rogers's seeming resignation is telling: Oxford Research Group's mission is to provide violence-free prescriptions for conflict resolution, and Rogers is by no means a hawk.

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According to Rogers, an attack against Iran would further fuel anti-American sentiment in the region--and in the mid-term it could assist extremist groups like al-Qaida. If the US does attack, he predicts it will spark a new wave of suicide bombings. A "protracted and highly unstable conflict" would be "virtually certain," Rogers predicts. "This would lead to further military action against Iran, establishing a highly dangerous cycle of violence." That makes it all the more troubling that the study's author considers the risk of an armed conflict with Iran actually taking place to be extremely high. In his short, stringent analysis of the three main countries involved in the diplomatic conflict--the US, Israel and Iran--he sees little opportunity for a de-escalation.

For Washington, Rogers writes, "it is fundamentally unacceptable to the United States for a 'rogue' state such as Iran to be allowed to get even remotely near having its own nuclear capability. Such a 'deterrent' would greatly limit US options in the region, and would provide a threat to its closest ally -- Israel." At the same time, Israel "regards it as essential to its security that it is the only state in the region with a nuclear capability." On the other side, Iran, which is surrounded by countries with US military bases, also sees itself threatened. A nuclear bomb, of course, would make for a strong deterrent.

"A military response to the current crisis in relations with Iran is a particularly dangerous option and should not be considered further," Rogers concludes in the report, "alternative approaches must be sought, however difficult these may be." The analysis may be bleak and the demand for alternative approaches naive, but Paul Rogers' research has proved prescient in the past. In a November 2002 report, "Iraq: Consequences of War," Rogers predicted the current situation in Baghdad, where al-Qaida and other terror groups have made establishing peace extremely difficult.  "The United States has sufficient forces to ensure regime destruction, but the regime's replacement by occupying forces or by a client regime," the 2002 report read, "... should be expected to increase regional opposition to the US presence. It is likely, in particular, to increase support for organizations such as al-Qaida and to prove counter productive to peace and security in the region."