Iran next?

In Brussels yesterday, President Bush spoke about the question of any US plans to attack Iran.

Bush says talk of attacking Iran "ridiculous"

"This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," Bush told a news conference after talks with European Union leaders.

"Having said that, all options are on the table," he added, drawing laughter at a clear reference to military action.

Interestingly, Bush's statement follows recent statements made by Scott Ritter on February 19 about how Bush has already approved an attack on Iran scheduled for June 2005.

Scott Ritter Says U.S. Plans June Attack on Iran, ‘Cooked’ Jan. 30 Iraqi Election Results

Scott Ritter, appearing with journalist Dahr Jamail yesterday in Washington State, dropped two shocking bombshells in a talk delivered to a packed house in Olympia’s Capitol Theater. The ex-Marine turned UNSCOM weapons inspector said that George W. Bush has "signed off" on plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, and claimed the U.S. manipulated the results of the recent Jan. 30 elections in Iraq.

The same Scott Ritter who, after serving as a United Nations UNSCOM weapons inspector in Iraq, stated there was no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq before the US invasion of Iraq.

From a September 2002 CNN article, Former weapons inspector: Iraq not a threat

Ritter denied that Iraq possessed any weapons of mass destruction but acknowledged that concerns exist about the country's weapons programs.

"These concerns are almost exclusively technical in nature and do not overcome the reality that Iraq, during nearly seven years of continuous inspection activity by the United Nations, had been certified as being disarmed to a 90 [percent] to 95 percent level," he said.

He warned that if the United States unilaterally launches any military action against Iraq, it would "forever change the political dynamic which has governed the world since the end of the second World War, namely the foundation of international law as set forth in the United Nations charter, which calls for the peaceful resolution of problems between nations."

Let's not forget, Scott is in a position of someone who should know.

Ritter resigned as chief weapons inspector for the United Nations in August 1998, saying that the U.N. Security Council and U.S. government had fatally undermined his team's attempts to locate and eliminate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

He has said U.S. intelligence agents used the weapons inspectors as a cover for spying and destroyed the inspection teams' credibility.

A couple of excerpt from a Times piece in response to accusations (Exclusive: Scott Ritter in His Own Words
The former weapons inspector explains his switch from getting up Saddam's nose to picking fights with Bush).

Some on the right call you the new Jane Fonda, and joke about what you'll call your exercise video.

(Long pause?) Those on the right who say that disgrace the 12 years of service I gave to my country as a Marine. I love my country. I'll put my record of service up against anyone, bar none. If they want to have an exercise video then why don't they come here and say it to my face and I'll give'm an exercise video, which will be called, "Scott Ritter Kicking Their Ass."

In 1998, you said Saddam had "not nearly disarmed." Now you say he doesn't have weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Why did you change your mind?

I have never given Iraq a clean bill of health! Never! Never! I've said that no one has backed up any allegations that Iraq has reconstituted WMD capability with anything that remotely resembles substantive fact. To say that Saddam's doing it is in total disregard to the fact that if he gets caught he's a dead man and he knows it. Deterrence has been adequate in the absence of inspectors but this is not a situation that can succeed in the long term. In the long term you have to get inspectors back in.

The idea of an impending attack on Iran has been presented by New Yorker columnist Seymour Hersch, on January 17, 2005, in his article "The Coming Wars". Here is a snippet from the article to give you an idea:

According to a former high-level intelligence official, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff shortly after the election and told them, in essence, that the naysayers had been heard and the American people did not accept their message. Rumsfeld added that America was committed to staying in Iraq and that there would be no second-guessing.

“This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush Administration is looking at this as a huge war zone,” the former high-level intelligence official told me. “Next, we’re going to have the Iranian campaign. We’ve declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah—we’ve got four years, and want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism.”

Behind the scenes are those who have been planning the direction of the current administration and slowly executing their plans.

The Administration has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran at least since last summer... Defense Department civilians, under the leadership of Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran. . . . Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military's war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran. . . . The hawks in the Administration believe that it will soon become clear that the Europeans' negotiated approach [to Iran] cannot succeed, and that at that time the Administration will act.

Moving to attack Iran would be the most obvious, indisputable signal of the current US administration's belief that the world is their's for the taking.