"TOO STUPID FOR CITIZENSHIP..."

Too Stupid for Citizenship
Will Americans fall for Bush's lies again?
by Charley Reese
If we allow the Bush administration to drag this country into a war with Iran, we should all burn our voter-registration cards and go ahead and admit that we are no longer worthy of being citizens of a self-governing republic.

For heaven's sake, the administration is employing the same tactics it used to justify the war against Iraq – refusal to negotiate, lies, disinformation, and demonization of the Iranian leader. Are we going to fall for the exact same con job all over again? If so, we are far too dumb to be trusted near a voting booth.

Recently, a story was floated that the Iranians had passed legislation requiring religious minorities to wear an identifying badge. "Nazi, Nazi" cried the neocon warmongers. Trouble is, the story was completely false. No such legislation was passed, and this bit of disinformation was knocked askew by the representative of Iran's Jewish community in the Iranian Parliament.

The source of the story was an Iranian who had been a big shot when the Shah was in power and is now with a public-relations firm that represents – surprise – many of the neoconservatives.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also told a big whopper when he said Iran was only months away from making a nuclear bomb. No nuclear expert I'm aware of agrees with that assessment, and Olmert is no nuclear expert. Even assuming Iran wants a bomb, it is years away from being able to produce one.

It's clear that the Bush administration has chosen war. One, it refuses to negotiate with Iran; two, it refuses to recognize Iran's right, as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes; three, it has already set up an office in the Pentagon and another in the State Department to agitate for regime change; and four, it has begun its anti-Iranian propaganda campaign.

President Bush is a liar when he says he wants to use diplomacy to end the crisis. In the first place, he created the crisis; in the second place, he refuses to negotiate; and in the third place, he has, for all practical purposes, issued an ultimatum: Give up your right to enrich uranium, or we'll attack.

No country in the world wants us to attack Iran except Israel. That's no surprise. If the American people haven't figured out that Israel exerts an undue and injurious influence on the American government, then that's another reason for them to tear up their voter-registration cards.

And if driving toward war with Iran isn't bad enough, the Bush administration has restarted the Cold War with Russia by its incessant criticism of Vladimir Putin's government. I think, sometimes, that the whole Bush administration is out of touch with reality and should be on medication, starting with the president and vice president.

When you consider the wars, the profligate spending, the out-of-control debt and trade deficits, the refusal to control the borders, the alienation of most of the world and the constant spitting on the Constitution and civil liberties, you can conclude that this administration is going to destroy the United States as we know it. I don't say that lightly. I never in a million years would have imagined that this administration would do what it's done.

And if you are one of those armchair jingoists who thinks it's fun to kill foreigners, just keep that thought in mind when you have to pay $10 a gallon for gasoline and the economy comes crashing down on your head. Sure, we can damage Iran's nuclear facilities and kill a lot of Iranians, but we can't do it and keep the oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf at the same time.

It isn't out of concern for the Iranians that the rest of the world doesn't want a war. It's because other nations recognize the damage it will cause the world economy. It's also because they recognize that this is a phony crisis, like Iraq's mythical weapons of mass destruction.

Even if Iran developed a nuclear weapon, so what. We have thousands; the Israelis have hundreds. Iran isn't going to attack anybody. It hasn't attacked anyone in the past 100 years.