[NYTr] Iran No Nuclear Threat? All the More Reason to Attack Them!

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Tim Murphy - activ-l

The Guardian - Dec 10, 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2225029,00.html

So Iran's not a nuclear threat any more? 
All the more reason for Bush to unleash Armageddon

Bush is so fact-phobic that he might as well declare  
a war on reality, in which anything palpably authentic is the enemy 

By Charlie Brooker 

So let's get this straight. A US intelligence report decides that Iran
isn't as big a threat as once feared, and Bush decides this proves
that, actually guys, I think you'll find it is. You've got to admire
his steadfast refusal to acknowledge anything that doesn't complement
his monochromatic world view. He's a true tunnel visionary. Awkward
facts simply ricochet off him, like peashooter pellets bouncing
harmlessly from an elephant's hide. He knows what he wants to believe,
and he'll carry on believing it until it kills him.

Or us. Preferably us. He can always recant and say, "Oops, I was wrong"
in his bunker. We'll be long gone by then, so what does he care?

Very little, in all probability. Bush is a bit like an unhinged
iconoclast who has arbitrarily decided he doesn't believe in cows, and
loudly and repeatedly denies their existence until you get so annoyed
you drive him to a farm and show him a cow, and he shakes his head and
continues to insist there's no such thing. At which point it moos
indignantly, but he claims not to hear it, so in exasperation you drag
him into the field and force him to touch the cow, and milk the cow,
and ride around on the cow's back. And, finally, he dismounts and says,
"That was fun'n'all, but dagnammit, I still don't believe in no cow."
And then he shoots it in the head regardless, just to be on the safe
side. Just so it isn't a threat.

Come to think of it, Bush is so vehemently fact-phobic, he might as well
expand the war on terror into an outright war on reality, in which
anything palpably authentic is the enemy. There'll be an "Axis of Real
Stuff", encompassing everyone and everything from hairbands to dustmen,
all of which Must Be Eliminated. "If it's provable, we can kill it."
That's our new motto. God's on our side, because he can't be proved or
disproved. He's one of our most valuable allies - the others being
Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, ghosts, the bogeyman, and Bigfoot. Not to
mention a vast fleet of UFOs, which the enemy won't have a chance of
defeating because it never existed in the first place. Our armies won't
be constrained by the laws of physics, and even if we lose, we'll
simply say we won, even if we have to say it from an afterlife which
doesn't exist either. That's the power of unwavering denial. It makes
deities of us all.

Of course, by rejecting anything he doesn't want to hear, Bush is simply
proving he's human. Humans hate the truth. Once someone's made up their
mind, they rarely change it, no matter how much evidence to the
contrary you show them. Changing your mind or admitting you were wrong
is seen as weak, as though life itself were an almighty pub quiz where
incorrect answers are penalised. The only option left is to interpret
the facts in a new and interesting way that supports your overall
position. This is what Bush has done. He says that since the report
indicates that Iran halted its weapons programme in 2003, there's a
clear possibility it could start it up again. The very fact that the
Iranians don't have a nuclear bomb proves they might still develop one.
Therefore, Iran is dangerous.

That's a clever thing to say, because a) the future is unknowable, so
it's impossible to tell him he's wrong, and b) the more he says it, the
more likely it is to come true. Since Bush has shown that he'll view
Iran as a nuclear threat regardless of whether it's got the bomb or
not, the Iranians might as well build one. What have they got to lose?

Also, the report doesn't say whether the Iranians are developing a giant
laser beam capable of sawing the sun in two, but that's no reason to
assume they won't be starting work on it next week. Picture a world in
which Ahmadinejad holds us to ransom by threatening to plunge one
sawn-off half of the sun into the Atlantic, sending 900ft waves of
boiling water rushing toward our shores. We can't let that happen.
We've got to get in first: drive a space shuttle into the sun and blow
the damn thing up before the enemy get their hands on it. It might
solve global warming too. Let's hope the Pentagon is across this. Don't
let us down, guys. Knock that baby out.

Another benefit of ignoring the report and piling in regardless is that
at least this time round we'll know for sure that the invasion and
subsequent war is based on a false premise in advance, which beats
finding out later and feeling a bit disgusted with ourselves.
Forewarned is forearmed. It's a narrative tweak which keeps things
fresh and interesting. The TV series Columbo used a similar device:
instead of being served a common-or- garden whodunnit, you'd see the
murderer committing the crime at the start, so the fun came from
watching his plan slowly unravel. There's no danger of that happening
to Bush though, because he doesn't believe in plans either. So nothing
unravels. It's a win-win situation. He should unleash the hounds
tomorrow. Go ahead, George. We'll be fine, out here, outside the
bunker. Don't you worry about us.