IRAN: THE TERRORISM TRUMP CARD
By Brian A. Burchill
Global Research, April 3, 2012
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30117
The
UK's Guardian recently interviewed “current and former U.S. and
European officials with access to intelligence on Iran,” and concluded
that the United States, its European allies, and even Israel, agree that
Tehran is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear
warhead.1
Twice in recent weeks, CBC News anchor Peter Mansbridge has closely questioned two leaders who hold a different view.
In a January 18th interview, Prime Minister Stephen
Harper told Mansbridge that he thinks that “the evidence
is...overwhelming” and that it “is just beyond dispute at this point”
that Iran’s purpose is to develop nuclear weapons. When pressed about
Iran's insistence that it has no intention to build nuclear weapons,
Harper said “I think there is absolutely no doubt they are lying”.2
Harper's claims are all-too-reminiscent of US Former
Secretary of State Colin Powell's February, 2003, statement at the UN
that, with “facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence”,3 there
was no doubt in his mind that Saddam Hussein was working to obtain key
components to produce nuclear weapons.
That intelligence has since been exposed as lies. In
fact, the Iraqi chemical engineer who perpetrated the false
intelligence, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, confessed his lies on British
television April 3rd.4
Also troubling is that Harper cited the International
Atomic Energy Commission, but in the March 22nd Guardian, the agency’s
former director-general, Hans Blix, raised concerns about its recent
credibility. The IAEC has been charged with over-reliance on unverified
intelligence, and pro-Western bias, since the 2009 arrival of its new
chief, Yukiya Amano.
More recently, Harper's conclusion was thrown into
question during a CBC News One on One interview with US Defence
Secretary Leon Panetta, aired last weekend.
Panetta first stated that the best US intelligence
has concluded that Iran has not made the decision to build a nuclear
weapon. He went on to say that Iran is involved in providing non-nuclear
weapons to terrorist-associated groups outside the country.5
However, when Mansbridge queried whether containment was an effective policy (sealing off the country to prevent weapons exports to outsiders), Panetta then contradicted his own intelligence claim by saying the US was going to apply economic and diplomatic sanctions because "we cannot allow a country that supports terrorism to have a nuclear weapon."
However, when Mansbridge queried whether containment was an effective policy (sealing off the country to prevent weapons exports to outsiders), Panetta then contradicted his own intelligence claim by saying the US was going to apply economic and diplomatic sanctions because "we cannot allow a country that supports terrorism to have a nuclear weapon."
When pushed to justify the sanctions, Panetta played
the debate-ending trump card – the supposed threat of Muslim terrorism –
the card spawned by 9/11.
Thus ended the Panetta news segment – Mansbridge did
not challenge whether hidden, ubiquitous, amorphous terrorism was a
factor in the case of Iran.
The time is long overdue for investigative
journalists to challenge such references to unsubstantiated terrorism.
They can do so with confidence by becoming knowledgeable about the
growing body of evidence refuting the official claims about the events
of 9/11.
The 9/11 issue has moved from conspiracy theories and street protests into the realm of laboratories and peer-reviewed science journals. Independent scientific research, as well as FOIA requests and firefighter testimonies, have proved beyond doubt that high-tech incendiaries, not jet impacts and jet-fuel fires, caused the collapses of all three World Trade Center towers.
The 9/11 issue has moved from conspiracy theories and street protests into the realm of laboratories and peer-reviewed science journals. Independent scientific research, as well as FOIA requests and firefighter testimonies, have proved beyond doubt that high-tech incendiaries, not jet impacts and jet-fuel fires, caused the collapses of all three World Trade Center towers.
Nano-technology professor Dr. Niels Harrit of the
University of Copenhagen led the team that discovered high-tech
incendiary nano-thermite chips in the dust of the WTC towers.6 With
reaction temperatures well above the melting point of steel, this
substance can be used to cut the steel framework of buildings as they
are taken down by controlled demolitions.
A new authority raising serious challenges to the
official narrative of 9/11 is the professional 23-member 9/11 Consensus
Panel,7 made up of PhD's, attorneys, journalists, commercial pilots, and
former NASA researchers. The Panel has used the Delphi Method (a
standard consensus model borrowed from medicine) to distill the "best
evidence" refuting 18 official claims about the major events of 9/11.
In San Francisco, steel-frame architect Richard Gage
leads a group of nearly 1700 architects and engineers8 calling for a new
investigation into the three World Trade Center collapses. Gage is
currently on an 11-city tour of Canada, where his technical presentation
of the evidence is rapidly converting believers of the official account
into doubters of it.
As a result of these investigations, and because
nano-thermite can be made in only a few specialized laboratories – which
do not include caves in the Middle East – the official claim that 9/11
was perpetrated by Middle Eastern operatives is becoming less credible.
Polls have shown that 35-40% of Western people
question the official story9 (a 2011 poll from the prestigious Enmid
Institute showed that 89.5% of Germans have doubts10), yet the media
refrains from challenging the trigger event for the continuing global
war on terror.
The tentacles of the 9/11 tale continue to reach down through time, trumping hard questions from responsible journalists, and enabling vague claims of terrorism to be used as justification to punish and pummel the Middle East.
The tentacles of the 9/11 tale continue to reach down through time, trumping hard questions from responsible journalists, and enabling vague claims of terrorism to be used as justification to punish and pummel the Middle East.
The question is, if 9/11 did not happen as we were told, do we as a society want to know the truth about that day?
Brian A. Burchill is Mechanical Engineer based in British Columbia
Notes
1. “Nuclear watchdog chief accused of pro-Western bias over Iran,” Julian Borger, The Guardian, March 22, 2012
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/22/nuclear-watchdog-iran-iaea .
2. CBC News Transcript: Peter Mansbridge talks with Stephen Harper. January 18, 2012
(http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/01/17/pol-mansbridge-interview-harper-transcript.html .
(http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/01/17/pol-mansbridge-interview-harper-transcript.html .
3. “Powell presents US case to Security Council of Iraq's failure to disarm,” UN News Centre, February 5, 2003.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=6079&Cr=iraq&Cr1=inspect
http://www.un.org/apps/news/storyAr.asp?NewsID=6079&Cr=iraq&Cr1=inspect
4. “Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all,” Jonathan Owen, The Independent, April 1, 2012
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/man-whose-wmd-lies-led-to-100000-deaths-confesses-all-7606236.html.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/man-whose-wmd-lies-led-to-100000-deaths-confesses-all-7606236.html.
5. “US defence chief worries about Iran nuclear potential,” CBC News, March 27, 2012
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/03/27/panetta-mansbridge.html?cmp=rss.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/03/27/panetta-mansbridge.html?cmp=rss.
6. “Active Thermitic Material Discovered
in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” Niels H. Harrit
et al, The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Vol 2, 2009
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.pdf
7. The 9/11 Consensus Panel was founded in 2011 and is being translated into several foreign languages. www.consensus911.org.
8. Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth was founded in 2006. ae911truth.org.
9. The first Zogby poll, conducted in
August 2004, found that 49% of New York City residents and 41% of New
York state citizens believe individuals within the US government "knew
in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001,
and that they consciously failed to act." http://www.zogby.com/search/ReadNews.dbm?ID=855.
10. “German Poll: 89% Question 9/11,” http://911truthnews.com/german-poll-89-question-911/. The German magazine is at
http://www.bauermedia.de/weltderwunder.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=750&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4&cHash=6e15318bbc#content .
http://www.bauermedia.de/weltderwunder.html?&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=750&tx_ttnews[backPid]=4&cHash=6e15318bbc#content .