Iran Deal Is No Big Deal

Whatever we were doing to try to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons was running into a dead end, where we were either going to have to invade Iran or let it go on about its proliferating business, as we have allowed North Korea. Since North Korea poses relatively little threat to Israel, we have allowed it to continue its nuclear program, with only a few lackadaisical, desultory meetings to give the appearance of concern, regardless of what threat North Korea may pose to US troops on the peninsula or to the South Korean population.

Israel, however, is much more concerned about Iran than North Korea; so, to please the American Jewish Lobby, we have to at least look like we are trying harder than we are with North Korea. Thus, this latest gambit of America's apparent willingness to join face to face negotiations with Iran. But, there are so many conditions with the Iranians, and so many disagreements with the Russians and Chinese, that it seems unlikely to go anywhere. Which is what hardliners like Cheney and Rumsfeld want. What the hardliners and the Jewish Lobby want is to blast the Iranian nuclear sites to smithereens. This "negotiation" offer is just a speed bump on the way to invasion, just as going to the UN before invading Iraq sort of appeased American doves and European "allies." The hawks are still looking for an opening. Fortunately, the US invasion of Iraq has become such a disaster that it will make invading Iran more difficult politically than invading Iraq was.

Full UN Report on Torture Criticizing Guantanamo

This link opens the full pdf version of the UN report criticizing the US for Guantanamo.

Article on Jewish Lawyers

This is an interesting article on how Jewish lawyers moved from small, Jewish law firms to large, mainstream, Protestant "white shoe" law firms representing large corporations.

Washington Institute for Near East Policy

This article gives a good background on one of the pro-Israel think tanks influencing US policy, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

I discovered this article while looking up articles written by Richard Speier, my old nemesis when I was working on missile proliferation issues. This LA Times article says he was one of the authors of the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime MTCR), which is true. However, if he had not been involved, the MTCR would have come into force sooner and probably would have been stronger. He was an acolyte of Richard Perle at the Pentagon, who held up formulating a US position on the MTCR in an effort to make it ban missiles absolutely. This, of course, is impossible, but it is a characteristic of politically right-wing, conservative approaches to arms control. In essence it means they don't like arms control (or international law) at all, because it doesn't make them feel absolutely safe. It's like saying that you should not outlaw murder because you can't be absolutely sure that no one will commit murder if you do outlaw it.

While looking to see what articles Speier has written since those bad old days when I was at the State Department feuding with him at Defense, I found that he has written for WINEP. It shows that if you are pro-Israel in Washington, somebody will look out for you. No wonder, AIPAC, WINEP and other Israeli lobbies are so successful! Interestingly, he also wrote an article on the dangers of the Iraqi al-Samoud missile in February 2003, before we found that Iraq didn't have any WMD. Another WINEP article dealt with the Israeli Arrow ABM missile which was a problem for us when I was working on the missile proliferation issue. To his credit, he continues to oppose the Arrow, which the US proposed during the Bush I administration to avoid the constraints on the US of the ABM (anti-ballistic missile) treaty, which the US has since renounced. Thus, the treaty is no longer a restraint on the US, and the US has less need of an Israeli proxy to do prohibited research.