Jan. 2, 2006 – Monday Brownbagger
Co-op radio, CFRO 102.7 FM,
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Interviewer: Don Nordin
Guest: Michel Chossudovsky
DN: I have on the line today Michel Chossudovsky,
He is a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, and we will be basing the programme today on an article that he has recently written (entitled “The Anglo-American War of Terror – An Overview”) that is on the website: http://globalresearch.ca and it centers around the problems in the Middle East particularly (in) Iran. Welcome to the programme, today, Michel.
[see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky and http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/ONE311A.html.]
MC: Well, it’s a pleasure to be on the programme. Greetings and best wishes to everybody in British Columbia.
DN: And you wanted to focus on the issue of Iran. Now, it seems like we are looking at a situation building up with Iran and it is centered around the terrorism, used as a pretext for this agenda that they are building up, this global domination agenda.
Do you want to just get into that a bit, Michel, and maybe you could talk around the issue of the imminent war against Iran?
MC: For the last year or so, the United States, Israel and Turkey have been preparing an aerial bombing of Iran. This went into the planning stage back in November of 2004. In other words, it’s over a year now and essentially this operation is using the pretext of Iran’s nuclear programme to bomb its nuclear facilities. In fact, what is actually being planned is a nuclear war and that nuclear war has nothing to do with Iran. It has to do with nuclear weapons, which are slated to be used by the United States and Israel and I have looked into the various documents behind this.
We are not talking about surgical strikes. That’s what’s being presented to public opinion – that the United States is going to embark on surgical strikes directed against Iran with a view to making the world safer and it’s all based on the idea that Israel is threatened and so on and so forth. In fact, what is being planned is an all out nuclear war using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. And this is something, which is not widely known, although it’s confirmed in a number of military documents. (The air assault) would use tactical nuclear weapons, which have an explosive capacity between 1/3, and 6 times the Hiroshima bomb.
I should mention that these tactical nuclear weapons, which are often referred to as ‘mini-nukes,’ are now in a sense re-classified – in fact they are considered as conventional weapons and the distinction between conventional and nuclear weapons has been blurred following a decision in the U.S. Senate, December 2003, which essentially allows for these so-called mini nukes to be used in conventional war theatres and in fact, the senate decision was reached after a propaganda campaign waged by the Pentagon, which enlisted nuclear scientists to the fact these nuclear bombs were harmless to civilians, quote, unquote. That’s exactly the term they used, that these nuclear weapons are “harmless to civilians” because the explosion is underground, and the system of delivery would be very similar to the conventional bunker buster bombs.
But what is now very disturbing is that actually the timeline for this operation has already been announced – March of 2006. In other words, in the next three months. This (timeline) has been confirmed by the Israelis. Prime Minister Sharon has made the statement. His political opponents, in particular Benjamin Netanyahu, have confirmed that they are also in agreement with this posture – that they will wage surgical strikes against Iran. But if you look at it in a broader context, you will realize that this is not strictly an Israeli operation. It’s an operation, which involves the United States, Turkey, and Israel as the main military actors but which is firmly supported by America’s coalition partners in NATO. In other words, NATO has given its approval to this military operation. There are no dissenting voices within the Atlantic military alliance as occurred prior to the war in Iraq and in effect, I think that there won’t be many dissenting voices in the United Nations Security Council, and eventually a pretext will be built that Iran is a threat to global security in view of its nuclear programme, and that is of course a very controversial issue. But as to whether this is up for civilian use or for military use, but there is no evidence that Iran at this stage is developing nuclear weapons.
But what we’re dealing with here is the fact that the United States wants to launch a nuclear war. o.k.? And if it launches a nuclear with Israel, what’s going to happen is this is going to affect a much broader region. The war is going to extend to the entire Middle Eastern region; it’s going to lead to radioactive contamination over a large part of that region and, in other words, if we thought we were in a situation of chaos and war crimes in Iraq, we really haven’t seen what is planned ahead because this is a major military operation which is being envisaged.
I have been reviewing a number of military documents to that effect, and they are now talking about what is called Concept Plan 8022. Now Concept Plan 8022 is a plan, which would be implemented by US Strategic Command, which is located at the Offutt Military Base in Nebraska. Essentially, it’s an air force base. And this Concept plan consists in what they call “global strike”; it combines both conventional as well as nuclear strikes, and it integrates the actions of the navy and the air force and then of course, it would be implemented from US military facilities in the Persian Gulf or in the Indian Ocean, in particular, Diego Garcia, the military base, the extremely large US facility strategically located in the Indian Ocean, which is a joint navy/air force base in Diego Garcia, in the Chagos Archipelago and from there they would implement the aerial bombardments and also the missile attacks.
And so if this plan goes ahead, we are really entering into a World War III scenario. I believe we are already in World War III. World War III started at the beginning of the post Cold war era, with the wars in Yugoslavia, but this is a new stage in the deployment of America’s war machine with devastating consequences for the future of humanity.
DN: Now these targets – they are supposedly aiming at these nuclear facilities. Are those located near to populated areas?
MC: Well, absolutely, they are heavily populated, and I don’t think they will limit these strikes strictly to these facilities. I should mention that even if they use conventional weapons against these nuclear facilities, the explosions at those facilities would in fact trigger the spread of radioactivity over a vast area because these are nuclear power plants, and so on, which would be targeted. But from what I understand, reading some of the background material, is that what is contemplated is an operation in terms of air strikes similar to what Donald Rumsfeld implemented in March 2003 on Baghdad, prior to the actual invasion. In other words, this ‘shock and awe’ blitzkrieg type of bombing would occur and that is confirmed in fact by statements of the U.S. military and we are talking about a very large deployment, again as I said, comparable to the US bombing raids on Iraq at the outset of the war.
DN: Now when you speak of these tactical nuclear weapons having the power of anywhere from 1/3 to 6 times a Hiroshima bomb, and we’ve seen the damage that those bombs did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would think that even ones with 1/3 the power – I guess they would be the ones that maybe they would use to take out a nuclear plant – would do a lot of damage. But I can’t imagine where they would use one 6 times the power of a Hiroshima bomb.
MC: I’m not entirely clear as to the explosive capacity of the bombs that they are planning to use. I think you’re right that the ones that are being contemplated to be delivered, let’s say, with B-52 bombers, wouldn’t be the larger ones, o.k? They would be delivered in much the same way as the conventional bunker buster bombs; it’s the B-61-11, which is the nuclear version of the conventional Blue 1-13. I think those are in fact probably of the order of about 1/2 of the Hiroshima bomb.
But I think when we see that this process is unleashed – once this process is triggered, we may be in a situation where the U.S. military is landing several nuclear devices in different parts of Iran and we must understand – and that’s also very important – is that Iran has the capacity to retaliate in many different ways. It has stated that it will retaliate. It has acquired rather sophisticated air defense systems. Russia has delivered the equipment to it.
This war which is contemplated by its architects as an aerial operation, could well lead into a ground war. ok? The whole idea of Con Plan is that you don’t have any deployment of ground troops, and in fact, you have minimal risk for your air force.
But what happens if Iran decides to confront U.S. troops stationed in Iraq across the border, in northern Iraq? What happens if Iran retaliates and sends its own missiles towards U.S. facilities in the Persian Gulf or Israel for that matter? So we are dealing with an extremely dangerous scenario.
People don’t realize – I don’t think the military planners realize themselves the implications of this military agenda. And we are in a situation where in fact the military planners, the people who actually devise the bombing strategies, not the politicians necessarily, they actually don’t realize that these nuclear weapons are in fact nuclear weapons, because the military manuals that they consult and which have been drafted by the science labs and the weapons factories and so on, stipulate that these tactical nuclear weapons are “harmless to civilians” because the explosion is underground. Now when a 3-star general picks up the military manual, and says “ha, ha, here we are, it explains that these weapons are harmless to civilians, let’s go ahead and use them”. And so what we have is a situation where the authors of this military propaganda, in fact, are feeding this propaganda to their own their own military command structures, so that those who devise the propaganda believe in the propaganda which they themselves are promoting. And that’s a very dangerous situation when people actually believe within the system, within the command system – high ranking officers, 3-star generals, 4-star generals – actually believe that these nuclear weapons are harmless, well then we are really in a fix because all the safeguards which have protected us from a nuclear holocaust have been literally broken down.
And I don’t think anybody really seriously has contemplated what is behind this military agenda. I mean there are a number of people around the world who know and understand, but because the matter has literally not been debated in the mainstream media, it’s not the object of media attention, it never reaches the front pages, andS Perhaps what’s going to happen is there is going to be a nuclear war in Iran and then we are going to get a blip on the evening news, which will follow various other news items saying “yes, there’s been a nuclear war” but they won’t even say it’s a nuclear war, they will say something else because the nuclear explosions may not be acknowledged as nuclear explosions until much later.
And I should mention that the bunker buster bombs and the nuclear versions are quite different but you can’t always say whether there is a nuclear explosion or a conventional explosion because the bunker buster bomb creates such a (large) explosion that it could be nuclear or it could be conventional. But of course the difference is that in one case you have radioactive materials which are spreading over a vast area and leading to literally the devastation of all forms of life for millions of years.
And so people, I don’t think realize, at what juncture we are presently (at) in our history. I think it’s absolutely devastating.
DN: Well, this is something new, Michel, this use of nuclear weapons on the battlefield. Why would they turn to nuclear weapons? Why wouldn’t they just stick to high intensity explosives?
MC: Well, I think there are many different reasons to that. First of all, there is a little bit of history.
Two years ago in August of 2003, in fact it was on Hiroshima Day, the Pentagon invited the private sector, namely the military-industrial complex, to a meeting held at the Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, Strategic Command Headquarters and at that meeting they more or less requested the private sector to define the nuclear agenda. Previously you had the Nuclear Posture Review, which was passed in the Senate in the beginning of 2002. But this 2003 meeting was very important because what it did is it privatized nuclear war. And it involved the military contractors, the producers of weapons systems, not only in the production side but also in the consumption side so that they actually said to the nuclear weapons producers, well, listen, tell us how we are going to use these weapons, we have to define a military agenda. And so they now have in effect, they have
privatized nuclear war.
And so that it is a market driven, profit making operation to produce bombs because the more bombs you produce the more money you make, and you have a military allocation of 450 billion dollars a year out of the public purse, not to mention the 200 billion dollars which is allocated to finance the war in Iraq. You are talking about something of the order of an annual basis, which is certainly in excess of 500 billion dollars, not to mention all the black budgets and the amounts which are channeled into shell companies, which are controlled either by U.S. military or intelligence, and so it is a very profitable venture for military contractors, security companies, mercenary companies, and so on.
And so I think that’s the consensus – and how you reach that consensus is by building, of course, pretexts for waging war, which is what we are dealing with – and the ‘fact’ that the nuclear weapons are harmless. The war on Iran is a market driven war. It’s profit for the military contractors, and the military-industrial complex. It’s profit for the oil companies because the ultimate objective is to confiscate Iran’s oil reserves. It’s to establish control over that broader area, which is the Central Asia, Middle East area, which encompasses 70% of (world) oil and gas reserves, and ultimately it is also intended to confront other major economic powers in the world, namely Russia and China, both of which have a sizeable interest in that region, and I should say also the Europeans, the European Union.
But it would appear in this particular case, there is some kind of tacit understanding with Germany and France in particular, on sharing the spoils of war and I think that is why we are leading up to a military operation where there will be ultimately consensus, much in the same way as (with) Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia was invaded and bombed in 1999, and even before that, when Germany and NATO and the United Nations interfered in the Yugoslav civil war in the early nineties, there was a consensus. The consensus was between the United States, Germany, and broadly the Western military alliance. And what you see emerging now is pretty much the same situation. There’s no dissenting voice anywhere.
In fact, even the frontline Arab states including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and Algeria have been sucked into this project. Early this year several countries of the eastern Mediterranean conducted military exercises with several Arab countries. And these countries were conducting military exercises with Turkey and Israel. And so you can see how, in effect, under NATO auspices they managed to bring in these countries, at least the leaders of these countries, not necessarily the people, but the leaders of these countries – which are increasingly serving U.S. interest – and how they managed to put them together in joint military exercises with Israel, so that there doesn’t seem to be much of a dissenting voice in the Middle East with regard to this military operation directed against Iran – although if we go into a scenario of nuclear war or even a conventional war, in other words, conventional aerial attack, in all likelihood this war is going to spread to the entire Middle Eastern region because at present what do we have? We’ve three separate war theatres: Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine.
But if Israel is involved in the coalition, in the Anglo-American coalition, officially – of course unofficially it has been part of the coalition for some time – but if Israel is officially involved in the coalition, and if the war extends into Iran and if Turkey is involved, you can see just by looking at the map, that whole area is going to explode. And if nuclear weapons are used, well, the consequences of course affect everybody on this planet because nuclear radioactive material will spread and it will spread in a very broad area of the world and the likelihood is the war itself could extend into other frontiers. That region borders on the former Soviet Union; it also borders onto China. Afghanistan has a border with China; that whole area is militarized with U.S. military bases scattered all over the place in the former Soviet republics and as I mentioned a ground war is not to be excluded either. It’s a very grim scenario and it means that we have to do everything in our power in the next few months to reverse the tide.
DN: Next we go to the major powers, which are, I suppose, Russia, China, and India, who are not very far away from even the present fighting in Iraq and they will be even closer to the fighting that threatens the world in Iran. I am just wondering what you think – I think I have heard Russia say that if there are any attacks on Iran, that it will retaliate in some way. China is certainly not going to be happy about things that are going on there. I don’t think I’ve heard anything from them.
But on the other hand, neither China nor Russia have really made any statements overtly in the diplomatic arena. Now Russia is supporting Iran in terms of weapons delivery – that we know. I mean even though the Russians are not making any public statements, but that’s part of the game. I mean, that goes back to the Cold War era that Vladimir Putin is not going to make any controversial statement directed against the U.S. military agenda.
I think there was some statement that came from one of the minister of defense or something like that. It wasn’t a statement from Putin.
MC: No, that’s entirely possible that people in the Russian parliament, in the Russian military, can make certain statements about what’s going on. But again they are very cautious and they also have their own hidden agenda.
But I think we have to take very seriously the fact that the Russians are supplying Iranians with an air defense system, a very sophisticated air defense system. They have actually also assisted the Iranians to establish a satellite, a spy satellite network, which will give them early warnings of an Israeli attack and so they signed a very large contract with Russia to put this spy satellite into orbit. This was actually confirmed in the Sunday Times report recently, and so we are not simply – we are dealing with a situation where in fact Iran has the capabilities – perhaps it doesn’t the capabilities to challenge the United States military but it certainly has the capabilities of defending itself to a limited degree and it has also the capability of responding and those capabilities.
We are talking about a country of some 60 million people. It’s not a small dot on the map. It has a very educated population. They have capabilities to address this aggression and I suspect that people in Iran will rally behind the president irrespective of whether they support him or not. That’s a logical reaction which occurs in times of war. So it certainly is something to bear in mind. I sincerely wish it would be part of our election campaign here in Canada. It should be part of the election campaign. There we have a war, an ongoing war in Iraq, and the next phase of this war has already been announced and the next phase of this war could be as deadly as the ongoing phase of this war.
DN: But you don’t think that in the event of aggression against Iran there would be any sort of military reaction from Russia or China at all?
MC: I don’t think that there would be any reaction from Russia or China directly, no. There may be military cooperation between Russia and Iran, which is in any event ongoing. But I think the nature of diplomacy is that these two competing powers, they don’t wash their dirty linen in public so to speak. When they meet with their counterparts, the United Nations or wherever or the G8, it’s all very polite.
Now, there are very important divisions which prevail. There are important divisions within the western alliance as well and so I think what is really needed at this juncture, first of all, (is that) some countervailing diplomacy has to occur.
It’s very important that citizens actually pressure their governments to take a stance on this, to take a stance nationally and internationally. In other words, what do political leaders in Canada believe of an impending nuclear holocaust by their closest ally, the United States of America? And this is something very serious, it’s not fiction.
Now, how can we reverse the tide? Well, we can reverse the tide at several levels. I don’t think it’s necessarily through massive demonstrations and so on, and walking through the streets we are going to achieve it. We are going to achieve that by ultimately unseating the military agenda, by unseating the people behind it. In other words by questioning the legitimacy of the main political and military actors and the people who support them. And essentially we are dealing with the Bush administration and so I think that is very important.
But if for instance in Canada, in Western Europe, there would be debate in national parliaments, where leaders would be confronted because in effect it is a conspiracy of silence; nobody is talking about it. Political leaders are not mentioning it; they are not saying they are for or against.
But there has been absolutely no dissenting voice (that) has occurred in the buildup to the invasion of Iraq. Ok? And in a sense this particular phase of the war is far more serious than the previous one, because it is the first time
that coalition partners Israel, Britain and the United States, have actually confirmed their intention to use nuclear weapons against Iran. We are not dealing with some abstract statement.
We are dealing with a pre-emptive nuclear doctrine and that pre-emptive nuclear doctrine has already been formulated in quite a number of texts of the U.S. military. It’s confirmed in speeches of the U.S. president and statements by the U.S. military. And unfortunately our anti-war movement is not always aware of these developments and doesn’t address them. So that anti-war sentiments from my point of view (are) not enough if we are going to build an anti-war movement based on “Hey, Bush, we are against you” and send postcards or petitions to whoever. That is not enough. We need to dismantle the decision-making process behind the war agenda and that means unseating the rulers who are supporting this particular course of action.
DN: I want to turn the last question around and I want to ask in this march towards global domination by the U.S. and the New World Order forces, do you think there would come a time where New World Order forces would militarily attack either Russia or China or are they getting what they want from those countries now? I mean in terms of economic activity and so forth? Maybe they wouldn’t even have to think in terms of that type of activity.
MC: Well there is no question that the National Security doctrine does target China and Russia. Officially in the Nuclear Posture Review of 2002, which was leaked to the Los Angeles Times, China and Russia are explicitly identified as targets for pre-emptive nuclear attacks. Now it is not to say that is anything new because they have always been a target going back to the Cold War era. But the fact that they would be officially identified as targets when in fact they are considered to be allies, at least Russia is considered to be a friend of America, China a bit less. But the fact that they would be officially identified as rogue states, so to speak, indicates that the ultimate objective of this military agenda is global, economic and military domination, and the two remaining super powers in the world, Russia and China, are the targets.
Now you are absolutely right, they already exert significant influence in the area of economic activity, for instance. China now has opened its borders to western banks. Western banks can simply go in and take over the domestic banking business – something which we don’t even have in Canada. We don’t have foreign banks in Canada, at least not operating freely in an unregulated environment and Citigroup has just acquired very large banking stakes in China. China is the provider of a large share of what we consume on a day-to-day basis, produced in cheap labour factories.
I mean this idea that China is somehow a competing economic power I think has to be qualified because in effect China is really an economic-industrial colony of the West. Without China the whole retail trade would collapse overnight because most of the commodities that we buy in supermarkets and shopping centres are produced in China, at least the consumer durables are produced in China. And so, I think that those inroads into the Chinese economy through inroads in terms of banking – the outsourcing in the manufacturing sectors – all this is happening and it indicates in effect that China is not really a sovereign country; it may have certain appearance of being sovereign but the way it’s international trade is organized, its links to international financial institutions and so on makes it very, very much dependent on Western markets and so on.
And that I think is also ultimately part of the military and strategic agenda. Conquest is not strictly based on invading, conquering and so on and taking over countries; it’s also based on overseeing the domestic banking system, taking over trade, using country’s resources to produce cheap commodities for the Western markets and so on and so forth. And that’s certainly true in China.
DN: Russia is somewhat of a different arrangement, but there you can see that Western financial and industrial interests have already made significant inroads into the former Soviet Union. The International Monetary Fund is calling the shots with regard to macro-economic reform. Large amounts of what used to belong to the Soviet state, of state capital and assets, have been transferred into private hands and many of the large companies operating now in Russia, of course, are foreign owned.
MC: Yes, absolutely, the military agenda is one aspect. War and globalization go hand and hand and the extension of the Free Market is supported in turn by the military agenda.
DN: Is it possible that the U.S. could over-extend itself in terms of military spending and their economy could collapse to the point where it couldn’t sustain an ongoing New World Order military agenda?
Well, I certainly think that perhaps we are already in that situation. It is over-extended so not much in the capacity to finance, but certainly it is over-extended in the capabilities that it can deploy, mainly, essentially manpower – the fact that it still need troops on the ground and this particular operation, in fact, the Con Plan, it’s rationale is really to minimize the use of troops. You don’t need to put any boots on the ground. You go in with your missiles, smart bombs, and B-52 bombers and essentially (inflict) large damage to Iran in this particular case, and you don’t need to send in any ground troops. But again that scenario in a sense is very theoretical because even an aerial type of military operation could well result in unintended consequences, which eventually lead into a ground war. And I don’t think the United States can afford another ground war at this stage.
DN: How cost effective are these nuclear weapons in terms as opposed to conventional weapons in terms of effecting damage to targets? Do you know?
MC: I really don’t know what I don’t know how much they cost to produce. The thing is that you don’t really need to have nuclear weapons to incur damage to these facilities. You could go in with conventional weapons and the damage, the actual damage through explosion, is enough to wipe it out.
DN: Bombs, for instance dead weight bombs, are cheaper to deliver than bombs on the heads of cruise missiles.
MC: Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, that’s correct. But the nuclear weapons can be delivered also from a B-52. You don’t need to you can use cruise missiles to deliver them but you can also use US long range bombers, which are deployed out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and they can carry both nuclear as well as conventional bombs. And so I don’t think there’s much of a consideration – as far as delivery is concerned, these new tactical nuclear weapons, the mini-nukes, can be delivered much in the same way as a conventional bunker buster bomb.
In fact, from a military standpoint, there is very little advantage in using a nuclear device; the only difference that I can see is that the nuclear device will kill more people both in the short as well as the long run. But if it’s a question of destroying a building or facilities, they can be easily done through run of the mill conventional weapons. But I don’t think ultimately that is the purpose of this military operation. The purpose of this military operation is not to disable the nuclear facilities; the purpose is to ultimately destroy a country resulting in significant civilian casualties, which then opens the door for the conquest of Iran, its oil facilities and so on.
The more fundamental question is when you use nuclear weapons without really assessing the underlying consequences this opens a Pandora’s Box and it leads to Pandora’s Box is not the correct designation it opens the road, essentially, to a much broader war which could threaten the future of humanity as we know it, and that’s not an understatement.
DN: Do you think Iran has any capability of lobbing or sending some sort of a large bomb or weapon over to Tel Aviv?
MC: Well they have the capabilities of retaliating that’s for sure, and they have their own generation of ballistic missiles which they intend to use and this is certainly well understood. The Iranians also have these Russian or M-1 anti-missile systems. Certainly they do have the capabilities of responding.
Now the Israelis also have a very sophisticated air defense system. But whatever actually occurs, as soon as – because we have to see the logic really of a military confrontation – as soon as they retaliate, the United States is going to retaliate and Israel is going to retaliate, and they are going to retaliate with more nuclear weapons. So the logic of retaliation in this particular case opens up again the possibility of escalation. I mean that’s really what we have to address is the fact if the Iranians decide to retaliate, which they said they will do, and I believe they will, then we expect the American will again retaliate in retaliation.
DN: So Israel is also sitting there with, I don’t know, a couple hundred of nuclear ICBM weapons that could be used too at some point.
MC: Well. that is correct, because Israel is the fourth or fifth nuclear power in the world today. Its nuclear arsenal is said to be more advanced and sophisticated than that of Great Britain. But the discussions that I’ve seen so far do not mention this nuclear arsenal; they don’t mention their nuclear arsenal. What they mention is the use of tactical nuclear weapons so that at this stage they are not talking about using their own nuclear warheads. They are talking about using the (U.S.-supplied) min-nukes, but you are absolutely right, if this whole conflict expands and leads to escalation, there is a possibility, of course, that they might decide to use their own thermonuclear weapons against Iran.
DN: Yeah. Well, on that note and in summing up, do you want to take a few minutes to maybe again tell people what you think they should be doing and maybe giving out some contacts?
MC: Well, I think we have to – again, the time span is very, very short. We have to certainly move very swiftly and establish very consist anti-war networks across the land, which are not necessarily geared towards major street marches – those consume a lot of energy – they are necessary, but they are not sufficient. We have to start confronting our political leaders, who are complicit in this war agenda.
Canada is involved in the war in Afghanistan, Haiti; it is involved in joint consultations with the United States leading up to its membership in Northern Command, which is also on the agenda of joint Canada-U.S. negotiations. So I think (Canadians) have to express our dissent in relation to this military agenda and we have to ultimately also challenge the people who are making these decisions on our behalf and we are not going to send them a petition and ask them please, Mr. So and so, Prime Minister, would you be so kind as not to wage war on Iran. That kind of action is, I think, ineffective because it ultimately accepts the legitimacy of those who are actually conducting the war, and these wars are criminal. They are a violation of international law, and we have to ultimately unseat the main political and military actors, which are pushing for this war against Iran, as well as the war and the illegal occupation of Iraq, which are part of the same broad military agenda. So that I think is absolutely crucial.
We have to start the challenge at all levels, municipal, provincial, federal, international and we ultimately have to educate the public.
We have to confront the media-the media is complicit in this project because if it were doing its job it would at least be informing people of the devastating impacts of a nuclear holocaust and it would be explaining to people the use of tactical nuclear weapons means nuclear war. There is no other way of saying it.
And when the United States embarks on a military adventure in which nuclear weapons are presented as some kind of peacekeeping instrument, essentially we can see on what course we are. We are really going to go down the tube so to speak. I mean down the drain, and that’s a self-destructive statement because it presents war as a peacekeeping operation and it presents nuclear weapons as some kind of harmless toy and military analysts are fully aware of the implications. Again they are too ‘polite’ to ultimately address these issues in a broad public arena.
DN: Well, o.k., Michel. People should also check into the website which you are involved with:
http://globalresearch.ca. Check in for information.
Related background article
Nuclear War against Iran
– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2006-01-03
