From: "Zepp"
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 05:29:10 -0700
Subject: [Zepps_News] Guardian Unlimited Politics | Bush is the real
threat


http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,1559617,00.html

Bush is the real threat

Tony Benn
Wednesday August 31, 2005
The Guardian

Now that the US president has announced that he has not ruled out an
attack on Iran, if it does not abandon its nuclear programme, the Middle
East faces a crisis that could dwarf even the dangers arising from the
war in Iraq.

Even a conventional weapon fired at a nuclear research centre - whether
or not a bomb was being made there - would almost certainly release
radioactivity into the atmosphere, with consequences seen worldwide as a
mini-Hiroshima.

Article continues
We would be told that it had been done to uphold the principles of the
nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) - an argument that does not stand
up to a moment's examination.

The moral and legal basis of the NPT convention, which the International
Atomic Energy Agency is there to uphold, was based on the agreement of
non-nuclear nations not to acquire nuclear weapons if nuclear powers
undertook not to extend nuclear arsenals and negotiate to secure their
abolition.

Since then, the Americans have launched a programme that would allow
them to use nuclear weapons in space, nuclear bunker-busting bombs are
being developed, and depleted uranium has been used in Iraq - all of
which are clear breaches of the NPT. Israel, which has a massive nuclear
weapons programme, is accepted as a close ally of the US, which still
arms and funds it.

Even those who are opposed, as I am, to nuclear weapons in every country
including Iran, North Korea, Britain and the US, accept that nuclear
power for electricity generation need not necessarily lead to the
acquisition of the bomb.

Indeed, many years ago, when the shah - who had been put on the throne
by the US - was in power in Iran, enormous pressure was put on me, as
secretary of state for energy, to agree to sell nuclear power stations
to him. That pressure came from the Atomic Energy Authority, in
conjunction with Westinghouse, who were anxious to promote their own
design of reactor.

It is easy to understand why president Bush might see the bombing of
Iran as a way to regain some of the political credibility he has lost as
a result of the growing hostility in America to the Iraq war due to the
heavy casualties suffered by US forces there .

It is inconceivable that the White House can be contemplating an
invasion of Iran, and what must be intended is a US airstrike, or
airstrikes, on Iranian nuclear installations, comparable to Israel's
bombing of Iraq in 1981. Israel has publicly hinted that it might do the
same again to prevent Iran developing nuclear nuclear weapons.

Such an attack, whether by the US or Israel, would be in breach of the
UN Charter, as was the invasion of Iraq. But neither Bush, Sharon nor
Blair would take any notice of that.

Some influential Americans appear to be convinced that the US will
attack Iran. Whether they are right or not, the build-up to a new war is
taking exactly the same form as it did in 2002. First we are being told
that Iran poses a military threat, because it may be developing nuclear
weapons. We are assured that the President is hoping that diplomacy
might succeed through the European negotiations which have been in
progress for some months.

This is just what we were told when Hans Blix was in Baghdad talking to
Saddam on behalf of the UN, but we now know, from a Downing Street
memorandum leaked some months ago, that the decision to invade had been
taken long before that.

That may be the position now, and I fear that if a US attack does take
place, the prime minister will give it his full support. And one of his
reasons for doing so will be the same as in Iraq: namely the fear that,
if he alienates Bush, Britain's so-called independent deterrent might be
taken away. For, as I also learned when I was energy secretary, Britain
is entirely dependent on the US for the supply of our Trident warheads
and associated technology. They cannot even be targeted unless the US
switches on its global satellite system.

Therefore Britain could be assisting America to commit an act of
aggression under the UN Charter, which could risk a major nuclear
disaster, and doing so supposedly to prevent nuclear proliferation, with
the real motive of making it possible for us to continue to break the
NPT in alliance with America.

The irony is that we might be told that Britain must support Bush, yet
again, because of the threat of weapons of mass destruction, thus
allowing him to kill even more innocent civilians.

· Tony Benn will be talking about War; Religion and politics; and
Democracy, at the Shaw Theatre in London on September 7, 8 and 9

Tony@tbenn.fsnet.co.uk
_________________________

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of
Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter
of the gods.

-- Albert Einstein