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 THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE Number 476, July 13, 2008 "Empire is a Negative-Sum Game"
Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise Yesterday, I was re-reading "Preparing the Battlefield," by Seymour M. Hersh who writes for the New Yorker magazine. His article gives extensive details about Bush and Cheney activities in support of Iranian opposition groups. Mr. Hersh notes, "The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former CIA clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. "'The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,' Baer told me. 'These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it's Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we're once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.' Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists." Another group the Bush and Cheney team have found to support in Iran is the Iranian People's Resistance Movement. "This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists. They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture," according to Vali Nasr who teaches international politics at Tufts University, and is quoted by Hersh. Hersh continues, "The CIA and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to...the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the MEK....The MEK has been on the State Department's terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in MEK coffers." Talk about irony, the analysts at Global Security say that MEK was allied with the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and chiefly funded by Saddam.
That same article identifies the MEK as one of the groups that took part in the 1979 hostage crisis. Yes, the Bush-Cheney government is so determined to start a war with Iran that they are funding a group that was involved in seizing the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and holding Americans as hostages for 444 days. Isn't that treason? Yes, that is treason. The constitution defines treason as, "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court." If the group that was among those who took Americans hostage in 1979, was allied with the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, and is on the terrorist watch list of the State Department is not among the enemies of the United States, who is? Mind you, there has not been a declaration of war in this country since 8 December 1941, presumably because the government likes to confuse the issue of who might be enemies. Unless you count the war on drugs and the war on terror, that is. In both cases, the Bush and Cheney government has been levying war against the United States and the American people. The constitution gives the government no power to prohibit alcohol, marijuana, or any other substance, ever since Prohibition was repealed. Yet the war on drugs imprisons millions of Americans, denies them post conviction liberties such as voting or gun possession, and makes war on Americans in our city streets. The same is true of the war on terror, which is prosecuted not against foreigners in other countries, but against Americans, here, in our airports, in our cities, through domestic espionage operations, and in many other ways. If you are going to take the side of George Bush and Dick Cheney in this controversy, you are saying that the American people are the enemies of the United States, and the people who took hostages in the American Embassy in Tehran in 1979 are not. If you side with Bush and Cheney in this matter of their treason, you are saying that the allies of Saddam Hussein in the recent war are not enemies of the United States, but Americans who fly on commercial airlines are. The Bush and Cheney regime is levying war against the American people. The Bush and Cheney "covert" operations in Iran are giving military and financial aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States—enemies the Bush/Cheney administration itself has identified. Their own state department says these guys are terrorists, and they say the country is in a war on terror. It is long past time for impeachment hearings. It is long past time for the Democratic party controlled Congress to stand up for freedom and against the brutality, torture, and treason of the Bush and Cheney government. Given that the Republicans and Democrats have all sold their souls to the devil, I suggest you vote for one of the many libertarians endorsed by the Boston Tea Party this year. As Ron Paul has noted, in his recent book, it is time for a revolution.
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