by James Buchanan

In just the last few weeks an ominous chain of events has taken place:

* Two Congressmen (one recently retired) died on the same day of suspicious causes

* A bizarre story of a B52 carrying nukes to the “wrong” airbase was leaked

* The neocons have kept up their pro-war propaganda against Iran

* 4.5 billion in options were placed betting on a large stock market drop by Sep. 21st

* The British news media reports that Bush is setting up a war against Iran

Two Congressmen were reported dead on September 5th. Congressman Paul Gillmor was found dead due to “blunt head and neck trauma.” His death was blamed on a fall down some stairs. No one has seriously discussed the possibility of him being pushed down the stairs or bludgeoned first and then thrown down a stairway. Gillmor was the ranking Republican on the Financial Institutions Subcommittee of the Financial Services Committee. Perhaps he noticed the 4.5 billion in options and connected that with the looming neocon war on Iran.

The other death was recently retired Congressperson Jennifer Dunn, who had been vice-chairperson of the House committee on Homeland Security. Jennifer Dunn died of a pulmonary embolism. Curiously, the CIA developed an untraceable pill that can kill a person with a pulmonary embolism. Perhaps Congressman Gillmor heard of plans of a nuclear war on Iran and called up Jennifer Dunn in an effort to go public and stop this madness. The Bush regime routinely wiretaps people without warrants and could easily have been spying on Gillmor and Dunn, and these two Congressmen may have been liquidated to keep them silent.

The same day the deaths of these Congressmen were announced, a curious story about a B52 supposedly flying nuclear-tipped cruise missiles to the “wrong base” was announced. It has since been learned that the airbase where these nukes were delivered has been used as a base for bombing runs to the Mid East. Perhaps some individual in the Air Force blew the whistle on Bush’s secret plans for a nuclear war on Iran.

Normally our Congress just rolls over when a warmonger president wants to stomp all over a defenseless nation. Killing thousands of people in some far off land is no big deal to most of our politicians. It’s easier for them to go along with these wars for the oil industry or the Israeli Lobby, than to fight the effort to go to war and risk ending their political career. They can always vote for a war and later claim that they were “fooled” even though they knew all along the war was unjust. Only something highly unusual and potentially disastrous such as a planned nuclear war of aggression, would cause Congressmen to take bold action to expose such efforts.

The London Sunday Telegraph has just announced that “Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran…Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran… Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran. Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.”

Over the last several months, the Bush regime has accused Iran of supplying Iraqi rebels with weapons and training. The first attempt to accuse Iran of supplying the Iraqi rebels was clumsy and inept. Pictures of mortar shells were supplied to the public, but there were some problems. The mortar shells weren’t marked in Farsi and the year of manufacture was 2006, which is in the Western-Christian calendar, which the Iranians don’t use. Unfortunately, most Americans have only heard the lies and not the exposure of the lies.

Being exposed as liars, won’t stop the neocons from fabricating even more lies. Bush and the neocons are now claiming that the Iranians are supplying Iraqi rebels and training them and that certain Iranian Revolutionary Guards Units are joining the rebels. The last lie is especially significant since it would give Bush an excuse to go to war against Iran supposedly in self-defense.

The truth is that the Iranians know Bush and the neocons are looking for any excuse to go to war with them. The Iranians are meticulously avoiding any connection with the Iraqi rebels. The Iranians do supply the Arabs in Lebanon (Hezbollah) with weapons to defend themselves against Israeli aggression. These weapons include highly effective anti-tank missiles that destroyed dozens of Israeli tanks last year. The Iranians also mass produce anti-aircraft missiles. If the Iranians really were making a serious effort to supply the Iraqi rebels, we would have burnt out Abrams tanks all over Iraq and we would be losing helicopters on a daily basis.

There are several possibilities in our near term future –none of them good. The neocons may stage a terror attack inside the US and blame it on the Iranians. The neocons may fabricate a border incident with Iran, or the neocons may just go ahead and start bombing Iran (with or without nuclear weapons) using their propaganda from the last several months as justification.

The bottom line is that every day Bush and Cheney occupy the White House is another opportunity for war or dictatorship. We need to be impeaching these two simply to put them on the defensive so they can’t cause more trouble. The election of 2006 gave the Democrats a mandate to end the Iraq War and to investigate the lies that led us into that war. They have failed to do both. The Bush regime is not only a threat to world peace; it is a threat to political freedom in America.