2012 Interview by Bruce Gagnon discussing the upcoming Iran war, oil price shock, & space warfare by @mestruth on 3Speak
2012 Interview by Bruce Gagnon discussing the upcoming Iran war, oil price shock, and the US military testing out their space-based weapons. Bruce is the founder of The Global Network Against Weapo...
Tags: #war #iran #iranwar #ww3 #space #dew #israel #usa #politics
Hello, welcome to this edition of this issue. I'm Rosalie Paul. I live in Georgetown, and I'm pleased to be the interviewer today. I'm going to be interviewing Bruce Gagnon, who's usually the host of this program. He is the founder and coordinator of the global network against weapons and nuclear power in space. And today we want to talk about the possibility of an imminent attack by the United States on the country of Iran. Hello, Bruce. Hi, thank you, Rosalie, for being here today. Thanks. We've been hearing for months and months now, little hints and insinuations that the United States is planning to attack Iran because we're not pleased with their nuclear planning. I wonder if you can talk about whether you think that's really what we have in mind to stop them from being a nuclear partner. and whether you think an attack really is imminent. Well, there's been a series of articles in the British newspapers, much more so than in America, that has really outlined what the entire plan appears to be, that the United States, the Bush-Cheney administration, with emphasis on Cheney, Cheney has really seems to be driving this whole thing, is very clearly going to attack Iran. There's a plan to bomb 10,000 targets, not just the so-called nuclear targets inside of Iran, but in fact, all military targets in the entire country. And U.S. military Navy ships and aircraft carriers are now being deployed in the region. When the United States launched the shock and awe attack on Iraq in 2003, it was Aegis destroyers made right in Bath that fired the first cruise missiles that were used to attack Iraq. And the same would be the case with this attack on Iran. Aegis cruisers, Aegis destroyers firing cruise missiles, and then airplanes from aircraft carriers and from bases throughout the region. would then attack over 10,000 targets. They're going after the entire infrastructure of the nation, not just the military or the even nuclear, but the entire infrastructure of the nation, which means electrical grids, water treatment plants, the whole thing. Railroads and bridges and... Exactly. They want to go and widen the war. in Iraq, make it into a Middle East war, what Bush administration is calling the long war. So generally this is the plan that they're putting out. This would be, under international law, an act of war, an act of aggression, which would violate international treaties and international law, saying that you're not allowed to attack another nation that has not provoked you in any way. At the same time, Seymour Hirsch at the New Yorker, one of the well-known journalists in America, Pulitzer Prize award-winning journalists, has been reporting for over a year that today American planes, military planes, are flying over Iran, trying to draw a response. U.S. Special Forces troops are today inside of Iran, blowing up various targets. trying to draw a response, which the United States would then use publicly to justify such an attack. Yes. Bruce, I'm not so sure that we're seeing the real reasons for the United States' irritation with Iran. When you look at the map and you see that Iran is not only an enormous country, but that it lies right between Iraq and Afghanistan, it's hard to believe that we aren't interested in an uninterrupted pipeline. What do you think it is really going on? I think that's a large part of it, but I think beyond that, too, is the whole issue of oil, plain and simple. Iran has a lot of oil. and the United States wants to get their hands on it. We know that oil is a diminishing resource in the world today. We've hit the top of the bell curve. The availability of oil worldwide is now declining. As India and China, the demand is growing as their countries develop. And so the price of oil will rise as the supply decreases and the demand grows. And so whoever controls the world's oil, as the price of it rises, will literally control the key to the world's economic engine. And so the U.S. current military strategy is to go out in this long war that they talk about, ostensibly to fight terrorism, ostensibly to bring democracy to the world, but it's really a global war for control of oil and other resources that are diminishing, such as water. And so this is the essence of what this expanding, non-ending war that the Bush administration is now doing. That's why they're going to attack Iran. That's why they'll be fighting for years to come. But we've got to begin to ask the question, what is going to be the result of this? I just want to refer you to an article that Seymour Hirsch wrote. in the October 8th edition of the New Yorker magazine, Seymour Hirsch, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, he interviewed Zabignau, Brzynski, the former national security advisor for Jimmy Carter. And Brzezinski says, After an attack by the United States and Israel, Israel would be a part of this, Iran would likely react by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, as you said, and that could draw in Pakistan, which we're now seeing is very unstable at this moment. We would be stuck in a regional war for 20 years. Now, imagine this. We're spending today $10 billion a month in Iraq on the occupation. Imagine the cost of a regional war going out into Pakistan through Iran and everything else. It would be a mess. And what would happen to the price of oil then? People say that it would explode. Now, we're already seeing a 20% increase in Maine in the price of home heating oil since last winter. Imagine now a wide war throughout the Middle East and Central Asia. Imagine the cost of home heating oil. We would not be able to afford to heat our homes if we allow the Bush administration to do this war with Iran. I have two things that come quickly to mind. One is, who's done a study that might show how that money could better be spent to develop alternatives so that we don't go down this road? The same amount of money could be spent, seems to me, to much better advantage. subsidizing alternative entrepreneurship. It's a good question, and it's the right question to ask. Studies are coming out right now that are showing that if you took the same amount of money, we're now spending on this endless war, and you put it into alternative production, building rail, to get us out of our cars, building solar, building windmills, we would create more jobs, emphasis on more jobs in the United States, getting us... out of the need to have endless war for oil. But we have to remember that our government is now controlled by the oil and the weapons corporations. Bush and Cheney are oil and weapons corporations puppets, if you will, puppeteers who are pulling the strings on our country, putting us into this situation. The other thing that came to mind was where in the world are the soldiers going to come from? We already have, I think it's 108 different mercenary companies hired at higher wages, way higher wages than our regular soldiers are being paid. It seems they would have to have a draft at some point to simply get the number of soldiers, unless they think they can do this entirely by air and be done. Well, they know they can't. They've learned that in Iraq, that no matter how much, how many bombs you drop, although we have to recognize, for them, it's a profitable enterprise, dropping bombs, missiles, cruise missiles are a million dollars apiece. We fired well over 100 of them in the initial attack in 2003 in Shock and Ah, again, from those Aegis destroyers out in the... Persian Gulf. So that's a lot of money. Yes. So they make a lot of money by doing this, but they understand that they need troops after that. But what they're doing is, we have a draft today. It's called the economic draft. Yes. When you have working class kids in this country who don't have any job future because all these corporate jobs are leaving the country, they have no alternative, really, then to go into the military. And then you have this huge influx of... illegal immigration. And they're now saying to Hispanics that are coming from Mexico, come and join the military, and if you survive a couple tours in Iraq, we'll give you U.S. citizenship. So that's an incentive for a lot of people there. So that's where they're getting a lot of these soldiers. They are getting a lot of soldiers, but they're also... lowering the bar an awful lot on the young people that are being recruited. It's not just the class of 2008 that's at risk, it's the young people that are incarcerated, and the young people who have various kind of mental illnesses that are being recruited and seems sort of a desperate act to avoid a draft, because if they did reinstate the draft... I think people would be up in arms. Do you think that's true? No, I do think it's true, because you would pull on more middle-class kids who have more options, whose parents can afford to send them to college and keep them out of the military. So I think you're right about that. I'd also like to comment about the sheer hypocrisy, though, of the Bush administration lecturing Iran about the use of nuclear weapons. Well, first of all, it must be established that that the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed al-Bardai, the chief inspector, have said over and over again that Iran does not have nuclear weapons. And in fact, just very recently, he was on CNN's Wolf Blitzer, his late edition show, and Al-Bardai said, that he has strongly advised the Bush administration to tone down its rhetoric on Iran. He said, we're not talking about Iran having nuclear weapons. I don't see any other solution, Wolf, he said, to Wolf Blitzer, except through diplomacy and inspection. So the fact is, Iran has zero weapons of mass destruction today. And it is not illegal. under the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the United States has signed, and Iran has signed, it is not illegal to develop civilian nuclear power. And so this is what... admittedly, Iran is doing today is developing civilian nuclear power. It is not illegal for them to do so. And in fact, just to show the utter hypocrisy, India has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. But just this past year... The Congress of the United States voted in favor of this U.S. India nuclear deal that will help India expand their civilian nuclear power and build more nuclear weapons. India has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and we're going to help them build more nuclear weapons, but then criticize Iran for... building civilian nuclear power. So the rest of the world is sitting back saying, the United States is an enormous hypocrite. We have 10,000 nuclear weapons of our own. We're building new generations of them today. We're building the technology to move the arms race into space, and we're lecturing Iran about nuclear weapons. This is, to me, evidence of the fact that this really is not about nuclear at all. It's really about oil. I want to know a little bit more about how your work with the global network fits in here. How does all the concern about weapons in space fit into this particular moment? Well, the key link is that space technology coordinates all warfare today on the planet Earth. When we did the shock and awe invasion of Iraq in 2003, in that initial attack, 70% of the weapons that were used by the United States were directed to targets by space satellites. So the cruise missiles that were fired from the Aegis destroyers, the so-called smart bombs, the planes firing missiles, all that was directed by space technology. And so since that time, in fact, there have been further upgrades. And so today, US space technology coordinates all of these kind of attacks. And it makes, frankly, the weapons corporations and the Pentagon eager to use these technologies because they keep upgrading them every year. And they really view a lot of these wars as field tests. And in fact, when you read the... the industry publications like I do, the publication called Space News or the one called Aviation Week in Space Technology, they blatantly report in there that the Persian Gulf War in the early 90s was the first space war. The 2003 Shokkanah attack allowed them to field test of upgrades that came following the Persian Gulf War, and so on and on it goes. And so they're eager to test out these new technologies and to show the world that, with our space technology in place, that we are unbeatable. You don't dare try to stand up to us. Also, that we care more about developing technology than we do about thinking of the lives that are being lost. I can tell you that the people running this show don't really care very much about the, quote-unquote, collateral damage. They have an end goal in sight, and that end goal in this case is two things. One is increasing profits for oil, by controlling oil, and the second is increasing profits on weapons. It's no coincidence that in the last several years that the stocks, the profits of the major weapons corporations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, they have increased dramatically. the earnings of the chief executive officers, the high executives in these corporations, has been enormous, the profits that they've brought in for themselves as well. And so there is an incentive to continue these wars, not only because they then give you control of the oil and ultimately control of the global. economy, but also enormous, enormous profits that are coming at the expense of social programs in America. Yes. Because you can't afford guns and butter anymore when you have the massive debt that we have in this country. So what they're doing is cutting social spending dramatically across the board in this country and moving that money into endless war. And that is how they're building the empire. We're painting a pretty bleak picture, and I wonder if we'd spend a little time thinking about what people might begin to do. Are there things we can be doing? Certainly talking about it on television is a way of raising a lot of awareness, and that's, I think, the first step for people to begin to really think about this is going on in their name because they're tax dollars that are paying for it. What do you think are some of the things we could be doing? Well, first of all, I think we have to end our illusions about what our country is doing in our name today, with our tax dollars. We have to really understand that this is a major power grab, and we have to stop believing all this talk about freedom, and it's a war on terrorism. Look up the word terrorism in the dictionary and see the fact is that what we're doing today is the height of terrorism as we're unleashing this ongoing slaughter of, as you say, the innocent people of Iraq. Over a million Iraqis have been killed since we attacked them in 2003. Several million displaced refugees, both into Jordan and Syria and internally within Iraq. There's a huge, huge human cost here that we're not really feeling back here in America. We're trying to ignore it. We're trying to push it away, shut it away. So I think that's the first thing we have to do. has become humans and feel that suffering that's out there. Number two, we have to move into political action immediately because this coming attack on Iran could come very soon. On November 1st, Senator Jim Webb from Virginia, a newly elected senator, wrote a letter to the president, and he had 29 other senators sign the letter. Olympia Snow and Susan Collins did not sign the letter. And the letter said this. that we're writing to express our concerns about the provocative statements and actions that your administration now is doing. These statements and actions are counterproductive and undermine efforts to resolve tensions with Iran through diplomacy. We emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran. Well, the first thing we could do in Maine is to get our two senators on board with this way of thinking. You have them publicly state they're opposed to this. We should be calling on Alan and Mishu to do the same thing. We've yet to hear from them publicly in strong terms, speaking out against this. In fact, One of our friends, Dexter Kamilevich recently had a conversation with Tom Allen. He said, what are you saying about Iran? He says, well, we're talking about it privately. Well, that's not good enough in a democracy. We should be having a raging debate about our country getting ready to attack another country violating international law. An unprovoked attack on another nation is illegal under international law. So those are the things that I think we all must be doing immediately. And if we could, whether by phone calls or stopping at the office or whatever ways we want to use to let our congresspeople know that we object mightily, can we begin to... Perhaps someone listening to this program could organize a group at their church or their school and have a discussion. Just sort of homemade ways of around the kitchen table getting more people to feel like this is not okay, this is in my name. I don't know how many phone calls it takes to Congress or how many people in the street it takes. But I think this is something we need to stop, and I think it's only up to the people to do that. It doesn't seem to Congress. is doing it on their own at all. Well, as I've heard others say, nothing good that's ever really ever come in this country has come from the politicians. It's always come from a mobilized and active American people. And the way we're going to stop any attack on Iran is to really... mobilizes the American people. We need to be writing letters to the editor. We need to be speaking out. I think organizing meetings, as you suggest, they're actually right now in the planning, several meetings inviting people to come and listen to Iranian... people from Iran that live in Maine, that can tell us personally about their country. Most Americans don't know anything about Iran. They've never met a person from Iran in their life. They couldn't even find it on the map if they had to. And so this is what we have to deal with. There's a certain ignorance, if you will, in this country about Iran, and so people are susceptible to be led like sheep. wherever the politicians might lead them because of this lack of understanding about the region, what's really going on, the history, and everything else. So making it personal and realizing that it is personal because it's my dollars that are funding this war machine. And because, let's make it real personal. Most people listening to this show heat their homes with heating oil. that again, the price is rising dramatically, just since last winter, 20% increase. All right, and if we attack Iran, the experts in the oil industry are saying that if we attack Iran, the price of oil will go so high, it will explode. And imagine... that we will not be able to afford to heat our homes in the debt of winter. The price could get that high. And I'm not just being dramatic about this. This is a warning coming from people that work in the industry. Now, this is something we should all be paying attention to, because if that happens... Our economy will grind to a halt. People will lose their jobs. They will lose their incomes. We will not be able to heed our homes. Our whole way of life really becomes disruptive. Now, Bush says, we have to attack them to protect our way of life. But in fact, the reverse will happen. If we attack Iran, our way of life will crumble quicker than ever. Your solution earlier, using our hard-earned tax dollars. to create new technologies in this country, creating good jobs, instead of building weapons, building rail, building solar, building wind, building mechanisms for tidal power. These are the kind of approaches we need to be taking now. A peaceful people, a true peaceful people, would be heading in that direction, demanding that our government would use…