"Assessment Jars a Foreign Policy Debate About Iran." Assessment? Jars? Debate? Excuse me?

Here's Gramma Pelosi this morning: "The NIE illustrates the effectiveness of international monitoring and targeted sanctions to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." Effectiveness? Targeted? Proliferation? Excuse me?

There were many other - oh I don't know what's a judicious word - deranged? duplicitous? drugged? - reactions this morning to yesterday's devastating NIE - even to my chagrin in these august columns - spinning as no big deal a watershed moment in the so far wretched history of the 21st century America. Not one of them seemed willing to grasp a very large nettle: the axis of evil that has this great nation in its paws, has been lying about Iran at least since August and probably far longer. Has been lying to us, to our allies, to the world. Again. And not just lying but striving with all their might to nuke - or allow an ally to nuke - innocent people who posed no threat to us.

Here are the salient points from the NIE:

We judge with high confidence that the halt (in trying to develop nuclear weapons, not producing them) has lasted at least several years. (Four to be exact, a lifetime in war and politics).

We continue to assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapon. (Or has ever had one).

We judge with high confidence that Iran will not be capable of producing and reprocessing enough plutonium for a weapon before about 2015. (Which Bush - and for that matter Gates - flatly lied about this morning implying that the NIE said they could re-up anytime).

Let's be quite clear how far the men in the White House were willing to go. In the lethal linguistic fog these warmongers and the rightwing quislings who enable them, have plunged us, reasonable people seem to have lost sight of what we're talking about. Nuclear weapons aren't a bigger better version of Daisy Cutters. Nuclear weapons aren't just more bang for the buck. Nuclear weapons are the most cowardly killing devices ever devised by our benighted species. Nuclear weapons are instant genocide. Nuclear weapons are designed to murder as many unarmed noncombatants as possible, by the hundreds of thousands if not millions. Using nuclear weapons - even throwing around the threat to use them - was is and always should be unthinkable. Yet the monsters, yes monsters in the White House were willing to lie through their teeth - again - to get the chance to use them. On innocent people who posed no threat to us.

You say they didn't lie because they didn't have the current NIE? Bullshit. They said they knew that Iran had nuclear weapons, that Iran was about to start World War III. At the barest minimum they knew that was a lie. At the barest minimum they had no evidence to back that up - just as they had no evidence to back up their assertion that Saddam had nukes - yet they said that they did. They said they knew. That's called lying. And they were willing to murder on a monumental scale - again - based on those lies.

In reality - not the barest minimum - it's inconceivable that this intelligence has not been available to them since August, that some of it has not been known far longer. It's inconceivable that Israel which has the most reliable intelligence services in the Mid-East did not develop some intelligence in four long years, that Iran had no nuclear weapons and was no longer even trying to acquire them. It's inconceivable - surely - that if Israel had such intelligence, it would not pass it along. At some point in four long years. To someone in the US power structure.

Waking in New York this morning and reading the responses to this Force Nine news story, I felt as if I should try again to wake myself up. I don't mean that as a figure of speech: it was one of those experiences where you wake up in a dream and then try to really wake yourself up. Reading the New York Times was truly like being a character in a Kafka short story. For a while the world was making no sense. The acceptance of this shattering exposure of duplicity, appeared totally impossible for even well-informed, responsible journalists.

It's plausible that we've reached the point where we just cannot face that Americans, elected Americans, who talk in familiar accents, who grew up in familiar places, who wear familiar clothes and look not terribly unlike us, could be as evil as it increasingly appears George Bush and Richard Cheney really are. Americans simply aren't that evil, are they? They can't be. There must be some good intentions somewhere. But there aren't and there never have been.

And we cannot face the fact that the threat to our security and integrity as a people, is not in Tehran despite the blatherings of its ludicrous (and largely powerless) President, anymore than it was in Baghdad. Nor is it in the gullies, caves, hilltops and villages of the North-West Frontier. Threats from there - hot air and light weaponry - are nugatory compared to one we must now confront.

The threat to America is right here at home, sitting in two chairs in Washington right now, not faces on a screen, not characters in the tawdry television drama we call politics, but two actual human beings, their buttocks warming the leather of their seats, plotting how to cover up their crimes - the ones we don't know about yet - plotting how to avoid accountability for the crimes they can no longer conceal, plotting even now in the fading twilight of their reign of lies, theft and murder, how by any means necessary, they can get still their hands on most of the world's oil and pass the proceeds along to their cronies.

If you won't impeach now Gramma, you're on your way to being as guilty as they. Those who enable high crimes and misdemeanors - including never let us forget, treason - become as culpable as the perpetrators. If you don't impeach now, you will be an accomplice as will be all the others who stand with you - those who voted to declare the nuclear-free armed forces of a sovereign nation 'terrorists' for example, or one of your leading candidates for President who refused to take 'off the table' the 'option' of nuking innocent people who posed no threat to us, just so that she could look as tough as war-criminals.

Enough. This is the moment of enough. This is the moment where we lose or win back what was once and still can be again a great nation. Use the Constitution or lose the Constitution.

_______

Besth



About author Tony Hendra, author of the international best-seller Father Joe, attended Cambridge University where he performed with Pythons-to-be John Cleese and Graham Chapman. He was an original editor of The National Lampoon and editor-in-Chief of Spy. He also played Ian Faith in This is Spinal Tap. His current book The Messiah of Morris Avenue, a novel, is available online and in all bookstores. You can check it out at Tony Hendra, author of the international best-seller Father Joe, attended Cambridge University where he performed with Pythons-to-be John Cleese and Graham Chapman. He was an original editor of The National Lampoon and editor-in-Chief of Spy. He also played Ian Faith in This is Spinal Tap. His current book The Messiah of Morris Avenue, a novel, is available online and in all bookstores. You can check it out at http://www.henryholt.com/messiahofmorrisavenue/