Antiwar.com Blog

Conservative Republican Congressman Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd district has stepped forward with a solution to Bush/Cheney’s intention to start another war – this time with Iran.

Click here to listen to the mp3 of my Antiwar Radio interview of Rep. Jones from Monday, February 12, 2007.

Jones has introduced House Joint Resolution 14: Concerning the use of military force by the United States against Iran, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has so far been non-committal about supporting or letting reach the House floor for a vote.

Contact your congressman! Tell them they had better begin supporting Representative Walter B. Jones’s resolution immediately!

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES January 12, 2007

Mr. JONES of North Carolina introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs

JOINT RESOLUTION

Concerning the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. REQUIREMENTS CONCERNING THE USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAN.

(a) Rule of Construction- No provision of law enacted before the date of the enactment of this joint resolution shall be construed to authorize the use of military force by the United States against Iran.

(b) Requirements- Absent a national emergency created by attack by Iran, or a demonstrably imminent attack by Iran, upon the United States, its territories or possessions or its armed forces, the President shall consult with Congress, and receive specific authorization pursuant to law from Congress, prior to initiating any use of military force against Iran.

[audio:http://dissentradio.com/radio/jones_02_12_07.mp3]

Representative Walter B. Jones of North Carolina’s 3rd district discusses his House Joint Resolution 14, which would make it clear to the President that he may not initiate a war against Iran without a Congressional declaration of war.

MP3 here. (11:09)

In Alex Cockburn’s Counterpunch, John Walsh complains that United for Justice and Peace, the old-line leftie antiwar umbrella organization, excluded anyone hostile to the Democratic party from the platform of its latest (and smallest) Washington demonstration. Ralph Nader, who was in town, was pointedly not invited to speak, and I was surprised to learn that I was also snubbed:

There was not a single Libertarian speaker even though the Libertarians and Old Right have been far more outspoken in opposing the war than the liberal “Left.” Compare the pages of The American Conservative or Antiwar.com with the editorials of The Nation, which endorsed the pro-war Kerry candidacy in 2004. This writer tried for months to get Ron Paul, the Libertarian/Republican Congressman from Texas, now a Republican presidential candidate, invited to speak at the rally and did so also in 2005. Several of us made an appeal to get Justin Raimondo, the Libertarian editor of Antiwar.com invited to speak. We got no response from UFPJ, and still have received none. In contrast, Raimondo advertised the UFPJ demonstration in a prominent place on his web site, and he even offered to pay his own air fare to D.C. to speak. But no response was forthcoming from whatever committee decides on the speakers, a committee which is none too visible. UFPJ was just plain rude to Raimondo. In general it appears that the liberal “Left” has scant knowledge about the Libertarians and less desire to acquire it. Libertarians are just “a bunch of selfish people,” according to the PC liberals. But there are more things in heaven and earth than the very PC have dreamed of.

I actually didn’t know much about this: I’d only heard vaguely that there was some kind of effort to get me and other non-leftists on the speakers’ platform. But it wasn’t me who offered to pay the plane fare: in the face of such attitude, I say screw ’em. I know these people all too well ….

When I was an organizer for Students for a Libertarian Society, back in the 1970s, I had to sit through innumerable endless meetings of antiwar “coalitions” representing every left-wing sect and tendency on the block. And, in San Francisco, we’re talking each and every grouplet. These guys invariably use the coalition as a kind of alternate universe, in which their minuscule numbers and political significance are artificially magnified. The Revolution may not be happening in the real world, but within the confines of these innumberable conclaves of the converted, a kind of Pyrhhic “victory” can be achieved. It is this playpen atmosphere that keeps the “official” organized antiwar movement almost comically irrelevant.

I have to say that I find the style and methods of the UFJP-commie crowd uninspiring. These people are stuck in a time warp. Do they really believe demonstrations, no matter how massive, are going to stop this rotten war? This is an old paradigm that never really worked to begin with. In an age of mass communications, when it is possible to educate the American people relatively quickly, it would behoove us to come up with a manifestation of mass protest that fits both the times and this particular war. The whole model of the UFPJ protest — a single big centralized action, controlled by a near-invisible “central committee” — is an outmoded template. After all, why should we go all the way to Washington, slog about in the cold and rain (or whatever), and carry something as old-fashioned as a placard? It’s like looking at someone with an antique Model-T tootling down a superhighway. It seems to me that utilizing the information superhighway — and the apparently massive antiwar sentiment out there that the “official” movement never even thinks to reach — is the key to developing new paradigms of protest.

So, no, I don’t care about not being invited to the not-so-big antiwar demonstration: I have no interest in becoming an unofficial adjunct of the Democratic party, nor in building any organization that pursues such a stupidly sectarian strategy. All I know is that I reach more people with a single edition of “Behind the Headilnes” than they managed to drag to Washington, and, in that, believe me, I take absolutely no satisfaction whatsoever.

Ever notice how many of those who are the keenest to torture and kill can’t take the slightest criticism? Doug Bandow highlights a Japan Today article on how Dick “F*ck Yourself” Cheney deals with the sting of fairly obvious observations.

(Updated below)

I first debunked this pathetic lie 11 months ago (a few days after Bush unveiled it):

While President Bush was threatening Iran on Monday, he blamed the Iraqi Shiites and Iran for the insurgency. According to the AFP, Bush said that:

“Tehran has been responsible for at least some of the increasing lethality of anti-coalition attacks by providing Shia militia with the capability to build improvised explosive devices in Iraq.”

I know what you’re thinking: President Bush is so stupid that giant mistakes like this should just be taken with a grain of salt. Even if he’s lashing out at Iran for intervening in the affairs of the Iraqi Shia, surely he’s not blaming the “improvised explosive devices” that are killing American soldiers and Marines in Iraq on the Shia. … Wrong. That’s exactly what he was doing.

“Asked about the linkage to Shiite forces, two US officials who declined to be named pointed to previously reported ties between the government of Iran and radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.”

The first problem is that the next day General Pace said he had no evidence whatsoever to back up the president’s false assertions and Secretary Rumsfeld just dissembled. The second is that the last time al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army was in violent conflict with the US was back in August of 2004 and the roadside bomb was not their tactic, those have been the tool of the home-grown Sunni insurgency which is led by the ex-Ba’athists and the recently under fire foreign fighter jihadist types.

Though al-Sadr has openly threatened war if America were to bomb Iran, he had been known as the leader of the least Iran-loyal faction among the Iraqi Shia, denouncing the federalism in the new constitution, and insisting on Iraqi nationalism regardless of religion and ethnicity. Recently, his political fortunes have been said to be on the rise, and though that may be in conflict with some genius’s plan to spread the war, a leader of the Iraqi insurgency he is not.

Is it possible that Iran is supplying bomb material to the Sunnis, seeing advantage in keeping America bogged down in its fight against the insurgency and forced to allow for expanded Iranian influence in Iraq? Sure, as far as I know, but I’ve seen no evidence of that, and it wasn’t the accusation in this case.

Professor Juan Cole thrashes that lying, tape recording, Judy Miller-wannabe, Michael R. Gordon of the New York Times about this same garbage today:

Over all, only a fourth of US troops had been killed Baghdad (713 or 23.7 percent of about 3000) through the end of 2006. But US troops aren’t fighting Shiites anyplace else– Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin–these are all Sunni areas. For a fourth of US troops to be being killed or wounded by Shiite EFPs, all of the Baghdad deaths would have to be at the hands of Shiites!

The US military often does not announce exactly where in Baghdad a GI is killed and so I found it impossible to do a count of Sunni versus Shiite neighborhoods. But we know that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was running interference for the Mahdi Army last fall, and it seems unlikely to me that very many US troops died fighting Shiites in Baghdad. The math of Gordon’s article does not add up at all if this were Shiite uses of Iran-provided EFPs.

So the unnamed sources at the Pentagon are reduced to implying that Iran is giving sophisticated bombs to its sworn enemies and the very groups that are killing its Shiite Iraqi allies every day. Get real!

Moreover, there is no evidence of Iranian intentions to kill US troops. If Iran was giving EFPs to anyone, it was to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its Badr Corps paramilitary, for future use. SCIRI is the main US ally in Iraq aside from the Kurds. I don’t know of US troops killed by Badr, certainly not any time recently.

Do ya’ll think that anyone in congress besides Dr. Paul understands what any of this means? The Democrats’ new head of the House Intelligence Committee doesn’t even know what Hezbollah is or that al-Qaeda is made up of radical Sunnis. Could these idiot so-called “representatives” of ours even assemble a coherent thought on this topic in their tiny little brains? Coherent enough to counter the Cheney regime on the eve of war?

Update: MSNBC reports:

“U.S. officials said there was no evidence of Iranian-made EFPs having fallen into the hands of Sunni insurgents who operate mainly in Anbar province in the west of Iraq, Baghdad and regions surrounding the capital.”

Okay, Iran is supplying bombs to who then? Not, they admit, to America’s enemies in Iraq – the “Sunni Insurgency” – but,

to what the military officials termed “rogue elements” of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. He is a key backer of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The U.S. officials glossed over armaments having reached the other major Shiite militia organization, the Badr Brigade. It is the military wing of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite political organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose leaders also have close ties to the U.S.

So: Iran is arming the AMERICAN-BACKED SHI’ITE GOVERNMENT.

S0-F%#*ing-what?!

And how do we even know this much is true?

“‘We know more than we can show,’ said one of the senior officials, when pressed for tangible evidence that the EFPs were made in Iran.”

We have to trust them because they have secret information we don’t know about.

Comments welcome at Stress.

The New York Times reporter behind this story is actually a tape recorder. (There’s some disagreement on the matter, however: Editor & Publisher claims that Michael R. Gordon is a sentient creature of some sort.)