the canary papers: Think the War in Iraq was a Bad Idea? Wait 'til You See What Bush-Cheney & Co. Have in Mind for Iran.

Perhaps you missed the headlines: America on the Brink of War Against Iran.

Or perhaps not, since this news has been conspicuously absent from the mainstream media in America. Now. Before you brush this news aside as the rantings of a tinfoil hat-wearing Chicken Little, running in circles, squawking, "The sky's falling!" consider that Congress is set to vote, any day, on the very resolutions that will finalize the Bush-Cheney preparations for war against Iran, waged on the claims that Iran has WMDs. Or that they *will* have WMDs. Any day now. Even though the intelligence and inspectors' reports say otherwise. Sound familiar?

(At this point, before you read on, please consider pausing long enough to protest ResolutionS 362 AND 580: http://capwiz.com/justforeignpolicy/issues/alert/?alertid=11518951)

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Consider, also, what the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector and director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- which oversees nuclear inspections in Iran -- said, just last week,

“I DON'T believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger.... A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything. It would turn the region into a fireball."

History seems to be repeating itself. Using the same blueprint they used to trick America into an illegal war in Iraq, Bush-Cheney are making a case for war in Iran, despite that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in November 2007 that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year, and despite that IAEA inspectors have found no evidence of nuclear weapons work in Iran.

History is, indeed, repeating itself: Has it been only 5 years since the Bush Administration similarly disregarded -- ridiculing as naive -- the findings of IAEA inspectors Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix, who told the Bush Administration there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq?

October 1997: IAEA reports Iraq is free of nuclear weapons.
February 2001: Colin Powell reports that Iraq is "contained" and is "unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens NOT the United States."
February 2002: CIA confirms that Iraq has not provided WMDs to terrorists.
August 2002: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.... Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon." -- Dick Cheney
September 2002: "Iraq is six months away from producing a (nuclear) bomb." President George W. Bush
September 2002: "Iraq’s military forces are able to use chemical and biological weapons, with command, control and logistical arrangements in place. The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons within 45 minutes of a decision to do so;” -- from the document: Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government
September 2002: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." -- Condi Rice
January 2003: "In the course of these inspections we have not found any smoking gun," Hans Blix
January 2003: "He has weapons of mass destruction -- the world's deadliest weapons -- which pose a direct threat to the United States, our citizens and our friends and allies." -- President George W. Bush
March 6, 2003: "The IAEA finds no indication of resumed nuclear activities in Iraq." -- IAEA director general/UN inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei
March 16, 2003: "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." -- Dick Cheney, three days before the invasion of Iraq.
May 1, 2003: "We found the weapons of mass destruction." -- President George W. Bush
June 26, 2008: “We have found the weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. It is oil." -- Dennis Kucinich

That was Iraq. This is Iran:

December 2005: "We haven't seen a smoking gun in Iran. We haven't seen an underground production enrichment facility. We haven't seen enough materials in Iran...to put into a weapon." -- Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA
October 2007: "There is NO evidence of a concrete, active nuclear weapon program” going on inside Iran." -- Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA report
October 2007: "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course, the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences." -- Dick Cheney
October 2007: "If Iran had a nuclear weapon, it'd be a dangerous threat to world peace. So I told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested" in ensuring Iran not gain the capacity to develop such weapons." -- President George W. Bush
November 2007: "Mohamed ElBaradei is an apologist for Iran....Even a stopped clock is right twice a day" -- John Bolton
March 2008: "Obviously, they’re also heavily involved in trying to develop nuclear weapons enrichment, the enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels,” -- Dick Cheney
June 4, 2008: “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat....George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter BEFORE THE END OF HIS TERM in the White House.” -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

To that end, Israel just recently carried out a full rehearsal of an air assault on Iran, to the tune of nearly 100 warplanes aimed at Iran's nuclear sites -- nuclear sites which, according to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors, are being used to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes: power, not weapons use. Yet, today, as in October 2002, Cheney is poised to, in his own words, "discredit inspections in favor of disarmament," which translates roughly to: So what if there aren't any nuclear weapons? We're going in, anyway.

So here we are, perched on the precipice of another war. Only, this war carries the potential to escalate out of control, possibly even to the scale of the sky-falling scenario that Chicken Little envisioned. The question now is: Is there any one here who knows why the U.S. and Israel should not join in war against Iran? Speak now, or forever hold your peace: http://capwiz.com/justforeignpolicy/issues/alert/?alertid=11518951