War with Iran next on the agenda?

source: "Iran Encircled: Two US Congressional Resolutions, One World War" by Ruqayyah Shamseddine at Global Research, August 1, 2010

Reports on H.R. 1553, submitted July 22 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by 49 representatives, trickled in to the National Unified Peace Conference in Albany. Tighe Barry of CODEPINK told us something about it at dinner on Saturday.

You may share CODEPINK's alarm at the purpose of the res: "Expressing support for the State of Israel's right to defend Israeli sovereignty, to protect the lives and safety of the Israeli people, and to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force if no other peaceful solution can be found within reasonable time to protect against such an immediate and existential threat to the State of Israel."

I have just now gotten to checking that neither of Maine's reps signed on. The sponsor of the resolution, Rep. Louis Buller Gohmert of Texas, has defended the State of Israel's attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla boat Mavi Marmara, where nine people were killed by Israel's military forces in an attack carried out in international waters. (According to retired Col. Ann Wright, who was on the flotilla, the State of Israel also confiscated and kept records of what really happened, including her computer.) Gohmert has also reportedly traveled to Israel for educational visits, or perhaps to oversee some of the spending of the $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel each year -- really a credit line for weapons systems.

You may begin to see, as I do, an overall pattern that explains the no-end-in-sight occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the enabling of Israel's militant occupation of Palestinian territories. Yes, I know the U.S. is on schedule to "exit" Iraq on the last day of August. Left behind will be the largest fortified "embassy" ever built on Earth, five "Enduring Presence Posts" outside the capitol, and U.S. State Department private military squads.

This calls into question the false justification offered for our escalation of the ten year war on Afghanistan, that of improving the lot of women there. Is anyone else embarrassed that women and girls' rights were so much better after a decade of Soviet occupation than they are after a decade of NATO? Ann Jones, who wrote the excellent Kabul in Winter exploring this subject, has a new book due out next month: War is Not Over When Its Over: Women and the Unseen Consequences of Conflict. She also recently applied to be an embedded journalist and posted a fascinating account here that explains why COIN isn't working and won't work, but why young Americans keep enlisting anyway.