Iran the Aggressor? Not According to the Pentagon — Which Agrees with Ron Paul
Every star is a US military base. (Courtesy of Juan Cole.)
According to television personality Bill O’Reilly, Iran is a global menace akin to Nazi Germany, Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul is Neville Chamberlain revisited, and the Pentagon must be prepared for war to contain Tehran’s aggression at any cost. Appearing on NBC’s Today Show to flog his most recent ghost-written bestseller Killing Lincoln, O’Reilly sneered: “His foreign policy disqualifies him in my eyes as an American — not as a journalist. I don’t think we need another Neville Chamberlain with Iran. So, he wants to be friends with Iran, that’s swell.”
Citing a key Bush-era National Intelligence Estimate and subsequent CIA findings, Dr. Paul has consistently emphasized that the Iranian government — although domestically repressive — is not pursuing aggressive designs against the United States. For this reason, Iran — like Soviet Russia and Communist China before it — can be dealt with through conventional diplomacy, rather than through pre-emptive war, as every other Republican candidate insists.
O’Reilly, who is Fox News’s ambassador to the geriatric warmonger demographic, consistently displays an unfavorable ratio of certitude to knowledge. He appears to be unaware of a recent official Pentagon threat analysis of Iran which validates Dr. Paul’s assessment.
And now… the rest of the story. …..
Harold
