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ALERT!
U.S. war provocation
against Iran: Another Tonkin Gulf? Take Action NOW to Stop
War on Iran!
The
Bush Administration has initiated an extremely dangerous war
provocation just off Iran's coast, in the Strait of Hormuz. With
Bush on his way to the Middle East to mobilize a collection of
oil-rich U.S. client states against Iran, the U.S. government is
working overtime to create a public-relations incident to
heighten tensions in the region and threaten a new war. We
must take action now to Stop
War on Iran.
On Jan. 6, the U.S. Navy alleged that a
"confrontation" took place between three massive
guided-missile U.S. attack vessels and five small, open Iranian
speedboats at the entrance to the Persian Gulf in the world's
most important and busiest sea lanes. The Navy even produced a
video purporting to show the Iranian speedboats approaching the
U.S. warships.
HELP
BUILD A GRASSROOTS MOBILIZATION TO STOP A U.S. ATTACK ON
IRAN!
NO Phony Provocations!
In
the coming days, we must mobilize like never before to Stop
War on Iran! We need your help to do this. Please
consider making an emergency donation at
http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml.
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But
the Iranian media on Jan. 9 quoted an Iranian official as saying,
“Images released by the U.S. Department of Defense about
the Navy vessels were made from file pictures, and the audio was
fabricated."
Nearly five years ago, the Bush
Administration, with active collaboration from Congress and the
media, led the U.S. into war, claiming that Iraq possessed
chemical and nuclear weapons and that the people of Iraq were
behind the attacks on 9/11. Now the Bush Administration is
clearly grasping for some excuse - any excuse - to attack Iran.
Once the National Intelligence Estimate revealed that Bush has
been lying about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program,
the hawks in his Administration have begun looking for any
justification, real or fabricated, to sell a military attack they
have been planning for years.
The real provocation here
doesn’t come from Iran. The U.S. currently has half
of its Navy off the coast of Iran, including nuclear-armed
aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers, frigates, cruisers
and submarines.
Meanwhile, Bush is spending eight days
visiting Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia. The
purpose of his trip is to convince these corrupt, feudal regimes,
which are dependent U.S.-client states, that Iran represents a
dangerous threat, in preparation for a U.S. attack.
U.S.
warships a constant threat
The U.S. Navy has again and
again held major war games to plan for and stage just such a
confrontation with Iran. The Pentagon has announced that it has
already set targets on thousands of sites in Iran.
Even
the video released to the media - if looked at closely- belies
the very story that is being drummed up by the Bush
administration. It shows five small open-air Iranian speedboats
buzzing in the distance, far from the USS Hopper. Iranian boats
have every right to patrol and defend their own coastal waters.
It should be noted that, according to the Pentagon’s
own description, the USS Hopper is a guided-missile destroyer. It
carries an M240 machine gun that can fire 10 armor-piercing
projectiles per second and is capable of carrying nuclear
missiles that can destroy whole cities. This high-tech ship
weighs 8,373 tons and measures 504 feet in length. It was
traveling in convoy with the USS Port Royal--a guided-missile
cruiser that weighs 9,600 tons fully loaded and has a length of
567 feet and is also capable of firing Tomahawk cruise
missiles--and the guided-missile frigate USS Ingraham, weighing
4,100 tons and measuring 445 feet in length.
These three
deadly ships are just a small part of the U.S. Navy armada
arrayed off the Iranian coast.
We Must Act Now to Stop
War on Iran No New Tonkin Gulf!
Even after 16 of
the top U.S. spy agencies publicly released a National
Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran has no nuclear
program, at least since 2003, nor nuclear weapons, the Bush
administration has continued to threaten Iran.
It is
important to remember that the massive U.S. bombing of Vietnam
and the Johnson administration's escalation of the war was
preceded by reports of an attack on a U.S. destroyer in the Gulf
of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam - which years later was
finally admitted to be phony.
On Aug. 2 and 4, 1964,
the Pentagon claimed that small Vietnamese boats had fired on the
USS Maddox and another destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lyndon
Johnson used this "attack" as pretext for ramming a
resolution through Congress giving him the power and funds to
wage war on Vietnam.
Johnson's own papers later revealed
it was a fraud, and later Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
admitted in the film "Fog of War" that the whole
incident had been phony.
Nearly all the Republicans and
Democrats in both houses of Congress, including the present major
contenders for the presidential nomination, voted for resolutions
against Iran. In a staged or fraudulent confrontation with Iran,
with wild charges from the corporate-owned media, Congressional
opposition is highly unlikely. The only force that will
stop an attack on a Iran is a massive, grassroots campaign.
It
is more urgent then ever that we raise a global alert.
We
must continue to mobilize and act to Stop the War on Iran BEFORE
it starts! It is essential that the anti-war movement denounce
this latest provocation by the Bush Administration.
The
Stop War on Iran campaign was the first international campaign
launched to oppose Bush's plans to attack Iran.
Since our founding in 2006, with initiators including George
Galloway, MP; Ramsey Clark; Tony Benn, MP; Dennis Halliday;
Harold Pinter, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Literature; Margarita
Papandreou, former First Lady of Greece; Ervand Abrahamian, Prof.
ME History, Author, Between Two Revolutions; and David N. Rahni,
Professor and scholar; and dozens more, we have now generated
more than half a million petitions sent to President Bush,
Congress, and major media.
But
we must do more.
In the coming days, we will be mobilizing like never before to
stop another bipartisan rush to war. We need your help to
do this. Please
consider making an emergency donation at
http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
.
We
must join forces to demand: U.S. Navy Out of the Gulf! U.S.
Troops Out of Iraq! We need Jobs, Health Care and Housing, Not
Endless War!
Sign
the Petition - http://stopwaroniran.org/petition.shtml
Print
out and circulate Stop War on Iran petitions -
http://www.stopwaroniran.org/petition.pdf
DONATE to
continue the Campaign to Oppose U.S. War on Iran -
http://stopwaroniran.org/donate.shtml
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