WMD fiasco could repeat itself if Canadians aren't vigilant.
by Ish Theilheimer
If Canadians aren't watchful and vocal, we risk marching into a war with Iran on dubious charges, led by a prime minister on a mission to make Canada an international military player.
Last week on Parliament Hill, Stephen Harper hosted a massive reception for returning military personnel returning from active involvement in the Libya conflict. Harper bragged about the quality of Canada's armed forces, as you would expect. He also laid down a doctrine that is unprecedented among Canadian PMs before him.
 | "You don't have to be a nuclear engineer to know that much of what's being said about the Iranian nuclear program is humbug." |
"Let no one ever question whether Canada is prepared to stay the course in defence of what is right," he said. "For we believe that in a world where people look for hope and cry out for freedom, those who talk the talk of human rights must from time to time be prepared to likewise walk the walk."
Talking this kind of talk is ominous in light of the ambiguous and controversial recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Hawks in Israel, the USA, and countries such as Canada are citing the report to build public support for a military strike against Iran.
If this happens, Stephen Harper will be clearly onside. He has repeatedly said he sees the Iranian regime as the biggest threat in the world to peace and security. And a week beforehand, his government supported a resolution by the IAEA that expresses "deep and increasing concern" about a potential Iran's nuclear weapons. The government's memo promised to "continue to work with like-minded nations on next steps... The question is not if, but rather the degree to which, we will act."
The IAEA's report is highly political and highly controversial. Former IAEA weapons inspector Robert Kelley has gone public with his concerns about evidence cited in the IAEA report, denouncing one of the agency's claims as "highly misleading."
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has meticulously poured over US intelligence reports and talked with spies and researchers. Nowhere, he says, is there evidence of a bomb-making program. "I've been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeated inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran,"he wrote this month in a blog on the magazine's website.
"It's some sort of a fantasy land being built up here, as it was with Iraq... no lessons learned, obviously," he told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. "We have enrichment in Iran. They've acknowledged it. They have inspectors there. There are cameras there, etc. Iran's a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Nobody is accusing them of any cheating. In fact, the latest report that everybody's so agog about also says that, once again, we find no evidence that Iran has diverted any uranium that it's enriching."
As Toronto Star editorial writer Haroon Siddiqui points out, the charges are stirred up by US and Israeli interests with axes to grind. "You don't have to be a nuclear engineer to know that much of what's being said about the Iranian nuclear program, including by the Stephen Harper government, is humbug," he wrote.
Siddiqui is struck by the irony that Iran, as a signatory to the NPT, must open up its nuclear facilities to international inspection while "Israel, India and Pakistan, which also developed the bomb on the sly, refuse to sign the treaty and don't show a thing to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Yet they get rewarded by the US, while Iran is subjected to illegal covert actions."
History — very recent history — is repeating itself here. In 2003, the USA led an invasion of Iraq based on reports of "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) possessed by Saddam Hussein. The reports were ultimately proven false, after hundreds of thousands died.
Canadians need to think twice and speak loudly if we are to avoid Stephen Harper using the Libya experience to justify a similar disaster in Iran.
Ish Theilheimer is founder and president of Straight Goods News and has been Publisher of the leading, and oldest, independent Canadian online newsmagazine, StraightGoods.ca, since September 1999. He is also Managing Editor ofPublicValues.ca. He lives wth his wife Kathy in Golden Lake, ON, in the Ottawa Valley.
eMail: ish@straightgoods.com
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