- By Ed Haas - efhaas@comcast.net - March 5, 2006 -

In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford signed a directive that granted Iran the opportunity to purchase U.S. built reprocessing equipment and facilities designed to extract plutonium from nuclear reactor fuel. 

When Gerald Ford assumed the Presidency in August 1974, the current Vice President of the United States, Richard B Cheney served on the transition team and later as Deputy Assistant to the President. In November 1975, he was named Assistant to the President and White House Chief of Staff, a position he held throughout the remainder of the Ford Administration. [1]

In August 1974, the current Secretary of Defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld served as Chairman of the transition to the Presidency of Gerald R. Ford. He then became Chief of Staff of the White House and a member of the President's Cabinet (1974-1975)[2] and was the Ford Administration's Secretary of Defense from 1975-1977.  

The current President of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz served in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency under President Gerald Ford. [3]  Wolfowitz is considered as a prominent architect of the Bush Doctrine, which, has come to be identified with a policy that permits pre-emptive war against potential aggressors before they are capable of mounting attacks against the United States. 

According to Washington Post Staff Writer Dafna Linzer, "Ford's team endorsed Iranian plans to build a massive nuclear energy industry, but also worked hard to complete a multibillion-dollar deal that would have given Tehran control of large quantities of plutonium and enriched uranium - the two pathways to a nuclear bomb.  Either can be shaped into the core of a nuclear warhead, and obtaining one or the other is generally considered the most significant obstacle to would-be weopons builders."[4]

What the current Bush Administration is asserting, particularly through its news agency Fox News, or as I like to call it, the Fascist Opinion X-change, is that it needs to prevent Iran from achieving the exact same nuclear capabilities that President Ford and his key appointees, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz were encouraging Iran to accomplish 30 years ago.  Iran, a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, is guaranteed the right to develop peaceful nuclear power programs - regardless of whether the United States approves or disapproves the politics or political leadership of that country; a point that Iran has repeated over and over again.  For 30 years, Iran has proclaimed that it needs nuclear power since its oil and gas supplies are limited, just like the United States, and therefore has the legal right to produce and operate nuclear power plants.  Thirty years ago, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld agreed.  Today, Cheney and Rumsfeld appear to be crawling out of their skins with uncontrollable militarized lust for control of Iranian oil fields via a U.S. occupied, Iran.  The NEO-CON war drumbeaters have already devised their plans for the liberation of the people again, this time Iranian people, and making things all better, just like they have done in Iraq.  Scary stuff, but it is true. In preparation, the Bush Administration has primed the mainstream media so effectively that 8 out of 10 Americans believe Iran poises an immediate nuclear threat to the United States.  The President's recent and risky travel to regional nuclear powers, Pakistan and India, no doubt also served as a strategic warning to those countries to prepare for the certain public backlash to be expected once the U.S. or Israel begins to drop bombs on Iran. 

It is also worth noting that in 2000, the World Bank resumed making loans to Iran.  As of June 30, 2004, the World Bank as made 51 loans valued at $2.6 billion to Iran.  The World Bank gets its funds from the International Monetary Fund, which in turn, gets its money from member nation dues / contributions.  The United States is required to contribute $37.2 billion per year into the IMF.  The atrocious Federal Reserve Banking Cartel orchestrated this money scheme so that it can continue to print and loan astronomical numbers of debt notes.  If the American people understood that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Congress have been funding many activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran, most would be skeptical of the federal government's current claim that Iran's 30 year old, U.S. sanctioned, nuclear program is somehow now an immediate threat to the security of the United States.  The IMF and the World Bank create just enough degrees of separation to shield the government from the people recognizing that the federal government has fed the dog well that it now claims will bite if we do not ‘put it down' with a pre-emptive strike. 

With Wolfowitz at the helm of the World Bank, one has to wonder if once again the Federal Reserve has positioned itself to fund both sides of a warring conflict.  One thing is certain; loaning money to fund both sides of a war is a perfected craft of the member banks of the Federal Reserve, which is interested only in loan collateral and interest payments.  Patriotism is not part of the equation.  What is most disturbing about the relationship between the Fed, IMF, and World Bank is that the $37.2 billion the U.S. is obligated to pay to the IMF annually, is actually secured by the American taxpayer.  We the People, and the ability of the U.S. Congress to confiscate our wealth through that unconstitutional apparatus referred to as a federal income tax, makes loaning money to the Islamic Republic of Iran easy because if Iran defaults on its World Bank loans, the U.S. portions of the loans work their way back to the lender of last resort, which is the U.S. Congress.  When the U.S. Congress responds to failed loans and failed banking institutions, they assume responsibility for the loan amount, and pass the burden of repayment onto the American people. 

Finally, but very much part of the U.S. government's charade aimed at deceiving the American people into believing that the U.S. has played no part in the development of Iran or its nuclear power programs, is the absolute economic threat that Iran poses to the global value of the U.S. dollar.  Unless the U.S. intervenes, on March 20, 2006 the world will have the option of purchasing oil with euros instead of dollars through the opening of the Iranian Oil Bourse.  The Iran Oil Bourse will be the third exchange in which global oil transactions will be executed.  While financial analysts debate whether such an exchange operating solely in euros will have the potential to collapse the U.S. economy, the complete silence of the mainstream media regarding this most important untold story can be interpreted as a sign that this suggested economic threat is real.  As the Bush Administration has proven itself to be the most dishonest, secretive presidency in the history of the United States, it has repeatedly demonstrated that the truth about its motives and agendas can only be found in what is not being reported to the American people.  And if the Iran nuclear threat rhetoric is the firewall that the U.S. government is hiding the U.S. dollar global supremacy behind, than any military action in Iran will be solely on behalf of the member banks of the Federal Reserve - at the expense of American sons and daughters serving in the U.S. military and at the burden of the U.S. taxpayer who is already indebted to the federal government to the tune of $28 thousand, which is each and every American's current share of the Federal Reserve / U.S. Congress banking cartel produced national debt - $28,000 and growing faster than ever! 

Here's a patriotic challenge and very American gut check for your consideration:  Next time you hold your children and / or grandchildren, look them in the eye and explain to them how they are, right at this very moment, indebted to the federal government of the United States of America, to the tune of $28,000, and then ask yourself how you allowed it to happen.  Sobering fact that feels better to ignore, does it not?  But hell, we are spreading democracy, right?  I don't think so, and hopefully soon, neither will you.

[1] The White House, Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/, [Accessed March 4, 2006]

[2] United States Department of Defense, Biography - Donald H. Rumsfeld, http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/rumsfeld.html, [Accessed March 4, 2006]

[3] Washington Post, Realism, Rewarded, George F. Will, May 12, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051101815.html, [Accessed March 4, 2006]

[4] Washington Post, Past Arguments Don't Square with Current Iran Policy, Dafna Linzer, March 27, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3983-2005Mar26.html, [Accessed March 4, 2006]

Freelance writer / author, Ed Haas, is the editor and columnist for the Muckraker Report.  Get smart.  Read the Muckraker Report.  [http://teamliberty.net]  To learn more about Ed's current and previous work, visit Crafting Prose.  - http://craftingprose.com/ -