Intelligence has departed every government
Paul Craig Roberts

Iran had the strategic advantage over Israel and could have wiped Israel out.  Instead, the hapless Iranians sat passively on their butts, gave a gratuitous demonstration of their capability, thus putting Israel on guard without doing any damage to Israel.  Next the Iranian government failed to see the many indications that it was about to be attacked while it wasted its time in “peace negotiations,” and had an important part of its leadership decapitated and its oil fields set on fire.  Talking about doing oneself in, Iran takes the cake.

Reminds me of Putin.  Putin kept Russia sitting on its passive butt for eight years self-deceiving himself with his  “Minsk Agreement,” while Washington built and equipped a large Ukrainian army.  Unable to  get a mutual security agreement from the Biden regime, on the eve of the Ukrainian army’s intended invasion of the two Donbas republics–Russian people whose requests in 2014 to be reincorporated into Russia Putin foolishly refused, Putin had to finally intervene although he had made no effort to be militarily prepared and had to rely on a semi-private army known as the Wagner Group.  The Russian general staff were jealous of the fighting capability of the Wagner Group and wanted the troops integrated into their forces.  

When the Wagner Group’s commander and his troops could no longer stand the mindless restraints Putin was putting on the conduct of a war, causing Russians casualties while restraining Russian offensives, some of the Wagner Group marched on Moscow as a protest.  The Russian generals called it a coup, a rebellion.  The Wagner Group’s leader died “mysteriously in a plane crash,” the Wagner group was broken up. Thus, an effective Russian fighting force was destroyed by the government it was fighting for.  

The latest consequence of Putin’s inability to face up to reality is the attack on the Russian strategic triad.  Again Putin denied reality and said it was not an act of war against Russia, just a terrorist action.  Putin did more damage than Ukrainians to Russia’s fighting force.

As I recently wrote in a column, there are wars everywhere but they are not acknowledged as wars.  Governments are too stupid to understand that this is a dangerous situation.

Now Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender” from Iran or Trump is going to assassinate the Iranian leader. “We know where he is hiding,” Trump added.  

Can you imagine!  What has Iran done to America? Nothing.  Trump is hot and bothered that Iran, according to Netanyahu, has, or is about to have, nuclear weapons, the thought of which discomforts Netanyahu, President Trump’s real boss.  Tulsi Gabbard, US Director of National Intelligence told Trump that the American intelligent services believe there is no evidence of Iranian nuclear weapons.  Really, does anyone think Israel would be attacking Iran if Iran had nuclear weapons? 

Israel tried to take out Iran’s nuclear research facilities and failed, lacking the ability.  So Netanyahu has passed the task on to the  Trump and his MAGA-American super patriots.  Americans have already destroyed FIVE countries for Israel, disguised as “the war on terror,” and now Netanyahu has set Trump up to do in the sixth.

The Russian Foreign Ministry responds to this dangerous situation with nothing but meaningless words.  RT reports: “The ongoing intensive attacks by the Israeli side on peaceful nuclear facilities in Iran are illegal from the point of view of international law, create unacceptable threats to international security and push the world towards a nuclear catastrophe,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement published on Tuesday. Why does the Russian Foreign Ministry think that Washington or Israel  care what it says?  As Russia never does anything, Russia is not a player.

If the Russian Foreign Ministry has anyone capable of thought, just because Iran has a target on its back doesn’t mean that Russia doesn’t.  China also has a target on its back, and the  Chinese government sits there passively telling their “Russian allies” to sue for peace in Ukraine. 

The stupidity is unimaginable. What is the point of  seeking peace with those whose intention is to get you?

Israel and/or Washington  bribed, paid, threatened, or ordered the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board to push through last week’s “biased anti-Iranian resolution” on Tehran’s nuclear program,” which, without an inspection, gave Israel a free hand, and led to this tragedy, according to the Russian foreign ministry. Yet, Putin and his foreign ministry are desperate to be a part, even a subordinate part, of the totally corrupt Western World whose reality is a fabrication of lies.

I sometimes wonder if the Russian population is lost to Russia.  Have the decades of Washington’s propaganda via the Voice of America, Radio Liberty into the minds of Russians succeeded in alienating Russians from their own defense?  If not, why are the Russians doing such a  poor defense of themselves.  All the Russians do is to protest the West’s official narratives.  What kind of resistance is this?  None at all.  The absence of resistance leads to war.

Are there any governments capable of acknowledging reality?  Every government is lost in official narratives that are stupid and dangerous beyond belief.  

Tulsi Gabbard, US Director of National Intelligence, reported to President Trump that the US intelligence community discounts the Israeli claim that Iran has, or is about to have, a nuclear weapon.  Trump responded: “I don’t care what she says.”  Trump’s controller–Netanyahu–told Trump different, and Trump believes his controller, not his own appointee as Director of National Intelligence.

With Netanyahu firmly in charge of the US government, war is a certainty.

American patriots will conclude that I am on the side of Iran, Russia, and China, which shows the limits of emotional response.  I am on the side of truth and life.  When governments refuse to confront reality, reality runs away with them.  We are headed into a massive conflagration, because there are no honest governments on earth.

A government somewhere has to stand up and acknowledge that pointless war is afoot, and the presence of nuclear weapons makes it dangerous.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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