Meanwhile in Halifax pre-emptive bombing of Iran is on the table

And not just their nuclear site, but pre-emptive bombing of their navy, their air force, their army.

Political leaders and security and defence officials and generals are in Halifax from November 5 to 7 for the second Halifax International Security Forum, presented by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and hosted by Airshow MacKay. Airshow is credited by GMFUS with having the idea for these annual security conferences.

Attending : Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security; Condoleezza Rice; Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Mark Udall ; Stephen Hadley; Ehud Barak, Minister of Defense, Israel; Amos Gilad, Political-Military Affairs, Israeli Ministry of Defense; Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute; Ron Covais, Lockheed Martin; John Manley, CEO Canadian Council of Chief Executives; ; Janice Gross Stein, Munk School of Global Affairs; Walter Natynczyk, Chief of Defence Staff; Mark Carney, Governor Bank of Canada; Vic Toews.

I just watched a panel today with US Senators Mark Udall and Lindsey Graham, and Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute - introduced by John McCain and moderated by the CBC's Susan Bonner.

Here's Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Budget, Armed Forces, and Homeland Security committees, supporting pre-emptive bombing of Iran [at half-hour mark]:

"Republicans are looking for a way to support Obama on Iraq and Iran.
My big fear about the Iranians developing a nuclear weapon is not so much they'll put it on top of a missile and send it to Israel, is that those materials can work their way into the hands of people who would use them in a variety of fashion. The one thing that changes the world as I know it is Iran with a nuclear weapon. The consequences are enormous, the idea of containment to me is off the table, so that takes us back to the idea of being tough.

And if you use military force, if sanctions are not gonna work - and a year from now it's pretty clear they're not gonna work, [inaudible] what our friends in Israel are gonna do - so I would like the President to make it abundantly clear : all options are on the table. And we all know what that means. My advice to the President : If you take military action against Iran as the last effort to stop their nuclear ambitions, you do open up Pandora's box but if you let them acquire nuclear weapons, you empty Pandora's box.

So my view of military force would be not to just neutralize their nuclear program, which would probably disperse and harden, but to sink their navy, destroy their air force, and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard.
In other words, neuter that regime, destroy their ability to fight back, and hope the people within Iran would have the chance to take back their government and be good neighbours to the world in the future. So that's what I mean by being tough."

Democratic Senator Udall did not disagree, hopes sanctions will yet work, but says: "This may be Agenda Item #1 for every person in this room."

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Gates touts his support for torture school

Photo snagged from Pacific Free Press

Gates touts support for WHINSEC in Halifax

Every November, thousands gather at Fort Benning, Georgia, to demand closure of the School of the Americas, renamed "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in 2001, for the disappearances, torture and the murder of hundreds of thousands of peasants, community and union organizers, clerics, missionaries, educators, and health workers in Latin America. This year's vigil marked the 20th anniversary of the 1989 SOA graduate-led Jesuit massacre in San Salvador and focuses on the current SOA graduate-led coup in Honduras.
The protestors are hopeful. During his election campaign, Obama made sympathetic noises about closing down the school and last year Congress came within 6 votes of cutting off its Dept. of Defense funding.

So I was somewhat surprised to read that on the same weekend as the SOA/WHINSEC vigil, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was up in Canada touting his support for WHINSEC. Prior to giving the keynote address to the Halifax International Security Forum - a closed shop affair for top brass from NATO countries to speak freely on matters of mutual concern - Gates gave one public presser with Defensive Minister Peter MacKay that I only just now got around to reading, courtesy of the US Defense Dept.

Gates, Deputy Director of the CIA to Ronald Reagan during Iran-Contra, Director of the CIA to GHW Bush, and Secretary of Defense to both George Bush and currently Barack Obama :

"The United States has made it a point to integrate human rights instruction into our joint training and education in programs such as the Western Hemispheric (sic) Institute for Security Cooperation."

Really? After all the coups, the disappearances, the brutal dictators, the now recalled torture manuals, isn't that rather like teaching a pig to sing?

Apologists for WHINSEC, which does indeed have mandatory human rights classes now, say it is not fair to judge the school on the basis of its graduates, that some pretty nasty characters likely came out of schools like Yale also and we don't lobby to have Yale shut down. I disagree. If a large proportion of nasty events featured Yale grads and if the Pentagon subsequently also had all their names classified, then yes, I think it's likely you could move Congress to within 6 votes of shutting it down.

For more of Gates' ideas on militarized solutions to climate change and to hear Airshow MacKay call him Bob, the presser transcript is here.

Irony note : Much of the groundwork for tracking SOA/WHINSEC over three decades has been done by Father Roy Bourgeois, a Viet Nam vet with a Purple Heart who founded SOA Watch after experiencing atrocities in Latin America. Since then, he has spent over four years in US federal prisons for nonviolent protests against the training of Latin American soldiers at Ft. Benning, Georgia.

This year he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
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