PRESS RELEASE
Retired CENTCOM Commander
Warns of Iran Strike by Israel
Nov. 8, 2011 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee.
U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, who served as the head of the U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994, after he relieved Desert Storm commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, and who has spent more than 23 years in the Middle East, engaged in a dialogue today about the immediate danger of war breaking out in the Persian Gulf, started by an Israel strike against Iran.
"It is really frightening, I think," General Hoar stated. "From what I have read over the weekend, not from formal organizations, but from articles I received, everybody has the same story now: that Iran are the bad guys, that they're putting the nukes underground and that they're enriching uranium and they're experimenting with warheads. And you know, this is the same cast of characters that brought us Iraq....
"So it appears to me that the same people who brought us the attack on Iraq are back working together to put together a case for an Israeli attack, with U.S. help, on Iran. There's just too much that's gone on, from too many different sources around Washington—none of which are federal government—all of these are outside organizations that believe this is the next step...."
If the Israelis are allowed to strike—General Hoar believes that Obama's behavior in the face of Benjamin Netanyahu has led Netanyahu to believe he can "get away with anything,"—then "whether or not the U.S. government is directly involved, we'll be blamed; there are going to be American airplanes, American ordnance, American technology in a strike that would be conducted by Israel."
With the U.S. media historically feeding the neo-conservative propaganda, and specifically blacking out coverage of Israeli critics of the Israeli government's war policy, General Hoar warned:
"I'm afraid that this thing is going to be a fait accompli before anyone talks about it seriously in this country. That it's just going to happen one morning—we're going to wake up and the strike has been conducted, and the Iranians are attacking shipping in the Gulf, and the fact that this thing was initiated by the Israelis is going to be lost in the background clutter."
On the prospects of stopping this war, including by forcing the removal or resignation of Obama for endangering the national security of the United States, General Hoar replied that he thinks "it would be very difficult, but is a great failing of the American government, and the American public in general."
The general also talks about the tragedy of the Abu Ghraib abuse of prisoners in Iraq, and the effort General Hoar is making with 22 other generals and admirals to block the current Defense Authorization bill in the Senate that would widen the incarceration of terrorist suspects, including American citizens, without trials, and without Constitutional protection. All suspects should be give a trial in U.S. Federal Court, he says.
Branching into important historical areas, General Hoar criticized the narrow-minded "insular" thinking toward other cultures, and how the United States should not ignore the fact that one of the reasons for the animus from Iran is that the U.S., at the request of the United Kingdom, overthrew the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in Iran in 1952, because the British were about to lose a "lucrative" petroleum contract. The U.S. was "suckered into" that coup, he says.
"I can give you the rest of the story," General Hoar said. "Mr. Churchill came to Mr. Eisenhower, and Mr. Eisenhower as the President said, 'We're not going to help you.' And Churchill said, 'If you don't, we'll pull the Commonwealth division out of Korea.' It was during the Korean War, and that was the division that was made up, as I recall, of a brigade of British soldiers, and Australians, Canadians, and other forces from across the British Commonwealth. And Mr. Eisenhower acquiesced, and that's how we got involved."
The interview will appear in an upcoming issue of Executive Intelligence Review magazine.
