by Stephen Lendman

Age hasn’t mellowed neocon lunatic Norman Podhoretz. At 85, he’s as outrageously over-the-top as ever.

He urges mass murdering Iranians in a Wall Street Journal op-ed no respectable editors would touch. Journal editors featured it. Podhoretz urged the same criminal act numerous times before.

The late Alex Cockburn called him an “apex neo-con.” He nicknamed him “Norman the Frother.” Journalist Bob Dreyfuss once called him a “wheezing neoconservative warhorse.”

He’s a longtime apologist for Israel’s worst crimes - and America’s. His anti-Iranian rants border on delirium. He calls the failure to stop its nonexistent nuclear weapons program the equivalent of not confronting Hitler pre-WW II.

It’s hard imagining anyone takes him seriously. He headlined his Wall Street Journal piece “Israel’s Choice: Conventional War Now, or Nuclear War Later.”

He called “Obama’s (nuclear) deal a calamity.” He repeated the tired old canard about it furthering its path to the bomb.

He ignores Tehran’s abhorrence of nuclear weapons, clear evidence its program has no military component, its longtime advocacy for a nuclear-free Middle East, and nuclear armed and dangerous Israel. Not a word about it.

“(I)f the objective remains preventing Iran from getting the bomb (the whole world knows it doesn’t have or want), the only way to do so is bomb Iran,” he ranted.

He ludicrously claimed diplomacy “never work(s).” And the real P5+1 goal is “open(ing) the way to lucrative business contracts.” If so, why wait 36 years to do it.

For Obama, it’s achieving “his long-standing dream of a US detente with Iran.” He “conceded just about anything the Iranians wanted - without…admitting (his) acquiescence (to) an Iran armed with nuclear weapons and the rockets to deliver them.”

“(A)llowing Iran to get the bomb, (he’s) setting the stage for a nuclear war between Iran and Israel.”

You can’t make this stuff up. Iran hasn’t attacked another country in centuries. It threatens none now. It bears repeating. The whole world knows its nuclear program is peaceful with no military component or desire to have one.

Israel is polar opposite - a warrior state, indoctrinating its people to hate Arabs from the cradle to the grave. Waging endless wars on Palestine and neighboring countries. Threatening regional peace and stability.

Podhoretz repeated the longstanding Big Lie about Iran “bound and determined to wipe the Jewish state off the map.”

His alternatives are “conventional war now or nuclear war later.” He urges unilateral Israeli war now to “spar(e) itself - and the rest of the world - a nuclear conflagration in the not too distant future.”

He’s not the only neocon lunatic urging war on nonbelligerent Iran. They know its government wants peace, not conflict.

They want it toppled - replaced by pro-Western puppet governance, letting mainly US monied interests loot its resources, exploit it people, at the same time eliminating Israel’s main regional rival.

The phony Iranian nuclear scare is all about power, control and carving up another country for profits - not its nonexistent path to the bomb or barbarians at the gates. A neocon lunatic fringe echo chamber wants this phony threat alone repeated ad nauseam.

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Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III".

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

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