If treason is defined as "consciously acting in a way to harm one’s country or to benefit the enemy of one’s country," then the Bush administration has lately been engaged in an act of treason by openly planning for the first use of nuclear weapons against Iran, a non-nuclear nation.

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If treason is defined as "consciously acting in a way to harm one’s country or to benefit the enemy of one’s country," then the Bush administration has lately been engaged in an act of treason by openly planning for the first use of nuclear weapons against Iran, a non-nuclear nation.

By the mere act of contingency planning for such a first use, the Bush administration has guaranteed that not just Iran, but probably many other nations that see themselves as remotely threatened by the U.S., will seek to obtain either nuclear weapons, or some other similarly catastrophic weapon for the purpose of resisting such nuclear blackmail.

The rushed announcement Tuesday by Iran that its scientists and engineers had succeeded in creating some enriched uranium is almost certainly a direct result of the administration's nuclear threats.

Most sane observers have calculated that if Iran is really planning on developing a nuclear weapon, it is years--perhaps even a decade--away from that goal. That was plenty of time to reassure Iran that it would not need the bomb, or to use international diplomacy to discourage the country from embarking on such a wasteful, expensive and dangerous project. Instead, by threatening to nuke Iran’s nuclear research and processing facilities, the administration has predictably put Iran onto a crash course for developing the bomb. What alternative did Iran's leaders have after all the administration's bombast?

In fact, Bush-Cheney rhetoric may well have pushed Iran to seek to obtain nuclear capability by other faster means, such as obtaining a weapon, perhaps illegally, from Russia, or perhaps more directly from North Korea. After all, North Korea has the bomb and is strapped for two things that Iran has in abundance—oil and cash.

These are dangerous times. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocon wackoes who infest the West Wing, the Pentagon, and various right-wing “no-think” tanks, have already succeeded in creating a cauldron of anti-U.S. fury in Iraq that will haunt this country for a generation to come. Now they appear dead-set on igniting something even worse in Iran. But just as the attack on Iraq has had repercussions far beyond the boundaries of that fractured land, the nuclear threat against Iran will have effects that reach far beyond Persia in both geography and in time.

It is clear from Bush policy over the past five years that nations which have no nuclear deterrent are considered fair game by these guys, while those nations that have the bomb are handled with kid gloves. Look at Bush administration policy towards Pakistan, India, China, and even North Korea. Iran clearly will make every effort to enter the safety circle in which those countries find themselves, thanks to this administration’s threats.

What makes this doubly treasonous is the undeniable reality that the more nations there are with nuclear weapons, the more likely it is that nuclear weapons will ultimately be used.

Instead of working to limit the spread of these ultimate weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration is doing the opposite--promoting it. The administration's plans to begin developing a new generation of smaller tactical nuclear weapons are having the same effect. By signaling to the world that the U.S. is getting prepared to use nuclear weapons in its campaign of endless wars on smaller nations, the Bush administration is insuring that the potential targets of U.S. malevolence will do their best to acquire similar weapons. It's only a matter of time, then, before one of those countries succeeds in slipping one of those small devices into an American city.

And that's not even to mention the terrorists, like Osama Bin Laden's merry gang, who will have a wider range of potential sources for acquiring a small nuclear device of their own as the nuclear club grows apace.

If we Americans want security, we need to start telling our elected officials they need to put a halt to this madness and treason.

The U.S. needs to declare unequivocally that it will never be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict, and particularly against any nation that has no nuclear weapons of its own. That is a fundamental act of sanity and security.

If this Congress won’t vote such a resolution, then 2006 is the year we need to elect a Congress that will. Then we can start examining that article in the Constitution that declares treason to be an impeachable crime.

Who the hell is Dave Lindorff

Submitter: Rob Kall

Submitters Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

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Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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