Wilkerson says Bush-Cheney snubbed 2003 Iranian peace plan
Larry Wilkerson is a retired US army colonel and served as Colin Powell’s chief of staff when Powell was baby Bush’s first Secretary of State.
Wilkerson has gone public (ruining his friendship with Powell, he says) about
– the falseness of the supposed evidence that Powell presented to the United Nations to help launch the Iraq war (despite his opposition to the idea) (which evidence Wilkerson helped Powell to gather from various ill-intentioned organs of the government — Pentagon, CiA, etc.)
– more generally, the lies and disinformation Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith et al orchestrated out of the Pentagon to launch the Iraq war
– the foundations (at the very top) of the American war crimes and misdemeanors at Abu Grahib prison.
– the arrogation by Cheney, as vice president, of executive power in the White House
Wilkerson, then, for Regular Army, is a refreshing cat.
And reports now (to the BBC) that there was a clear proposal for something like peace from the Iranian government in 2003 after Bush had declared victory from the flight deck of the USS Lincoln. The BBC story:
Washington ‘snubbed Iran offer’
Iran offered the US a package of concessions in 2003, but it was rejected, a senior former US official has told the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
Tehran proposed ending support for Lebanese and Palestinian militant groups and helping to stabilise Iraq following the US-led invasion.
Offers, including making its nuclear programme more transparent, were conditional on the US ending hostility.
But Vice-President Dick Cheney’s office rejected the plan, the official said.
The offers came in a letter, seen by Newsnight, which was unsigned but which the US state department apparently believed to have been approved by the highest authorities.In return for its concessions, Tehran asked Washington to end its hostility, to end sanctions, and to disband the Iranian rebel group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq and repatriate its members.
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had allowed the rebel group to base itself in Iraq, putting it under US power after the invasion.
One of the then Secretary of State Colin Powell’s top aides told the BBC the state department was keen on the plan – but was over-ruled.”We thought it was a very propitious moment to do that,” Lawrence Wilkerson told Newsnight.
“But as soon as it got to the White House, and as soon as it got to the Vice-President’s office, the old mantra of ‘We don’t talk to evil’… reasserted itself.”
Observers say the Iranian offer as outlined nearly four years ago corresponds pretty closely to what Washington is demanding from Tehran now.
