Amid the increased likelihood that President Barack Obama will cave in to pressure from foreign policy hawks to "Libya-ize" Syria and to accord Syrian President Bashar al-Assad the same treatment meted out to Libya's Col. Muammar Gaddafi, the main question is WHY? Obviously, there is concern about the human rights catastrophe in Syria, but is the main target Syria's main ally, Iran, as many suspect?

Surely, the objective has got to be more than simply giving Secretary of State John Kerry a chance to brag, in the manner of his predecessor, Hillary Clinton, regarding Gaddafi, "We came, we saw, he died." And, there is little expectation - however many Cruise missiles the United States fires at Syrian targets in a fury over disputed claims about chemical weapons - that lives are likely to be saved.

So, what are Iran's new leaders likely to see as the real driving force behind Obama's felt need to acquiesce, again, in a march of folly? And why does it matter?

Iran's leaders need not be paranoid to see themselves as a principal target of external meddling in Syria. While there seem to be as many interests being pursued - as there are rag-tag groups pursuing them - Tehran is not likely to see the common interests of Israel and the U.S. as very complicated. Both appear determined to exploit the chaotic duel among the thugs in Syria as an opportunity to deal a blow to Hezbollah and Hamas in Israel's near-frontier and to isolate Iran still further, and perhaps even advance Israel's ultimate aim of "regime change" in Tehran.

In the nearer term, are the neocons in Washington revving up to nip in the bud any unwelcome olive branches from the Iran's new leaders as new talks on nuclear matters loom on the horizon?

The Not-So-Clean Break

"A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," a policy document prepared in 1996 for Benjamin Netanyahu by a study group led by American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, laid out a new approach to solving Israel's principal security challenges. Essentially, the point was to shatter the frustrating cycle of negotiations with the Palestinians and instead force regime change on hostile states in the region, thus isolating Israel's close-in adversaries.

Among the plan's features was "the containment of Syria by engaging in proxy warfare and highlighting their possession of 'weapons of mass destruction.'" The following "Clean-Break" paragraph is, no doubt, part of the discussion in Iran's leadership councils:

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq - an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right - as a means of foiling Syria's regional ambitions."

Against this background, what is Iran likely to think of the two-year old mantra of Hillary Clinton, repeated by Obama that "Assad Must Go?" Or what to think of Obama's gratuitous pledge a half year later, on Super Bowl Sunday 2012, that the U.S. will "work in lockstep" with Israel regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions. Assuming they checked Webster's, Iran's leaders have taken note that one primary definition offered for "in lockstep" is: "in perfect, rigid, often mindless conformity or unison."

In that pre-game interview, Obama also made the bizarre charge that the Iranians must declare, "We will pursue peaceful nuclear power; we will not pursue a nuclear weapon." In actuality, Iran has been saying precisely that for years.

Still more odd, Obama insisted, "Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program." The Israelis could hardly have expected the President to regurgitate their claims about Iran working on a nuclear weapon, but that is what he did - despite the fact that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta had said on TV just four weeks before that Iran was NOT doing so.

Of course, Panetta was simply reiterating the consensus conclusion of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that declared in 2007 that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon in 2003 and that it did not appear that such work had resumed.

And even if you don't want to believe the U.S. intelligence community and Panetta, there was the acknowledgement by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak that Israeli intelligence had reached the same judgment. Barak gave an interview on Jan. 18, 2002, the day before JCS Chairman Martin Dempsey arrived for talks in Israel:

"Question: Is it Israel's judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: ... confusion stems from the fact that people ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now ... in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case. ...

Question: How long will it take from the moment Iran decides to turn it into effective weapons until it has nuclear warheads?

Barak: I don't know; one has to estimate. ... Some say a year, others say 18 months. It doesn't really matter. To do that, Iran would have to announce it is leaving the [UN International Atomic Energy Agency] inspection regime and stop responding to IAEA's criticism, etc.

Why haven't they [the Iranians] done that? Because they realize that ... when it became clear to everyone that Iran was trying to acquire nuclear weapons, this would constitute definite proof that time is actually running out. This could generate either harsher sanctions or other action against them. They do not want that."

No one knows all this better than the Iranians themselves. But, for Israel, Iran's new President Hassan Rouhani poses a more subtle threat than the easier-to-demonize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The more moderate and polished Rouhani - IF he can calm those Iranians who consider Washington a Siamese twin to Tel Aviv - may be able to enter renewed talks on the nuclear issue with concessions that the West would find difficult to refuse.

This would rattle the Israelis and the neocons in Washington who must be pining for the days when Ahmadinejad made it easier to mask the very real concessions made while he was president. Israeli and neocon hardliners have amply demonstrated that - despite their public face - they have little concern over Iran's non-existent nuclear weapons program. Quite simply, they would like to get the U.S. to do to Iran what it did to Iraq. Period.

Israel Riding High Again

Dealing with more moderate leaders in Iran remains one of Israel's major headaches, even as Israel has ridden a string of geopolitical successes over the past several weeks. First and foremost, the Israelis were able to persuade Washington to represent the military coup d'etat in Cairo as something other than a military coup, which enabled U.S. military and other aid to keep flowing to the Israel-friendly Egyptian military.

After shielding this blood-stained Egyptian military from geopolitical pressure, Israel was rewarded by the generals' decision to choke off Gaza's lifeline to the outside world via Egypt and thus further punish the Gazans for having the temerity to elect the more militant Hamas as their leadership.

With the Palestinians reeling - as their international backers face internal and external pressures - Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has found it timely to return to the bargaining table to discuss what undesirable land might be left for the Palestinians to live on as Netanyahu's government continues to approve expansions of Jewish settlements on the more appealing patches of Palestinian territory.

The Israeli position vis a vis its Muslim adversaries is also improved by the spreading of sectarian conflicts pitting Sunni vs. Shiite, a rift that was turned into a chasm - and made much bloodier - by the neocon-inspired U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Now, similar divisions are shattering Syria in a chaotic civil war with the growing likelihood that the Obama administration will soon weigh in militarily against the Alawite-dominated regime of Bashar al-Assad, which is being challenged by a Sunni-led rebellion. Alawites stem from the Shiite branch of Islam and Assad is allied with Shiite-ruled Iran.

The more the Sunni and Shiite are fighting each other - and thus expending their resources on internecine warfare - the better for Israel, at least in the view of neocon hardliners like those who crafted Netanyahu's "clean-break" strategy in the 1990s. That strategy would see the snuffing out of the Syrian regime as a signature accomplishment.

Hardliners on Both Sides

As these regional pressures build, Westerners tend to forget that there is a hard-line equivalent in Tehran with whom Rouhani has to deal. The hardliners in Tehran believe, with ample justification, that many American officials have the virus that George Washington so pointedly warned against; i.e., a "passionate-attachment" to a country with priorities and interests that may differ from one's own country - in this case, Israel.

The Iranian hawks do not trust the U.S. especially on the nuclear issue, and developments over recent years - including statements like President Obama's cited above - feed that distrust. So, President Rouhani faces tough sledding should he wish to offer the kinds of concessions Iran made in the fall of 2009 and spring of 2010, when Ahmadinejad's government offered to export much of its low-enriched uranium.

That promising beginning was sabotaged in October 2009 when, after Iran had agreed in principle to a deal involving the shipping of two-thirds to three-quarters of it low-enriched uranium out of country, a terrorist attack killed five generals of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, just before the talk to flesh out that deal. A similar deal was worked out with the help of Turkey and Brazil in early 2010 (with the written encouragement of President Obama) only to fall victim to Secretary of State Clinton and other hawks who preferred the route of sanctions.

As if the prospect of U.S. military involvement regarding Syria was not delicate enough, the hardliners in Tehran are bound to make hay out of two major stories recently playing in the U.S. media.

The first is a detailed account of precisely how the CIA and British Intelligence succeeded in 1953 in removing Iran's first democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and installing the Shah with his secret police. A detailed account was released responding to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive. Much had been already known about the coup, but the play-by-play is riveting and, presumably, highly offensive to Iranians.

The second expose came in a detailed report published by Foreign Policy Magazine on Monday entitled: "CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran." This account, replete with declassified CIA and other documents, will likewise be a highly painful reminder of the troubled past and great grist for those Iranians bent on exposing U.S. treachery.

In sum, the Foreign Policy report by Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid provides a wealth of detail on how Washington was aware that the Iraqis were using mustard and Sarin nerve gas in their war with Iran in the 1980s, and nonetheless enabled the Iraqis to use it to maximum effect by providing all manner of intelligence, including up-to-date information from satellites.

The nerve gas, in particular, was effective in thwarting the last major Iranian offensives and left thousands dead. The impression given by the documents is that toward the end of the war, Iran had the upper hand and may have ultimately prevailed were it not for Washington's precise intelligence support for Iraq and blind eye to the first major use of chemical warfare since it was banned after World War I.

A CIA memo dated Nov. 4, 1983, is titled "Iran's Likely Reaction to Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons" included this paragraph: "Iran is unlikely to be deterred from pursuing the war because of Iraq's use of chemical weapons. ... Iran will be forced to adjust its military tactics and acquire additional protective gear but it will continue to launch attacks on Iraq. We have no evidence that Iran has lethal chemical agents or that it is making an effort to acquire any."

These will be very painful reminders of the tragic history of Iranian-American relations and seem bound to make negotiations even more difficult.
(c) 2013 Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years - from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. During the early 1980s, he was one of the writers/editors of the President's Daily Brief and briefed it one-on-one to the president's most senior advisers. He also chaired National Intelligence Estimates. In January 2003, he and four former colleagues founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

I DIDN'T want to write this article, but I had to.

I love Egypt. I love the Egyptian people. I have spent some of the happiest days of my life there.

My heart bleeds when I think of Egypt. And these days I think about Egypt all the time.

I cannot remain silent when I see what is happening there, an hour's flight from my home.

LET'S PUT on the table right from the beginning what's happening there now.

Egypt has fallen into the hands of a brutal, merciless military dictatorship, pure and simple.

Not on the way to democracy. Not a temporary transition regime. Not anything like it.

Like the locusts of old, the military officers have fallen upon the land. They are not likely ever to give it up voluntarily.

Even before, the Egyptian military had enormous assets and privileges. They control vast corporations, are free of any oversight and live off the fat of a skinny land.

Now they control everything. Why should they give it up?

Those who believe that they will do so, of their own free will, should have their head examined.

IT IS enough to look at the pictures. What do they remind us of?

This row of over-decorated, beribboned, well-fed generals who have never fought a war, with their gold-braided, ostentatious peaked hats – where have we seen them before?

In the Greece of the colonels? The Chile of Pinochet? The Argentina of the torturers? Any of a dozen other South-American states? The Congo of Mobutu?

All these generals look the same. The frozen faces. The self-confidence. The total belief that they are the only guardians of the nation. The total belief that all their opponents are traitors who must be caught, imprisoned, tortured, killed.

Poor Egypt.

HOW DID this come about? How did a glorious revolution turn into this disgusting spectacle?

How did the millions of happy people, who had liberated themselves from a brutal dictatorship, who had breathed the first heady whiffs of liberty, who had turned Liberation Square (that's what Tahrir means) into a beacon of hope for all mankind, slide into this dismal situation?

In the beginning, it seemed that they did all the right things. It was easy to embrace the Arab Spring. They reached out to each other, secular and religious stood together and dared the forces of the aging dictator. The army seemed to support and protect them.

But the fatal faults were already obvious, as we pointed out at the time. Faults that were not particularly Egyptian. They were common to all the recent popular movements for democracy, liberty and social justice throughout the world, including Israel.

These are the faults of a generation brought up on the "social media", the immediacy of the internet, the effortlessness of instant mass communication. These fostered a sense of empowerment without effort, of the ability to change things without the arduous process of mass-organization, political power-building, of ideology, of leadership, of parties. A happy and anarchistic attitude that, alas, cannot stand up against real power.

When democracy came for a glorious moment and fair elections were in the offing, this whole amorphous mass of young people were faced with a force that had all they themselves lacked: organization, discipline, ideology, leadership, experience, cohesion.

The Muslim Brotherhood.

THE BROTHERHOOD and its Islamist allies easily won the free, fair and democratic elections against the motley anarchic field of secular and liberal groups and personalities. This has happened before in other Arab countries, such as Algeria and Palestine.

The Islamic Arab masses are not fanatical, but basically religious (as are the Jews who came to Israel from Arab countries.) Voting for the first time in free elections, they tend to vote for religious parties, though they are by no means fundamentalist.

The wise thing for the brotherhood to do was to reach out to other parties, including secular and liberal ones, and lay the foundation for a robust, inclusive democratic regime. This would have been to their own advantage in the long run.

At the beginning it seemed that Mohamed Morsi, the freely elected president, would do so. But he soon changed course, using his democratic powers to change the constitution, exclude everybody else and start to establish the sole domination of his movement.

That was unwise, but understandable. After many decades of suffering from state persecution, including imprisonment, systematic torture and even executions, the movement was thirsty for power. Once it got hold of it, it could not restrain itself. It tried to gobble up everything.

THAT WAS especially unwise, because the brotherhood regime was sitting next to a crocodile, which only seemed to be asleep, as crocodiles often do.

At the beginning of his reign, Morsi drove out the old generals, who had served under Hosni Mubarak. He was applauded. But this just replaced the old, tired crocodile with a young and very hungry one.

It is difficult to guess what was going on in the military mind at the time. The generals sacrificed Mubarak, who was one of them, in order to protect themselves. They became the darling of the people, especially the young, secular, liberal people. "The army and the people are one!" – How nice. How naive. How utterly inane.

It is quite clear now that during the Morsi months, the generals were waiting for their opportunity. When Morsi made his fatal mistakes and announced that he was going to change the constitution – they pounced.

All military juntas like to pose, in the beginning, as the saviors of democracy.

Abd-al-Fatah al-Sisi does not have an exciting ideology, as did Gamal Abd-al-Nasser (pan-Arabism) when he carried out his bloodless coup in 1952. He has no vision like Anwar al-Sadat (peace), the dictator who inherited power. He was not the anointed heir of his predecessor, sworn to continue his vision, as was Hosni Mubarak. He is a military dictator, pure and simple (or rather, not so pure and not so simple).

ARE WE Israelis to blame? The Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, says so. It's all the making of Israel. We engineered the Egyptian coup.

Very flattering, But, I'm afraid, slightly exaggerated.

True, the Israeli establishment is afraid of an Islamic Arab world. It detests the Muslim Brotherhood, the mother of Hamas and other Islamic movements which are committed to fighting Israel. It enjoys a cosy relationship with the Egyptian military.

If the Egyptian generals had asked their Israeli colleagues and friends for advice on the coup, the Israelis would have promised them their enthusiastic support. But there is nothing much they could have done about it.

Except one thing. It is Israel that has assured the Egyptian military for decades its annual big US aid package. Using its control of the US Congress, Israel has prevented the termination of this grant through all these years. At this moment, the huge Israeli power-machine in the US is busy ensuring the continuation of the 1.3 billion or so of US aid to the generals. But this is not crucial, since the Arab Gulf oligarchies are ready to finance the generals to the hilt.

What is crucial for the generals is American political and military support. There cannot be the slightest doubt that before acting, the generals asked for American permission, and that this support was readily given.

The US president does not really direct American policy. He can make beautiful speeches, elevating democracy to divine status, but he cannot do much about it. Policy is made by a political-economic-military complex, for which he is just the figurehead.

This complex does not care a damn for "American Values." It serves American (and its own) interests. A military dictatorship in Egypt serves these interests – as it does the perceived interests of Israel.

DOES IT really serve them? Perhaps in the short run. But an enduring civil war - on the ground or under ground – will ruin Egypt's shaky economy and drive away crucial investors and tourists. Military dictatorships are notably incompetent administrations. In a few months or years this dictatorship will crumble – as have all other military dictatorships in the world.

For those who seek an independent Black politics that is faithful to the historical Black consensus for peace and social justice, the inclusion of President Barack Obama in the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington is a desecration. The ancestral sanctum is to be utterly defiled by the presence of the very personification of imperial savagery and a ballooning domestic police state.

Of course, the organizers of this monumental self-debasement - this obscene groveling at the feet of Power - see Obama's participation as the ultimate testimony to Black progress. Proximity to Power has always been their Dream. Dr. Martin Luther King serves as a mere prop in the ceremony, which seeks to draw a straight line from the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, through the 1963 mass march, to the First Black President's embrace of the 2013 commemoration - a kind of holy trinity.

For the Black Misleadership Class, the great social movement in which Dr. King played such a pivotal role was brought forth, not to confront Power, but to integrate it. President Obama is the perfect blending - the literal embodiment of Black Power, in the warped worldview of the 2013 organizers. Dr. King has no place in this abomination, except to mark the tolling of the bell on his dream to overcome the three evils inherent in imperial capitalism: racism, militarism and materialism.

It is a funereal occasion.

Not that the actors were so different in 1963. But, back then, the grasping Black classes had not yet been launched on the trajectory that would give them a stake in the imperial order. Their status was still aspirational. Years of tumult would unfold - and Dr. King's assassination - before the system would deign to offer serious silver to the Judases in his entourage and the larger movement. For those that spent much of the next 50 years jockeying for greater opportunities to join structures of power - the "burning house" that Dr. King feared he was leading his people into - there is no shame in hosting the nominal head of Empire at a great public ceremony. Rather, such an event is the pinnacle of success - especially for folks that imagine they have a special, complexional relationship with His Highness.

It has been so long since the dissolution of the Black Freedom Movement, the pretenders to Black leadership have forgotten how to speak the language of struggle. Non-violent "direct action," Dr. King's preferred tactic to "create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue," has degenerated to mean simply marching down a street on a sunny day.

The 1963 march was not an example of direct action - quite the opposite. The purpose was to gather as many people as possible for an orderly and "dignified" demonstration of the movement's mass following and broad support - and then get them out of town by sundown, as promised to the powers-that-be. The last thing the organizers wanted was that a quarter million marchers create a "crisis" in the heart of Washington - a scenario that Dr. King hoped to organize in the summer of 1968, but was interrupted by an assassin.

The 1963 march was so accommodating to the Kennedy's demand for orderliness, Malcolm X dubbed it the "Farce on Washington."

"It ceased to be a black march; it ceased to be militant; it ceased to be angry; it ceased to be impatient," said Malcolm. "In fact, it ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, an outing with a festive, circus-like atmosphere...."

It was also the biggest show of massed humanity in the history of the Nation's Capitol - which certainly made the intended impression. But, accommodation with Power is not what created the movement that brought the throngs to Washington for the one-day "outing," nor did strolling in the park carry that movement forward in the ensuing years of confrontation with power.

The 1963 March on Washington was sanitized by the organizers, themselves, whose goal was to impress the nation - including other Black people - with the size and the breadth of the forces the leaders could call on at that point in time. It did not seek confrontation on that day, although its immensity served as implicit warning that masses of people were deeply committed to social transformation, and might not always be so orderly.

In that sense, the event on the Mall was quite unrepresentative of the movement. It was, as Malcolm described from the sidelines, "a festive, circus-like atmosphere" - but it also occurred smack in the middle of years of mortal combat with the "system." When the march is taken out of the context of what happened before and after, all that remains is the "picnic" and the self-censored, deliberately non-confrontational speeches - most notably Dr. King's vague "dreaming." Which perfectly suits the needs of today's Black Misleadership Class, who have no intention of confronting Power - ever! On the contrary, they cling to the garments of Power, in the person of the First Black President, and wrap themselves in the flag of Empire.

Dr. King rejected U.S. empire, and broke with President Lyndon Johnson over the "inter-related" issues of foreign war and and domestic poverty. There is not a shadow of a doubt that King would denounce Obama in the strongest terms, were he alive, today. Yet, those who pose as his political and moral descendants hug the presidential scorpion to their bosoms.

Malcolm's critique of the 1963 March does not seem so dated if one substitutes the words "Obama" or "Democrats" for "white liberals":

"The white liberals [Democrats/Obama] control the Negro and the Negro vote by controlling the Negro civil rights leaders. As long as they [Democrats/Obama] control the Negro civil rights leaders, they can also control and contain the Negro's struggle, and they can control the Negro's so-called revolt."

Without whistleblowers, the mainline media outlets are more transfixed than ever with telling the official story. And at a time like this, the official story is all about spinning for war on Syria.

Every president who wants to launch another war can't abide whistleblowers. They might interfere with the careful omissions, distortions and outright lies of war propaganda, which requires that truth be held in a kind of preventative detention.

Every time a president has decided to go to war against yet another country, the momentum has been unstoppable. Today, the craven foreshadow the dead.

By mid-week, media adrenalin was at fever pitch as news reports cited high-level sources explaining when the U.S. missile attacks on Syria were likely to begin, how long they might last, what their goals would be. But what about other (potential) sources who have documents and other information that contradict the official story?

It's never easy for whistleblowers to take the risk of exposing secret realities. At times like these, it's especially difficult-and especially vital-for whistleblowers to take the chance.

When independent journalist I.F. Stone said "All governments lie and nothing they say should be believed," he was warning against the automatic acceptance of any government claim. That warning becomes most crucial when a launch of war is imminent. That's when, more than ever, we need whistleblowers who can leak information that refutes the official line.

There has been a pernicious method to the madness of the Obama administration's double-barreled assault on whistleblowers and journalism. Committed to a state of ongoing war, Obama has overseen more prosecutions of whistleblowers than all other presidents combined-while also subjecting journalists to ramped-up surveillance and threats, whether grabbing the call records of 20 telephone lines of the Associated Press or pushing to imprison New York Times reporter James Risen for not revealing a source.

There has been a pernicious method to the madness of the Obama administration's double-barreled assault on whistleblowers and journalism.

The vengeful treatment of Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, the all-out effort to grab Edward Snowden and less-publicized prosecutions such as the vendetta against NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake are all part of a government strategy that aims to shut down unauthorized pipelines of information to journalists-and therefore to the public. When secret information is blocked, what's left is the official story, pulling out all the stops for war.

From the false Tonkin Gulf narrative in 1964 that boosted the Vietnam War to the fabricated baby-incubators-in-Kuwait tale in 1990 that helped launch the Gulf War to the reports of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction early in this century, countless deaths and unfathomable suffering have resulted from the failure of potential whistleblowers to step forward in a timely and forthright way-and the failure of journalists to challenge falsehoods in high government places.

There are no "good old days" to point to, no eras when an abundance of whistleblowers and gutsy reporters thoroughly alerted the public and subdued the power of Washington's war-makers. But we're now living in a notably-and tragically-fearful era. Potential whistleblowers have more reason to be frightened than ever, and mainline journalists rarely seem willing to challenge addiction to war.

Every time a president has decided to go to war against yet another country, the momentum has been unstoppable. Today, the craven foreshadow the dead. The key problems, as usual, revolve around undue deference to authority-obedience in the interests of expediency-resulting in a huge loss of lives and a tremendous waste of resources that should be going to sustain human life instead of destroying it.

With war at the top of Washington's agenda, this is a time to make our voices heard. (To email your senators and representative, expressing opposition to an attack on Syria, click here.) A loud and sustained outcry against the war momentum is essential-and so is support for whistleblowers.