From This Can’t Be Happening
By Dave Lindorff

A CBS/Associated Press story yesterday reported that the man who runs the Pentagon’s anti-missile program, Lt. Gen. Henry Obering III, had warned incoming President-elect Barack Obama that any reversal of Bush/Cheney administration plans to install anti-ballistic missile missiles in Poland would “severely hurt” American interests.

It was a classic “stupid” story of the type that we now expect to get from our corporate media—basically a regurgitation of the statement of one self-interested official, backed up by a few supporting quotes from other government officials, and the usual “anonymous” official sources, and lacking any context or opposing viewpoints.

Let’s analyze this a little more. The Bush/Administration, since coming into office eight years ago, has been putting intense pressure on Russia by pressing to have NATO expanded right up to Russia’s borders—also to have NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan, to Russia’s south in central Asia. As one ratchet up in that pressure, the administration pushed to get anti-missile sites placed in some countries on Russia’s western border. One such proposed location was the Czech Republic, but that was rejected because of local opposition. Poland, however, agreed, after being pressed hard by the administration.

For US consumption, the move was presented as being aimed at Iran, which Bush and Cheney keep insisting is constructing nuclear bombs. No one could explain why anti-missile missiles placed in Poland, which sits in northern Europe, would have any utility in knocking down would be Iranian missiles aimed at Europe, or, for that matter, why Iran would want to fire nuclear missiles at Europe, which, in Britain and France, has a large and sophisticated nuclear stockpile capable of incinerating Iran. The real target of those missiles became clear when Georgia provoked Russia into sending its army into the breakaway state of Ossetia. Before that little military conflict, Poland had been resisting US pressure to agree to the missile sites, because of strong local opposition. After Russia moved its troops and tanks into Ossetia, and trounced Georgia’s military, Poland went ahead and approved the anti-missile site.

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