The mullahs must go!
By Carol Devine-Molin
web posted November 22, 2004
The Islamo-fascist regime of Iran is the next stop in this global war on terror. Why? Because if Iran acquires nuclear weaponry, Iran's ruling class of radical clerics -- the mullahs -- will undoubtedly target America and Israel.
Since 1979 -- when the Ayatollah Khomeini and his minions ousted the Shah -- Iranian leadership has forged alliances with a number of Islamic terrorist groups, most notably, the PLO and other Palestinian organizations. In the past few years, we've also heard that Iran has been aiding and harboring al-Qaida members. As scholar Michael Ledeen indicated in his book The War Against the Terror Masters, "Iran is the mother of modern Islamic terrorism" -- It's the premier terror state. Ledeen also underscored that, "Khomeini created one of the most dangerous international terrorist groups, Hezbollah, and Assad (Hafez al-Assad of Syria) supported it with many of the same favors." Hezbollah -- which is thoroughly enmeshed with the regimes of Iran and Syria -- is the model for terrorists as surrogates working hand-in-glove with terror sponsoring regimes. And, when enacting death and mayhem, there's nothing like the use of surrogates to help a terror state maintain plausible deniability.
In short, the web of terror seeks to destroy western civilization: America is the Big-Kahuna of the west, and Israel is the out-post of the west in the Islamic world. Vicious anti-Americanism has been endemic to this Iranian regime, with rhetoric such as "Death to America" and "America, the Great Satan" typically bandied about by hard-line fundamentalists. Although America has been dubbed the "Great Satan" by Iranian clerics, Israel is known as the "Little Satan." Moreover, the Iranian regime would like nothing better than to wipe Israel from the face of the earth and strike out against America in any way possible.
Now, let's address the situation at hand: Members of the Bush administration are very concerned regarding Iran's nuclear ambitions. As noted in the November 21, 2004 edition of the New York Times, "President Bush increased the administration's pressure on Iran on Saturday, saying there were indications that the country was speeding forward in its production of a key ingredient for nuclear weapons fuel, a move he said was ‘a very serious matter' that undercut Iran's denials that it was seeking to build weapons. On the first day here (Antiago, Chile) of the annual gathering of Pacific Rim leaders, his first summit meeting since winning re-election, Mr. Bush also tried to re-establish a unified front against the other nuclear challenge facing his second term: North Korea."
The mullahs are apparently determined to get hold of a nuclear weapon by 2005. Given the tense circumstances and lack of hard intelligence, it's natural for rumors to crop up. Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell briefly alluded to an unverified intelligence source that suggested Iran is getting ready to fit a nuclear weapon on a missile. According to John Loftus -- a former Justice Department prosecutor and current Fox News contributor -- the prevailing scuttlebutt is that North Korea recently sold one of its nukes to Iran. And others are claiming that there are numerous underground nuclear facilities in Iran, some located under residential communities. Now, this could be pure drivel, in whole or in part. Or it could be largely true. However, the US obviously needs to obtain accurate intelligence on the Iranian circumstances. Our lives depend upon it! And, this brings me to the Porter Goss shakeup at the CIA.
It's encouraging that the new CIA Director Porter Goss has quickly sought to reform/rebuild the dysfunctional and inept CIA, which is also rife with Clintonista liberals who have lashed out at President Bush with various leaks to the press, scathing reports on Iraq, and a book critical of the Bush administration by a senior CIA analyst entitled Imperial Hubris -- Heaven knows what else they've done behind the scenes. The dirty tricks of the Left-leaning crowd are downright abhorrent and, when confronted, they refuse to be held accountable. Democrats are ranting that President Bush would be better served by keeping "dissident voices" at the CIA. Understandably, the Democrats want to keep their backstabbing troublemakers in place. In response, Republicans maintain that the bottom line is this: The CIA has been doing a really lousy job for years. Human intelligence and covert activates have fallen by the wayside, leaving us vulnerable even in the aftermath of 9/11. And the CIA's claim of a "slam dunk" on WMDs in Iraq again demonstrates the agency's ineptitude. In short, the CIA is going to require an enormous amount of work in order to bring it up to snuff as a reliable intelligence agency. There's got to be a select group of new recruits - untainted by the CIA bureaucracy -- that can be trained correctly and apart from the CIA incompetents.
Regarding Iran, it's "gaming the system", ignoring the Europeans and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and buying time so that it can continue its efforts to build or acquire nuclear weaponry and delivery capacity. This Iranian regime refuses to relinquish its nuclear ambitions, and there's the rub. Ultimately, it will be up to the US and Israel to bomb Iran's underground nuclear facilities and aid the Iranian people in their quest to overthrow the fanatical mullahs. And that's the unvarnished truth. 
Carol Devine-Molin is a regular contributor to several online magazines.
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