Michel Chossudovsky: Wiping Countries Off the Map!

Who's failing the "Failed States". Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread, that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, Israel must be wiped off the map. Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made. The United States has attacked, directly or indirectly, some 44 countries throughout the world, since August 1945, a number of them many times. The avowed objective of these military interventions has been to effect regime change. The cloaks of human rights and of democracy were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts. This is a Pentagon memo that describes how we are going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off, Iran. I said, Is it classified? He said, Yes sir. I said, Well, don't show it to me. General Wesley Clark, Democracy Now, March 2, 2007. Washington is in the business of destroying a very long list of countries. Who is "Wiping Countries off the Map"? Iran or the United States? During a period which is euphemistically called the post war era, extending from 1945 to the present, the US has directly or indirectly, attacked more than 40 countries. While the tenets of US foreign policy are predicated on the "spread of democracy", US interventionism, through military means and covert operations, has resulted in the outright destabilization and partition of sovereign nations. Destroying countries is part of a US Imperial project, a process of global domination. Moreover, according to official sources, the US has a total of 737 military bases in foreign countries. The Washington based National Intelligence Council (NIC) in its Global Trends report, December 2012, predicts that 15 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, will become "failed states" by 2030, due to their potential for conflict and environmental ills". The list of countries in the 2012 NIC report includes Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mali, Kenya, Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Somalia, DR Congo, Malawi, Haiti, and Yemen. In its previous 2005 report, published at the outset of Bush's second term, the National Intelligence Council has predicted that Pakistan would become a failed state by 2015, "as it will be affected by civil war, complete "Talibanisation" and struggle for control of its nuclear weapons".