Target Iran: US able to strike in the spring

Despite denials, Pentagon plans for possible attack on nuclear sites are well advanced

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian


A second battle group has been ordered to the Gulf and extra missiles have already been sent out. Meanwhile oil is being stockpiled. Photograph: Reuters

US preparations for an air strike against Iran are at an advanced stage, in spite of repeated public denials by the Bush administration, according to informed sources in Washington.

The present military build-up in the Gulf would allow the US to mount an attack by the spring. But the sources said that if there was an attack, it was more likely next year, just before Mr Bush leaves office.

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney. The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision. The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion.

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Deployment

Mr Cannistraro, who worked for the CIA and the National Security Council, stressed that no decision had been made.

Last month Mr Bush ordered a second battle group led by the aircraft carrier USS John Stennis to the Gulf in support of the USS Eisenhower. The USS Stennis is due to arrive within the next 10 days. Extra US Patriot missiles have been sent to the region, as well as more minesweepers, in anticipation of Iranian retaliatory action.

In another sign that preparations are under way, Mr Bush has ordered oil reserves to be stockpiled.

The danger is that the build-up could spark an accidental war. Iranian officials said on Thursday that they had tested missiles capable of hitting warships in the Gulf.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, a former air force officer who has carried out war games with Iran as the target, supported the view that planning for an air strike was under way: "Gates said there is no planning for war. We know this is not true. He possibly meant there is no plan for an immediate strike. It was sloppy wording.

"All the moves being made over the last few weeks are consistent with what you would do if you were going to do an air strike. We have to throw away the notion the US could not do it because it is too tied up in Iraq. It is an air operation."

One of the main driving forces behind war, apart from the vice-president's office, is the AEI, headquarters of the neo-conservatives. A member of the AEI coined the slogan "axis of evil" that originally lumped Iran in with Iraq and North Korea. Its influence on the White House appeared to be in decline last year amid endless bad news from Iraq, for which it had been a cheerleader. But in the face of opposition from Congress, the Pentagon and state department, Mr Bush opted last month for an AEI plan to send more troops to Iraq. Will he support calls from within the AEI for a strike on Iran?

Josh Muravchik, a Middle East specialist at the AEI, is among its most vocal supporters of such a strike.

"I do not think anyone in the US is talking about invasion. We have been chastened by the experience of Iraq, even a hawk like myself." But an air strike was another matter. The danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon "is not just that it might use it out of the blue but as a shield to do all sorts of mischief. I do not believe there will be any way to stop this happening other than physical force."

Mr Bush is part of the American generation that refuses to forgive Iran for the 1979-81 hostage crisis. He leaves office in January 2009 and has said repeatedly that he does not want a legacy in which Iran has achieved superpower status in the region and come close to acquiring a nuclear weapon capability. The logic of this is that if diplomatic efforts fail to persuade Iran to stop uranium enrichment then the only alternative left is to turn to the military.

Mr Muravchik is intent on holding Mr Bush to his word: "The Bush administration have said they would not allow Iran nuclear weapons. That is either bullshit or they mean it as a clear code: we will do it if we have to. I would rather believe it is not hot air."

Other neo-cons elsewhere in Washington are opposed to an air strike but advocate a different form of military action, supporting Iranian armed groups, in particular the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), even though the state department has branded it a terrorist organisation.

Raymond Tanter, founder of the Iran Policy Committee, which includes former officials from the White House, state department and intelligence services, is a leading advocate of support for the MEK. If it comes to an air strike, he favours bunker-busting bombs. "I believe the only way to get at the deeply buried sites at Natanz and Arak is probably to use bunker-buster bombs, some of which are nuclear tipped. I do not believe the US would do that but it has sold them to Israel."

Opposition support

Another neo-conservative, Meyrav Wurmser, director of the centre for Middle East policy at the Hudson Institute, also favours supporting Iranian opposition groups. She is disappointed with the response of the Bush administration so far to Iran and said that if the aim of US policy after 9/11 was to make the Middle East safer for the US, it was not working because the administration had stopped at Iraq. "There is not enough political will for a strike. There seems to be various notions of what the policy should be."

In spite of the president's veto on negotiation with Tehran, the state department has been involved since 2003 in back-channel approaches and meetings involving Iranian officials and members of the Bush administration or individuals close to it. But when last year the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sent a letter as an overture, the state department dismissed it within hours of its arrival.

Support for negotiations comes from centrist and liberal thinktanks. Afshin Molavi, a fellow of the New America Foundation, said: "To argue diplomacy has not worked is false because it has not been tried. Post-90s and through to today, when Iran has been ready to dance, the US refused, and when the US has been ready to dance, Iran has refused. We are at a stage where Iran is ready to walk across the dance floor and the US is looking away."

He is worried about "a miscalculation that leads to an accidental war".

The catalyst could be Iraq. The Pentagon said yesterday that it had evidence - serial numbers of projectiles as well as explosives - of Iraqi militants' weapons that had come from Iran. In a further sign of the increased tension, Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, cancelled a visit to Munich for what would have been the first formal meeting with his western counterparts since last year.

If it does come to war, Mr Muravchik said Iran would retaliate, but that on balance it would be worth it to stop a country that he said had "Death to America" as its official slogan.

"We have to gird our loins and prepare to absorb the counter-shock," he said.

War of words

"If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly"
George Bush, in an interview with National Public Radio

"The Iranians clearly believe that we are tied down in Iraq, that they have the initiative, that they are in position to press us in many ways. They are doing nothing to be constructive in Iraq at this point"
Robert Gates

"I think it's been pretty well-known that Iran is fishing in troubled waters"
Dick Cheney

"It is absolutely parallel. They're using the same dance steps - demonise the bad guys, the pretext of diplomacy, keep out of negotiations, use proxies. It is Iraq redux"
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counter- terrorism specialist, in Vanity Fair, on echoes of the run-up to the war in Iraq

"US policymakers and analysts know that the Iranian nation would not let an invasion go without a response. Enemies of the Islamic system fabricated various rumours about death and health to demoralise the Iranian nation, but they did not know that they are not dealing with only one person in Iran. They are facing a nation"
Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

CIA doubts didn't deter Feith's team

Intelligence agencies disagreed with many of its prewar findings.

By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writers
February 10, 2007

WASHINGTON — As the Bush administration began assembling its case for war, analysts across the U.S. intelligence community were disturbed by the report of a secretive Pentagon team that concluded Iraq had significant ties to Al Qaeda.

Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.

The dueling groups sat down at CIA headquarters in late August 2002 to try to work out their differences. But while the CIA agreed to minor modifications in some of its own reports, Gimble said, the Pentagon unit was utterly unbowed.

"They didn't make the changes that were talked about in that August 20th meeting," Gimble said, and instead went on to present their deeply flawed findings to senior officials at the White House.

The work of that special Pentagon unit — which was run by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith — is one of the lingering symbols of the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq.

The Bush administration's primary justification for invading Iraq was always its assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. But Iraq's supposed ties to Al Qaeda — and therefore its connection to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — were an important secondary argument, and one that resonated with many Americans in the lead-up to the war with Iraq.

The CIA and many other intelligence agencies were wrong in their assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. But the agency was always deeply skeptical about the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

Most of the evidence that Feith's Office of Special Plans cited in making its case for significant collaboration between Baghdad and Al Qaeda has crumbled under postwar scrutiny. The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Saddam Hussein was so wary of the terrorist network that he barred anyone in his government from dealing with Al Qaeda.

Although the Pentagon Inspector General's report released Friday did not address the accuracy of such assessments, it documented the unusual efforts by Defense Department policymakers to bypass regular intelligence channels and influence officials at the highest level of government.

Feith's work was of critical importance to Vice President Dick Cheney, who once referred to the Pentagon team's conclusions as the "best source" for understanding the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

The activities of Feith's group weren't illegal, Gimble concluded. But they were, "in our opinion, inappropriate, given that the intelligence assessments were [presented as] intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community."

The Pentagon team touted a series of claims that have not survived postwar review. Among them was the allegation that Mohammed Atta, the presumed ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague before the attacks.

A critical question raised by the inspector general's report is whether Feith and his office were just critiquing CIA analysis, or were creating their own intelligence assessment, a role that is supposed to be left to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) noted Friday that Cheney has referred to Feith's work as an "assessment," suggesting it was a formal intelligence document. But Feith maintained in interviews he was not creating an intelligence "product," but was just checking the work of the CIA.

Laurence H. Silberman, a semiretired U.S. appeals court judge and co-chairman of a presidential commission on Iraq's weapons, said it is appropriate to question intelligence.

"Policymakers, whether they are in Defense, State, the White House or Congress, are absolutely entitled to question the intelligence community, look over the material and come up with their own views," he said.

Feith's work had the blessing of his boss, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The operation was set up at the behest of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz with approval from Rumsfeld, Gimble noted. By most accounts, those three officials had distrust, if not disdain, for the work of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

But Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of Defense and former CIA director, said that groups outside the CIA and other chartered intelligence agencies should not be involved in freelance analysis.

"Based on my whole career, I believe all intelligence activities need to be carried on by the established institutions, where there is appropriate oversight," he told reporters traveling with him in Europe for meetings on security.

Gimble provided new details on the chain of events leading from the creation of the Feith team, through a series of briefings it made for senior officials and culminating in a presentation before deputies in the National Security Council at the White House.

The initial instruction to search for links between Iraq and Al Qaeda came from Wolfowitz in January 2002, Gimble said.

By that July, Feith had assembled a group of analysts detailed from other agencies to draft a document outlining evidence that the officials thought other agencies had ignored.

The team presented its findings to Rumsfeld on Aug. 8. Rumsfeld found it so compelling that he urged Feith to arrange a briefing for then-CIA Director George J. Tenet at the CIA. In the meantime, the team's paper began to circulate among analysts at other agencies who took issue with more than half of its contents.

"There were like 26 points," in the Feith team's paper, Gimble said. "And essentially [experts at other agencies] disagreed with more than 50% of it, and either agreed or partially agreed with the remainder."

When the team briefed Tenet and other senior CIA officials on Aug. 15, the audience was polite but unimpressed. Tenet described the meeting as "useful," Gimble said, but "in our interviews with him he later said that he only said that it was 'useful' because he didn't agree with it and he was just trying to, you know, nicely end the meeting."

That encounter led to the "roundtable" meeting at the agency five days later where CIA experts urged the Pentagon unit to at least include footnotes acknowledging the long list of disagreements.

Nevertheless, the Pentagon team pressed on.

P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, said that the intelligence peddled by Feith tainted the public dialogue.

"They weren't creating intelligence, but they were assembling the pieces to create a rationale for war," Crowley said. "Their production was discredited, but they had the desired effect. The little pieces ended up infecting the process."

Israel's Bomb, Iran's Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations

PART ONE

Four years ago today, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell played a major role in persuading a gullible, stupefied and craven American news media and public - but not a cynical world - to support the Bush administration's illegal, immoral invasion of Iraq. He did so by presenting a panoply of lies, false statements and exaggerations about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda terrorists.

Four years later, as both United States and Israel prepare their populations for an illegal, immoral preventive war against Iran -- allegedly to disrupt, if not destroy, the secret nuclear weapons program that both insist (without evidence) is well under way there -- Americans might do well to avoid being duped again. Thus, they might contemplate not only the allegations against Iran, but also the sins of the United States and Israel when it comes to developing, using and brandishing their own nuclear weapons.

The sins of the United States are quite well known. Acting on the advice of Albert Einstein, who feared that Nazi Germany might obtain nuclear weapons, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt authorized a crash program, the Manhattan Project, to develop the bombs that would be dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In Five Days in August, Michael D. Gordin asserts: "Military men in particular considered the decision to drop the bomb as a given from the moment development shaded into a deliverable weapon" [p. 11] Moreover, "By the time the Americans began to consider the potential utility of the atomic bomb, they had already for years experienced increasing brutality, bloodshed, mayhem, and dehumanization, and experienced them routinely." [pp. 7-8] Thus, the United States dropped the bombs on Japan as if they were just tactical weapons, but as part of a "'shock strategy' to compel the Japanese government to accept surrender." [p. 13].

Truman, however, soon believed otherwise. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa writes in his meticulously researched book, Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan, "Truman had read the Magic Diplomatic Summary reporting that the atomic bomb on Hiroshima had killed 100,000 people." "He didn't like the idea of killing� 'all these kids,'" Admiral William Leahy wrote in his diary. [p 202]

Thus, on August 10, 1945 - a day after Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki and the very day that the Japanese government sent a letter to the Swiss legation to the United States government protesting the use of atomic bombs as a crime against humanity [ibid. p. 299] - "Truman announced that he had given an order to stop further atomic bombing without his authorization." [Ibid, p. 202]

In addition to Truman, the bomb quickly awed war-weary Americans, thanks, in part, to the propaganda about the technological marvel and ultimate weapon that "journalist" William Leonard Laurence aimed at both Japanese and American audiences. Not only did Americans naturally, but mistakenly, assume that the bomb was responsible for Japan's abrupt surrender, they also experienced "visions and fears of total annihilation [which] emerged almost immediately upon Japanese surrender." [Gordin, p. 131]

Actually, it was the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, not the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki alone, that prompted Japan's surrender. According to Professor Hasegawa: "Without the Soviet entry into the war, the Japanese would have continued to fight until numerous atomic bombs, a successful allied invasion of the home islands, or continued aerial bombardments, combined with a naval blockade, rendered them incapable of doing so." [Hasegawa, p.298]

According to Hasegawa, "Americans still cling to the myth that the atomic bombs�provided the knockout punch to the Japanese government�The myth serves to justify Truman's decision and ease the collective American conscience." [Ibid, pp. 298-99] "Until his death, Truman continually came back to this question and repeatedly justified his decision, inventing a fiction that he himself later came to believe." [Ibid, p. 299]. Hasegawa might have added that America's collective conscious also was eased by a widespread faith that such an indisputable demonstration of America's technological prowess once again indicated that God had assigned the U.S. an "exceptional" role in His plans for mankind.

Thus, Americans deluded themselves twice. First, about their own guilt. Second, about the efficacy of the bomb. Which explains why, "a year after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, U.S. strategy proposed dropping fifty atomic bombs on twenty separate Soviet cities." [Gordin, p. 130] Some (sick) Americans even advocated a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, lest it break America's nuclear monopoly.

Additionally, as Joseph Gerson has observed: "Unlike any other nation, on more than thirty occasions since the A-bombing of Nagasaki every U.S. president has prepared or threatened to initiate first strike nuclear attacks during crises�Since 1950, the U.S. has threatened North Korea with nuclear attack at least eight times. Nearly a dozen such threats have been made during Middle East wars and crises. Since the end of the Cold War, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Libya have been threatened with U.S. nuclear attacks. And, the 2002�Bush-Cheney Nuclear Posture Review named seven nations as primary U.S. nuclear targets: Iraq, Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, Libya and Syria." [Gerson, "Preventing Nuclear War in Korea," Znet Oct. 18, 2006]

Making matters worse, on March 15, 2005, the Department of Defense released a policy paper, "'Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,'�which made permissible the employment of nuclear weapons by the United States preemptively, in non-nuclear environments, either to defeat overwhelming conventional opposition, or simply to assure U.S. victory." [Ritter, Target Iran, p. 179]

How such a U.S. willingness to use the bomb would discourage other countries from pursuing their own nuclear deterrent is difficult to imagine -- especially after the Bush administration's whimsical invasion of "brittle," nuke-less Iraq.

Moreover, the sole country to ever to use the bomb also continues to brandish it and upgrade it in bad faith and in violation of Article VI of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT). Article VI stipulates: "Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."

Yet, now, the hypocritical and reckless Bush administration is accusing Iran of deceit and lies regarding its nuclear program and has gone so far as to demand that Iran - a signatory to the NPT -- even forego rights legally available to it under the NPT. The Bush administration is being prodded by Israel, another hypocritical and rogue nuclear power that refuses to be bound by the NPT

According to Scott Ritter, writing in his recent book, Target Iran, "the conflict currently underway between the United States and Iran is, first and foremost, a conflict born in Israel. It is based upon an Israeli contention that Iran poses a threat to Israel, and defined by Israeli assertions that Iran possesses a nuclear weapons program. None of this has been shown to be true, and indeed much of the allegations made by Israel against Iran have been clearly demonstrated as being false." [p. 208]

Yet, given Israel's own dishonorable record of deceit and lies attending the building of its own bomb, everyone should readily understand why Israel's rulers today remain suspicious about Iran's nuclear program. After all, how could any Israeli possibly believe that Iran's leaders today are less dishonorable than their own leaders were?

It's that very pattern of deceit and lies behind Israel's bomb, which will be examined in Part Two of this article.

Israel's Bomb, Iran's Pursuit of the Bomb and U.S. War Preparations (Part Two)

Walter C. Uhler

One person possessing the courage to admit guilt for his role in producing the bomb was Albert Einstein. Some five months before his death in late 1954, Einstein declared: "I made one great mistake in my life, when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made, but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them." [Karpin, pp.
358-59]

Another person, David Ben-Gurion, reached just the opposite conclusion about the bomb. Notwithstanding the role that Zionist settlers played in stirring up Arab hatred in Palestine, in the wake of the Arab attacks on Jews in Jerusalem in August 1929 and the "Arab Revolt" of 1936, Ben-Gurion told friends in Jerusalem, "The danger we face is not rioting, but extermination. The attackers will not only be the Arabs of Palestine, but also the Iraqis and Saudi Arabians, and they have warplanes and artillery. We have to prepare seriously to constitute a substantial force in this country, capable of standing up to a massive offensive." [Karpin, p, 20]

But, if the events of 1929 and 1936 had Ben-Gurion thinking about extermination by Arabs, one should try to imagine the trauma he experienced upon visiting Germany's Dachau concentration camp and the extermination camp at Bergen Belsen in October 1945. According to Israeli journalist, Michael Karpin, writing in his book The Bomb in the Basement: How Israel Went Nuclear and What that Means for the World, it was precisely in October 1945 -- just two months after the United States dropped its hideous atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but almost three years before Israel became a state -- that Israel's future Prime Minister and Defense Minister decided that Israel must have the bomb.

As Karpin also makes clear, it was largely under Ben-Gurion's leadership that Israel engaged in a campaign of lies and deceit -- much like Iran over the past two decades -- in order to obtain "the nuclear option." According to Karpin, not only did Prime Minister/Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion distinguish between ethics and national security, [p. 234] "Israeli public opinion had always drawn a clear distinction between morality and ethics on the one hand and the country's security on the other." [p. 291] (And, thus, how could Israel's leaders today possibly believe that Iran's current leaders are behaving less dishonorably than Ben-Gurion did, when it comes to getting the bomb?)

It began when Israel traded its intelligence about Egypt's role in the terrorism gripping French-occupied Algeria for the secret sale of French jet fighters and armored cars -- in violation of a Middle East arms embargo. Israel then leveraged its tie to France to pull off an even bigger secret deal. It would receive a nuclear reactor from France that was capable of producing plutonium for Ben-Gurion's bomb. In return, Israel would attack Egypt and, thus, provide France and Great Britain with a pretext for intervening to reestablish the peace and, coincidentally, forcibly reopen the Suez Canal -- their real objective.

And although both the United States and Soviet Union subsequently intervened to foil the French/British scheme, Israel lived up to its side of the dishonorable bargain -- by launching an assault on Egypt on October 29, 1956. And, for that, France honored its promise to help build the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev. The first French technicians arrived in late 1957, construction was completed in 1962, and Israel produced its first two bombs in mid-1967.

According to Karpin, "For years experts have been busy estimating or guessing the actual capacity, and a consensus of a sort has emerged that the reactor was originally built with a 40-megawatt capacity and was upgraded in the 1970s. This meant it could produce 15-20 kilograms of plutonium and four to five bombs a year." [p. 109] Information subsequently supplied by Mordechai Vanunu indicates that "Israel's annual plutonium output is some 40 kilos, and that it manufactures ten bombs a year." [Ibid] Today, Israel is thought to possess as many as 200 atomic warheads.

Judging by Michael Karpin's book, Israel paid no price for its lies and deceit surrounding its nuclear program, because: (1) the U.S. has always tilted toward Israel (or as Harry Truman observed: "I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs in my constituents." (2) Israel was able to deceive the U.S. until Dimona became a fait accompli, (3) American presidents, especially Lyndon Johnson, turned a blind eye to the emerging evidence that Israel was pursuing the bomb until (4) President Nixon and Henry Kissinger finally acknowledged it, but also embraced it as being in America's national interest.

As Karpin acknowledges, although it was U.S. policy to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Israel "was a special case. The influence of the Jewish vote and the pro-Israel lobby in the United States was growing, and at least three presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - set their policy toward Israel's nuclear program with one eye on the Jewish electorate." [p. 181]

Special case, indeed! Consider, for example, Abe Feinberg's role in financing Israel's nuclear program during late-1958 to late-1960. Feinberg was President Truman's "close friend," [p. 135] "who had been bequeathed to Kennedy by Eisenhower, who had in turn inherited him from Truman." [p. 185] He also was "Ben-Gurion's representative in charge of obtaining donations from the wealthiest Jews in the world" [p. 136] During late-1958 to late-1960, Feinberg led a secret and successful fund raising campaign to finance Israel's nuclear program.

Thanks to Feinberg's "Dimona campaign" [p. 136], which was bolstered by the contributions of the Sonneborn Institute ("the group formed by the eighteen richest Jews in North America"), "some twenty-five millionaires contributed a total of about $40 million dollars" to finance Israel's nuclear program. Today that $40 million would equal $250 million. [Ibid]

Feinberg's secret fund raising campaign commenced some six months before American intelligence channels first learned of "the building site in the Negev." [p. 154] And it continued, even after an American reconnaissance satellite photographed Dimona in September 1960. [p. 155] President Eisenhower was especially concerned about the source of the funding: "We do not know where they obtained the funds, but have a proper interest in this because of the aid we are giving them." [p. 159]

The fund raising campaign succeeded, notwithstanding the fact that it was official U. S. policy to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. And, it succeeded, notwithstanding the fact that the U.S. already had supplied Israel with a low-power nuclear reactor, one that became operational in 1960. That reactor, however, could not produce the plutonium necessary for bombs.

Thus, it's difficult to avoid the conclusion that the contributors to the Dimona campaign knew precisely what they were supporting. That being the case, just imagine the national outcry - highlighting America's pro-Israel bias -- were it to be revealed that U.S. citizens of Iranian descent had been making secret contributions to finance Iran's nuclear program!

In December 1960, after the American news media got wind of Dimona and suggested that that Israel might be "developing a nuclear option," [pp. 156-57] Ben-Gurion spoke to the Knesset and lied about the allegations. He lied when he asserted: "This reactor...is meant to be used only for peaceful purposes, and is being built under the direction of Israeli experts." [p. 161]

Karpin claims that the departing Eisenhower administration "had no interest in revealing its suspicion that Israel was building a bomb," [p. 158] and that the incoming Kennedy administration wasn't much better. Kennedy accepted the comforting words of two American scientists, who had been duped by the Israelis when they visited Dimona ten days before the president met with Ben-Gurion on May 30, 1961. Thus, Kennedy not only swallowed Ben-Gurion's false assertion that the main purpose of the reactor was to produce cheap energy [p. 193] - Iran's leaders make similar claims today -- but he also ignored hints from Ben-Gurion that Israel reserved the option to build a bomb. Finally, Kennedy failed to ask Ben-Gurion "why Israel needed a plutonium extraction plant." [p. 194]

After the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy became much more serious about nuclear nonproliferation. When he met with Golda Meir in December 1962 in Palm Beach, Florida, Kennedy informed her that the United States "has a special relationship with Israel in the Middle East, really comparable only to that which it has with Britain over a wide range of world affairs." [p. 218] He added: "I think it is quite clear that in the case of an invasion the United States would come to the support of Israel." [Ibid]

But when Kennedy issued an "ultimatum" [p. 232] about opening Dimona to inspections, the Israelis stalled until after his assassination. Moreover, when the first inspection finally took place, on January 18, 1964, the Americans were defrauded again.

Kennedy's failure to halt Israel's nuclear program occurred at a time, especially during late 1962 and early 1963, when Israel's Mossad was conducting a campaign of terror (including letter bombs) and intimidation against German scientists who, allegedly, were helping Egypt to build it s own bomb. The intelligence behind the terror campaign proved to be "one big cock-and-bull story," [p. 210] but the injuries and diplomatic fallout proved to be all too real. (This nasty business seems to continue. According to The Sunday Times (UK) of February 4, 2007, an Iranian nuclear scientist was assassinated by Mossad in mid-January 2007)

Yet, as bad as Kennedy's myopia about Israel's bomb was, Lyndon Johnson's was even worse. It was the product of life-long concern for the Jews and Israel. First, an aunt, who preached the importance of helping the Jews, influenced Johnson's childhood. Second, in 1938 Johnson helped to organize a network that smuggled Jews into Texas and, third, in 1945 he was visibly shaken by a visit to Dachau. When he became president, he was the first to agree to sell Israel offensive weapons.

When he met with Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in January 1968, Johnson knew that the CIA believed "that Israel already achieved nuclear capability." [p. 296] Nevertheless, although he informed Eshkol that the U.S. was "opposed to the presence of nuclear weapons and strategic missiles in the Middle East," [Ibid] he did not challenge Eshkol's assertion that Israel would not be the first nation to introduce them.

Not only did Eshkol lie, by producing two bombs in mid-1967, Israel already had violated the terms of a March 1965 arms agreement with the U. S., in which Israel stipulated: "The Government of Israel has reaffirmed that Israel will not be the first to introduce weapons into the Arab-Israel area." [p. 257]

Yet, Johnson responded to such lies by Eshkol and Foreign Minister Abba Eban by overruling his own officials - Dean Rusk and Paul Warnke - who insisted that Israel submit to regular inspections and sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, before being permitted to purchase technologically sophisticated F-4 Phantoms.

According to Karpin, pressure exerted by Abe Feinberg and Arthur Goldberg -- at the request of Israel's U.S Ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin! -- was decisive. "The assault of the Jewish lobby on the White House and the heads of the Democratic Party had apparently worked." [p. 309] "In his memoirs, Rabin describes how he agonized over the propriety of a foreign ambassador making use of a lobby within the American governmental system." [p. 308]

The lies and deceit directed at the United States finally ended, when the new Prime Minister, Golda Meir, decided to "tell the truth to the American leaders,"[p. 315] in 1969. Fortunately, she encountered a Nixon administration that, under Henry Kissinger's tutelage, took a permissive position on nuclear proliferation by America's friends. And, thus, yet more American hypocrisy when it comes to nuclear nonproliferation!

Thus, "the United States accepted the fact that Israel possessed nuclear capability, ceased to demand that Israel sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and stopped sending its experts to inspect Dimona. Israel committed itself to three nos: no publication, no testing, and no provoking the Arabs with its nuclear option." [p. 318] And, thus, Israel maintains such "ambiguity" to this day.

Yet, notwithstanding Israel's policy of ambiguity, it's well known that, on October 9, 1973, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan recommended that Israel use nuclear weapons in order to avoid losing the Yom Kippur war. [Avner Cohen, "The Last Nuclear Moment," New York Times, Oct. 6. 2003] And according to Scott Ritter, Israel put its "nuclear-tipped Jericho missile force...on full alert" [Ritter, p. 8] during the 1991 Gulf War.

Worse still (if the January 7, 2007, report in The Sunday Times is accurate), "Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons." Not exactly what one could call ambiguity - or responsible custodianship of nuclear weapons. (Israel subsequently denied the report.)

Meanwhile, Israeli intelligence has remained vigilant, lest some other Middle Eastern state emulates Israel and sneaks a bomb into its basement. Thus the Mossad's letter bombs against innocent German scientists in 1962-63, Israel's preventive strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, and the alleged Mossad murder of an Iranian scientist just recently.

Indeed, an Iran in possession of nuclear weapons could pose an existential threat to Israel, especially if the individuals who wield military power, such as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, literally seek Israel's destruction. As Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael B. Oren recently concluded: An Iran possessing the bomb "would be able to destroy the Zionist dream without pressing the button." [Yossi Klein Halevi & Michael B. Oren, "Israel's Worst Nightmare: Contra Iran," The New Republic Feb. 5, 2007] Under the threat of a nuclear attack, people will leave, especially the elite who have opportunities abroad. Foreign investors will flee as well. Consequently, "the promise of Zionism to create a Jewish refuge will have failed, and, instead, Jews will see the diaspora as a more trustworthy option for both personal and collective survival." [Ibid]

Thus, their conclusion: "A Jewish state that allows itself to be threatened with nuclear weapons - by a country that denies the genocide against Europe's six million Jews while threatening Israel's six million Jews -will forfeit its right to speak in the name of Jewish history." [Ibid] Yet, precisely because the authors, like many Israelis, discount deterrence and rule out negotiations, one has even more reason to suspect Israel of contemplating nuclear madness.

Yet, Iran denies pursuing nuclear weapons. Indeed, in September 2004, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a fatwa forbidding the "production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons." [Ritter, p. 170] Whose religious edicts count in Iran, if not his?

Moreover, as Israel, America's Israel lobby and its bootlicking neocons prod the Bush administration to wage war against Iran, by attacking its nuclear facilities, it's worth recalling that the 1981 attack on Osirak backfired. For, as Joseph Cirincione has written recently, "After the Israeli strike on the Osirak reactor in 1981, Saddam Hussein turned the program from one involving 500 workers into a more ambitious, secret 7,000-person drive that came closer to delivering a bomb by 1991 than the open program would have" {Joseph Cirincione, "The Clock's Ticking: Stopping Iran Before It's Too Late," Arms Control Today, November 2006]

An attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would certainly provoke Iran to seek nuclear weapons with a vengeance. And an attack using nuclear weapons would outrage the world.

Thus, although there are plenty of reasons to suspect that Iran's leaders, like Israel's before them, are lying about their nuclear program - a matter to be examined in Part Three of this article - there also are plenty of reasons to believe that an Osirak-like strike would be even more counterproductive this time around. As a 2005 study by two scholars at the National Defense University concluded: "The costs of rolling back Iran's nuclear program 'may be higher than the costs of deterring and containing nuclear Iran.'"[Elaine Sciolino, "Chirac's Iran Gaffe Reveals A Strategy: Containment," New York Times, Feb. 3, 2007] Consequently, a different approach is required.
Send to a friend
Post a Comment
Print Post
Read all posts by Walter C. Uhler

The Pentagon's not-so-little secret

As the president and Republicans continue to hype the surge -- and stifle debate about it -- Bush's own war planners are preparing for failure in Iraq.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Feb. 08, 2007 | Deep within the bowels of the Pentagon, policy planners are conducting secret meetings to discuss what to do in the worst-case scenario in Iraq about a year from today if and when President Bush's escalation of more than 20,000 troops fails, a participant in those discussions told me. None of those who are taking part in these exercises, shielded from the public view and the immediate scrutiny of the White House, believes that the so-called surge will succeed. On the contrary, everyone thinks it will not only fail to achieve its aims but also accelerate instability by providing a glaring example of U.S. incapacity and incompetence.

The profoundly pessimistic thinking that permeates the senior military and the intelligence community, however, is forbidden in the sanitized atmosphere of mind-cure boosterism that surrounds Bush. "He's tried this two times -- it's failed twice," Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said on Jan. 24 about the "surge" tactic. "I asked him at the White House, 'Mr. President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.'" She repeated his words: "'I told them that they had to.' That was the end of it. That's the way it is."

On Feb. 2, the National Intelligence Council, representing all intelligence agencies, issued a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, as harsh an antidote to wishful thinking as could be imagined. "The Intelligence Community judges that the term 'civil war' does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qaida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements."

The report described an Iraqi government, army and police force that cannot meet these challenges in any foreseeable time frame and a reversal of "the negative trends driving Iraq's current trajectory" occurring only through a dream sequence in which all the warring sects and factions, in some unexplained way, suddenly make peace with one another. Nor does the NIE suggest that this imaginary scenario might ever come to pass. Instead, it proceeds to describe the potential for "an abrupt increase in communal and insurgent violence and a shift in Iraq's trajectory from gradual decline to rapid deterioration with grave humanitarian, political, and security consequences."

Bush justified his invasion on the basis of false intelligence in the now notorious NIE of October 2002 that claimed Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Now, as the latest NIE forecasts nightmares, he is escalating the war. But almost everything has changed in the nearly four years since the invasion.

A newly elected Congress has been galvanized to debate a bipartisan resolution disapproving of Bush's escalation. Yet in the Senate, where 60 votes are necessary to establish cloture on a filibuster, the Republican minority has blocked a vote. Though many Republicans are keenly aware that continued support for Bush's policy amounts to political suicide in 2008, all but two of them have joined a phalanx to shut down the vote. By mustering behind him, they tie their fate to his policy. Bush, however, will be gone, while they remain exposed to the political elements.

Even Sen. John Warner of Virginia, the Republican cosponsor of the resolution against the escalation along with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., cast his lot with the Republican martyr brigade, voting to suppress his own measure. In 2002, the Republican right mounted a primary campaign against Warner in retribution for his deviation from their ideological line, but failed feebly. Warner cannot fear a repetition of the right's vengeance. Can he be undermining himself out of deference to the authority of a commander in chief whose course he believes is reckless?

The Republican prevention of a vote on the Warner-Levin resolution reflects an effort to close debate on the war itself. It amounts in effect to a gag rule on Bush's Iraq policy. During the Vietnam War, under President Johnson, neither party attempted to shut down debate. After 1969, President Nixon's Vietnam policy consisted of misdirection, deception, covert action and fait accompli, such as the counterproductive and ultimately catastrophic invasion of Cambodia. The Bush administration's methods can be traced to the Nixon administration, with Dick Cheney as the connecting thread.

The reception of the latest NIE, even more than the NIE itself, indicates again Bush's and Republicans' denial of objective analysis from the professional intelligence community. The October 2002 NIE was produced under intense pressure from the White House, especially Vice President Cheney, to validate its preconceived views. "The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made," Paul Pillar, the national intelligence officer for the Middle East who oversaw the assembling of that NIE, wrote a year ago. In the shadow of this travesty, the new NIE was written with great care; its frightening descriptions, therefore, should be considered to be deliberately guarded and reserved in tone.

Just as Bush and the Republicans rejected the bipartisan wise men of the Baker-Hamilton Commission, they have now rejected the objective assessment of the professionals. By thwarting the bipartisan Warner-Levin resolution, they have declared that they will operate on their own fanciful criteria, even against their own political interests.

As the Senate curdles in frustration over Republican tactics, the trial of Scooter Libby continues to clarify the degree to which the administration covered up its disinformation campaign that led the country into war with another disinformation campaign to cover up the role of the vice president as the prime mover of the smear campaign against former ambassador Joseph Wilson for committing the unforgivable act of revealing the truth. For the Senate Republicans, Scooter Libby is not an object lesson. The lesson they take away, if any, is not the necessity of open government but once again the need to burn the tapes.

Libby's effort to prevent his grand jury tapes from being entered into evidence in his trial resembled nothing so much as Nixon trying to suppress his tapes. Both in the end revealed their respective coverups. Cheney learned from Nixon to burn the tapes at least figuratively; now, his chief of staff, Cheney's Cheney, has tried to protect Cheney by literally and futilely suppressing the tapes. Cheney finds himself back at the beginning. For him, life has come full circle. From the entire history of deception, from the Nixon to the Libby tapes, the Republicans have learned nothing.

The new NIE offers more than "key judgments" on "The Prospects for Iraq's Stability." It is also a template for the short-term future of American politics. The ruthlessly cruel events projected for Iraq will blow back to the United States. The more Bush fights there, the more the embattled Republicans must fight here.

The Senate Republicans' vote to suppress the resolution on the war was the moment when they irrevocably aligned themselves completely with a president who rejects objective analysis. Unable to shield him or themselves from the inevitable consequences, they have made a conscious decision to place the president's delusions above the welfare not only of the Republican Party but also of the troops sent into the deadly labyrinth of Baghdad. Quietly and calmly, as the Republicans hype the "surge," the war planners prepare for the worst.

-- By Sidney Blumenthal

British film crew threatened by drunken settler in Hebron

Would you pledge your virginity to your father?

It’s like a wedding but with a twist: Young women exchange rings, take vows and enjoy a first dance…with their dads. “Purity balls” are the next big thing in the save-it-till-marriage movement. Smart or scary? Tell us what you think here.

By Jennifer Baumgardner

In a chandelier-lit ballroom overlooking the Rocky Mountains one recent evening, some hundred couples feast on herb-crusted chicken and julienned vegetables. The men look dapper in tuxedos; their dates are resplendent in floor-length gowns, long white gloves and tiaras framing twirly, ornate updos. Seated at a table with four couples, I watch as the gray-haired man next to me reaches into his breast pocket, pulls out a small satin box and flips it open to check out a gold ring he’s about to place on the finger of the woman sitting to his right. Her eyes well up with tears as she is overcome by emotion.

The man’s date? His 25-year-old daughter. Welcome to Colorado Springs’ Seventh Annual Father-Daughter Purity Ball, held at the five-star Broadmoor Hotel. The event’s purpose is, in part, to celebrate dad-daughter bonding, but the main agenda is for fathers to vow to protect the girls’ chastity until they marry and for the daughters to promise to stay pure. Pastor Randy Wilson, host of the event and cofounder of the ball, strides to the front of the room, takes the microphone and asks the men, “Are you ready to war for your daughters’ purity?”

Wilson’s voice is jovial, yet his message is serious—and spreading like wildfire. Dozens of these lavish events are held every year, mainly in the South and Midwest, from Tucson to Peoria and New Orleans, sponsored by churches, nonprofit groups and crisis pregnancy centers. The balls are all part of the evangelical Christian movement, and they embody one of its key doctrines: abstinence until marriage. Thousands of girls have taken purity vows at these events over the past nine years. While the abstinence movement itself is fairly mainstream—about 10 percent of teen boys and 16 percent of girls in the United States have signed virginity pledges at churches, rallies or programs sponsored by groups such as True Love Waits—purity balls represent its more extreme edge. The young women who sign covenants at these parties tend to be devout, homeschooled and sheltered from popular culture.

Randy Wilson’s 19-year-old, Khrystian, is typical: She works at her church, spends most weekends at home with her family and has never danced with a male other than her father or brother. Emily Smith, an 18-year-old I meet, says that even kissing is out for her. “I made a promise to myself when I was younger,” she says, “to save my first kiss for my wedding day.” A tenet of the abstinence movement is that having lovers before marriage often leads to divorce. In the Wilsons’ community, young women hope to meet suitors at church, at college or through family connections.

The majority of the girls here are, as purity ball guidelines suggest, “just old enough…[to] have begun menstruating….” But a couple dozen fathers have also brought girls under 10. “This evening is more about spending time with her than her purity at this point,” says one seven-year-old’s dad, a trifle sheepishly. The event is seemingly innocent—not once do I hear “sex” or “virgin” cross anyone’s lips. Still, every one of the girls here, even the four-year-old, will sign that purity covenant.

Encouraging girls to avoid sleeping around is, without a doubt, a good thing. The same goes for dad-daughter bonding; research shows that girls who have solid relationships with their fathers are more likely to grow up to be confident, self-respecting, successful women and to make wise choices along the way. Question is, is putting girls’ purity on a pedestal the way to achieve these all-important goals?

Fathers who are protective of their daughters’ virginity are nothing new. “Keep your flower safe!” a good friend’s dad used to tell her when we were in college, and we’d laugh—both because it was too late for her virginity and because there was something distasteful to us about his trying to control her sex life. Recently, though, protecting girls’ virginity has become a national, not just familial, concern. In 1996, after lobbying by the religious right, Congress allocated nearly half a billion dollars for public schools nationwide to adopt sex ed programs that advocate abstinence only. Today, all but a few states use government money for classes that basically warn against any sexual activity outside of marriage.

The movement’s latest mission is to make abstinence cool (it’s been called “chastity chic”). There are Christian rock concerts where attendees sign pledges, sites like geocities.com/thevirginclub that list stars who have held off on sex until marriage (Jessica Simpson, divorce notwithstanding, is one of their patron saints), and supportive bloggers (abstinence.net features one called “The Professional Virgin”). Silver Ring Thing, a national abstinence group for teens, has an active MySpace page filled with comments like this from “Brianna”: “I vowed to stay a virgin till marriage two years ago and it’s been a long tough road…but it gets a lil’ easier everyday.”

The first purity ball, with all its queen-for-a-day allure, was thrown in 1998 by Wilson, now 48, and his wife, Lisa, 47; the two run Generations of Light, a popular Christian ministry in Colorado Springs. “We wanted to set a standard of dignity and honor for the way the girls should be treated by the men in their lives,” says Lisa, a warm, exuberant woman with a ready smile and seven children, ages 4 to 22. Lisa’s own father left her family when she was two, and despite a kind stepfather, she says, she grew up not feeling valued or understood. “Looking back, it’s a miracle I remained pure,” she says. “I believe if girls feel beautiful and cherished by their fathers, they don’t go looking for love from random guys.”

That first ball got some positive local and Christian press, as well as inquiries from people in 21 states interested in throwing their own. Today, South Dakota’s Abstinence Clearinghouse—a major association of the purity movement—sends out about 700 “Purity Ball Planner” booklets a year (tips include printing out the vows on “beautiful paper” and serving wedding cake for dessert). While the Wilsons make no money from their ball, a cottage industry for accessories has sprung up. Roam the Internet and you’ll find a $250 14-karat pearl-and-diamond purity ring; for $15, you can buy a red baby-doll T-shirt with ‘I’m Waiting’ emblazoned on the chest, its snug fit sending a bit of a mixed message.

The older girls at the Broadmoor tonight are themselves curvaceous and sexy in backless dresses and artful makeup; next to their fathers, some look disconcertingly like wives. In fact, in the parlance of the purity ball folks, one-on-one time with dad is a “date,” and the only sanctioned one a girl can have until she is “courted” by a man. The roles are clear: Dad is the only man in a girl’s life until her husband arrives, a lifestyle straight out of biblical times. “In patriarchy, a father owns a girl’s sexuality,” notes psychologist and feminist author Carol Gilligan, Ph.D. “And like any other property, he guards it, protects it, even loves it.”

When it’s time for dads and daughters to take the pledge (some informally exchange rings as well), the men stand over their seated daughters and read aloud from parchment imprinted with the covenant: “I, [father’s name], choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity….” The men inscribe their names and their daughters sign as witnesses. Then everyone returns to their meals and an excited buzz fills the room.

Purity balls are, in fact, part of a larger trend throughout American culture of fathers spending more time with their daughters and sons—the amount rose from 2.6 hours a week in 1965 to 6.5 hours in 2000, the most recent year for which statistics are available. This togetherness has a real payoff for girls: Those who are close with their fathers generally do better in life than those who aren’t. Dan Kindlon, Ph.D., a Harvard-based psychologist who did in-depth interviews with 113 girls and teens for his new book, Alpha Girls, found that those who had the best relationships with their dads were the most accomplished academically and had the strongest sense of self. Another much-cited study on the subject by two sociologists tracked 126 Baltimore girls from low-income families. It found that those with involved and caring dads were twice as likely to go to college or find a stable job after high school than those without such fathers; 75 percent less likely to give birth as teens; 80 percent less likely to ever be in jail; and half as likely to experience significant depression.

Of course, adolescence poses a tricky challenge: Teens are often more interested in hanging out with friends than in spending time with dear old Dad. And their fathers may not be sure how to treat a child who’s morphing into a young woman. (I vividly recall the betrayed look my father gave me when he caught me, at 14, emerging from a makeout session in my room.) Some experts wonder if dads’ involvement in the family is seeming less important these days, given mothers’ more dominant role—they’re becoming the breadwinners in record numbers. Says Margo Maine, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in West Hartford, Connecticut, who often works with families, “Our culture—and even fathers themselves—underestimates the power fathers have on women’s self-esteem and identity.”

Randy Wilson wants to change that. With his bright smile, steady eye contact and the erect posture of a small but confident man, he reminds me of the magnetic self-help guru that Tom Cruise portrayed in Magnolia. “Way to go, men!” Wilson says. “I applaud your courage to look your daughter in the eye and tell her how beautiful she is. If you haven’t done it yet, I’ll give you a chance to do it right now.”

I strike up a conversation with Christy Parcha, an 18-year-old brunette who’s here to perform a ballet later on; her 10-year-old sister is attending the ball with their dad, Mike, a math teacher at a local community college. Christy’s eyes are bright, her cheeks flushed, and a smile permanently animates her face. Although she just graduated from high school, she is not going to college but instead will be teaching ballet classes, continuing with piano lessons and writing a book about “emotional purity,” which Christy thinks is even more important than the physical kind. “I am just trying to reserve all those special feelings for my husband,” she says ardently.

As it turns out, not allowing herself to think sexual thoughts makes her nervous, too, because she wants to experience pleasure with her future husband: “I don’t want to be a burden to him in that I am not enjoying [sex].” Recently, a friend took her to see a movie about Queen Esther, One Night With the King—“a really romantic story,” according to Christy. “So I watched it and I had these huge feelings rise up inside me, and I was like, ‘OK, they are still there!’” she says, flopping back in her chair with relief. Still, Christy doesn’t want to date. She associates sex outside of marriage as a girl “getting used, betrayed, having guys deceive you, all that kind of thing.”

Other girls at the ball are far less eloquent about the pledge they’ve just made. To them, the excitement of the ball is buying fancy dresses and primping; one 14-year-old in the bathroom tells me she started getting ready at 9 A.M. When I ask Hannah Smith, 15, what purity means to her, she answers, “I actually don’t know.” Her older sister Emily jumps in: “Purity, it means…I don’t know how to explain it. It is important to us that we promise to ourselves and to our fathers and to God that we promise to stay pure until…. It is hard to explain.” I suspect that the girls’ lack of vocabulary has to do with a universal truth of girlhood: You don’t want to talk about sex with anyone older than 18, particularly your dad. At the same time, the girls seem so unsure of the reasons behind their vows that I can’t help but wonder if they’ve just signed a contract whose terms they didn’t fully understand.

There is no data on whether girls who attend purity balls remain abstinent until marriage; chances are many do, given the tight-knit communities they live in. But there is striking evidence that more than half of teens who take virginity pledges—at, say, rallies or events—go on to have sex within three years, according to findings of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the most comprehensive survey of teens ever taken. And 88 percent of the pledgers surveyed end up having sex before marriage. “No pledge can counter the fact that teenagers are, in fact, sexual beings postpuberty,” notes Cary Backenger, a clinical psychotherapist in Appleton, Wisconsin, who works with teens, including several who have taken virginity pledges. “You can’t turn that off.”

Disturbingly, the adolescent health study also found that STD rates were significantly higher in communities with a high proportion of pledgers. “Pledgers are less likely than nonpledgers to use condoms, so if they do have sex it is less safe,” says Peter Bearman, Ph.D., a Columbia University sociologist who helped design the study. For these teens, he believes, it’s a mind game: If you have condoms, you were planning to have sex. If you don’t, sex wasn’t premeditated, which makes it more OK. The study also found that even pledgers who remained virgins were highly likely to have oral and anal sex—risky behavior given that most probably didn’t use condoms to cut their risk.

Curiously, the teen pregnancy rate is on the decline nationwide. Proponents of an abstinence-only philosophy point to this as evidence that pledges work. But a just-released study by the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University attributed 14 percent of this drop to teens holding off on sex—and 86 percent to teens using more effective forms of birth control, like the Pill. Says study author John Santelli, M.D., a specialist in adolescent medicine, “If most of the progress in reducing teen pregnancy rates is due to improved contraceptive use, national policy needs to catch up with those realities.”

Leaders of the abstinence movement firmly believe, however, that teaching kids about the mechanics of sex and contraception “arouses” them, sparking them to have sex. They claim that those who break their vows were not “strong” pledgers to begin with, and that many more teens do keep them (teens the researchers didn’t speak to). “Kids who abstain are not out there breaking hearts; they’re not dogs in heat. They go on to have great, intimate sex,” says Leslee Unruh, president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse. “The purity movement celebrates sex but not sex outside of commitment.”

Girls who are getting married do need information about sex, Unruh continues, and she’s there to provide it. (On one occasion, “I had a girl call me from her wedding,” she says.) “I let them know what to expect, that there might be some discomfort,” and she gives detailed information about touching and lubricants when necessary. Unruh thinks purity balls are a commendable way to get girls who want to stay virgins to do so. As she says, “They help girls realize that their fathers care deeply about their future, and then they decide to keep themselves pure.”

Many experts strongly disagree. “Virginity pledges set girls up for failure,” contends Kindlon, who specializes in adolescent behavior. “I like the father-daughter bonding part of the balls, but it is unfortunate that it is around a pledge that is doomed. I always counsel parents to try to encourage teens to delay sex. But when you completely forbid teens to be sexual, it can do them more harm than good. It’s like telling kids not to eat candy, and then they want it more.”

“When you sign a pledge to your father to preserve your virginity, your sexuality is basically being taken away from you until you sign yet another contract, a marital one,” worries Eve Ensler, the writer and activist. “It makes you feel like you’re the least important person in the whole equation. It makes you feel invisible.”

It’s not hard to imagine the anxiety young women must feel about being a purity failure. Carol-Maureen, an acquaintance from my hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, who got a purity ring in seventh grade and still wears it at 22, told me, “If I had sex before marriage and my parents found out, I’d be mortified. I’d feel like I failed in this promise to them, even though it’s really not their business.”

Marie, a Texan I met through a colleague, took a virginity pledge at 14 but actually felt no shame about breaking her vow a year later. “When I took the pledge, I was true in my heart, but as I got older I had a broader world view,” she says. Still, she snuck around to have sex with her boyfriend so her parents wouldn’t find out, and ended up getting pregnant at 19; she married quickly thereafter. Would she ever ask her son to take a virginity pledge? “No,” she says. “I don’t want him to tell me something just because he thinks I want to hear it and then lie to me about it.”

Figuring out your sexuality on your own terms is a major passage into adulthood. Back when I was 19 and contemplating having sex for the first time, I presented my virginity to my boyfriend as this great treasure he could take from me. He looked at me and said, “But I don’t want to take anything. You should be having sex with me because you want to—and if you don’t, then you aren’t ready.” I was embarrassed by the smack-down of my “gift,” but his words made me realize sex wasn’t just something to give to him but something to do for myself, too. Learning that was more meaningful to me than actually having sex.

When I point out to Christy Parcha’s father, Mike, that experience with relationships, bumps and all, can help young women mature emotionally and become ready for sex and marriage, he warily concedes that’s true. “But there can be damage, too,” he says. “I guess we’d rather err on the side of avoiding these things. The girl can learn after marriage.” Like other fathers I speak with, Parcha says that if his daughter were to fail in her quest to be pure, she would be met with “grace and forgiveness.”

But, he continues, “I am not worried about that. She is not even going to come close to those situations. She believes, and I do too, that her husband will come through our family connections or through me before her heart even gets involved.” Randy Wilson’s oldest daughter, Lauren, 22, met her fiance, Brett, a young man from the Air Force Academy, at church, and other fathers and daughters mention this to me as a hopeful sign that God will open similar doors for them. God has been throwing some curveballs lately, though; a week before the ball, Mike and Christy Parcha’s pastor, Ted Haggard, a man who has openly railed against gay marriage, made headlines nationwide when he admitted to receiving a massage from a man (one who claimed Haggard had paid him for sex), showing how at odds what is preached and what is practiced can be.

Following dessert—chocolate cake or fruit coulis for the adults, ice cream sundaes for the girls—couples file into the adjacent ballroom. Seven ballerinas, including Christy Parcha, appear in white gowns with tulle skirts, carrying on their shoulders a large, rustic wooden cross that they lift up and rest on a stand. Lisa Wilson cries as she presents each of their three ceremonial dances, one of which is called “I’ll Always Be Your Baby.” Afterward, Randy Wilson and a fellow pastor, Steve Holt, stand at the cross with heavy rapiers raised and announce that they are prepared to “bear swords and war for the hearts of our daughters.” The blades create an inverted “V” under which girls and fathers kneel and lay white roses that symbolize purity. Soon there is a heap of cream-colored buds wilting beneath the outstretched arms of the cross.

It’s a memorable image at the end of a memorable night. I’ve been moved and charmed by the Wilsons, an uncommonly warm, polite and loving brood. Over and over, the five daughters have told me how great their father is at giving them attention, love and hugs. When Khrystian ballroom-dances with him, they look so comfortable in each others’ arms that you wish every girl in the United States could have that closeness.

But the real challenge, in my mind, is for a father to remain loving toward his daughter and at the same time nurture her autonomy. The purity movement is, in essence, about refusing to let girls grow up: Daddy’s girls never have to be adults. “The balls are saying, I want you to be 11 forever,” says Kindlon. These are girls who may never find out what it means to make decisions without a man involved, to stand up for themselves, to own their sexuality.

I deeply wish that the lovely things I have seen tonight—the delighted young women, the caring, doting dads—might evolve into father-daughter events not tied to exhorting a promise from a girl that may hang over her head as she struggles to become a woman. When Lauren Wilson hit adolescence, her father gave her a purity ring and a charm necklace with a tiny lock and key. Randy Wilson took the key, which he will hand over to her husband on their wedding day. The image of a locked area behind which a girl stores all of her messy desires until one day a man comes along with the key haunts me. By the end of the ball, as I watch fathers carrying out sleepy little girls with drooping tiaras and enveloping older girls with wraps, I want to take every one of those girls aside and whisper to them the real secret of womanhood: The key to any treasure you’ve got is held by one person—you.

Photo credit: Juliana Sohn