{"id":43220,"date":"2019-01-27T13:10:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T18:10:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43220"},"modified":"2019-01-27T13:10:23","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T18:10:23","slug":"mccain-may-be-dead-but-bomb-bomb-bomb-iran-still-resounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43220","title":{"rendered":"McCain May Be Dead, but \u2018Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran\u2019 Still Resounds"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"McCain<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

McCain May Be Dead, but \u2018Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran\u2019 Still Resounds<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 2007, when making a speech during his bid for the presidency of the United States, the late Senator John McCain spoke about Iran\u2019s supposed nuclear weapons\u2019 programme and when questioned as to whether there might be US reaction to such allegations responded<\/a> by singing \u201cThat old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran… bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This jovial retort about killing people by bombing them was not surprising to those who remembered that during the US war on Vietnam McCain was shot down on a mission to bomb<\/a> a power generation plant in Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, in the course of the entrancingly-named Operation Rolling Thunder<\/em>.  If he hadn\u2019t been shot down before he released his bombs there would almost certainly have been civilian casualties and deaths. Power stations in cities are not manned by soldiers, after all, and around the Hanoi plant there were houses that would doubtless be struck by errant bombs.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But who cares about civilians who are killed or maimed in bombing or rocket attacks?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Syria,\u00a0for example<\/a>, in October 2018 \u201cthe US-led coalition was\u00a0responsible for 46% of civilian casualties<\/a>\u00a0from all explosive weapon use in Syria.\u201d\u00a0 And in November\u00a0Reuters\u00a0<\/em>reported<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cAt least 30 Afghan civilians were killed in US air strikes in the Afghan province of Helmand, officials and residents of the area said on Wednesday, the latest casualties from a surge in air operations aimed at driving the Taliban into talks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forbes\u00a0records that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe US has never dropped as many bombs on Afghanistan as it did this year. According to\u00a0U.S. Air Forces Central Command data<\/a>, manned and unmanned aircraft released 5,213 weapons between January and the end of September 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

McCain May Be Dead, but \u2018Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran\u2019 Still Resounds In 2007, when making a speech during his bid for the presidency of the United States, the late Senator John McCain spoke about Iran\u2019s supposed nuclear weapons\u2019 programme and when questioned as to whether there might be US reaction to such allegations responded by singing \u201cThat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[12435,441,3046,8203,827],"class_list":["post-43220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-brian-cloughley","tag-iran","tag-john-mccain","tag-strategic-culture-foundation","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43221,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43220\/revisions\/43221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}