Build 'em up, bomb 'em down.

"In the heart of Tehran sits one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities, a dome-shaped building where scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs," reported the August 23 Chicago Sun-Sentinel. "It was provided to the Iranians by the United States"--along with weapons-grade uranium required to power the facility.

Roughly a year ago, London's Financial Times described how Halliburton, the oil services conglomerate and military contractor once headed by Vice President Cheney (and in which he retains a financial interest), was involved in a Tehran oil-development project with Cyrus Nasseri, a key member of Iran's nuclear development team. That deal, which promised to be quite lucrative for Tehran's nuclear architects, was scuttled as a result of exposure in the press. And 10 years earlier, while Cheney was Halliburton's CEO, the company reportedly flouted Washington-imposed sanctions to provide Iran with key nuclear-reactor components.

During the build-up to the 2003 attack on Iraq, the Bush administration spoke at great length about Saddam's supposedly massive arsenal of biological and chemical weapons without acknowledging that whatever capacity he had to manufacture such arms had been provided to him by the United States under president Reagan and the first President Bush (with Donald Rumsfeld, then a special presidential envoy to Baghdad, playing a pivotal role in a 1983 meeting with Saddam). Now that Iran and its weapons programs are in Washington's cross hairs, we can expect to see the same type of brazen hypocrisy and convenient amnesia regarding the role played by Washington insiders in building up Tehran's nuclear program.