| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Apr 11, 2004 9:43 pm Post subject: Latest Neocon Excuse to Kill Iranians |
| http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/Nimmo0410.htm
Moqtada al-Sadr: the Latest Neocon Excuse to Kill Iranians
by Kurt Nimmo
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 10, 2004
Somebody needs to tell Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Reuel Marc Gerecht to shut the hell up.
In fact, they need to be arrested and tried as traitors for their part in the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. AEI needs to prosecuted as a criminal organization and shuttered for good. So does JINSA and the Hoover Institute and all of the other neocon criminal organizations. If there was any justice in the world, Bush would be impeached and Dick Cheney would be wearing an orange jumpsuit. Instead, these guys influence and run US foreign policy, they are millionaires, they are allowed to publish books and papers filled with criminal conspiracies against international peace. The American people either don't know, don't care, or are too busy watching television to do anything about it.
As Jim Lobe reports, the above mentioned are now "pushing for retribution against Iran for, they say, sponsoring this week's Shiite uprising in Iraq led by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Despite the growing number of reports that depict the fighting as a spontaneous and indigenous revolt against the U.S.-led occupation, the influential neo-cons are calling on Bush to warn Tehran to cease its alleged backing for al-Sadr and other Shia militias or face retaliation, ranging from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to covert action designed to overthrow the government."
Note the first option -- attacking Iran's nuclear facilities. It is a line straight out of the Zionist script. On June 7, 1981, the Israelis attacked Iraq's Osiraq nuclear facility with American-made F-16s, in direct violation of international law. Now the Bush neocons want to do the same thing to Iran.
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon urged US President George Bush to take all steps possible to block Iran from developing nuclear arms [last July]," al-Jazeerah reported. "Sharon also said Israel believed Iran is shipping weapons to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah through Syria, and voiced Israeli concerns about camps for training Palestinian 'terrorists' in Syria."
Note, nearly all of Sharon's enemies are mentioned: Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah. These enemies are also on the neocon hit list and Bush's evil axis roster.
Of course, most people in the world, when asked, don't believe Iran, Syria, or Hezbollah are primary threats to world peace -- that distinction is reserved for Israel. For instance, a poll conducted by Eurobarometer late last year indicated nearly 60% of Europeans believe Israel "presents a threat to peace, putting it ahead of Iran, North Korea and the US, each of which polled 53%," the BBC reported.
As for nukes -- they are a pipe dream for Iran, but a reality for Israel. "By the late 1990s the U.S. Intelligence Community estimated that Israel possessed between 75-130 weapons, based on production estimates," writes FAS. "The stockpile would certainly include warheads for mobile Jericho-1 and Jericho-2 missiles, as well as bombs for Israeli aircraft, and may include other tactical nuclear weapons of various types. Some published estimates even claimed that Israel might have as many as 400 nuclear weapons by the late 1990s."
So maybe the US should attack Dimona, Israel's nuclear facility.
Sharon, the rabid Likudites, and the Bush neocons are racists who hate Arabs and Iranians. They can't wait to start World War IV -- World War III, according to the neocons, was the Cold War (these guys love back-to-back wars and mass murder) -- and turn the Middle East into one huge killing field in the name of Greater Israel. Remarkably, the American people have allowed them to get away with lying about Iraq and WMD and killing 10,000 people, excluding the approximately 40,000 Iraqi conscripts they slaughtered last year.
"Some neo-conservatives have seized on Sadr's uprising as a new opportunity both to raise tensions against Iran and to divert attention from Washington's bungling of relations with the Shia community in Iraq," writes Lobe.
This is criminal behavior. It should not be tolerated. Unfortunately, it will not only be tolerated, it will be encouraged by the likes of the War Street Journal and Fox, especially after Bush takes the election in November, either semi-legitimately or by hook, crook, and Diebold voting machine.
It's war all the time from here on out.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer living in New Mexico. He is author of Another Day in the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America (Dandelion Books, 2003). To see his photo work and read more of his essays, visit his excellent “Another Day in the Empire” weblog.
Other Articles by Kurt Nimmo | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 2:23 pm Post subject: Zionist extremist Elliott Abrams |
| It would take an Iran contra criminal (who is a Zionist extremist racist) to hatch a criminal plot.
Backroom bureaucrat played key role in US deal with Israel
By James Harding in Washington
Published: April 16 2004 20:29 | Last Updated: April 16 2004 20:29
When George W. Bush was in Britain last November, one of the president's aides was quietly dispatched to Rome for a discreet meeting.
Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, was in Italy and took the opportunity to relay to Mr Bush his plan for unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians. The official the White House sent was Elliott Abrams.
In shaping the Bush administration's historic and highly controversial decision this week to endorse Mr Sharon's Middle East vision, Mr Abrams, the National Security Council official chiefly responsible for Arab-Israeli relations, has played a central, if largely unseen, role.
This does not overstate his influence. Mr Abrams has worked in a trio on Middle East policy that has included his superior, Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and William Burns, the State Department official in charge of Middle East policy.
Israeli and US officials also say that the individuals who forged this week's policy were the protagonists: Mr Sharon and Mr Bush.
Mr Abrams' role, according to a senior administration official, was to "carry out what the president wants". In 10 weeks of consultations before this week's announcement, US officials made three trips to see Mr Sharon and his staff and there were two visits from Israeli delegations to the White House.
Mr Abrams and his colleagms and his colleagues, the official said, were "kept on a short leash. [They] were not dreaming up policy."
The Israeli prime minister was one of the few international figures with whom Mr Bush had a relationship before he became president: Mr Sharon was his guide to Israel in 1998 when he was Texas governor.
"I had the honour of traveling the West Bank with Ariel Sharon by helicopter," Mr Bush told an audience at the Republican Jewish Coalition in 1999. "You can imagine what it was like to be given a history lesson by this great warrior and hero of freedom and democracy."
Mr Sharon also had praise this week for Mr Bush.
"I myself have been fighting terror for many years, and understand the threats and cost from terrorism," he said. "In all these years, I have never met a leader as committed as you are, Mr President, to the struggle for freedom and the need to confront terrorism wherever it exists."
These words, say some Middle East experts, may resonate favourably for Mr Bush among Jewish and conservative Christian voters in an election year. Martin Indyk, the former US ambassador to Israel, says: "The president is in a tight spot and Jewish votes matter, particularly in some key states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio."
The White House insists election year politics did not play a part. "The poll data suggest that there is hardly anything that a Republican president can do to move his support among the Jewish community," the senior administration official says.
But to appreciate the internal intellectual argument within the White House for supporting the Sharon plan, diplomats and officials generally agree with a former US official who says: "Elliott was instrumental."
It was Mr Abrams, a senior White House official says, who reasoned that Mr Bush should not be bound by "myths and taboos". It was not helpful for Arab and Palestinian leaders to continue to perpetuate the "myth" that Palestinian refugees would one day return to their homes in Israel.
It was important to create the precedent of withdrawal from the settlements, the official says, rather than making settlements untouchable. And, the official says, it was important to get things moving when there had been no progress since last August.
Mr Abrams, a Reagan official implicated in the Iran-Contra affair, in 1991 admitted withholding information from Congress. He was sentenced to two years' probation and community service.
In the years after he was pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, Mr Abrams wrote a book calling for Jews to return to their faith to stem assimilation. He also helped found the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think-tank that included Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz.
Mr Abrams supported Mr Sharon, a leader, he once wrote, who knows "the road to peace lies through strength instead of weakness". He is seen as one of the most effective operators in modern American government.
"Elliott Abrams is one of the best bureaucratic artists in Washington. He has traditionally taken bureaucratic positions and turned them into strong positions, because he reads the president and knows what he wants," says Jon Alterman, who was on the State Department's policy and planning staff.
"Elliott Abrams is the person who got the Middle East to talk about reform. [The US] cannot micromanage the universe, but you can force items on to the agenda. He has done a masterful job of that."
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1079420404675
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Excellent Asia Times article on Zionist extremist racist Elliott Abrams:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DL19Ak01.html
The Bush Administration's Dual Loyalties:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/19/the-bush-administration-s-dual-loyalties.php
More on Zionist extremist Elliott Abrams:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/12/10/abrams/index_np.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Apr 17, 2004 3:04 pm Post subject: Neoconservatives Try to Suggest that Sadr Uprising is “Mad |
| http://www.nowarforisrael.com
http://www.nogw.com/warforisrael.html
Neoconservatives Try to Suggest that Sadr Uprising is “Made in Teheran”
By Jim Lobe
April 9, 2004
Despite the growing number of reports that depict the past week's uprising by the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, and his Mahdi Army as a spontaneous and indigenous revolt, some influential U.S. neoconservatives are insisting that Iran is behind it. They are calling on the Bush administration to warn Teheran to cease its alleged backing for al-Sadr and other Shia militias or face retaliation, ranging from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to covert action designed to overthrow the government.
But independent experts on both Iran and Iraq say that, while Iran has no doubt provided various forms of assistance to Shia factions in Iraq since Hussein's ouster one year ago, its relations with Sadr have long been rocky and that it has opposed radical actions that could destabilize the situation. “Those elements closest to Iran among the Shiite clerics (in Iraq) have been the most moderate through all of this,” according to Shaul Bakhash, an Iran expert at George Mason University. Indeed, many regional specialists agree that Iran has a strategic interest in avoiding any train of events that risks plunging Iraq into chaos or civil war and partition.
Neoconservatives centered in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office and among the civilian leadership in the Pentagon have strongly opposed any détente with Iran and have frequently blamed it for problems it has encountered in both Afghanistan and Iraq.
Neoconservatives outside the administration, such as former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and his colleagues at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Michael Ledeen and Reuel Marc Gerecht, called even before the Iraq war for Washington to support indigenous efforts to oust the “mullahcracy” in Teheran, which is seen as an arch-enemy of both the U.S. and Israel.
Raising Tensions with Iran
Some neoconservatives have seized on Sadr’s uprising as a new opportunity both to raise tensions against Iran and to divert attention from their own bungling of relations with the Shia community in Iraq.
Top U.S. officials both in the U.S. and in Iraq have not yet named Iran as the hidden hand behind Sadr, although a senior reporter at the right-wing Washington Times, Rowan Scarborough, quoted unnamed “military sources” April 7 th as telling him that Sadr “is being aided directly by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard … and by Hezbollah, an Iranian-created terrorist group based in Lebanon.” Unnamed “Pentagon officials” gave a similar account to the New York Times, although the Times reporter, James Risen, stressed that CIA officials disagreed with that analysis, adding: “Some intelligence officials believe that the Pentagon has been eager to link Hezbollah to the violence in Iraq to link the Iranian regime more closely to anti-American terrorism.”
The Iran hand was first raised in connection with Sadr’s revolt by Michael Rubin, who just returned from a stint as a “governance team adviser” for the CPA in Iraq to his previous position as a resident fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI). In a column published in the Los Angeles Times on April 4 th, he complained that Washington and the CPA had failed to provide liberal and democratic Iraqi leaders with anything like the kind of support that Iran was supplying to radical Shia leaders and their “gangs.”
On a visit to the Shia-dominated south, according to Rubin, he found that Iranians were pouring money and arms to key Islamist parties, including the Da’wa, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and Sadr himself whose rise over the past year, according to Rubin, is explained by the “ample funding he receives through Iran-based cleric Ayatollah Kazem al Haeri, a close associate of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini.”
Similarly, another senior CPA adviser, Larry Diamond, a neoconservative who specializes in democratization at the California-based Hoover Institution, told IPS this week that Sadr’s Mahdi Army, as well as other Shia militias, are being armed and financed by Iran with the aim of imposing “another Iranian-style theocracy.”
" Iran is embarked on a concerned, clever, lavishly resourced campaign to defeat any effort for any genuine pluralist democracy in Iraq,” said Diamond. “The longer we wait to confront the thug, the more troops he’ll have in his army, the more arms he’ll have and financial support, virtually all coming from Iran, the more he will intimidate and kill sincere democratic actors in the country, and the more impossible our task at building democracy will become.” He added, “I think we should tell the Iranian regime that if they don't cease and desist, we will play the same game, that we will destabilize them.”
On Tuesday, April 6 th, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page took up the same theme, noting that Sadr has talked “openly of creating an Iranian-style Islamic Republic in Iraq (and) has visited Tehran since the fall of Saddam. … (H)is Mahdi militia is almost certainly financed and trained by Iranians,” the editorial went on, adding, “Revolutionary Guards may be instigating some of the current unrest.”
"As for Teheran, we would hope the Sadr uprising puts to rest the illusion that the mullahs (in Teheran) can be appeased. As Bernard Lewis teaches, Middle Eastern leaders interpret American restraint as weakness. Iran's mullahs fear a Muslim democracy in Iraq because is it a direct threat to their own rule. If warnings to Teheran from Washington don't impress them, perhaps some cruise missiles aimed at the Bushehr nuclear site will concentrate their minds,” the Journal suggested.
On Wednesday, New York Times columnist William Safire asserted the existence of an axis involving Sadr, Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria, as well. “We should break the Iranian-Hezbollah-Sadr connection in ways that our special forces know how to do,” he wrote. “Plenty of Iraqi Shiites, who are Arab, distrust the Persian ayatollahs in Iran and can provide actionable intelligence about a Syrian transmission belt” that presumably is used to infiltrate Hezbollah members into Iraq to link up with the Sadr’s partisans.
A Predictable Conflagration
This line of reasoning, however, appears particularly curious to Bakhash who notes that the Sadr family, including Moqtada himself, is precisely the kind Iraqi Shiite who would be deeply suspicious of Teheran. “Sadr’s father was a strong Iraqi nationalist, like Moqtada himself,” he said. “He often used to question why there were in Iraq ayatollahs who spoke Arabic with a Persian accent.”
Like other experts, Bakhash believes that Iran has indeed been heavily involved with the Iraqi Shia community, but sees the leadership providing far more support to SCIRI and its Badr brigades than to Sadr, who, from Teheran’s point of view, is seen as untrustworthy.
Bakhash also questions the neoconservative assumption that Iran wants to destabilize Iraq at this point. “Obviously the Iranians are not unhappy to see the Americans discomfited in Iraq, but I don’t think it’s the policy of the Iranian government to destabilize Iraq right along its own border,” he said.
Middle East historian Juan Cole of the University of Michigan also questions the notion of a link between Iran and Sadr in the current uprising. While Sadr’s views on theocratic government are consistent with those of Iranian hardliners, according to Cole, his outspoken Iraqi nationalism poses a major challenge to Khameini’s claim to authority over all Shiite religious communities, including those outside Iran. Contrary to the Journal’s assumptions, according to Cole, Sadr did not receive much encouragement from the Iranians leaders with whom he met in Teheran. “The message he got … was that he should top being so divisive and should cooperate more with the other Shiite leaders.”
Geoffrey Kemp, an Iran specialist at the Nixon Center and Middle East adviser on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff, says he has little doubt that the Iranians have influence with several different Shiite groups and that there may even be “rogue elements” inside Iran who back Sadr. But he agrees that Teheran’s strongest ties are with SCIRI and the Badr Brigades, who were trained by the Revolutionary Guard inside Iran during Saddam Hussein’s rule. “Iran has a huge strategic stake in what happens in Iraq, but I don’t think it is trying to provoke a direct confrontation (with the U.S.) at this time,” he said. “The situation is far too complex to make simplistic statements about what Iran is or is not doing,” Kemp said, “But to suggest that this is an Iranian-inspired insurrection is a stretch.”
“The neoconservatives are all so heavily invested in the success of Iraq that, instead of blaming the Pentagon for some extraordinary blunders, they want to blame everyone else--the State Department, the Iranians, the Syrians for the mess that was partly of their own making,” according to Kemp.
Cole, in fact, has raised questions about how some of those blunders--including the CPA’s decision to close Sadr’s newspaper--came to be committed, suggesting that some neoconservatives in the CPA may themselves have been pushing for a crisis for “all sorts of ulterior motives,” such as moving Iraq closer to partition--a move that would could also lead to the destabilization of Syria and Saudi Arabia.
Cole noted that Sadr’s expression of solidarity with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas whose spiritual and political leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was assassinated in an Israeli rocket attack late last month, may have moved the CPA to provoke a confrontation. The following day, Sadr’s top aide and 13 of his followers were suddenly arrested on a six-month-old warrant, touching off the insurrection. “Who provoked (the arrests) and why?” asked Cole, who adds that the conflagration that followed was entirely predictable.
(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.) | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
