| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:45 pm Post subject: George Washington's Farewell Address/Passionate Attachment |
| "So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a
variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion
of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists,
and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a
participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate
inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite
nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the
nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld . . .
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe
me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly
awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the
most baneful foes of republican government . . . Excessive partiality for one
foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate
to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of
influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the
favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes
usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.
" . . . nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate
antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others
should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings
toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an
habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a
slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to
lead it astray from its duty and its interest."
-- President George Washington
Farewell Address
September 26, 1796
Todays Holy Wars News:
http://www.antiwar.com | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 7:38 am Post subject: U.S. Prepared to Grab Iran's Southwesten Oil Rich Province a |
| Subject: U.S. Prepared to Grab Iran's Southwesten Oil Rich Province after Saturation Bombings
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
August 10, 2005 -- U.S. prepared to grab Iran's southwestern majority Arab and oil-rich province after saturation bombing of Iranian nuclear, chemical, and command, control, communications & intelligence (C3I) targets. According to sources within the German Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst - BND), the Bush administration has drawn up plans to hit Iran's nuclear, other WMD, and military sites with heavy saturation bombing using bunker buster bombs and tactical nuclear weapons. The attack will be coordinated with urban and rural critical infrastructure sabotage carried out by elements of the People's Mujaheddin (MEK), Pentagon Special Operations units, and other Iranian dissident groups. The German intelligence comes from classified briefings provided by elements within the CIA that are concerned the neocons in the Bush administration will, in attacking Iran, set off a chain of events that will lead to world war. Intelligence on U.S. plans to attack Iran has also been passed by CIA agents to counterparts in France, Britain, Canada, and Australia. The Bush war plans for Iran also entail quickly seizing Iran's southwestern Khuzestan Province, where most of Iran's oil reserves and refineries are located. Khuzestan has a majority Shia Arab population that has close links with their ethnic and religious brethren in Iraq. The Bush plans call for a U.S. military strike across the Iraqi border and from naval forces in the Persian Gulf in answer to an appeal for assistance from the Al Ahwaz Popular Democratic Front and Liberation Organization rebel forces in Khuzestan, which will declare an independent Arab state of the Democratic Republic of Ahwaz and receive diplomatic recognition from the United States and a few close U.S. allies. After World War I, Khuzestan was annexed by Iran, then called Persia. There are also plans to incite rebellions among Iran's other minorities, including Azeris and Turkmenis in the oil-rich Caspian Sea region. Other minorities targeted by the neo-con planners are Iranian Kurds along the Iraqi and Turkish borders and Baluchis along the border with Pakistan. The neo-con plan seeks to separate Iran from its oil resources and create an "Irani triangle" centered around Teheran, Isfahan, Qom, and other historically Persian centers. In anticipation of the U.S. attack, the spy sub USS Jimmy Carter has placed taps on undersea communications cables in the Persian Gulf that carry Iranian commercial, diplomatic, and military traffic. In addition, Task Force 121 covert paramilitary forces have scouted Iran using the cover of journalists and businessmen to pinpoint military targets.
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Who's Behind the Coming War with Iran?
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/08/06/who-s-behind-the-coming-war-with-iran.php
http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 14, 2005 3:32 am Post subject: The Iran trap |
| The Iran trap
by Scott Ritter
Sunday 11 September 2005 3:06 PM GMT
In the complicated world of international diplomacy surrounding the issue of Iran's nuclear programme, there is but one thing that the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the so-called EU-3 (Germany, France and Great Britain) and Iran can all agree upon.
And that is: Iran has resumed operations of facilities designed to convert uranium into a product usable in enrichment processes. From that point forward consensus on just about anything begins to fall apart.
Iran's resumption of its uranium conversion programme seems to have brought to an end a negotiating process begun in November 2004 between the EU-3 and Iran, at which time Iran agreed to freeze its uranium enrichment-related activities in exchange for the EU-3's agreement to broker a deal that would provide inducements for Iran to give up its nuclear enrichment program.
With the EU-3 initiative now dead in the water, it appears that the next logical step in the diplomatic process is for the IAEA to refer the matter to the Security Council, where the US, backed by the EU-3, have threatened to push for economic sanctions. The IAEA board meets in Vienna, Austria on 19 September to discuss this matter.
The EU-3 countries are uniform in their criticism of Iran's diplomatic slap in the face, but in fact neither the EU-3 nor the IAEA have a legal leg to stand on.
Iran, as a signatory to the non-proliferation treaty (NPT), asserts its "inalienable right" under Article IV of the NPT to "develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes".
Such rights are conditional, however, but Iran strongly believes that it has complied with Articles I and II of the NPT, where it agrees not to manufacture or acquire nuclear weapons, and Article III, where it accepts full safeguards, including on-site inspections.
The only chance the world has of avoiding a second disastrous US military adventure in the Middle East is for the EU-3 to step back from its policy of doing the bidding of the US
Iran has yet to be declared to be in formal breach of any of these obligations, which raises the basic question: What is it the EU-3 wish to accomplish vis-a-vis their diplomatic intervention?
The real purpose of the EU-3 intervention - to prevent the United States from using Iran's nuclear ambition as an excuse for military intervention - is never discussed in public.
The EU-3 would rather continue to participate in fraudulent diplomacy rather than confront the hard truth - that it is the US, and not Iran, that is operating outside international law when it comes to the issue of Iran's nuclear programme.
In doing so, the EU-3, and to a lesser extent the IAEA, have fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Bush administration designed to use the EU-3 diplomatic initiative as a springboard for war with Iran.
The heart of the EU-3's position regarding Iran's nuclear programme is the matter of nuclear enrichment, which the EU-3 outright oppose. This, of course, is an extension of the American position (as well as that of America's shadow ally, Israel).
Legally, this is an unsupportable position under the NPT, but one which has been pursued based upon two fundamental points.
The first is Iran's history of deception regarding its nuclear programme, in which Iran hid critical aspects of this effort from the international community.
Iran now claims to have come into compliance with its NPT obligations, by having declared the totality of its efforts, something neither the EU-3 and the IAEA, nor the US and Israel can refute factually.
As with Iraq earlier, the United States has embraced a position which requires Iran to prove the negative
Indeed, the recent disclosure by the IAEA that the hard 'evidence' it possessed to sustain the charge that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons programme (the existence of traces of highly enriched uranium on Iranian centrifuges) was flawed.
The fact that the uranium came from Pakistan, not Iran, has undercut any case the EU-3 might have had in pursuing its confrontational stance with Iran.
In the face of this development, the EU-3 - Britain, Germany and France - need to ask themselves a very fundamental question: What is their true policy objective being pursued vis-a-vis Iran?
The answer appears to be little more than serving as a front for American complaints against the Iranian nuclear programme.
Given this, the EU-3 must next confront the real policy of the US when it comes to Iran - regime change. As was the case with Iraq, Europe has failed to confront the Bush administration's policy of regime change.
Instead, the EU-3 has allowed their seemingly unified European foreign-policy position regarding Iran to be hijacked by a neoconservative cabal in Washington, DC, as a stepping stone to war.
Europe would like to believe that the diplomatic initiative undertaken by the EU-3 last November represents a nominal Plan A, which avoids direct confrontation between the US and Iran through use of the European intermediary.
It is completely irrelevant that Iran has yet to be shown to have a nuclear weapons program (in fact the overwhelming amount of data available points to the exact opposite conclusion)
The EU-3 comfort themselves with the knowledge that any failure of their initiative pushes the world not to the brink of war, but rather toward a Plan B, intervention by the Security Council of the United Nations, which would seek to compel Iran back into line with the threat of economic sanctions.
A failure by the Security Council to achieve change on the part of Iran would then, and only then, pave the way for Plan C, American military intervention.
European diplomats concede that there is little likelihood that the Security Council will impose sanctions on Iran, given the intransigence on the part of Russia and China.
However, they have lulled themselves into a false sense of complacency by noting that given the situation in Iraq, and now in the US in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the US military is so overstretched that any talk of the Bush administration implementing a Plan C is out of the question.
What the Europeans - and the member nations of the EU-3 in particular - fail to recognise is that the Bush administration's plan for Iran does not consist of three separate plans, but rather one plan composed of three phases leading to the inevitability of armed conflict with Iran and the termination of the theocratic regime of the mullahs currently residing in Tehran.
These three phases - the collapse of the EU-3 intervention leading to a referral of the Iran matter to the Security Council, the inability of the Security Council to agree upon the imposition of economic sanctions against Iran, and the US confronting the Security Council over its alleged inability to protect American national security interests - lead inevitably toward military confrontation.
A failure by the Security Council to achieve change on the part of Iran would then, and only then, pave the way for Plan C, American military intervention
As with Iraq earlier, the US has embraced a position which requires Iran to prove the negative (ie, demonstrate that it does not have a nuclear weapons program) as opposed to the US and the IAEA proving that one does in fact exist.
The criteria put forward by the Bush administration for Iran to comply - no-notice inspections of any site at any time - are an affront to a sovereign nation that has yet to be shown to be in violation of any of its legal obligations.
The fact that the US used a similar programme of no-notice weapons inspections as a front for espionage against Iraq in support of its regime-change policy against Saddam Hussein has not escaped the attention of the Iranians, who have flat-out rejected any such extra-legal requirements on its part.
The US, and to a lesser extent the IAEA and the EU-3, have taken Iran's intransigence as a clear sign that Iran has something to hide.
Once again, as was the case with Iraq, the US has put process over substance, and unless the EU-3 bloc, the American effort to have the Iranian case transferred to the Security Council, the end result will be war.
The Iran trap has been well baited by the Bush administration, so much so that a Europe already burned once by American duplicity regarding Iraq, and a war-weary American public, fail to recognise what is actually transpiring.
The bait for this trap is, of course, diplomacy, first in the form of the EU-3 intervention, and that having failed, in the form of Security Council actions.
Polls taken in April 2005 showed that most Americans (63% to 37%) believed the Bush administration should take military action to stop Iran from developing or trying to develop a nuclear weapons programme.
It is completely irrelevant that Iran has yet to be shown to have a nuclear weapons programme (in fact the overwhelming amount of data available points to the exact opposite conclusion).
Today, in September 2005, many Americans might be loath to immediately embrace a direct path towards war with Iran. However, according to recent polls, most Americans support referring the matter of Iran to the Security Council for the purpose of imposing sanctions.
The EU-3, and to a lesser extent the IAEA, have fallen into a trap deliberately set by the Bush administration designed to use the EU-3 diplomatic initiative as a springboard for war with Iran
If the Security Council, because of Russian and Chinese opposition, refuses to support sanctions, the American people will be confronted by the Bush administration with the choice to either appear weak before the UN, or to take matters into our own hands (ie, unilateral military action) in the name of national defence.
The outcome in this case is certain - war.
Since the result of any referral of the Iran issue to the Security Council is all but guaranteed, the push by the EU-3 to have the IAEA refer Iran to the Security Council, while rooted in the language of diplomacy, is really nothing less than an act of war.
The only chance the world has of avoiding a second disastrous US military adventure in the Middle East is for the EU-3 to step back from its policy of doing the bidding of the US, and to confront not only Iran on the matter of its nuclear programme, but also the larger issue of American policies of regional transformation that represent the greatest threat to Middle East security and stability today.
Scott Ritter is former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998 Author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, published by IB Tauris (London) and Nation Books (USA) in October 2005.
The opinions expressed here are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position or have the endorsement of Aljazeera.
Aljazeera
By Scott Ritter
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1A678E7E-2612-4B21-8D21-04E6D5FC5D54.htm | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Oct 16, 2005 4:26 pm Post subject: Russians gave aid with nukes: report |
| Russians gave aid with nukes: report
17oct05
FORMER members of the Russian military have been accused of secretly helping Iran produce missiles capable of striking in the heart of Europe.
Britain's Sunday Telegraph has reported the Russians have been acting as go-betweens with North Korea.
Their help has enabled Tehran to receive regular clandestine shipments of top-secret missile technology, believed to be channelled through Russia.
Western intelligence officials believe the technology will enable Iran to finish developing a missile with a range of more than 3500km.
It can carry a 1.2 tonne payload, enough for a basic nuclear device.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday failed to win Russia's support for referring Iran to the UN Security Council if the Islamic republic refuses to resume talks over suspected nuclear arms programs.
Dr Rice flew to Moscow on a surprise trip to press President Vladimir Putin to commit to backing the move, and the potential for international sanctions, if Iran continues to defy the West.
But with Russia wary of measures against a country it has strong commercial ties with, Mr Putin was unmoved.
He reaffirmed Russia's position that the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency should deal with Iran.
A senior US official was quoted as saying Iran's program was "sophisticated and getting larger and more accurate".
"They've had very much in mind the payload needed to carry a nuclear weapon. I think Putin knows what the Iranians are doing," he told the Telegraph.
The US accuses Iran of hiding its weapons development behind its nuclear power program.
Iran has refused to suspend its uranium enrichment program or allow full UN inspections. – REUTERS | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Oct 17, 2005 5:33 pm Post subject: Israel, Iran, and the US: Nuclear War, Here We Come |
| October 17, 2005
Israel, Iran, and the US: Nuclear War, Here We Come
by Jorge Hirsch
The stage is set for a chain of events that could lead to nuclear war over chemical weapons in the immediate future. If these events unfold, the trigger will be Israel, the target Iran, the nuclear aggressor the U.S. These are the reasons:
The U.S. State Department determined in August 2005 that "Iran is in violation of its CWC [Chemical Weapons Convention] obligations because Iran is acting to retain and modernize key elements of its CW infrastructure to include an offensive CW R&D capability and dispersed mobilization facilities."
According to the CIA, "Iran likely has already stockpiled blister, blood, choking, and probably nerve agents – and the bombs and artillery shells to deliver them – which it previously had manufactured."
According to (then undersecretary for arms control and international security, now U.S. ambassador to the UN) John Bolton's testimony to the House of Representatives (June 24, 2004), "We believe Iran has a covert program to develop and stockpile chemical weapons," and on Iran's ballistic missiles, "Iran continues its extensive efforts to develop the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction," and "The 1,300-km range Shahab-3 missile is a direct threat to Israel, Turkey, U.S. forces in the region, and U.S. friends and allies."
In the IAEA resolution of Sept. 24 [.pdf], Iran was found to be in "noncompliance" with its NPT safeguards agreements.
Members of the Israeli parliament from across the political spectrum are urging the United States to stop Iran's nuclear programs, or Israel will "act unilaterally." Statements of grave concern about Iran's nuclear program have been made by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, and Mossad chief Meir Dagan (Iran poses an "existential threat" to Israel). Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter accuses Iran of plotting relentlessly to attack Israeli targets.
According to the head of the Russian Atomic Energy Organization, Alexander Rumyantsev, Russia will ship the first cargo of nuclear fuel for Iran's Bushehr's reactor at the end of 2005 or early 2006.
Israel bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor (which was under IAEA supervision) in 1981 just before nuclear fuel was loaded into it (to prevent nuclear fallout).
President Bush has said that "all options are on the table" if diplomacy fails to halt Iran's nuclear program.
The U.S. House of Representatives on May 6, 2004, by a vote of 376-3, called on the United States to use all appropriate means to deter, dissuade, and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
In the recently released draft document "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" [.pdf], the Pentagon states that it will respond to the threat of WMD (which includes chemical and biological weapons) with nuclear weapons.
Conclusion: according to Israel, the U.S. administration, and 99.2 percent of the U.S. House of Representatives, Iran will not be allowed to have access to any nuclear technology. No diplomatic options to achieve that goal will remain when Russia and China veto Security Council sanctions, or if the IAEA refuses on Nov. 24 to refer Iran to the Security Council. Military action will occur before Russia ships uranium fuel to Iran, and will inevitably lead to the use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. against Iran.
How will it all get started? No matter how much Bush and Cheney want it, the U.S. Senate is unlikely to authorize the bombing of Iranian installations out of the blue. Unless there is some major disturbance in Iraq that can be blamed on Iran, Israel is likely to pull the trigger. It knows how to and has every motivation to do so.
Once Israel drops the first bomb on an Iranian nuclear facility, as it did with Iraq's Osirak reactor in 1981, there is no return. Bushehr is likely to be the first target; other installations will follow.
Iran will respond – how can it not? At a minimum, it will shoot missiles at Israel. It may or may not shoot at U.S. forces in Iraq initially, but given the U.S.-Israel "special relationship," there is no way the U.S. will stay out of the conflict. Many of Iran's targeted facilities are underground, and U.S. bombs will be needed to destroy them all.
Once the U.S. enters the conflict, 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq will be at risk of Iranian missiles with chemical warheads, or of being overrun by Iran's conventional forces streaming into Iraq. According to the Pentagon planning [.pdf], nuclear weapons will be used:
"To demonstrate U.S. intent and capability to use nuclear weapons to deter adversary use of WMD."
"Against an adversary using or intending to use WMD against U.S., multinational, or alliance forces or civilian populations…"
"[O]n adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons or the C2 infrastructure required for the adversary to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies"
"[T]o counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces…"
"For rapid and favorable war termination on U.S. terms…"
"To ensure success of U.S. and multinational operations…"
That makes six independent reasons for nuking Iran.
The first nuclear bomb used in an act of war after "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" should be code-named "Demo" – for "demonstration" that we can do it, don't mess with us, for "democracy" on the rise in the Middle East, and for the "Democrats" in Congress who will go along with the program. As with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we will be told it saved lives, ours and theirs. You know the script.
The upshot: a nuclear superpower will have nuked a non-nuclear state that is an NPT signatory and is cooperating with the IAEA, at the instigation of a state that is not an NPT signatory, that reportedly has over 100 nuclear bombs of its own, and that initiated hostilities with an unprovoked act of military aggression.
Given these prospects, the U.S. government should be doing its utmost to restrain Israel, yet it is doing exactly the opposite. It should be trying to achieve a diplomatic solution, but it refuses to even talk to Iran. The ongoing diplomatic effort by the EU is simply designed to provide cover for the planned military action, just as in the case of Iraq. How many times must Bush play the same game before the EU finally learns it is being used?
And how many times will it take for the U.S. citizenry to learn? The U.S. public and its representatives in Congress, preoccupied with the deception and subsequent disaster of the Iraq invasion, are blind to the enormously bigger deception and disaster unfolding just before their eyes. Do the majority of American citizens, from whom the authority of the administration is derived, really want to be drawn by Israel into a nuclear conflict? Is this really in the United States' best interest?
The sane world needs to tell the U.S. and Israeli governments to back off. And the United States needs to tell Israel, in no uncertain terms, that it will not allow (American-supplied) Israeli bombers carrying (American supplied) bunker-busting bombs over Iraqi airspace, and that it will not aid, abet, or condone such an attack. By not demanding this of the Bush administration, the U.S. Congress is complicit in what is about to happen and is betraying the trust of the people it represents.
There is a rational way to avoid this disaster.
Let Iran pursue a civilian nuclear program. Over 30 countries have civilian nuclear programs, while only nine have nuclear weapons. Let the Nobel-prize winning IAEA and Mohamed ElBaradei do their job!
The U.S. can guarantee Israel's safety by assuring Israel that any threat to its existence from a non-nuclear nation will be met with the full force of U.S. conventional forces, and any threat from a nuclear nation will be met with U.S. nuclear forces.
If Iran were to withdraw from the NPT and not allow international supervision of its programs, it would still take several years for it to acquire a nuclear weapon. There would still be plenty of time to act.
Otherwise? Welcome to the new world order, where the U.S. can nuke any non-nuclear country at will. Refrain from having a nuclear deterrent at your own risk. All nations that can will become nuclear, others on their way will be nuked, and all-out nuclear war will become an absolute certainty. Bye-bye, world.
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http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=7649 | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
