| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:12 am Post subject: IRAN IN NEO-CON CROSSHAIRS |
| http://americanfreepress.net/html/iran_in_neo-con_.html
IRAN IN NEO-CON CROSSHAIRS
AIR STRIKES BY ISRAEL WOULD DRAW U.S. INTO ANOTHER WAR
What would happen if Israeli warhawks launched an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities? This week, American Free Press takes a look at a new study by an international terrorism expert, which warns that bombing the Persian country would likely drag the United States into a drawnout
and bloody clash of civilizations. AFP predicted it almost a year ago, but are neo-cons that crazy?
By Richard Walker
A new study by an international terrorism expert warns that a military attack launched by the Israelis on Iran’s nuclear facilities would certainly escalate to involve the United States, Iraq and Lebanon, as well as Persian Gulf states.
In its early stages, it would result in many thousands of civilian and military casualties.
In an in-depth report for the Oxford Research Group, titled “Iran: Consequences of a War,” Prof. Paul Rodgers writes that Israel has bought [or has been given—Ed.] all the necessary weapons from the United States for such an attack, including long-range fighters and a large supply of so-called “bunker-buster bombs,” capable of penetrating hardened underground bunkers.
The targets of such an attack would initially be the Tehran nuclear reactor, as well as a radioisotope facility and a range of laboratories and other facilities, all of them in heavily populated areas.
If the newest reactor at Bushehr were to be targeted after it comes on line later this year, such an attack could lead to a Chernobyl-type disaster with radioactive clouds rising over most gulf countries.
According to Rodgers, if the United States is drawn into such an attack with the aim of setting back Iran’s nuclear program, the British could also find themselves dragged into the affair by being asked to provide bases for the refueling of U.S. aircraft as happened when F-111s were used to bomb the Libyan capital of Tripoli in 1986.
If bombings were launched this year against Iran they would, claims the Oxford report, be launched simultaneously in order to kill as many of the technical staff as possible at the various nuclear sites. Iran would be unable to prevent such an air assault because of its lack of a functioning anti-missile and anti-aircraft arsenal.
Some experts dispute this aspect of the report, however, due to recent high-tech weapons purchases Iran has made from North Korea, China and Russia.
In the past decade, it is known that Iran has acquired hundreds of medium-range missiles from China and North Korea and an unknown number of long-range Sunburst cruise missiles from Ukraine, which, it is believed, could be used to sink U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.
Israeli hawks in Tel Aviv and their allies in Washington want Americans to believe that Iran is a major threat to U.S. and Israeli interests in the Middle East.
The Israelis and their neo-con backers had hoped a successful invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would undermine the clerical leadership in Iran and lead to its overthrow by an emerging democratic movement led by the youth of the country. To the dismay of Washington and Tel Aviv, however, the war in Iraq has failed to achieve that goal, and the power of the religious leadership in Iran has grown significantly.
The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran stands in the way of Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Israeli hardliners have convinced many Americans that they should be the only Middle East country with nuclear weapons. It is estimated that the Israeli nuclear arsenal contains as many as
400 nukes.
In order to plan for an attack on Iran, recent reports indicate Israel has been buying long-range versions of American-made F-15 and F-16 aircraft. Beginning in 2003, the Israeli air force purchased 102 F-16s and 500 bunkerbuster bombs.
Efforts are also under way to equip Israeli submarines, including ones given to Israel by Germany, and naval surface vessels with cruise missiles that could reach Iran.
The Oxford Report points to an alarming trend: in the past two years, there has been the appearance of a strengthening of the relationship between the Israeli defense forces and the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command.
The report warns: “Although not commonly covered in the western
media, this relationship is well known in the Middle East and would contribute to an assumption that any Israeli attack on Iran would be undertaken with the knowledge, approval and assistance of the United States. It is certainly the case that an Israeli air attack on Iran would involve flights through airspace currently dominated by the United States.”
Rodgers also makes the point in his report that close links between Israel and the United States are far more widely recognized in the Middle East than in the United States and in Europe. Therefore, any Israeli action would
be seen as a joint operation with “Israel acting as surrogate and doing so with direct U.S. support.”
He speculates that this would mean that Iranian retaliation would be directed at U.S. interests in the gulf and at U.S. forces in Iraq. Hezbollah, regarded as the most formidable terrorist organization on the planet, would be encouraged by Tehran to launch attacks on Israel from Lebanon and to coordinate strikes against U.S. targets across the Persian Gulf, in Iraq and in the continental U.S. While Israel would enjoy a short-term advantage over Hezbollah forces in Lebanon, there would be long-term consequences for both Israeli and U.S. interests.
It would be costly in terms of lives, money and influence. Perhaps the most troubling outcome, says Rodgers, would be the likelihood of a prolonged military confrontation, which would probably spread to other gulf nations.
Any attack on Iran by Israel, he says, no matter how small, would surely escalate to involve the United States and its bogged-down forces in Iraq.
(Issue #9, February 27, 2006)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
More war for Israel coming with the bombing of Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/01/14/more-war-for-israel-coming-with-bombing-of-iran.php | |  | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:28 pm Post subject: Silence the War Drums |
| Silence the War Drums
by Ron Paul
Before the US House of Representatives, February 16, 2006
Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this very dangerous legislation. My colleagues would do well to understand that this legislation is leading us toward war against Iran.
Those reading this bill may find themselves feeling a sense of déjà vu. In many cases one can just substitute "Iraq" for "Iran" in this bill and we could be back in the pre-2003 run up to war with Iraq. And the logic of this current push for war is much the same as was the logic used in the argument for war on Iraq. As earlier with Iraq, this resolution demands that Iran perform the impossible task of proving a negative – in this case that Iran does not have plans to build a nuclear weapon.
There are a few things we need to remember when thinking about Iran and this legislation. First, Iran has never been ruled in violation of its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations.
Second, Iran concluded a Safeguards Agreement more than 30 years ago that provides for the verification of Iran's fulfillment of its obligation to not divert nuclear energy programs to nuclear weapons development. Since this agreement was reached, the International Atomic Energy Agency has never found any indication that Iran has diverted or attempted to divert source or special nuclear materials from a peaceful purpose to a military purpose.
But, this does not stop those eager for conflict with Iran from stating otherwise. As the Washington Post reported last year, "U.S. officials, eager to move the Iran issue to the U.N. Security Council – which has the authority to impose sanctions – have begun a new round of briefings for allies designed to convince them that Iran's real intention is to use its energy program as a cover for bomb building. The briefings will focus on the White House's belief that a country with as much oil as Iran would not need an energy program on the scale it is planning, according to two officials."
This reminds us of the quick move to justify the invasion of Iraq by citing Iraq's "intentions" when actual weapons of mass destruction could not be found.
The resolution's second resolved clause is a real misrepresentation of the Iran/EU3 talks. The "efforts of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom" were not "to seek...suspension of enrichment and reprocessing related activities..." As the EU3-Iran Paris Agreement makes very clear, the suspension of enrichment is a purely voluntary measure taken by Iran and is "not a legal obligation."
This is similar to the situation with Iran's voluntarily observation of the Additional Protocols (allowing unannounced inspections) without legally being bound to do so. Suspending voluntary observance of the Additional Protocols is not a violation of the NPT. But, those seeking to push us toward war with Iran are purposely trying to connect the two – to confuse voluntary "confidence building" measures taken by Iran with the legally-binding Treaty itself.
Resolved clause four of this legislation is the most inflammatory and objectionable part of the legislation. It lowers the bar to initiating war on Iran. This clause anticipates that the US may not be successful in getting the Security Council to pass a Resolution because of the potential of a Russian or Chinese veto, so it "calls upon" Russia and China to "take action" in response to "any report" of "Iran's noncompliance. That is right: any report.
Mr. Speaker, this resolution is a drumbeat for war with Iran. Its logic is faulty, its premises are flawed, and its conclusions are dangerous. I urge my colleagues to stop for a moment and ponder the wisdom of starting yet another war in the Middle East.
February 20, 2006
Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
Ron Paul Archives
Find this article at:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul304.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:35 am Post subject: Ex-U.N. Inspector: Decision Already Made To Attack Iran |
| Ex-U.N. Inspector: Decision Already Made To Attack Iran
http://www.bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=10282
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11812.htm
Ex-U.N. Inspector: Decision Already Made To Attack Iran
Ex-U.N. inspector: Iran's next: Ritter warns that another U.S. invasion in Mideast is imminent
By Brandon Garcia
02/06/06 (Santa Fe New Mexican, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The former U.N. weapons inspector who said Iraq disarmed long before the U.S. invasion in 2003 is warning Americans to prepare for a war with Iran.
"We just don't know when, but it's going to happen," Scott Ritter said to a crowd of about 150 at the James A. Little Theater on Sunday night.
Ritter described how the U.S. government might justify war with Iran in a scenario similar to the buildup to the Iraq invasion. He also argued that Iran wants a nuclear energy program, and not nuclear weapons. But the Bush administration, he said, refuses to believe Iran is telling the truth.
He predicted the matter will wind up before the U.N. Security Council, which will determine there is no evidence of a weapons program. Then, he said, John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, "will deliver a speech that has already been written. It says America cannot allow Iran to threaten the United States and we must unilaterally defend ourselves."
"How do I know this? I've talked to Bolton's speechwriter," Ritter said.
Ritter also predicted the military strategy for war with Iran. First, American forces will bomb Iran. If Iranians don't overthrow the current government, as Bush hopes they will, Iran will probably attack Israel. Then, Ritter said, the United States will drop a nuclear bomb on Iran.
The only way to prevent a war with Iran is to elect a Democratically controlled Congress in November, said Ritter, a lifelong Republican. He later said he wasn't worried his advice would be seen as partisan because, "It's a partisan issue." He said the problem is one party government and if Democrats controlled the presidency and Congress, he would advise people to elect Republicans.
Most of Ritter's hour-long speech focused on Iraqi weapons programs from shortly before the Persian Gulf War in 1991 to 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. He also discussed the weapons-inspections process during that time.
Ritter was in charge of U.N. weapons inspections until he resigned in 1998. Before the Iraq invasion, Ritter said, he told Congress that inspections needed to continue.
He also said he was a Marine in the Persian Gulf War and was part of an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s.
Throughout the 1990s, Ritter said, America's real policy for Iraq was regime change -- not forcing Iraq to disarm and destroy chemical-, biological- and nuclear-weapons programs. The U.S. insisted on regime change, he said, because it believes transforming the Middle East countries into democracies will help ensure American access to oil.
The policy, he said, was borne from a political problem, not a threat to national security.
Ritter said the CIA knew Iraq had no ballistic, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons by 1995. "We knew there were no WMDs in Iraq," he said.
Ritter blamed Americans' apathy for allowing Bush to claim there was an intelligence failure. Presidents can lie to the public too easily about national security issues because Americans aren't paying attention, he said.
"It's a damn shame there's so many more people interested in the Seattle Seahawks and the Pittsburgh Steelers," he said in reference to the two teams that played in Sunday's Super Bowl.
After his speech, Ritter took questions from the audience. The first questioner wondered whether the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were faked. Ritter, a fiery speaker, seemed irritated by the question and said the attacks were real.
Someone else asked if he was interested in running for Congress. While the question drew applause, Ritter responded, "I hate politics."
Ritter, 44, was promoting his book Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein. The speech was sponsored by Peace Action New Mexico.
Contact Brandon Garcia at 995-3826 or at bgarcia@sfnewmexican.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iran spurns Russian demand for enrichment freeze
By Oleg Shchedrov
5 minutes ago
Iran showed few signs on Tuesday that it was ready to strike a deal with Russia that could allay fears it wants nuclear arms and avert possible U.N. sanctions.
After two days of talks in Moscow, Russian and Iranian negotiators said they planned more discussions this week on a Russian proposal to enrich uranium for Iran, seen as a way to ensure Tehran cannot divert nuclear fuel into bomb-making.
But the two sides appeared far apart, with Iran's foreign minister ruling out any return to a moratorium on uranium enrichment, which Russia has repeatedly demanded.
"We discussed a joint formula and we will continue talks," said Ali Hosseinitash, deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security, who led his country's delegation in Moscow.
"Our assessment of this offer is positive," he added.
The Russians were more circumspect, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin saying only that Moscow's proposal had been examined in detail and that more talks were planned.
Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia's atomic energy agency Roastom, is due to travel to Iran on Thursday.
Kamynin, quoted by Itar-Tass news agency, said Moscow had again stressed that Iran must restore the enrichment moratorium.
However, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said this was out of the question and Tehran would press ahead with its nuclear work with or without the Russian plan.
"Returning to the suspension of our nuclear activities is not on our agenda," Mottaki said on his return to Tehran after talks on the nuclear issue with EU officials in Brussels.
U.S. officials suggest Iran is discussing the Russian plan merely to gain time, a view shared by many Russian commentators.
"Their aim is to haggle, to put off as long as possible the hour when sanctions from the international community become unavoidable," wrote the daily Izvestia.
Tehran has said it will consider a joint venture with Russia and possibly others to enrich uranium for power stations, but reserves the right to pursue enrichment at home as well. It says it wants nuclear fuel only to produce electricity, not bombs.
POSSIBLE SANCTIONS
Iran may face action by the U.N. Security Council after Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, formally reports on Tehran's nuclear program at a March 6 meeting of the U.N. watchdog's governing board.
He is expected to circulate his report to members of the 35-nation board on February 27 so they can digest its conclusions.
Diplomats say they doubt the Security Council will rush into sanctions, which Russia, China and other countries oppose.
It may first reiterate IAEA demands for Iran to answer questions still outstanding after three years of investigations and then consider expanding the agency's inspection powers.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier urged Iran to change tack to stave off punitive measures. "We do not rule out the possibility of economic sanctions completely," he said.
Germany and other European countries have hardened their stance on the Iran nuclear issue after repeated calls by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the destruction of Israel.
Russia and China, which could veto any move by the United States and its European allies to impose sanctions on Tehran, share concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions, but do not want to sacrifice their commercial interests in the Islamic Republic.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman again urged Iran to restore a freeze on uranium enrichment activities to create the conditions for a negotiated solution.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said it might be hard for Moscow to resist calls for U.N. sanctions unless Iran resumes the moratorium it abandoned in January.
Analysts and European diplomats in Tehran said Iran's tough line was a ploy to draw Washington into the nuclear talks.
"They know that the only way to address the issues they really want addressed, such as security concerns, is to talk to the Americans," said a European diplomat who said he had been told of the gambit by a senior Iranian official.
Iran's leaders, who want guarantees against any U.S. attack on a country listed by President George W. Bush as part of an "axis of evil," may believe the time to force the issue is now.
"They know that the Americans were not going to give up until they had sent Iran to the Security Council," said an Iranian political analyst, who asked not to be named.
"So they figured it was better to go to the council now, with America still struggling in Iraq and oil prices high, than say in two years when America may be in a stronger position."
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley in Beijing, Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo, Meg Clothier in Moscow, Parisa Hafezi and Paul Huges in Tehran and Mark Heinrich in Vienna)
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Feb 25, 2006 9:47 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 12:29 pm Post subject: The Caricatures in Middle East Politics |
| The Caricatures in Middle East Politics
James Petras and Robin Eastman-Abaya
February 19, 2006
The center piece of the current explosive confrontation between Islamic and Arab protestors, political leaders and governments and the US and Western European regimes and publishers is rooted in Israeli efforts to polarize the world in its favor and to promote isolation, economic sanctions and/or a military attack on Iran. There are several key questions, which almost all commentators and analysts have failed to address. These include: Why did the “cartoons” get published in Denmark?
What is the political background of “Flemming Rose” the cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten, who solicited, selected and published the cartoons?
What larger issues coincide with the timing of the cartoons publication and reproduction?
Who “benefits” from the publication of the cartoons and the ensuing confrontation between the Arabs/Islam and the West?
What is the contemporary political context of the Arab/Islam protests?
How is the Israeli secret service, Mossad, implicated in provoking the Western-Islamic/Arab conflict, and how do the consequences measure up to their expectations?
A starting point for analyzing the cartoon controversy, which has been a focus for attacking Muslims and Muslim countries as intolerant of Western ‘freedom of expression’ is the long-standing role of Denmark as a major operation point for Mossad activity in Europe. Re-phrased: How could a tiny Scandinavian country of 5.4 citizens and residents (200,000 or less than 3% of whom are Muslim), renowned for fairy tales, ham and cheese, have become a target for the fury of millions of practicing Muslims from Afghanistan to Palestine, from Indonesia to Libya and into the streets of cities all over the world with significant Muslim populations? Why, after the bombing of Baghdad, the tortures of Abu Ghariab, the massacres in Fallujah and the utter destitution of the entire Iraqi and Afghan people…would Moslems turn their anger at symbols of Denmark from its tinned cookies to its Embassies and overseas business offices?
The story, presented with straight faces, by television news-people, is of, Mr. ‘Flemming Rose’, a crusading cultural editor of a widely read Danish daily newspaper who wanted to counter the growing ‘political correctness’ of Europeans about criticizing Moslems and which he compared to the ‘self-censorship’ he had witnessed in his native Soviet Union. The oddly named Ukrainian-born editor of the culture page of the Jyllands-Posten commissioned Danish cartoonists to submit a series of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed as they (the Danish cartoonists) might imagine him. However four of the twelve cartoons selected for publication were illustrated by ‘Rose's’ own staff including the most controversial ‘bomb in the turban’ one. Braving Denmark's anti-blasphemy laws Mr. Rose published the cartoons on September 30, 2005 and the rest is history…
A huge world wide attack on the West's “sacred right to free expression” erupted in the Moslem world with millions of shocked Europeans and North Americans rushing to defend their cherished freedoms in this ‘clash of civilizations’. Syria and Iran were prominently blamed for the stirring up of furious believers in the streets of Damascus and Teheran, Beirut and in the slums of Gaza. According to US Secretary Rice, "Iran and Syria have gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes and the world ought to call them on it." The Pakistani and Libyan authorities allied to the US fired on demonstrators killing and wounding scores while numerous religious leaders were arrested. The Western governments urged their Arab and Moslem allies to prevent more attacks on Danish products and property and blamed those unable to quell the fury with complicity and instigation. All of this was over a series of cartoons, or so we are told.
The cultural editor, ‘Flemming Rose’, who soon tired of being surrounded by a team of Danish police and security to protect him from assassination and missing his daily jogs through his tranquil Copenhagen neighborhood, chose to seek safe haven in Miami, Florida (rather than his native Ukraine) among the Cuban exiles, Israeli sayanim*(see footnote) and Mah Jong-playing retirees as the drama plays on.
Denmark Center of Mossad Activity
Why Denmark? Could this crudely manufactured controversy have been generated on the pages of any major London or New York paper? Who would wish to put Denmark at the center of this ‘clash of civilization’ – appearing as a script from some grade B Islamophobic thriller?
An interesting chapter in former Israeli Mossad agent, Victor J. Ostrovsky's book, By Way of Deception (1990 St. Martin's Press), outlines the close relationship between the workings of the Danish intelligence services and the Israeli Mossad over decades:
“The relationship between the Mossad and Danish intelligence is so intimate as to be indecent. But it is not the Mossad's virtue that is compromised by the arrangement; it's Denmark's. And that's because the Danish are under the mistaken impression that because they saved a lot of Jews in World War II, the Israelis are grateful and they can trust the Mossad.”
The Mossad has the capacity to monitor the entire population of Arabs and especially Palestinians (presumably including those with Danish citizenship) through their special relations with the Danes:
“…a Mossad man monitors “all Arabic and Palestinian-related messages(among Denmarks Arab community) coming into their (the Danish Civil Security Service)headquarters…an extraordinary arrangement for a foreign intelligence service.”
The Danish Intelligence officers’ high regard for their Israeli Mossad office mates is apparently not, according to Ostrovsky, reciprocated:
“The Mossad have such contempt for their Danish counterparts that they refer to them as ‘fertsalach’, the Hebrew term for a small burst of gas, a fart…they tell the Mossad everything they do.” Pp. 231-232
In return for their servility, the Danes get valuable ‘training’ from the Israelis:
Once every three years, Danish intelligence officials go to Israel for a seminar conducted by the Mossad”… which generates useful contacts for the Mossad “while perpetuating the notion that no organization deals with terrorism better than they (Mossad) do.”
In the wake of the US debacle in Iraq and the world's resistance to a massive ‘preemptive military attack’ or economic and diplomatic embargo of Iran, which could send oil prices to over $100 a barrel, Israel needed to turn the war of ideas on its head. It would make sense that a campaign, aimed to further whip up justifications to attack countries like Iran and Syria (Israel's current enemy du jour), would emanate from one of the US strongest European ally in the invasion and destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan and whose national intelligence apparatus (so fondly known as ‘fertsalach’) would be eager to serve Israel's interest.
Flemming ( or Flaming) Rose: Journalist with a cause
Given Mossad's long-standing penetration of the Danish intelligence agencies, and their close working relations with the right wing media, it is not surprising that
a Ukranian Jew, operating under the name of “Flemming Rose” with close working relations with the Israeli state (and in particular the far right Likud regime) should be the center of the controversy over the cartoons. “Rose's” ties to the Israeli state antedate his well-know promotional “interview” with Daniel Pipes (2004), the notorious Arab-hating Zionist ideologue. Prior to being placed as a cultural editor of a leading right-wing Danish daily, from 1990 to 1995 “Rose” was a Moscow-based reporter who translated into Danish a self-serving auto-biography by Boris Yeltsin, godchild of the pro-Israeli, post-communist Russian oligarchs, most of whom held dual citizenship and collaborated with the Mossad in laundering illicit billions. Between 1996-1999 “Rose”, the journalist, worked the Washington circuit (traveling with Clinton to China) before returning to Moscow 1999-2004 as a reporter for Jyllands-Posten. In 2005 he became its cultural editor, despite few or any knowledge of the field and over the head of other Danish journalists on the staff. In his new position “Rose” found a powerful platform to incite and play on the growing hostility of conservative Danes to immigrants from the Middle East, particularly practicing Moslems. Using the format of an ‘interview’ he published Pipes’ virulent anti-Islamic diatribe, probably to “test the waters” before proceeding to the next stage in the Mossad strategy to polarize a West-East confrontation.
Political Context for Action
There is a great body of evidence demonstrating that Iraq war was largely a result of a massive disinformation campaign by civilian militarists in the Pentagon and US Zionists in and out of high places in the Pentagon and civil society, in coordination with the Israeli state, which wanted Iraq to be destroyed as a viable nation. There is no evidence that the major US oil corporations pressured Congress or promoted the war in Iraq or the current confrontation with Iran. There is plenty of evidence that they are very uneasy about the losses that may result from an Israeli attack on Iran.
The Zionist succeeded in their goals in Iraq: establishing a beachhead in the northern Kurdish enclave (‘Kurdistan’), and securing assets in the new “Iraqi” regime via Chalabi and others.
The major Jewish organizations mobilized to oppose any critics of the Zionist policymakers, predictably accusing them of ‘anti-Semitism’. Nevertheless, over time, FBI investigations, CIA reports and judicial indictments have pointed to key Israeli operatives and their domestic collaborators as Israeli spies. While Israel benefited from the Bush-Blair invasion in Iraq, the same cannot be said for the United States. As thousands of casualties mounted, and war spending skyrocketed to hundreds of billions of dollars, opposition to the war escalated.
Israeli strategic plans to extend US military operations to Iran and Syria faced major challenges, from within the US military and public and even sections of the mass media. Mossad assets in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere had to settle for puff pieces on Iran's non-existent nuclear weapon threat, right after the same plot with regard to Iraq was exposed as a total fabrication. Another line of propaganda was needed to silence war critics and heighten animosities to the Islamists/Arabs in general and Iran in particular. This is where the “Flemming Rose”-Mossad operation came into the picture. The Islamic-hate cartoons were published in Denmark in September 2005 as Israeli and US Zionists escalated their war propaganda against Iran. The initial response from the Islamic countries however was limited. The story wasn't picked up in the International Herald Journal until late December 2005. By early January 2006, Mossad “Katsas” (Hebrew for case officers) activated sayanim (volunteer Jewish collaborators outside of Israel) throughout Western and Eastern European media to simultaneously reproduce the cartoons on Feb. 1 and 2, 1006. One such sayanim operation would have been the decision by France-Soir Senior Editor, Arnaud Levy and Editor in Chief Serge Faubert, to publish the cartoons. The paper's French Egyptian owner almost immediately fired the paper's Managing Editor, Jacques Lefranc, who, according to an interview with CNN, had initially opposed their publications, without touching Levy and Faubert.
A strident campaign was launched in practically all the pro-Western mass media condemning the initial, relatively moderate Islamic protests, which had occurred between September to December 2005 and rapidly provoked the subsequent massive escalation, doubtlessly aided by covert Mossad operatives among Arab populations. Mossad's ‘little farts’, the Danish intelligence fanned the fires by advising Denmark's rightwing Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen not to give way by refusing to apologize as the pro-Western Arab regimes requested and even refusing a request for a meeting with a group of Denmark-based diplomats from Arab and Moslem countries to discuss the ‘situation’.
“Flemming Rose”-Mossad tried one more gambit – to further heighten East-West tension. He publicly offered to publish any Iranian cartoons which would mock the Holocaust in ‘his’ paper’. The senior editor of Jyllands-Posten, apparently belatedly caught on to “Flemming Rose” hidden agenda and vetoed the ‘offer’ and asked Rose to take a leave of absence. Rose left for Miami, not Tel Aviv – where his residency might raise suspicions about his claim to be merely an opponent of “self-censorship”. In Miami, he no doubt will have the protection of the locally based sayanin, armed and train for “self-defense” of threatened Zionists.
Sayanim – Defenders of Western Civilization
The sayanim, derived, according to Victor Ostrovsky, from the Hebrew word ‘to help’ are a huge world-wide network of Jews in strategic or useful places (real estate, mass media, finance, car dealerships etc…) who have been agreed to help in Israeli Mossad actitivies within their own countries. This has been ascribed to the supra-national loyalty sayanim offer to Israel, above and not always in the interest of their home country. According to Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, in their detailed biography, Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy (Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2002), the notorious media mogul, Robert Maxwell, was a super-sayanim, providing cover, offices, political connections, money-laundering services and planted stories in the service of Israel at the Mossad's beheast. Jonathan Pollard, the American Naval Researcher jailed for espionage, is another notorious sayanim. The activities of these ‘helpers’ really range from the spectacular to the more mundane and, according to Victor Ostrovsky, in his 1990 biography By Way of Deception, the sayanim represent a pool of thousands of active and inactive individuals who can provide services discretely out of loyalty to ‘the cause of Israel’ as defined by any current Mossad operation. The cynicism of this arrangement is clear: It makes little difference to the Mossad if an operation, such as ‘Flemming Rose’, jeopardizes the national and economic interests of the sayanim's own country and , if exposed, might harm the status of Jews in the diaspora. The standard response from the Mossad would be: “So what's the worst that could happen to those Jews? They's all come to Israel? Great.” This recklessness clearly has ramifications for Jews who have refused to be recruited as Mossad helpers in affected countries.
Mossad War Propaganda and the “Cartoon Controversy”
Israeli leaders expressed their opposition to the Bush Administration's diplomatic efforts to engage the European powers in the Iran negotiations. Automatically and without question all the major Zionist and Jewish organizations in the US (AIPAC, Presidents of the Major Jewish Organizations, ADL and others) unleashed a sustained national campaign to mobilize congress and their “friends” in the executive branch to take immediate military action or to impose economic sanctions on Iran. The Bush Administration however while in agreement, lacked public support in the US and among his European allies and their national electorates. The Mossad policy was to create a pretext to polarize public opinion between the Middle East (and beyond) and the West in order to escalate tensions and demonize Islamic adversaries to its Middle East hegemonis pretensions. “Rose” cartoons served the Mossad perfectly. The issue could be presented as a free speech issue, a conflict of “values” not “interests”, between the “democratic West” and the fundamentalist “totalitarian” (as characterized by Pipes-Rose) Islamists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rose had solicited and selected the Islamic caricatures while his paper had rejected similar cartoons of Jesus Christ in an earlier context. The image of Rose as a “cultural iconoclast” - while working for a right wing daily whose daily fare was publishing anti-(Mid-East)immigrant “news stories” and favorable interviews with Zionists extremists - is prima facie not credible, although that image has been purveyed by all the major media outlets. While “Rose” initiated the international tensions, liberal and neo-con colleagues and his comrades in and out of the Mossad publicized his transgressions and provoked the ire of the Arab and Islamic world.
The cartoons, the subsequent insults and calumnies attacking the Islamic protestors and their secular allies throughout Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe eventually provoked major peaceful and then violent protests by millions of people. Visual images of violent protests and demonstrations were featured by the Western mass media, successfully creating the intended fear and apprehension against Muslim countries and minorities in Europe. Islamophobia gained momentum. Zionist propagandists in Europe and the US linked the defense of “free speech” issue to Israeli “security” policies. While the West turned its fury against the Islamic protestors, Israel blockaded Gaza and the US and Europe cut off all funding to the Palestinians, threatening the population with mass starvation for exercising its democratic right to elect its own leaders! “Rose's” free speech charade revived the discredited ZionCon doctrine of “Clash of Civilizations”. Playing on European Islamophobia and the increasing sensibility of practicing Moslems and Arab nationalists to Western abuses, it is likely that Israeli psych-war experts pinpointed the “free speech” issue as the ideal detonator for the conflict.
The democratic electoral victory of Hamas – dubbed by Israel as a terrorist movement – accelerated Israeli efforts to convince Western governments to insist that regimes in Muslim countries repress the ‘irrational Islamic masses’ or face Western censure or elimination of aid. (The failure to crack down violently on demonstrators was presented by the media as official approval or instigation) The major US Zionist organizations were able to influence Secretary of State Rice into blaming Iran and Syria for fomenting the worldwide demonstrations, from Gaza to the Philippines. The Israeli strategy was to use European outrage to weaken opposition to a military attack or economic sanctions on Iran and Syria.
Beyond Religious Blasphemy
While most establishment analysts have narrowly focused on the cartoon as the source and target of the massive global demonstrations, in fact it is at best the immediate detonator of a whole series of ongoing events of much greater political significance. From the “shock and awe” carpet bombing of Iraq, to the mass torture and routine everyday humiliation in occupied countries, from the utter destruction of Fallujah (an American example as Guernica was for the Nazis), to Israeli devastation of Jenin and Palestine, from the everyday assassinations of Palestinians by the Israeli occupiers, to the smearing of the Koran with filth at Guantanamo, Israel, the US and Europe have attempted to demonstrate that no Moslems are safe anywhere- not in their schools, home, offices, fields, factories or mosques- and that nothing is sacred.
The reasons that millions are demonstrating against a caricature of Mohammed published in an insignificant Scandinavian rightwing newspaper is that this is the last straw – the detonator – of a series of deliberate violations of fundamental social and political rights of Muslim, Arab and colonized peoples. While the Western media have focused exclusively on the religious content of the demonstrators, almost every country, where massive sustained demonstrations have taken place, has been subject to recent Western intervention, large-scale pillage of raw materials and/or experienced the destruction of their secular rights: countries invaded, homes, schools, hospital, systems of health and clean water demolished, agriculture and natural resources looted, museums, libraries and archeological sites pillaged and mosques desecrated. The present condition for material existence has been a Western inferno for all the people (both secular and observant) living in Arab or Islamic countries. Now their most profound, historic, spiritual reference point, the prophet Mohammed – the most cherished religious figure – has been repeatedly trampled with impunity by arrogant imperialists, their media servants, aided and abetted by the Israeli state and its overseas ‘sayanin’ operatives. It is cynical to suggest that practicing Moslems could desecrate the figure of Jesus Christ with impunity when that too is forbidden by the Koran.
As the Israeli strategists well knew in advance, the vilification of Islam was not taking place in a political vacuum: The material conditions for an Islamic-Arab uprising were ripe: Hamas had swept the Palestinian elections, the US military were aware that they were losing the war in Iraq, Iran was refusing to capitulate, Bush was losing public support for ongoing and future Middle Eastern wars, AIPAC, Israel's main political instrument for influencing US policy was under criminal investigation…Israel's strategy of having the US fight its wars was boomeranging. There was a need to revive the political-military tensions which they had exploited after September 11, 2001 to Israel's advantage: hence the “Flemming Rose” provocation, hence the coordinated, wide promotion of the act, hence the free speech agitation among Western ‘sayanin’, liberals, conservatives and neocon ideologues, hence the predictable explosion of protest, hence the ‘recreation’ of Mid-East tension…and the advances of Israel's agenda.
Clearly the burgeoning confrontation is more than a religious or free speech issue, more than the crude provocations of an errant cultural editor coddled by the ‘little farts’ of a penetrated Danish intelligence agency. What is at stake is the deliberate racist stereotyping of Arab, Islamic and Third World people in order to sustain and deepen their oppression, exploitation and subordination.
The most pervasive, prolific and influential source of racist Arab stereotypes are Israel and its overseas (particularly US and European) academics, terror ‘experts’, psychologists at the most prestigious universities and think tanks, who have provided the “psychological profile” to torture, humiliate, provoke and repress the millions struggling for self-determination against colonial and imperial dominance.
Once again Israel and especially its overseas operatives have placed the expansion and militarist interests of Israel above the interests of the people of the US and Europe. “Is it good for the Jews?”: A criterion as defined by the Israeli state, has led to the blind alley of massive confrontations, deepening animosity between Arabic/Muslim peoples and Western regimes. What appeared so clever to the ‘Roses’ of the world and their Katsas and docile Sayanim, in provoking confrontation may once again boomerang: The uprisings may go beyond protesting symbols of vilification to attacking the substance of power, including the Arab and Moslem pro-consuls and collaborators of the Euro-American political and economic power. While the Mossad is very astute in infiltrating and provoking oppressed groups, it has been singularly inept in controlling and containing the resultant uprisings as the recent victory of Hamas demonstrates and the success of the Iraqi resistance illustrates. The next controversial cartoon may show Moses leading his people into the desert.
Epilogue
While the Mossad-provoked ‘free speech versus blasphemy’ controversy between the West and the Islamic peoples continues to deepen, Israel proceeds to impose a Nazi-like economic siege over 4 million Palestinians, intended to starve them into surrendering their democratic freedoms. Intended is the concise term, Gideon Levy, star reporter for the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz (19/02/06) records Dov Weissglas, advisor to the Israeli Prime Minister, jokingly telling top officials “Its (the economic blockage – which may include electricity and water, as well as food) like an appointment with a dietician. The Palestinians will get a lot thinner but won't die.” The Israeli officials “rolled with laughter”. As Levy points out “more than half of all Palestinians are already living in poverty…last year 37 had difficulties obtaining food… 54% of the residents of Gaza cut back the amount of food they consume…child mortality rose by 15%…unemployment reached 28%.” Planned pre-meditated mass starvation of a ghettoized population, jokingly discarded by its executioners as a ‘visit to the dietician’, is an exact replica of the internal policy discussion of the Nazi high command over the population in the Warsaw Ghetto. Israel's capacity to impose and implement a genocidal policy has been greatly facilitated by the symbolic sideshow, which the Mossad-‘Rose’ orchestrated in Western Europe. “Cultural” conflict at the service of genocide – is hardly a clever ruse or merely a violation of Islamic sensibilities, it is a crime against humanity. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject: Iran was not referred to the Security Council for Noncomplia |
| http://groups.google.com/group/soc.culture.iranian/browse_thread/thread/103ab82f58e80392/97b2c605bff8834c
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060221_iran_was_not_referre.htm
OpEdNews.com
Original Article at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060221_iran_was_not_referre.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 21, 2006
Iran was not referred to the Security Council for Noncompliance
By Mike Whitney
How powerful is the mainstream media?
Is it powerful enough to convince the public that Iran was “referred” to the UN Security Council for violations to the NPT when, in fact, it wasn’t?
The IAEA did not report on Iran’s “noncompliance” to the Security Council; because there is no evidence that Iran has done anything wrong. As nuclear physicist Gordon Prather points out in his recent article, “March Madness”, “THE BOARD DIDN’T REPORT ANYTHING.”
Nothing?
Then why do the media keep insisting that Iran has been called before the Security Council for noncompliance?
Could it be that the media is simply executing an agenda that is deliberately designed to deceive?
There was no “referral” and there will be no “punitive action” because there are no treaty violations. As Prather states, “the IAEA Board ‘REQUESTED’ that Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei report to the Security Council”…”calling on Iran to-among other things-implement ‘transparency measures’”.
These “transparency measures” have nothing to do with Iran’s obligations under the NPT. They are additional demands made at the behest of the Bush administration to force Iran to provide access to “individuals, documentation relating to procurement, dual-use equipment, certain military owned workshops, and research and development as the Agency may request in support of its ongoing investigations”.
What does this mean?
It means that the Bush administration, which has already demonstrated its hostile intentions towards Iran, will be able to operate secretly behind its surrogates in the IAEA to locate all of Iran’s conventional weapons sites, radar facilities, and military installations so they can easily destroy Iran’s defensive capability when the inevitable attack is launched.
Isn’t this the same trap that Saddam fell into?
The IAEA should be condemning the administration's belligerence rather than facilitating another war.
The IAEA members are well-aware of the propaganda that is currently circulating in the wire-services and newspapers. Why are they playing along?
Do they really believe that war can be averted by capitulation to the superpower?
Iran has not violated the NPT, does not have a nuclear weapons program, and poses no threat to its neighbors or the United States. Never the less, the spurious accusations in the media have precipitated a dramatic shift in public opinion. For more than a decade only 6% of the American people considered Iran the “greatest danger” to the United States. Now (according to a recent Pew Poll) that number has jumped to 27%. Also, the survey showed that “nearly half (47%) said they favored military action, preferably along with European allies, to halt Iran’s nuclear program.” (Jim Lobe, “Polls: anti-Iran Propaganda Working”)
“Military action”? Even while the US is bogged down in an “unwinnable” war in Iraq?
Can anyone seriously doubt the shocking power of propaganda after seeing these polling results?
The public should not be worried about Iran, rather, it should be concerned about the implications of allowing one nation to arbitrarily repeal internationally-accepted treaties and dictate how the world will be run.
Iran has an “inalienable right” to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the terms of its treaty agreement. It should reject the efforts to overturn its legally-binding contract just to appease Washington.
Iran is not a pariah or a rogue-nation. It should fight to be treated equally and with justice.
The United States has steadfastly refused to provide Iran with any security-guarantees that it will not attack if it chooses to do so. In fact, Iran was originally duped into negotiating with the EU-3 (Germany, France, England) because it believed that the talks might produce a non-aggression pact between themselves and the United States. The Bush administration, however, does not believe in treaties and will not “lower itself” to sign agreements with those it feels are its inferiors.
There is nothing Iran can do to forestall the approaching war. The Washington warlords believe they are entitled to the vast oil wealth of the Caspian Basin and will not be deterred by the facts. Iran would be better off ignoring the ineffectual maneuverings of the feckless United Nations, and preparing itself for the struggle ahead.
Authors Bio: Mike lives in Washington State with his charming wife Joan and two spoiled and overfed dogs, Cocoa and Pat-Fergie.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course the serving Israel first US press/media has been in on the war for Israel agenda (as such is another reason the following hasn't been covered either to the extent that it should have been):
Treason at a high level: Pentagon Zionists, AIPAC and Israel:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/09/08/treason-in-high-places-pentagon-zionists-aipac-and-israel.php
Pentagon investigation of Iraq war hawk stalling Senate inquiry into pre-war Iraq intelligence :
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/01/30/pentagon-investigation-of-iraq-war-hawk-stalling-senate-inqu.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Feb 25, 2006 8:59 am Post subject: Iranian advisor: We'll strike Dimona in response to U.S. att |
| http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/687022.html
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last update - 05:18 25/02/2006
Iranian advisor: We'll strike Dimona in response to U.S. attack
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
If the United States launches an attack on Iran, the Islamic republic will retaliate with a military strike on Israel's main nuclear facility.
Dr. Abasi, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Tehran would respond to an American attack with strikes on the Dimona nuclear reactor and other strategic Israeli sites such as the port city of Haifa and the Zakhariya area.
Haifa is also home to a large concentration of chemical factories and oil refineries.
Zakhariya, located in the Jerusalem hills is - according to foreign reports - home to Israel's Jericho missile base. Both Israeli and international media have published commercial satellite images of the Zakhariya and Dimona sites.
Abasi, a senior lecturer at Tehran University, was quoted in the Roz internet news site, identified with reform circles in Iran.
Iranian affairs experts believe Abasi's statements are part of propaganda battle being wages by all sides - including Israel and Iran - in the lead up to next months United Nations Security Council debate on Iran's nuclear program.
At this stage, the possibility that sanctions will be leveled at Iran are extremely low.
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Mar 11, 2006 11:30 pm Post subject: Israelis Demand U.S. Attack Iran Now |
| Israelis Demand U.S. Attack Iran Now
Saturday March 11th 2006, 2:26 pm
Once again, the disgusting Straussian neocon owned Jerusalem Post has complained that “United States has until now not done enough to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons,” in other words the United States has yet to bomb the heck out of Iran, as the Jabotinsky maniacs in Israel demand. “America needs to get its act together,” brayed a senior Defense (Offense) Ministry official. “Until now the US administration has just been talking tough but the time has come for the Americans to begin to take tough action,” that is to say begin mass murdering Iranians.
According to this nameless official, as paraphrased by Yaakov Katz of the Post, the “only real way to stop Teheran’s race to obtain the bomb apart from military action was through tough economic sanctions that [would cause] the Iranian people to suffer” the same way a million and a half Iraqis suffered and died under medieval sanctions. “Once the people understand that their government is bringing upon them a disaster will they realize that the [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad’s regime needs to be replaced,” the official continued.
If the Israelis sincerely believe this, they should invade Iran on their own and leave the United States out of it. But then the genocidal Jabotinskyite Israelis own America, or at minimum its foreign policy, and direct it from the offices of the treasonous AIPAC, the Project for a New American Century, the American Enterprise Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Radical Jabotinskyites and Straussian neocons—Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Edward Luttwak, Henry Kissinger, Dov Zakheim, Kenneth Adelman, Scooter Libby, Robert Satloff, Elliott Abrams, Marc Grossman, Richard Haass, Robert Zoellick, Ari Fleischer, David Frum, Joshua Bolten, John Bolton, David Wurmser, Eliot Cohen, Michael Chertoff, and others—have labored over the past few years to turn the Pentagon and the White House into an Israel-First encampment at the behest of Jabotinsky Mafia dons in Israel.
Of course, the Israelis understand they cannot shock awe Iran on their own—and in due course, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and even mega-populated Egypt—and that is why they have spent years infiltrating the United States government, particularly the Pentagon.
Israel must be prepared “take military action” on its own, the Post summarized the nameless official as stating. But this option is not only undoable, it is impossible, and it was only mentioned as a way to get the attention of the United States and keep the war drums reverberating in the corporate media. “Israel has many drawers containing everything it needs to defend its citizens,” Defense (Offense) Minister Shaul Mofaz said mid-week. “We do not plan to turn a blind eye to these threats and we will do everything possible to make sure they do not materialize.” In other words, they will lean ever more on the United States.
One day, after the smoke and radiation clouds have subsided, the United States will lay in economic ruins, picked clean by the Jabotinsky maniacs in Israel. Like the people of Germany after the fall of Hitler and the Nazis, Americans will be considered the scourge of the world, a nation of people untrustworthy. Naturally, after the fall of America—a lot closer than many think—the tiny outlaw state of Israel will go by the wayside and become another small country in the Middle East. As the United States rebuilds itself, if indeed there will be anything left to rebuild, the people must make damn sure they get rid of all the Israel-Firsters, a partial list enumerated above, and make sure they never get back into power.
After arrest, trial, and conviction, these people need to be put on a ship and sent to a small island in the Pacific, an island situated in shark-infested waters, a sort of penal colony for Straussian neocons and their fellow travelers. In that way we can only hope they will never hijack our government again, a government based on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as initially proposed, but subverted over the years by sociopaths, power-mongers, miscreants, sleazeballs, and mountebank snake oil salesmen.
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=284 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Mar 14, 2006 6:27 pm Post subject: UN Council faces Iran impasse |
| UN Council faces Iran impasse
By Evelyn Leopold 16 minutes ago
The United States, Britain and France on Tuesday will move the Iran crisis to the full U.N. Security Council after failing to get support from Russia and China for proposals to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions.
At issue is a British-French draft of a council statement that would call on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment efforts, which the West believes are a cover for bomb making, and obtain a progress report from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency in a short period of time.
The talks on Tuesday among the 15-nation Security Council at France's mission to the United Nations are scheduled several hours after the five veto-holding permanent council members meet again in an effort to find a compromise on the text.
"We're trying to hold the perm five together," U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said on Monday, after the third session among the five ended without agreement.
"But reality is reality and time is an important factor given the Iranians continue to progress toward overcoming their technological difficulties" in enriching uranium, Bolton told reporters.
If the split continues, the Western powers may decide to drop the idea of a Security Council statement, which requires the consent of all 15 members. Instead they are considering putting a resolution to a vote and force Russia and China to abstain or veto, thereby breaking any semblance of unity.
IAEA ROLE
Russia and China have been uneasy about involving the Security Council, which has the authority to impose sanctions, and want the IAEA to retain control.
The United States wants Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the IAEA, to report to the council within 14 days on Iran's compliance. Russia and China prefer a six-week deadline and want the report to go to the IAEA rather than to the Security Council, the envoys said.
But Bolton said the case was now before the Security council, not just the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
"There's no reason why a specialized or technical agency of the United Nations can't report to the Security Council on a matter within the Security Council's jurisdiction. That's certainly our view," Bolton told reporters.
Iran, which denies it is trying to make a nuclear weapon, had rejected an offer from Russia to enrich Iranian uranium on Russian soil. But it then wanted to reopen the talks, which Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said would happen soon.
But Lavrov expressed impatience with mixed messages from Iran, saying he was "extremely disappointed with the way Iran in the course of these talks."
"Iran is absolutely no help to those who want to find peaceful ways to solve this problem," he said on Monday.
ElBaradei's report to the council a week ago said Iran had disregarded a February resolution from the 35-nation IAEA board urging it to suspend all enrichment-related work and answer inquiries on its nuclear program.
Instead, Iran is testing a cascade of 20 centrifuges -- machines that convert uranium UF6 gas into fuel for atomic power reactors or, if purified to high levels, weapons.
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2006 4:13 am Post subject: 'JINSA John' Bolton says use of force an option with Iran |
| 'JINSA John' Bolton says use of force an option with Iran
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,187680,00.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 15, 2006
Bush Reaffirms Ties With Leading Neocons
by Jim Lobe
If the medium is the message, then U.S. President George W. Bush's choice of forum to launch a new public campaign to defend his beleaguered Iraq policy should be troubling to those, particularly in Europe, who had hoped that his administration was moving toward a more evenhanded stance in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The staunchly neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), one of the most hawkish groups on the "war on terror" since it was created two days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and the Pentagon, has often taken strident positions against Arab and European allies whose cooperation has been sought by the administration itself.
Part of an interlocking network of neoconservative-dominated groups that include the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy, the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and the Committee on the Present Danger, which it founded, FDD has also tried to build support here for "regime change" in Syria and Iran.
Bush's speech, which broke little new ground, is the first of a series scheduled this week aimed at bolstering badly sagging public support for the U.S. occupation and reassuring voters that Iraq is not descending into civil war despite the widespread sectarian violence that followed the bombing of Samarra's Golden Mosque late last month.
"The Iraqi people made their choice," he said. "They looked into the abyss and did not like what they saw," he said. "By their response over the last two weeks, Iraqis have shown the world they want a future of freedom and peace and they will oppose a violent minority."
His speech comes amid a growing consensus among independent analysts here that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has successfully displaced Vice President Dick Cheney and the neoconservatives who clustered around him as the dominant influence on Bush's foreign policy.
Rice's rise and the eclipse of the neoconservatives, many of whom have had close ties to Israel's right-wing Likud Party, have, in this view, made Washington more modest about its ability to "transform" the Middle East by effecting "regime change" against governments that are perceived as actively hostile to the U.S. and Israel.
Similarly, Washington is now seen as far more eager to repair relations with European and Arab allies that were badly frayed during Bush's first term as a result of the unilateralist trajectory on which Cheney and the neoconservatives took U.S. policy.
In that sense, the White House's choice of the FDD as an appropriate forum would appear somewhat anomalous, given the prominence of neoconservatives in their leadership and the stridency of its views.
Among its board of advisers are Center for Security Policy president Frank Gaffney, who has attacked Bush for supporting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan; Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol; former CIA director James Woolsey, one of the most ubiquitous advocates of the notion that Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9/11 attacks in the run-up to the Iraq war; and the American Enterprise Institute's Richard Perle, the former ultra-hawkish chairman of the Defense Policy Board who reportedly suggested in a debate at the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (that was also addressed by Cheney) that 12 B-2 bombers could solve the ongoing crisis with Iran over its nuclear program.
The group, which is headed by Clifford May, a former New York Times reporter and communications director for the Republican National Committee, originally evolved from another organization called Emet: An Educational Initiative, Inc.
It was created in early 2001 by a number of wealthy Jewish philanthropists, including Dalck Feith, the father of Bush's former undersecretary of defense for policy and Perle protégé, Douglas Feith.
Its purpose, according to a 2003 article in The American Conservative, was to bolster Israel's image among U.S. university students and faculty in the face of the Palestinian Intifada. After 9/11, Emet was transformed into FDD with May at its helm and a former Israeli embassy official, Nir Boms, as its vice president.
"Although FDD's mission statement makes no mention of Israel, FDD's public statements and operations mostly concern Israel," according to the Right Web Web site, which profiles neoconservative and other right-wing organizations.
Indeed, the group first came to public notice in the spring of 2002, when Boms produced a 30-second television spot that played repeatedly on cable news stations in Washington called "The Suicide Strategy." The spot, whose main message was that there was no difference between Palestinian suicide bombings and the Sept. 11 skyjackings, depicted successive images of Yassir Arafat, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein against scenes of violence and mayhem.
"The suicide strategy threatens all of us – all those who are hated as 'infidels,'" the voice-over intones. "If we appease terrorism, we'll get more terrorism. Our way of life is threatened."
In the run-up to the Iraq war, FDD and May, a regular guest on right-wing radio and Fox News, gave voice to many of the same arguments in favor of preventive war that were issued by the administration and its neoconservative supporters, including the assertion that Hussein and al-Qaeda had a long history of cooperation. They also assailed Western European governments and the United Nations for failing to support the U.S.
Indeed, the UN, which neoconservatives have long attacked as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, became a major target of FDD when it hired former Wall Street Journal writer Claudia Rosett to investigate the UN's "Oil-for-Food" scandal.
With the help of the Journal editorial page, the Weekly Standard, and other neoconservative publications, Rosett eventually published more than 50 feature articles, testified against the UN before Congress on several occasions and, in the words of FDD itself, took the "scandal from a footnote to the front page."
In 2004, FDD, which had by then begun receiving government funds for training students and activists in the Middle East in addition to private contributions, submitted a brief to the International Court of Justice in support of Israel's construction on Palestinian land of the wall sealing off Israel and major Israeli settlement from the rest of the West Bank on the grounds that "it can benefit the Palestinians."
In the same year, it also helped found Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) and recruited former Secretary of State George Shultz and Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar to its board. FDD and CPD have run a number of joint conferences "targeted at the Washington policy community," particularly regarding Syria and Iran, and espousing the view that Washington faces "World War IV" in its battle with "Islamofascism."
That Iran poses a major threat to the U.S. is perhaps the most prominent current theme of the groups' work. After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections in January, May wrote that its "leaders have long taken direction from the Militant Islamists of Tehran and will continue to do so no matter how much money we throw at them."
In his most recent Web posting just last week, May quoted another Perle protégé, the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Ledeen, as identifying Iran as the terrorist puppet master that "now exercises effective control over groups ranging from Hezbollah, Ansar al-Islam, al-Qaeda, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Jaish-e-Mahdi, and Jaish-e-Huti (Yemen) to the Joint Shi'ite Army of Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and part of Saudi Arabia, as well as Islamic movements in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia."
At another FDD/CPD forum in the Capitol building last month, Center for Security Policy's Gaffney warned that Iran's missile program was designed to detonate a nuclear weapon "in space high above the United States, unleashing an immensely powerful electromagnetic pulse (EMP) [that] could reduce the United States to a pre-industrial society in the blink of an eye."
"The Foundation is making a difference across the world," Bush said Monday, "and I appreciate the difference you're making."
(Inter Press Service)
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=8703
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
