| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 8:47 am Post subject: Iran: The Next War (for Israel) |
| Iran: The Next War (latest Bamford article for Rolling Stone magazine)
Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.
BY JAMES BAMFORD
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/10962352/iran_the_next_war/1
Bamford discusses 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda on MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann':
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/08/07/bamford-discusses-a-clean-break-on-msnbc-s-countdown.php
Pro-Israel (AIPAC, JINSA and similar) Lobby Pushing US to attack Iran for Israel like it did in getting US into the Iraq quagmire:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/03/17/u-s-middle-east-policy-motivated-by-pro-israel-lobby.php
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Jewish Israel first neocon says: BOMB IRAN (for Israel!): We Must Do What?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski167.html
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
Bush administration would be open to bombing North Korea and Iran
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/11/16/1451242
In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today his government is nearing the “final step” in developing its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad did not provide details. He’s already announced Iran will celebrate its “right to nuclear technology” by the end of the Iranian year in March. His comments come two days after an unidentified senior US official told the Reuters news agency the Bush administration would be open to bombing North Korea and Iran. The official said: "We, the United States, and others who might be threatened by these developments will have to look at how to respond and inevitably I think people will have to look at the question of pre-emption."
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Gunning for Iran
Exposed : Where The U.S. gets its "intelligence" about Iran's nuclear program:
You must've heard the howls of protest from the International Atomic Energy Agency after the release of a US House of Representatives report on Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA branded the American report "outrageous and dishonest" for asserting that Tehran's nuclear plans were geared towards weapons. This, of course, was just the latest flare-up in the running debate over Iran's supposed nuclear ambitions. So where is Washington getting its information?
Try an Iranian opposition group known as the Mujahedin-e-Khalq - MeK for short. Given the debacle over Saddam's non-existent WMDs in Iraq, you'd reckon there'd have to be a touch of caution where Iranian exiles peddling nuclear secrets are concerned. But as Bronwyn Adcock tells it, when the MeK speaks, Washington hardliners listen.
Broadcast 11/04/06- Dateline - Australia - Runtime 27 Minutes
Reporter - Bronwyn Adcock
Click Play To View:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15562.htm
JINSA/PNAC (war for Israel) Jewish Neocon Richard Perle speaks at MEK terrorist event in D.C.:
http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com/2005/04/terrorist-group-to-hold-convention-in.html
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The Washington Times
www.washingtontimes.com
No cakewalk in the park?
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published November 13, 2006
"Ripley's Believe It Or Not" began in 1918 as a comic strip featuring unusual, hard-to-believe facts from around the world. Today it is a Web site for a global community that combs cyberspace for events so strange and unusual it is often hard to believe they are taking place. These days, you don't have to go further afield than Washington , D.C.
The neo-conservatives (neocons) who gave us the "cakewalk" prediction for Iraq before the war are now plugging "a walk in the park" in Iran -- i.e., a U.S. bombing campaign to consign the mullahs' nuclear ambitions to oblivion, or at least to retard the advent of an Iranian bomb for a few years, hoping that in the interim good democrats would rise up and send the clerics and their Revolutionary Guards packing.
Two Washington-based representatives of a global Fortune 100 company told their visiting senior executive this week a bombing campaign of Iran 's nuclear facilities "is inevitable while Mr. Bush is in the White House." The incredulous CEO thought his Washington eyes and ears were overstating the case. They assured him they were deadly serious.
Leading neocon Richard Perle, who led the intellectual charge for the ill-fated invasion of Iraq , believes two B-2 bombers, each with 16 independently targeted weapons systems, could punch out Iran 's nuclear lights. No Air Force expert we could find agreed. But the Pentagon's Air Force generals believe it can be done -- and successfully -- with a much larger operation, including five nights of bombing, some 400 aim points, 75 requiring deep penetration ordnance. Time magazine estimates 1,500 such aim points, or "viable targets," related to Iran 's widely scattered nuclear development complex. The Navy, with its carrier task forces and ship-launched cruise missiles, does not share the same degree of certainty.
No one has worked more assiduously for military action than Michael Ledeen, a neocon field marshal, who writes frequently about the "horrors" of Iran 's mullahocracy. His National Review Online commentary Nov. 1 was headlined "Delay." Mr. Ledeen has grown impatient over Mr. Bush's dangerous postponement of what he considers inevitable. "If the president knows Iran is waging war on us," wrote Mr. Ledeen, "he is obliged to respond; the only appropriate question is about the method, not the substance. If he does not know, then he should remove those officials who were obliged to tell him, and get some people who will tell the truth."
The truth has become an increasingly rare commodity in Washington . Mr. Ledeen concludes the president knows the truth, but thinks he may lack the political capital to directly challenge the mullahs. More likely, Mr. Bush's thinking has changed when confronted by the intelligence community's assessment of Iran 's retaliatory capabilities. They are described as "formidable." These include mining the Strait of Hormuz , the channel for two-fifths of the world's oil traffic, which would send oil prices skyrocketing to $200 per barrel almost overnight.
Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia 's ambassador to the U.S. , headed his country's intelligence service for 25 years. He warns that an attack against Iran would turn "the whole Persian Gulf into an inferno of exploding fuel tanks and shot-up facilities." Earlier this month, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards test-fired dozens of missiles, including the long-range Shahab-3 (1,242 miles), Shahab-2 (cluster warhead of 1,400 bomblets), solid-fuel Zalzals, Zolfaghar73, Z-3, and SCUD-Bs, all timed to follow by two days the completion of U.S.-led allied naval maneuvers in the Gulf that Tehran described as "adventurist." Warships from Australia , Britain , France , Italy , Bahrain and the U.S. participated.
Dubbed "Great Prophet," Iran 's 10-day war games were designed "to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message," said Revolutionary Guard commander Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi.
Iran also has control over Hezbollah whose terrorist arm has already reached all the way to Argentina (in the mid-1990s) and whose sleeper cells, from Saudi Arabia's eastern oil fields where Shi'ites are the majority, to North America, are still feigning sleep.
Russia and China have made clear they will not be part of any tough sanction regime against Iran . They both have strong commercial ties to Iran . Tehran is paying Russia $700 million for 29 air defense missile systems. China signed a 10-year, $100 billion oil deal with Iran .
What the neocons dismiss as the "nervous nellies" of the intelligence community may have slipped in to President Bush's morning brief a subversive quote or two from conservative historian Paul Johnson, e.g., "Statesmen should never plunge into the future ... without first examining what guidance the past could supply?"
Mr. Ledeen, who acts as spokesman for Iran 's suppressed democratic forces, says, "The first step is to embrace the unpleasant fact that we are at war with Iran , and it is long past time to respond." The Iraqi debacle, along with the fading image of the U.S. as the world's sole superpower, as well as of Israel as the regional superpower, evidently persuaded President Bush to further disappoint the neocons. The Iraq Study Group's (ISG) James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton wanted neocon idol Donald Rumsfeld replaced as defense secretary before going public with their findings.
The new defense secretary, former CIA Director Robert M. Gates, a close friend of Mr. Baker, and also a member of ISG, has long favored direct talks with "Axis of Evil" charter member Iran . Mr. Baker, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Gates are now on the same wavelength. They believe bombing Iran would be an unmitigated disaster for U.S. interests the world over. The alternative is to explore a geopolitical deal with a country that has legitimate security interests.
The neocons' ideas for a walk in the Iranian park are still very much alive in Israel , whose very existence has been threatened by the mullahocracy. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will make clear to Mr. Bush today during a White House visit that Israel is not prepared to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
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http://www.antiwar.com/orig/lind1.html
How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – and Launched a War
by Michael Lind
April 10, 2003
America's allies and enemies alike are baffled. What is going on in the United States? Who is making foreign policy? And what are they trying to achieve?
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http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
March 24, 2003 issue
Whose War?
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.
by Patrick J. Buchanan
AIPAC and the Neocon (War for Israel) agenda:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rf16XjbOUs
War with Iran:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15564.htm
U.S. naval armada set to sail into Gulf to 'intimidate' Iran :
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2454053.7506944444.html
IRAQ DISASTER WARNING - An Attack on Iran by Christmas?
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/11/12/iraq-disaster-warning-an-attack-on-iran-by-christmas.php
Nancy Pelosi and Israel
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=646
AIPAC and NeoCon Policy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rf16XjbOUs
Bush OK's Israel Attack on Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/11/10/bush-ok-s-israel-attack-on-iran.php
Israeli-US Strategy: Lebanon and Iran
by James Petras
www.dissidentvoice.org
September 7, 2006
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Petras07.htm
US naval war games off the Iranian coastline: A provocation which could lead to War?
by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061024&articleId=3593
Analysis: War on Iran started a year ago
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15192.htm
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America Moves Toward War with Iran: Part 1
10-16-06
http://hnn.us/articles/30797.html
Moves toward War with Iran: Part 2
10-23-06
http://www.hnn.us/articles/31051.html
[Notebook]
The Next War
http://harpers.org/TheNextWar.html
Monday, October 16th, 2006
Scott Ritter on "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/16/144204
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w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
Last update - 02:01 22/10/2006
Putin to Olmert: No military action against Iran
By Yossi Melman
Russian president Vladimir Putin denounced any military operation against Iran in a meeting last week with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Putin told Olmert in the Moscow meeting that foiling Iran's nuclear program could end in disaster for the world. Russian sources attached great importance to the Russian president's first mention of a military option in talks with an Israeli leader.
Olmert also discussed the Iranian nuclear program with Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in the first meeting in eleven years between an Israeli premier and a Russian defense minister.
During his meeting with Putin, Olmert didn't talk about a military operation, but emphasized that not only the U.S. but also Russia holds responsibility for handling Tehran. Putin recounted that in past talks with U.S. President George W. Bush and his aides, he had discussed how to prevent Iranian acquisition of nuclear arms. Putin asked if the U.S. could conduct a military operation and had a clear plan. He said the Americans didn't answer.
Putin's comments can be interpreted in two ways. One is that the Americans evaded the question, the other is that they didn't answer because they do not have effective military capability or an organized plan to substantially harm the Iranian nuclear program. In any case, Russia rejects an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. The Putin administration believes that only negotiations will prevent or at least delay Iranian nuclear ambitions.
Olmert asked Putin to join an American-European move to impose severe sanctions on Iran, which he referred to in a press briefing saying, "The Iranians need to be afraid something will happen that they don't want to have happen."
The Prime Minister's Office declined to provide a statement and said they do not comment on the content of the premier's meetings in Moscow.
Israel hopes that if Iran does not obey international demands and does not stop enriching uranium, Russia will threaten not to complete construction of the Bushehr nuclear reactor and not to supply the uranium needed to fuel it. The Bushehr reactor, slated to generate electricity, is about four years behind schedule in starting operations, a delay Russian and Western sources attribute both to technical problems in the construction of the reactor and to Russian government decisions. Israeli and American experts do not believe Moscow is interested in Iran having nuclear weapons.
The UN Security Council is continuing in its efforts to draft a formula for sanctions that is acceptable to all five permanent members.
/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=777566
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From: "Donald Jones"
Subject: RE: Bush Orders Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Eisenhower and Additional Navy Ships To Iran's Western Coast
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2006 19:14:09 -0400
The striking arm of the carriers is the F/A-18. Bush would have to suddenly strike Tehran and decapitate the entire Iranian government at one blow before doing anything else. F/A-18s and Tomahawks can’t do that. Otherwise, 50,000 Iranian soldiers would plunge into Iraq and attack our troops there. It would be like Custer’s last stand for us. Iran has about 750,000 regular and reserve soldiers plus 5,000,000 militia. The nuclear sites are well hidden and protected and we would have to use several dozen nukes to be certain of their destruction. That might result in half the world’s oil supplies being stopped at the wellheads. We don’t have the troops to attack anyone now. In 10 divisions there are 37,000 pure riflemen. Not very many. The CIA needs talk to the mullahs and senior Iranian military professionals about the consequences of any attack on us by Iran . This should be the CIA’s war, not the army’s. Until Bush ceases to appear to be an Israeli toady to the Arabs, we are doomed to endless conflict. I think we should tell the Israelis to take care of their problems while we take care of ours. But since Bush is a Mexican Israeli we are doomed to open borders and fighting Israel ’s wars for it.
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Sent: Sunday, October 15, 2006 6:22 PM
Subject: Bush Orders Nuclear Aircraft Carrier Eisenhower and Additional Navy Ships To Iran 's Western Coast
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff
"This is very serious," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq . He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)
Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College , says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is "very important evidence" of war planning. He says, "I know that some naval forces have already received 'prepare to deploy orders' [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date" of any possible military action against Iran . (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date--in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, "You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's a very significant order, and it's not done as a training exercise." This point was also made in the Time article.
So what is the White House planning?
As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.
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War Signals?
by DAVE LINDORFF
[posted online on September 21, 2006]
As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major "strike group" of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran's western coast. This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.
As Time writes in its cover story, "What Would War Look Like?," evidence of the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors "suggest that a much discussed--but until now largely theoretical--prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran."
According to Lieut. Mike Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the Second Fleet, based in Norfolk , Virginia , the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a little over a week. Other official sources in the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21.
The Eisenhower had been in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several years for refurbishing and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been scheduled to depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and possibly not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved into the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses and parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch of the "Ike Strike" group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.
"This is very serious," said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers' complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq . He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)
Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College , says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is "very important evidence" of war planning. He says, "I know that some naval forces have already received 'prepare to deploy orders' [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date" of any possible military action against Iran . (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date--in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, "You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It's a very significant order, and it's not done as a training exercise." This point was also made in the Time article.
So what is the White House planning?
On Monday President Bush addressed the UN General Assembly at its opening session, and while studiously avoiding even physically meeting Iran 's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was also addressing the body, he offered a two-pronged message. Bush told the "people of Iran " that "we're working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis" and that he looked forward "to the day when you can live in freedom." But he also warned that Iran 's leaders were using the nation's resources "to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons." Given the President's assertion that the nation is fighting a "global war on terror" and that he is Commander in Chief of that "war," his prominent linking of the Iran regime with terror has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his right to carry the fight there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the 2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan was also an authorization for an unending "war on terror."
Even as Bush was making not-so-veiled threats at the UN, his former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a sharp critic of any unilateral US attack on Iran, was in Norfolk, not far from the Eisenhower, advocating further diplomatic efforts to deal with Iran's nuclear program--itself tantalizing evidence of the policy struggle over whether to go to war, and that those favoring an attack may be winning that struggle.
"I think the plan's been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran ," says Gardiner. "It's a terrible idea, it's against US law and it's against international law, but I think they've decided to do it." Gardiner says that while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles, "the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can activate Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world, including Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia militias in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and shut the Persian Gulf." Most of the major oil-producing states in the Middle East have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a concern of their own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers, given the sometimes close connection of Shiite populations to Iran 's religious rulers.
Of course, Gardiner agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of military preparedness could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in the bargaining with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian coast reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm antiship missiles, and possibly even more sophisticated Russian antiship weapons, against which the Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy would risk high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with such a tactic. Nor has bluffing been a Bush MO to date.
Commentators and analysts across the political spectrum are focusing on Bush's talk about dialogue, with many claiming that he is climbing down from confrontation. On the right, David Frum, writing on September 20 in his National Review blog, argues that the lack of any attempt to win a UN resolution supporting military action, and rumors of "hushed back doors" being opened in Washington, lead him to expect a diplomatic deal, not a unilateral attack. Writing in the center, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler saw in Bush's UN speech evidence that "war is no longer a viable option" in Iran . Even on the left, where confidence in the Bush Administration's judgment is abysmally low, commentators like Noam Chomsky and Nation contributor Robert Dreyfuss are skeptical that an attack is being planned. Chomsky has long argued that Washington's leaders aren't crazy, and would not take such a step--though more recently, he has seemed less sanguine about Administration sanity and has suggested that leaks about war plans may be an effort by military leaders--who are almost universally opposed to widening the Mideast war--to arouse opposition to such a move by Bush and war advocates like Cheney. Dreyfuss, meanwhile, in an article for the online journal TomPaine.com, focuses on the talk of diplomacy in Bush's Monday UN speech, not on his threats, and concludes that it means "the realists have won" and that there will be no Iran attack.
But all these war skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all, it must be recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions the whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq , and the current situation is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United States , according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special forces operating in Iran , and now major ship movements are looking ominous.
Representative Maurice Hinchey, a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq War, informed about the Navy PTDOs and about the orders for the full Eisenhower Strike Group to head out to sea, said, "For some time there has been speculation that there could be an attack on Iran prior to November 7, in order to exacerbate the culture of fear that the Administration has cultivated now for over five or six years. But if they attack Iran it will be a very bad mistake, for the Middle East and for the US . It would only make worse the antagonism and fear people feel towards our country. I hope this Administration is not so foolish and irresponsible." He adds, "Military people are deeply concerned about the overtaxing of the military already."
Calls for comment from the White House on Iran war plans and on the order for the Eisenhower Strike Group to deploy were referred to the National Security Council press office, which declined to return this reporter's phone calls.
McGovern, who had first told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on the National Mall in Washington , DC , during an ongoing action called " Camp Democracy ," about his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned, "We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening."
One solid indication that the dispatch of the Eisenhower is part of a force buildup would be if the carrier Enterprise --currently in the Arabian Sea, where it has been launching bombing runs against the Taliban in Afghanistan , and which is at the end of its normal six-month sea tour--is kept on station instead of sent back to the United States . Arguing against simple rotation of tours is the fact that the Eisenhower's refurbishing and its dispatch were rushed forward by at least a month. A report from the Enterprise on the Navy's official website referred to its ongoing role in the Afghanistan fighting, and gave no indication of plans to head back to port. The Navy itself has no comment on the ship's future orders.
Jim Webb, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration and currently a Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia , expressed some caution about reports of the carrier deployment, saying, "Remember, carrier groups regularly rotate in and out of that region." But he added, "I do not believe that there should be any elective military action taken against Iran without a separate authorization vote by the Congress. In my view, the 2002 authorization which was used for the invasion of Iraq should not extend to Iran ."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061009/lindorff
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Chris Hedges: Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse
By Chris Hedges
10/09/06 "TruthDig" -- -- The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.
War with Iran —a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East —is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East , defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq , now occupied; North Korea , which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran . Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua , and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America . He knows nothing about the Middle East . He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.
These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States , slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.
But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.
The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East . Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran ’s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan , India and Israel . These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word “Dimona,” the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel , is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims’ existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?
Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making “preemptive” and unprovoked strikes.
Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon , where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon . And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.
“As a people we are enormously forgetful,” Dr. Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York . “We should have learned from history that foreign powers can’t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland . Napoleon learned it in Spain . The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia . We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq . Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can’t always succeed against the poor and less powerful.”
An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East . The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf , could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia , the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain , Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq , as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.
The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel . And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East . The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.
If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.
Chris Hedges is former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran , and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.
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World War W
by Michael Carmichael
October 10, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CAR20061010&articleId=3443
BREAKING NEWS: Eisenhower Carrier Group Sails for Iran Theater:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/trackback/1530
Chris Hedges: US to Attack Iran (Bush's Nuclear Apocalypse)
Chris Hedges: Bush’s Nuclear Apocalypse
By Chris Hedges
10/09/06 "TruthDig" -- -- The aircraft carrier Eisenhower, accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Anzio, guided-missile destroyer USS Ramage, guided-missile destroyer USS Mason and the fast-attack submarine USS Newport News, is, as I write, making its way to the Straits of Hormuz off Iran. The ships will be in place to strike Iran by the end of the month. It may be a bluff. It may be a feint. It may be a simple show of American power. But I doubt it.
War with Iran—a war that would unleash an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East—is probable by the end of the Bush administration. It could begin in as little as three weeks. This administration, claiming to be anointed by a Christian God to reshape the world, and especially the Middle East, defined three states at the start of its reign as “the Axis of Evil.” They were Iraq, now occupied; North Korea, which, because it has nuclear weapons, is untouchable; and Iran. Those who do not take this apocalyptic rhetoric seriously have ignored the twisted pathology of men like Elliott Abrams, who helped orchestrate the disastrous and illegal contra war in Nicaragua, and who now handles the Middle East for the National Security Council. He knew nothing about Central America. He knows nothing about the Middle East. He sees the world through the childish, binary lens of good and evil, us and them, the forces of darkness and the forces of light. And it is this strange, twilight mentality that now grips most of the civilian planners who are barreling us towards a crisis of epic proportions.
These men advocate a doctrine of permanent war, a doctrine which, as William R. Polk points out, is a slight corruption of Leon Trotsky’s doctrine of permanent revolution. These two revolutionary doctrines serve the same function, to intimidate and destroy all those classified as foreign opponents, to create permanent instability and fear and to silence domestic critics who challenge leaders in a time of national crisis. It works. The citizens of the United States, slowly being stripped of their civil liberties, are being herded sheep-like, once again, over a cliff.
But this war will be different. It will be catastrophic. It will usher in the apocalyptic nightmares spun out in the dark, fantastic visions of the Christian right. And there are those around the president who see this vision as preordained by God; indeed, the president himself may hold such a vision.
The hypocrisy of this vaunted moral crusade is not lost on those in the Middle East. Iran actually signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has violated a codicil of that treaty written by European foreign ministers, but this codicil was never ratified by the Iranian parliament. I do not dispute Iran’s intentions to acquire nuclear weapons nor do I minimize the danger should it acquire them in the estimated five to 10 years. But contrast Iran with Pakistan, India and Israel. These three countries refused to sign the treaty and developed nuclear weapons programs in secret. Israel now has an estimated 400 to 600 nuclear weapons. The word “Dimona,” the name of the city where the nuclear facilities are located in Israel, is shorthand in the Muslim world for the deadly Israeli threat to Muslims’ existence. What lessons did the Iranians learn from our Israeli, Pakistani and Indian allies?
Given that we are actively engaged in an effort to destabilize the Iranian regime by recruiting tribal groups and ethnic minorities inside Iran to rebel, given that we use apocalyptic rhetoric to describe what must be done to the Iranian regime, given that other countries in the Middle East such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia are making noises about developing a nuclear capacity, and given that, with the touch of a button Israel could obliterate Iran, what do we expect from the Iranians? On top of this, the Iranian regime grasps that the doctrine of permanent war entails making “preemptive” and unprovoked strikes.
Those in Washington who advocate this war, knowing as little about the limitations and chaos of war as they do about the Middle East, believe they can hit about 1,000 sites inside Iran to wipe out nuclear production and cripple the 850,000-man Iranian army. The disaster in southern Lebanon, where the Israeli air campaign not only failed to break Hezbollah but united most Lebanese behind the militant group, is dismissed. These ideologues, after all, do not live in a reality-based universe. The massive Israeli bombing of Lebanon failed to pacify 4 million Lebanese. What will happen when we begin to pound a country of 70 million people? As retired General Wesley K. Clark and others have pointed out, once you begin an air campaign it is only a matter of time before you have to put troops on the ground or accept defeat, as the Israelis had to do in Lebanon. And if we begin dropping bunker busters, cruise missiles and iron fragmentation bombs on Iran this is the choice that must be faced—either sending American forces into Iran to fight a protracted and futile guerrilla war or walking away in humiliation.
“As a people we are enormously forgetful,” Dr. Polk, one of the country’s leading scholars on the Middle East, told an Oct. 13 gathering of the Foreign Policy Association in New York. “We should have learned from history that foreign powers can’t win guerrilla wars. The British learned this from our ancestors in the American Revolution and re-learned it in Ireland. Napoleon learned it in Spain. The Germans learned it in Yugoslavia. We should have learned it in Vietnam and the Russians learned it in Afghanistan and are learning it all over again in Chechnya and we are learning it, of course, in Iraq. Guerrilla wars are almost unwinnable. As a people we are also very vain. Our way of life is the only way. We should have learned that the rich and powerful can’t always succeed against the poor and less powerful.”
An attack on Iran will ignite the Middle East. The loss of Iranian oil, coupled with Silkworm missile attacks by Iran on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, could send oil soaring to well over $110 a barrel. The effect on the domestic and world economy will be devastating, very possibly triggering a huge, global depression. The 2 million Shiites in Saudi Arabia, the Shiite majority in Iraq and the Shiite communities in Bahrain, Pakistan and Turkey will turn in rage on us and our dwindling allies. We will see a combination of increased terrorist attacks, including on American soil, and the widespread sabotage of oil production in the Gulf. Iraq, as bad as it looks now, will become a death pit for American troops as Shiites and Sunnis, for the first time, unite against their foreign occupiers.
The country, however, that will pay the biggest price will be Israel. And the sad irony is that those planning this war think of themselves as allies of the Jewish state. A conflagration of this magnitude could see Israel drawn back in Lebanon and sucked into a regional war, one that would over time spell the final chapter in the Zionist experiment in the Middle East. The Israelis aptly call their nuclear program “the Samson option.” The Biblical Samson ripped down the pillars of the temple and killed everyone around him, along with himself.
If you are sure you will be raptured into heaven, your clothes left behind with the nonbelievers, then this news should cheer you up. If you are rational, however, these may be some of the last few weeks or months in which to enjoy what is left of our beleaguered, dying republic and way of life.
Chris Hedges is former Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times and author of the bestseller “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” reports on Bush’s plan for Iran, and how a callous war, conceived by zealots, will lead to a disaster of biblical proportions.
Copyright ? 2006 Truthdig, L.L.C. All rights reserved.
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Take a look at the article about Elliott Abrams which is linked in the left margin of the following URL:
http://www.nowarforisrael.com/Rachel%20Corrie.htm
Even Colin Powell knows that the Pentagon has been hijacked by the JINSA (war for Israel) Neocons via Rumsfeld, and we know that JINSA is after Iran next:
Powell believes that JINSA Neocons have hijacked the Pentagon via Rumsfeld:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/10/08/a-war-for-israel-colin-powell-seems-to-think-so.php
Welcome to Fascist America:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/10/06/welcome-to-fascist-america.php
War with Iran is a genuine possibility, and it would destroy the prospects of progressive foreign policy reform for years to come:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectionfiltered=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12073
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BREAKING NEWS: Eisenhower Carrier Group Sails for Iran Theater
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/trackback/1530
by Dave Lindorff | Oct 9 2006 - 5:10pm |
The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Eisenhower and its accompanying strike force of cruiser, destroyer and attack submarine slipped their moorings and headed off for the Persian Gulf region on Oct. 2, as I had predicted in a piece in The Nation magazine a few weeks back.
The Eisenhower strike force, according to my sources, is scheduled to arrive in the vicinity of Iran around October 21, at the same time as a second flotilla of minesweepers and other ships.
This build-up of naval power around the coast of Iran, according to some military sources, is in preparation for an air attack on Iran that would target not just Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities, but its entire military command and control system.
While such an attack could be expected to unleash a wave of military violence all over Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and elsewhere against American forces and interests and against oil wells, pipelines and loading vacilities, as well as a mining of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, with a resulting skyrocketing of global oil prices, the real goal of this new war by the U.S. would be ensuring Republican control of the House and Senate.
It seems increasingly clear that the Republican Party is going to lose its grip on the House of Representatives, and that it may even lose control of the Senate, barring some dramatic October Surprise by the president. So far, the surprises have been working against Republicans, with the Foley sex scandal, the evidence that Abramoff's bribery reached right into the inner sanctum of the White House, and the deteriorating U.S. position in Iraq.
With the number of House seats reportedly "in play" now rising from 15 to 30 and now 50, President Bush is looking at the possibility of a blow out Nov. 7 that could see him facing a Democratic Congress bent on revenge for five six years of systematic abuse.
Bush has committed a long string of impeachable crimes against the Constitution, the Republic and the American people--everything from lying to the Congress and the 9-11 Commission, obstructing an investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, abuse of power, violation of federal laws like the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act, dereliction of duty and criminal negligence, and war crimes. He can expect a Democratic Congress to call him to account for at least some of these crimes, whatever House minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) may say today.
This means that the worse things look for Republican chances in November, the greater the likelihood that a desperate President Bush will order a disastrous attack on Iran--one that would have the country enter into a third, even worse, war even as it is currently busy losing two others. But Bush and his gang of cronies don't care about initiating a disaster. They're focussed on the disaster that will hit them if they don't turn around the November election. Sacrificing the country or its young men and women in uniform, or the lives of innocent Iranians, is not a concern, any more than it was when Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq.
Clearly such a war would be an act of madness, and yet we know that the plans, already drawn up, are being updated and fine-tuned now by generals and admirals whose twisted sense of patriotism has them giving primary loyalty to a demented commander in chief instead of to the Constitutional and the people of the United States, to both of which they swore an oath to protect.
I hope I am wrong about all this, but the sailing of the Eisenhower, which had been pushed forward recently by about a month by the Pentagon for clearly political reasons, makes me think I'm right. A key will be what happens with the Enterprise carrier strike force, which has already been on station in the Arabian Sea for six months, where it has been launching air strikes against Afghanistan and Iraq targets. Ordinarily, such deployments last six months and then the carrier group returns to base for resupply and for R&R for the crew. If the Enterprise is held over for a longer deployment, after the arrival of the Eisenhower, we will know that something serious is planned.
Meanwhile, journalist Larisa Alexandrovna, in the online publication Raw Story, reports that top military leaders are already engaging in "branches and sequels" planning for an Iran attack, which her sources tell her is the kind of planning that is done "after an initial plan has been decided upon."
What is deeply troubling here is the total silence on the part of the Democratic Party opposition. Not one Democrat in Congress, and as far as I know, not one Democratic candidate for Congress--not even anti-war insurgent Ned Lamont in Connecticut, has demanded an answer from Bush and the Pentagon for the obvious military buildup around Iran, or about published reports that the U.S. already has special forces in side Iran backing the terrorist organization MEK, and selecting targets for U.S. bombardment.
If and when the U.S. attacks Iran, leading to a predicable--if temporar--rallying around the flag by the American public, and to an upset win by incumbent Republican congressional candidates, Democrats will have only themselves to blame for the debacle.
But it will be the American people--and especially the people of Iran--who will be the victims of this treacherous deed and this treasonous failure of will.
_______
About author Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common Courage Press. Lindorff's new book is "The Case for Impeachment," co-authored by Barbara Olshansky. He can be reached at: dlindorff@yahoo.com
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Krauthammer, Iran, and the End Days:
http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=571
Attack On Iran Inevitable - Nuke Use In White House Plan
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15170.htm
House Approves Iran Freedom Support Act:
By JIM ABRAMS , 09.28.2006
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/09/28/ap3052830.html
http://www.newsone.ca/piercelandherald/ViewArticle.aspx?id=10432&source=2
US military Operations ongoing in Iran right now..
Col. Sam Gardiner on CNN, 9/18/06
http://thinkprogress.org/col-sam-gardiner-on-cnn-91806/
BLITZER: How likely is the U.S. strike against Iran? And would it lead to all-out war? Joining us now is retired U.S. Air Force colonel Sam Gardiner. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, the Air War College, and the Naval War College. Colonel thanks very much for coming in. He just prepared a paper for the Century Foundation entitled ?Considering the U.S. Military Option For Iran.? You speak to a lot of people plugged in. What is your bottom line? How close in your opinion is the Bush Administration to giving that go ahead.
GARDINER: It?s been given. In fact, we?ve probably been executing military operations inside Iran for at least 18 months. The evidence is overwhelming
BLITZER: Wait. Wait. Let me press you.
GARDINER: Sure.
BLITZER: When you say it?s been given. The president says he wants diplomacy to work to convince the Iranian government to stop enriching uranium, not go forward. ?I would tell the Iranian people that we have no desire for conflict.? He told David Ignatius of the Washington Post the other day. So what does that mean, the order has been given?
GARDINER: We are conducting military operations inside Iran right now. The evidence is overwhelming. From both the Iranians, Americans, and from congressional sources.
BLITZER: What is ?military operation?? Define that.
GARDINER: Sure. They probably have had two objectives going back 18 months. The first was to gather intelligence. Where is the Iranian nuclear program? The second has been to prepare dissident groups for phase two which will be the strike, which will come as the next phase, I think.
BLITZER: Preparing intelligence, that?s understandable using all sorts of means. They want to know what the Iranians are up to in terms of their nuclear program. But are you suggesting that U.S. military forces, special operations forces, or others are on the ground right now in Iran.
GARDINER: Yes, sir. Certainly. Absolutely clear the evidence is overwhelming from lots of sources, and, again, most of them you can read in the public. Seymore Hersch has done good work on it. There are lots of other people who have done that. I have talked to Iranians. I asked an Iranian ambassador to the IAEA, what?s this I hear about Americans being there? He said to me, well, we?ve captured some people who worked with them. We?ve confirmed that they?re there.
BLITZER: Yeah, but, you know, these guys ? the Iranians, you can?t necessarily believe what they?re saying. They could arrest some dissidents in Iran and say these are American spies. They do that all the time.
GARDINER: Sure. Sure. The House Committee on Emerging Threats tried to have a hearing some weeks ago in which they asked the Department of State and Defense to come and answer this question because it?s serious enough to be answered without congressional approval, and they didn?t come to the hearing. There are sources that I have talked to on the Hill who believe that that?s true and that it?s being done without congressional oversight.
BLITZER: Look, I was once a Pentagon correspondent many years ago, and in those days and in these days, as Jamie McIntire just reported, and as you well know from your time in active duty in the Pentagon, in the U.S. military, these guys are planning contingency operations for almost everything. If Canada goes to war against the United States, they have a contingency plan.
GARDINER: Okay, two differences. Number one, we have learned from TIME Magazine today that some U.S. naval forces had been alerted for deployment. That is a major step. That?s first. Second thing is the sources suggest the plan that?s not in the Pentagon. The plan has gone to the White House. That?s not normal planning. When the plan goes to the White House, that means we?ve gone to a different state.
BLITZER: You think it?s possible there is a little psychological warfare being played on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to rattle him. To spread the word. To put out this kind of information. To get him nervous, perhaps a little bit more agreeable to the diplomatic option.
GARDINER: It?s possible. It?s also possible that this path was selected a long time ago. You recall that even before Gulf II that a time when the president said we have no plan. I have no plan on my desk. In the summer of 2002 we began bombing Iraq. Operation Southern Focus, without congressional approval, without the U.N. sanctions, we went ahead and began bombing.
BLITZER: The argument at that time is if there were violations of the no-fly zone, U.S. war planes were flying in the north and the south and there were rockets or anti-aircraft fire going up, they could take those out.
GARDINER: Yes, but it was a campaign to begin the war before the war began. You know, I would suggest the evidence is there.
BLITZER: You see a similar pattern right now.
GARDINER: Exactly.
BLITZER: We?re going to follow this closely. Colonel Sam Gardener, thank you very much. We look forward to reading your report that the Century Foundation is putting out as well.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 27th, 2006
As Crazy As It Sounds
By Charlie Reese
As crazy as it sounds, President George Bush might be planning to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities.
There are two currents of speculation flowing through Washington these days. One current says that the Bush administration is planning the bombing campaign, but only as a bluff to force the Iranians to negotiate. The other current says that the Bush administration actually plans to launch the attack.
Unfortunately, I think the latter is the accurate one. So far, the Bush administration has eerily followed the exact same pattern it used to justify the attack against Iraq. Bush keeps insisting, without a shred of evidence, that Iran, despite its denials, is seeking nuclear weapons. Remember how he kept insisting that Iraq had huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?
Secondly, he has set up the diplomatic efforts to fail. By demanding that Iran suspend its uranium-enrichment program as a precondition for talks, he guarantees, of course, that Iran will reject that offer. It's like a wife telling her husband, "Sign over the house, the car and half your income, and then we'll talk about a divorce settlement."
Thirdly, Bush knows Russia and China will veto any U.N. effort to impose sanctions. Therefore, one night he will go on national television and say we tried diplomacy and that failed, we tried the U.N. and that failed, so I'm ordering American forces to take out Iran's nuclear-weapons facilities.
The scariest part of this scenario is that Bush and his war hawks seem to believe that the Iranian people will blame their own government for the American attack, overthrow it and install a new government that will be eager to jump into bed with the U.S and Israel. That's really nuts.
It's the old "They will greet us with flowers and sweets and dancing in the streets" routine. You would think that 2,600 dead Americans and 20,000 wounded in Iraq would have convinced even the most ideologically blinded that you can't win hearts and minds by bombing bodies to bits. The Iranian people will do what human beings always do ? rally around their government and prepare to fight the foreign invader. It will end all hope of a democratic reform movement.
There is no question that we have the air power to substantially damage Iran's nuclear facilities, even though they are dispersed and some are underground. Iran doesn't have much of an air force, and I doubt its air-defense system would last more than a day. We will kill a lot of civilians in the process.
What would be the consequences? I don't know exactly, but I believe they would be very bad for us. According to polls, most of the world already thinks we're a greater threat to world peace than either Iran or North Korea. I think it would reduce our influence in Europe and in other parts of the world to zero.
The price of oil would certainly hit $100 or more a barrel, and that would have a devastating impact on the world economy.
Iran would retaliate as best it can. It would launch its missiles at U.S. forces in the region, and probably at Tel Aviv and Haifa in Israel. How effective they would be remains to be seen. Ernie Hemingway once quipped that the outcome of war is always uncertain unless, of course, you've decided to go to war against Romania. Iran might attack the oil facilities in the Arab countries or try to sink a tanker in the Straits of Hormuz. Shiites in Iraq might attack U.S. forces.
Pakistan might break relations with us or see its government overthrown. I imagine the Muslim world would see an attack on Iran as "the last straw." Syria might figure it was next and launch against Israel. Ditto North Korea. If you were on Bush's "axis of evil" list and you'd seen two countries also on the list pre-emptively attacked, what would you think?
The irony of it all is that despite the smear talk of Hitlers in the Middle East, the leader whose thinking process most resembles Hitler's is our own president. Like Hitler, Bush's ideological beliefs have blinded him to reality, and like Hitler, he seems impervious to advice that conflicts with his beliefs. There the resemblance ends, of course, but it is bad enough. Hitler learned that he couldn't win a two-front war, and Bush will learn that he can't democratize the Middle East with bombs and
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:55 pm; edited 33 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Fri Sep 01, 2006 11:30 pm Post subject: JINSA JOHN BOLTON AFTER IRAN FOR ISRAEL AT THE UN |
| 'JINSA JOHN' BOLTON AFTER IRAN FOR ISRAEL AT THE UN:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/03/07/jinsa-israel-firster-john-bolton-named-as-us-ambassador.php
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Iran refuses to suspend atomic work
By Edmund Blair
Reuters
Sun Oct 8, 12:27 PM ET
Iran insisted on Sunday that it would not suspend sensitive atomic work despite signs that world powers were close to agreeing on sanctions against Tehran.
"We believe that suspension is totally rejected and is unacceptable," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.
Some media reports had suggested Iran may be prepared to freeze atomic fuel manufacturing work for 90 days to allow direct negotiations with the United States and other major world powers to take place.
But Hosseini dismissed the reports. "It (the temporary suspension) has never been part of our policy and it will not be part of it."
Iran says its nuclear program will be used only for peaceful purposes and not, as the United States alleges, to make atomic weapons.
The United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany agreed in London on Friday to discuss possible U.N. Security Council sanctions to punish Iran for failing to heed demands to halt uranium enrichment.
Iran says it wants to master uranium enrichment to make nuclear reactor fuel for electricity generation. But the same process can also be used to make bomb-grade fuel.
"Using the language of threats and force against Iran will have no results," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by Iran's Fars News Agency as saying.
SEEKING TALKS
"Iran is interested in dialogue and talks to resolve its nuclear issue," the president said.
Western diplomats say Iran has been pushing for more talks as a stalling tactic, in order to avoid taking action.
While Washington, backed by Britain, is lobbying hard for sanctions, Russia and China have opposed this route and emphasized dialogue over punishment.
Political directors from the six powers involved in Iran's case are due to hold talks again on Tuesday or Wednesday and their U.N. ambassadors are expected to begin discussing a sanctions resolution the following day.
Any sanctions are likely to be limited and targeted at first, focusing on measures against its nuclear industry.
U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns has said sanctions could influence Iran's behavior.
"The Iranians are not like the North Koreans," Burns told the BBC in an interview aired on Saturday.
"They don't want to live isolated in the world ... They are concerned about it, and that is a good thing. It means that we have their attention, and it means the cost of their illegal activities is now going to rise substantially," he said.
Asked about North Korean threats to conduct a nuclear test, Hosseini said:
"We have always said we want a world without nuclear weapons ... and we hope this issue of the nuclear activities of North Korea is resolved through talks in a way that is in the interests of the international community and the North Korean people."
(With additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi)
Forwarded:
Oh no it appears that the Brits are not going to help Bush in his attack on Iran. . . .the alliance of the "willing" appears to be disintegrating. . . .
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100301577_pf.html
British Find No Evidence Of Arms Traffic From Iran
Troops in Southeast Iraq Test U.S. Claim of Aid for Militias
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 4, 2006; A21
ON THE IRAQ-IRAN BORDER -- Since late August, British commandos in the deserts of far southeastern Iraq have been testing one of the most serious charges leveled by the United States against Iran: that Iran is secretly supplying weapons, parts, funding and training for attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.
A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or any sign of it.
There's just one thing.
"I suspect there's nothing out there," the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. "And I intend to prove it."
Other senior British military leaders spoke as explicitly in interviews over the previous two months. Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.
"I have not myself seen any evidence -- and I don't think any evidence exists -- of government-supported or instigated" armed support on Iran's part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.
"It's a question of intelligence versus evidence," Labouchere's commander, Brig. James Everard of Britain's 20th Armored Brigade, said last month at his base in the southern region's capital, Basra. "One hears word of mouth, but one has to see it with one's own eyes. These are serious consequences, aren't they?"
They are. Allegations that Iran or its agents are providing military support for Iraqi Shiite Muslim militias and other armed groups is one of the most contentious issues raising tensions between Washington and Tehran. Most gravely, U.S. generals and diplomats accuse Iran of providing infrared triggers for special explosives that are capable of piercing heavy armor.
Evidence of Iranian armed intervention in Iraq is "irrefutable," one U.S. commander in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Michael Barbero, told Pentagon reporters in August. The lead U.S. military spokesman in Iraq renews the allegation almost weekly in Baghdad.
Iraq's remote Maysan province is "a funnel for Iranian munitions," said Wayne White, who led the State Department's Iraq intelligence team during the war and now is an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. White said that in the first year of the occupation a well-placed friend had seen "considerable physical evidence of it, and just about everyone in al-Amarah knew about it." Al-Amarah is the commonly used name of Maysan province.
Here in Maysan, Jasim Alawa Salum, an Iraqi father of 10 whose home is in a warren of thatched farmhouses near the border, agreed. "All troubles come from Iran," he said, bending his head to show a wound from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.
But Maj. Dominic Roberts of the Queen's Dragoons said: "We have found no credible evidence to suggest there is weapons smuggling across the border."
Asked why he could declare himself so confident that no arms were coming through, Labouchere mildly cited his confidence in Iraq's border force.
Guards at one of the 27 border forts now used to guard Maysan were dismissive of talk of military support from Iran. "It's just fabrication," insisted one, Haidar Hassan.
At one crossroads checkpoint, two border guards grinned awkwardly when a British desert patrol stopped in. No smugglers had come by, no untoward travelers, no problems, the guards said. The guards, however, come from tribes with a history of smuggling, and since the fall of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi border workers have redoubled their reputation for taking bribes.
To determine the truth of the charges, British commanders say, the British troops did something no other large-scale conventional unit in the U.S.-led coalition here has tried. They gave up their base.
Almost every night for months, rockets and mortar rounds had pounded Abu Naji, the outpost where British forces made their home outside Amarah, Maysan's provincial capital. In the base's last five months of use, 281 rockets or mortar rounds hit Abu Naji, Labouchere said.
Young soldiers would slip out of base at night to try to find the attackers. They would return in the morning as frustrated as when they left, he said. "The boys felt they were powerless," Labouchere said.
So the British forces packed up. The night before they left, mortars gave Abu Naji a farewell pounding.
About 5,000 townspeople gathered at the gates of Abu Naji on Aug. 24. When British troops pulled out that afternoon, the mobs moved in. Iraqi forces briefly tried to hold back the crowds, then gave way, said Maj. Charlie Burbridge, a British military spokesman at Basra. The mobs looted the base down to the bricks.
"This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!" loudspeakers at the local offices of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr trumpeted.
In their new mission, the British spread out over a desert carpeted with shrapnel, the legacy of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that claimed the bulk of its 1 million dead here in the deserts of Maysan. Pressing all hands into duty, a former tank crewman became a medic; the regiment chaplain took the wheel as a fuel tanker driver.
If trouble in most of Iraq had inevitably followed foreign soldiers, the soldiers in Maysan didn't seem to hear anything coming. Attackers had lobbed a rocket or mortar round at them during their first week in the desert, but there had been nothing since, they said.
At the least, Labouchere said, "I am satisfied our presence will reduce" the dangers for the rest of Iraq.
Ultimately, however, the British can do little more than demonstrate that the borders are closed, Labouchere said. Save for that, he said, they find themselves trying "to prove a negative."
? 2006 The Washington Post Company
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This seems to be the article that the guy's program (mentioned below) seems to be referencing in the opening of his broadcast in which he conveys that a massive military (US Navy) build-up is taking place for an attack on Iran between October 24th and November 8th (again, this guy is also a conspiracy theorist big time, so simply read this article and perhaps listen to the first 20 minutes or so of his broadcast via the link after the following, and check it out yourself to see how credible it is if you can):
This is serious if even just some of the stuff that this guy is saying is accurate (he is a bit of a conspiracy theorist around 9/11, but what he conveyed about a coming attack on Iran is very concerning as his most recent broadcast can be heard via the following URL - he was using material from globalresearch.ca ):
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Dan06.html
The March to War: Naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and the Eastern Mediterranean.
By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
October 1, 2006
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=N20060921&articleId=3299
Even Colin Powell knows that the Pentagon has been hijacked by the JINSA (war for Israel) Neocons via Rumsfeld, and we know that JINSA is after Iran next.
Powell believes that JINSA Neocons have hijacked the Pentagon via Rumsfeld:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2006/10/08/a-war-for-israel-colin-powell-seems-to-think-so.php
Last edited by Alpha on Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:29 am; edited 5 times in total | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2006 6:03 am Post subject: New 'winning strategy', same old war |
| New 'winning strategy', same old war
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI07Ak02.html
By Ehsan Ahrari
While the "war on terror" inside the United States is being reduced to winning the hearts and minds of Americans to vote for the Republican Party in November's congressional elections, major issues are percolating - and they don't bode well for stability in West Asia.
On Tuesday the latest version of the strategy to fight terrorism was released, coinciding with President George W Bush's warning to Iran over its nuclear program.
The new strategy, featured in a report that was drafted in 2003
and updated this March, focuses more on decentralized networks of extremists than on al-Qaeda, and singles out Iran as a potential source of unconventional weapons for terrorist groups.
The report also acknowledges that while the United States succeeded in undermining global terrorism after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US, the "enemy has adjusted to US defenses". "America is safer, but not yet safe," it warns.
Despite Bush's claim that Iraq had become the "central front" of the "war on terror", the report's emphasis is less on Iraq than on small terror groups "springing up around the world".
What it boils down to is that Washington needs fresh rhetoric to make Americans believe that their country is really "winning" the "war on terror".
The reader of the latest document clearly gets the message that it contains no new message. Why, then, issue another strategy? It is because the "war on terror" is being played to win electoral advantages. This was done in 2002 to win congressional elections, then in 2004 to help Bush win a second presidential term, and now it is being used as the US edges toward congressional elections again. And this time the stakes are high, as Republicans could lose both chambers of Congress.
In issuing the new strategy, Bush has drawn on analogies with World War II to urge people to heed his warnings and not repeat the mistake of not recognizing the dangerous development of events leading to the 1940s war. Bush compared Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin.
In major speeches on the "war on terror" trail, Bush has spoken of the "Shi'ite extremism" of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran and raised "the specter of an industrialized world subject to blackmail from nations awash in oil and nuclear weapons if the radicals achieve their aims".
Further, "The Shi'ite strain of Islamic radicalism is just as dangerous and just as hostile to America and just as determined to establish its brand of hegemony across the broader Middle East." And Shi'ite extremists "have achieved something that al-Qaeda has so far failed to" - taking control of Iran in 1979. A neo-conservative revision of the history of the Islamic Revolution of Iran is being presented to the US electorate.
Bush also had his take on Iran's goals: "Like al-Qaeda and the Sunni extremists, the Iranian regime has clear aims. They want to drive America out of the region, to destroy Israel, and to dominate the broader Middle East. To achieve these aims, they are funding and arming terrorist groups like Hezbollah, which allow them to attack Israel and America by proxy."
Returning to the issue of the Iraq war, Bush argued, "If we retreat from Iraq, if we don't uphold our duty to support those who are desirous to live in liberty, 50 years from now history will look back on our time with unforgiving clarity and demand to know why we did not act. I'm not going to allow this to happen, and no future American president can allow it either."
Major developments involving Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah have placed the US on the defensive.
In Iraq there is the rising specter of sectarian war, which has even contributed to the influential Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani withdrawing from the political arena. The latest US approach is to persuade Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to abolish Shi'ite militias, which is easier said than done. No one wants to talk about the fact that, if the current rate of violence continues, Maliki may need those militias just to stay in power. But the "rational" approach is to demand that those militias be abolished, which is why the Americans are recommending it.
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is in no mood to give up his crucial source of power by abolishing his militia, the Mehdi Army, and many see him as the "Nasrallah of Iraq", in reference to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon.
And talking of that. Washington neo-cons, both in and outside the US administration, were confident that the Israeli armed forces would annihilate Hezbollah, which did not happen. And now no one knows how to deal with the realities of power inside Lebanon, where Hezbollah no longer exists merely as a political party and as a fighting force. It has transcended that to become a bigger movement of which even Christian Lebanese are proud.
The release of the new strategy to fight terrorism coincides with the crisis over Iran, whose leaders Bush refers to as "tyrants", even though President Mahmud Ahmadinejad was duly elected.
The new hyperbole about al-Qaeda and Iran is aimed at catching the attention of Americans. But it is also possible that the US is getting increasingly frustrated with Iran, which refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, claiming it as a legitimate, peaceful right. Tehran's prestige is also high in much of the Islamic world.
The US appears not to be interested in rapprochement with Iran, which leaves the options of sanctions and, ultimately, military action. If the latter is the current thinking in Washington - and it seems to be, given the latest "war on terror" twist - then the US might be edging toward another war in West Asia.
Ehsan Ahrari is the CEO of Strategic Paradigms, an Alexandria, Virginia-based defense consultancy. He can be reached at eahrari@cox.net or stratparadigms@yahoo.com. His columns appear regularly in Asia Times Online. His website: www.ehsanahrari.com.
(Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing .) | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 5:12 am Post subject: CONSULT AMERICA -- BEFORE IRAN WAR! |
| CONSULT AMERICA -- BEFORE IRAN WAR!
By Pat Buchanan
So Winston Churchill is widely quoted. Those words, however, were spoken in 1954, decades after Churchill's voice had been the most bellicose for war in 1914 and 1939, the wars that bled and broke his beloved empire.
Yet, Churchill's quote frames well the main question on the mind of Washington, D.C.: Will President Bush effect the nuclear castration of Iran before he leaves office, or has he already excluded the war option?
One school contends that the White House has stared down the gun barrel at the prospect of war with Iran, and backed away. The costs and potential consequences -- thousands of Iranian dead, a Shia revolt against us in Iraq joined by Iranian "volunteers," the mining of the Straits of Hormuz, $200-a-barrel oil, Hezbollah strikes on Americans in Lebanon, terror attacks on our allies in the Gulf and on Americans in the United States -- are too high a price to pay for setting back the Iranian nuclear program a decade.
Another school argues thus: If Tehran survives the Bush era without dismantling its nuclear program, Bush will be a failed president. He declared in his 2002 State of the Union Address that no axis-of-evil nation would be allowed to acquire the world's worst weapons. Iran and North Korea will have both defied the Bush Doctrine. His legacy would then be one of impotency in Iran and North Korea, and two failed wars -- in Iraq and Afghanistan -- which will be in their sixth and eighth years.
Those who know him best say that George Bush is not a man to leave office with such a legacy. He will go to war first, even if no one goes along.
But before America faces this question, two others need answering.
Is Iran so close to a nuclear weapon that if we do not act now, it will be too late? Or do we have perhaps a decade before Iran has the capacity to build nuclear weapons?
Early this year, Israel was warning that if Iran was not stopped by March 2006, it would be too late. Iran would by then have acquired the knowledge and experience needed to build nuclear weapons.
The neoconservatives, too, have been demanding "Action this day!" and were stunned by Bush's statement at the United Nations that America does not oppose Iran's acquisition of peaceful nuclear power.
The other side argues that Iran is perhaps a decade away from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb, that the 164 centrifuges Tehran has are so primitive and few in number it will take years even to produce fuel for nuclear power plants.
While the International Atomic Energy Agency has not given Iran a clean bill of health, it has never concluded that Iran is working on a bomb.
Where does this leave America? With grave questions, the answers to which should be given not by George Bush alone, but by the American people through their representatives in the Congress.
Lest we forget, it is not President Bush who decides on war or peace. The Congress is entrusted with that power in the Constitution. The Founding Fathers wanted a clear separation between the commander in chief who would fight the war and the legislators who would declare it. They had had their fill of royal wars.
Congress, when this election is over, should return to Washington to conduct hearings on how close Iran is to a nuclear capacity, and place that information before the nation. We do not need any more cherry-picked and stove-piped intelligence to take us to war. But the critical question that needs to be taken up in congressional and public debate is this:
Even if Tehran is seeking a nuclear capacity, should the United States wage war to stop her? Is a nuclear-armed Iran more of an intolerable threat than was a nuclear-armed Stalin or Mao, both of whom America outlasted without war?
Today, Republicans and Democrats are competing in calling Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a Hitler who will complete the Holocaust, a terrorist with whom we cannot deal. But the Iran he leads has not started a war since its revolution, 27 years ago, and knows that if it attacked America, it will invite annihilation as a nation.
CONSULT AMERICA -- BEFORE IRAN WAR!
Bismarck called pre-emptive war committing suicide out of fear of death -- not a bad description of what we did in invading Iraq.
Today, President Bush does not have the constitutional authority to launch pre-emptive war. Congress should remind him of that, and demand that he come to them to make the case and get a declaration of war, before he undertakes yet another war -- on Iran.
Before any air strikes are launched on Iran's nuclear facilities, every American leader should be made to take a public stand for or against war. No more of these "If-only-I-had-known" and "We-were-misled" copouts.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20060926/cm_uc_crpbux/pat_buchanan20060926 | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Sep 27, 2006 9:29 pm Post subject: Iran, EU Meet in Berlin for Last-Chance Nuke Talks |
| Iran, EU Meet in Berlin for Last-Chance Nuke Talks
27.09.2006
Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani (left) with Javier Solana at a previous meeting
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,1922256_1,00.jpg
Iran's top nuclear negotiator arrived in Berlin for crunch talks with the EU's foreign policy chief Wednesday in a final chance for the Islamic republic to agree to a nuclear deal offered by world powers.
"Ali Larijani is in Berlin with his delegation to meet Javier Solana," an Iranian source close to the negotiations told AFP news service ahead of the talks, which state television said would be getting under way sometime Wednesday afternoon.
The discussions have been billed as a last opportunity for Iran to agree to a suspension of sensitive uranium enrichment activities as demanded by the UN Security Council and stave off the threat of UN sanctions.
The deal offered by the five permanent council members plus Germany asks Iran to accept a package of incentives in exchange for it freezing enrichment work the West fears could be channeled into producing nuclear arms.
Iran "optimistic," minister says
"The third round of talks between Solana and Larijani was supposed to be held today in New York but due to visa problems for Mr. Larijani it will be held today in one of the European countries," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said earlier.
"Since there is an atmosphere of understanding between Iran and Europe, we can be optimistic on the results of the meeting," Mottaki was quoted as saying by Iranian state television.
The official news agency IRNA said that Larijani could also use the occasion to meet German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The question of whether Iran is prepared to suspend uranium enrichment for a limited period of time before or even during full negotiations with world powers remains key to the success of Wednesday's talks.
Suspension under debate
However there was confusion over whether Iran is considering such a step. European diplomats said Larijani made an offer at his last talks with Solana but several Iranian officials have denied any suspension is on the cards.
"Such issues will not be addressed in the next negotiations," Atomic Energy Organization deputy head Mohammad Saeedi told the Iranian student news agency ISNA on Tuesday.
But the Washington Times newspaper also reported Tuesday that Iran was close to agreeing to a secret deal that would have it suspend uranium enrichment for 90 days in order for additional talks to take place with European nations.
Diplomatic effort
The US state department spokesman meanwhile spoke of "hopeful" signs from Iran but warned sanctions were still on tap if diplomacy failed.
The repeated delays for the latest Larijani-Solana meeting -- they last met Sept. 9-10 in Vienna -- appear to reflect intense diplomatic efforts to ensure the nuclear dossier does not go to the Security Council.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meanwhile again hit out at the West for what he described as its failure to allow Iran access to peaceful nuclear technology.
Controversial policy
"Today the people will not accept that some countries have warehouses full of nuclear weapons and then tell others that you cannot have a (nuclear) fuel cycle since you may deviate," he said in a speech.
Iran's uranium enrichment is particularly controversial as it can be used to make fuel for a nuclear power station but in highly enriched form can also be employed to make the explosive core of a nuclear bomb.
Iran insists that its nuclear program is solely for peaceful energy needs, vehemently rejecting US allegations that it is seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons.
The negotiations were given a last chance after Washington, under pressure from Europe and China, backed down on its demand for immediate sanctions against Iran for failing to meet an Aug. 31 UN deadline to freeze enrichment.
According to European diplomats, Western powers have set the start of October as a final deadline for Iran to give its definitive response to the Security Council offer.
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2187141,00.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Negotiator says no progress with Iran
By CONSTANT BRAND, Associated Press Writer
October 4th, 2006
49 minutes ago
A top European Union negotiator said Wednesday that "endless hours" of talks with Iran about its nuclear program have failed to make any progress, while the Iranian president said U.N. sanctions would not stop Tehran from enriching uranium.
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told the European Parliament that Iran must decide whether it wants to continue negotiations about suspending enrichment as demanded by the U.N. Security Council.
"Today, Iran has made no commitment to suspend," Solana said. "This dialogue I am maintaining cannot last forever and it is up to Iranians now to decide whether its time has come to end."
He suggested that if the talks ended, the standoff should be moved to the Security Council.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned the West that sanctions would not stop his government from uranium enrichment.
"You are mistaken if you assume that the Iranian nation will stop for even a moment from the path toward using nuclear energy due to your nagging," he told supporters, drawing chants of "Death to America!" from a crowd in Hashtgerd, outside the Iranian capital, Tehran.
"It's been 27 years that they (the West) haven't allowed us to use technologies that they possess," Ahmadinejad said. "This nation is powerful and won't give in to one iota of coercion."
Solana has been leading talks with Iran's top negotiator, Ali Larijani, on behalf of Britain, France, Germany, China, the United States and Russia, which are seeking to persuade Iran to suspend work on processing uranium in return for a package of incentives.
Iran insists it is developing enrichment technology to produce fuel for nuclear reactors that generate electricity. But Washington and others suspect Tehran's real goal is to use enriched uranium to build nuclear weapons.
Solana told the lawmakers that four months of talks with Larijani had not made any progress.
"We have reached common ground only on a number of issues, an important number of issues, but we have not agreed in what is the key point, which is the question of suspension of activities before the start of the negotiations" with the West on Iran's use of nuclear technology, he said.
Solana said he remained committed to continuing talks.
"I have negotiated endless hours, it has been my top priority, because I am convinced, I continue to be convinced that this is a crucial subject ... not only for the Europeans, but for the international community as a whole," Solana said.
Diplomats familiar with the Solana-Larijani talks said Tuesday that the effort was all but dead due to Iran's continuing refusal to suspend enrichment.
The talks had been seen as a last-ditch attempt to avoid a full-blown confrontation between Iran and the Security Council after Tehran ignored an Aug. 31 deadline to suspend enrichment or face punishment.
Foreign ministers of the major powers urging Iran to suspend enrichment could meet in the coming days to assess the status of negotiations, an EU official said.
The official refused to elaborate on when the meeting might take place, saying only that it was under consideration. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.
Before Solana spoke, Iranian state television announced that Ahmadinejad had ordered that the country's nuclear facilities opened to foreign tourists to prove the program is peaceful.
"After an order by the president ... foreign tourists can visit Iran's nuclear facilities," the head of Iran's tourism division, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, was quoted as saying.
The report did not clarify the definition of a foreign tourist.
The announcement came a day after Iran's parliament voted to debate a bill that would require the government to fingerprint U.S. citizens visiting Iran. The measure is a response to the fingerprinting of Iranians visiting the United States under a procedure implemented in 2002 that affects citizens of several nations.
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?sectionfiltered=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12073
Liberals, take note: War with Iran is a genuine possibility, and it would destroy the prospects of progressive foreign policy reform for years to come.
By Matthew Yglesias
Web Exclusive: 10.03.06
Last week, the Princeton Project on National Security -- an ambitious, years-long effort to outline a course for American foreign policy spearheaded by Anne-Marie Slaughter and G. John Ikenberry, and involving a wide range of accomplished figures -- released its final report, Forging a World of Liberty Under Law: U.S. National Security In the 21st Century. As one would expect from any project of this scope, there are various elements in the report with which one might quibble or disagree. Fundamentally, however, it gives the lie to the myth that liberals have no alternative to Bush's futile quest for unilateral hegemony and gunpoint democratization.
The report calls for a recommitment of American policy to international institutions and legitimate mechanisms of action, which entails a renewed effort to revitalize, reform, and deepen existing institutions while also creating new ones. It also advocates a rebalancing of grand strategy away from a narrow focus on terrorism and toward the full range of transnational threats.
One could go on, and perhaps one should. But there's a problem. Days after the release of the Princeton report, I attended a small conference (coincidentally hosted at Princeton) that brought together various more-or-less likeminded journalists and academics interested in national security policy. We had interesting discussions and even, I dare say, some good ideas. Then I took a train to New York to visit my father. Coming home, I greeted the building's doorman. We chatted for a while, and he mentioned that his nephew, who serves in the Navy, is about to be dispatched to the Persian Gulf.
He's not alone.
Rather a lot of naval assets are being readied for deployment to the Gulf these days, and rumors are flying that more may be on the way. Nobody knows exactly why this is happening. No official explanation is forthcoming from the White House or the Pentagon. But it is happening, just as the United States is constructing a large airbase in Tallil, Iraq, also with nobody talking about it.
One strong possibility, outlined in a recent report for the Century Foundation by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, is that the decision has already been made to launch air strikes against Iran. Less dramatically, the administration may simply be making sure that the option is in place in case they decide to unleash it later.
What is certain is that the possibility of war is significantly higher than many people seem to appreciate. The administration has spent a lot of time attempting the "diplomatic option" with Iran, but they haven’t conducted any actual diplomacy. Instead, the White House has offered Iran various opportunities to surrender on all the points under dispute, in exchange for which the United States will stop seeking to punish the country. A nice deal if you can get it, to be sure, but why would the Iranians give it to us? And, indeed, all signs point to us not being able to get it, which seems to be the real point. Bush isn't interested in a meaningful exploration of possible diplomatic agreements, but merely wants to be able to claim that he "tried diplomacy" and it "didn't work" before he unleashes the bombs and missiles.
This would be a bad thing on any number of levels, as I've had occasion to argue previously. One point, however, is especially important for liberals hoping to think creatively about the future of American foreign policy: a war with Iran would, in essence, render all of our grand schemes moot.
We all know what damage the invasion of Iraq has done to the international system and America's standing in the world, but the damage caused by a second war in the Persian Gulf -- even one not involving a land invasion -- would be incalculably larger. Unlike in the Iraq case, there isn't anything even vaguely resembling a case for American action under international law. This war would be unilateralism on steroids, leaving the United States utterly isolated in the global community. The international agenda, as a consequence, would shift largely to one dominated by the question of how to contain, constrain, and control American military power. Schemes to reform existing institutions and make them more effective would be moot. The only problem anyone would be genuinely interested in solving would be Washington's erratic behavior. Meanwhile, the worthy cause of waging war on al-Qaeda would become more and more indistinguishable from a looming clash of civilizations.
Perhaps worst of all, it's not clear that there's much liberals can do to prevent all this from happening. By most accounts, the White House is contemplating giving the military orders to launch a surprise attack on Iran. That, in turn, implies that the administration believes there's no need to seek congressional authorization for strikes before launching them, which would make the outcome of the midterm elections beside the point.
The best we can do, it seems, is to at least raise this issue and try to bring pressure to bear on the administration before anything happens. The War Powers Act states that "the constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2) specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by a attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces."
Iran, rather clearly, fits none of these cases, which would render an unauthorized strike illegal. But waiting for war and then filing a lawsuit afterward isn't going to do. Democrats should press the administration on this point. Many of its members have opined from time to time that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional. Does the Bush administration intend to follow it as a matter of policy? So far, Iran has played only a tiny role -- if any role at all -- in the midterm campaigns, but at the moment this may be the most important question we face as a nation.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
Last edited by Alpha on Wed Oct 04, 2006 4:33 pm; edited 2 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:07 am Post subject: The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks |
| http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=N20060921&articleId=3299
The March to War: Iran Preparing for US Air Attacks
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
September 21, 2006
GlobalResearch.ca
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Iran is bracing itself for an expected American-led air campaign. The latter is in the advanced stages of military planning.
If there were to be war between the United States and Iran, the aerial campaign would unleash fierce combat. It would be fully interactive on multiple fronts. It would be a difficult battle involving active movement in the air from both sides.
If war were to occur, the estimates of casualties envisaged by American and British war planners would be high.
The expected wave of aerial attacks would resemble the tactics of the Israeli air-war against Lebanon and would follow the same template, but on a larger scale of execution.
The U.S. government and the Pentagon had an active role in graphing, both militarily and politically, the template of confrontation in Lebanon. The Israeli siege against Lebanon is in many regards a dress rehearsal for a planned attack on Iran.1
A war against Iran is one that could also include military operations against Syria. Multiple theatres would engulf many of the neighbors of Iran and Syria, including Iraq and Israel/Palestine.
It must also be noted that an attack on Iran would be of a scale which would dwarf the events in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Levant. A full blown war on Iran would not only swallow up and incorporate these other conflicts. It would engulf the entire Middle East and Central Asian region into an extensive confrontation.
An American-led air campaign against Iran, if it were to be implemented, would be both similar and contrasting in its outline and intensity when compared to earlier Anglo-American sponsored confrontations.
The war would start with intense bombardment and attacks on Iran's infrastructure, but would be different in its scope of operations and intensity.
The characteristics of such a conflict would also be unpredictable because of Iran's capabilities to respond. And in all likelihood, Iran would launch its own potent attacks and extend the theatre of war by attacking U.S. and American-led troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf.
The United States must also take into account the fact that Iran unlike Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon would be an opponent with the capability to resist the US sponsored attacks on the ground, but also on the sea and in the air.
Unlike the former opponents faced by the United States and its partners, Iran would be able to target the military launch pads used by the United States. Iran would also be able to attack the U.S. supply and logistical hubs in the Persian Gulf. American ships carrying supplies, troops, and warplanes would be vulnerable to Iranian counter-attacks by way of Iranian missiles, warplanes, and naval forces. It is no mere coincidence that Iran has been demonstrating its military capabilities during the “Blow of Zolfaqar” war games conducted in late August .2
Iranian Preparations for an American-led Air Campaign
The United States has continually threatened to attack Iran. These threats are made under the pretext of halting the development of nuclear weapons in Iran. The development of nuclear weapons by Iran is something the IAEA and its inspectors have refuted as untrue3, but the United States insists on continuing the charade as grounds for a military endgame with Iran.
The threat of an American-led attack against Iran with the heavy involvement of Israel and Britain, amongst others, has primed Iran to prepare itself for the anticipated moment. Over the years, this has led Iran to stride for self-sufficiency in producing its own advanced military hardware and the development of asymmetrical tactics to combat the United States.
Iranian defense planners have stated publicly that they have learned from the cases of neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq. They are acutely aware of the U.S. military’s heavy reliance on aerial strikes.
August 2006 saw the start of the virtually unprecedented events of the Blow of Zolfaqar war games throughout Iran and its border provinces.4 These were similar to those conducted in April 2006.
The latter were also held during a period of tense confrontation between Iran and the United States.
April 2006 was a period that could have resulted in military conflict between both the United States and Iran. In April 2006, Iran had not only dismissed the deadline set on its nuclear program, but it announced in defiance to the United States that it had successfully enriched uranium for the first time.
Iran has taken the opportunity of the launching of both the April 2006 and Blow of Zolfaqar war games to display its preparedness and capability to engage in combat. Additionally, Iran has taken the occasion to fine tune its defenses and mobilize its military apparatus. This exhibition of Iranian military might is intended to deter America's intent to trigger another Middle Eastern war.
During the war games, the Iranian military has adjusted and modified its air defense shield for maximum dexterity and efficiency in preparation, to stop incoming missiles and invading aircraft..5 The war games have been an opportunity for testing of Iranian capacity to wage war in the air
The Iranian military has also reported the testing of laser-guided weaponry, advanced torpedoes, ballistic missiles, anti-ship missiles, bullets that pierce through bullet-proof vests, and electronic military hardware during the Blow of Zolfaqar war games.6 Surface-to-surface and ocean-to-surface missiles (submarine-to-surface missiles) in the Persian Gulf were also tested in late-August 2006. These included missiles that are invisible to radar and can use multiple warheads or carry multiple payloads to hit numerous targets simultaneously.
Iran has also tested a “2,000 pound guided-bomb with long-range capabilities.” This “2,000 pound bomb” is said to be a “special weapon developed for penetrating military, economic and strategic targets located deep underground or on the soil of the [impending] enemy.”7 In the case of war, this weapon could be directed against Anglo-American military infrastructure in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf. This guided bomb is an unmanned aircraft carrying an explosive warhead. Following the execution of the Blow of Zolfaqar war games, the Iranian Defense Minister stated that “Iran now joins the few countries that possess guided missile technology,”8
Iran has also been manufacturing its own warplanes,9 submarines, attack helicopters, tanks, torpedoes, and missiles. This includes remote-controlled modified Maverick Missiles.10 Brigadier-General Amini, the Deputy Commander of the Air Branch (Air Force) of the Regular Forces, has highlighted that Iran has starting the development and manufacturing of new types of warplanes besides the “Lighting fighter jets” that have been showcased in Northern Iran.11
To discourage the United States in its plans to attack Iran, the Iranian military has additionally been showcasing its abilities to dog fight in the air with its fighter jets.12 Iranian fighter and bomber jets have been progressively equipped with advanced software and hardware, developed in Iran or by way of technology transfers from China, the Russian Federation, and the republics of the former Soviet Union.
Iranian Commanders have also stated that Iran can track and hit warplanes without using conventional radar. Iran has also been showcasing its signal jamming devices and electronic military hardware, which it compares to NATO standards13.
Warnings to the United States To Stop Its War Plans
In Iran military commanders and state officials have also directly warned the United States to halt its march towards war in the Middle East. An account of a statement by Major-General Salehi, commander of the Iranian Army, sums up the generic view of Iranian military officials and planners in the advent of another Middle Eastern war initiated by the United States;
“Pointing to the joint maneuvers to be carried out by the U.S. army [meaning military] and some other countries in the regional waters in the coming days, the General said that the U.S. presence in the region [Middle East] is considered as a threat to the security of the regional countries, and further warned Washington that in case the U.S. dares to practice threats [by actually attacking], it will then have to face a defeat as bad as the one that the Zionists [Israel] had to sustain in Lebanon.”14
The Iranian Defence Minister has said “that his ministry is now equipping the border units of the army with modern military tools and weapons in a bid to increase their military capabilities,”15 and “that any possible enemy invasion of Iran will receive a severe blow, adding that failures of alien troops [meaning U.S., British, Coalition, and NATO forces] in Iraq and Afghanistan have taught trans-regional powers extreme caution.”16
Other examples of public warnings by Iranian military commanders directed at the United States and its partners include;
Acting Deputy Commander [Brigadier-General Ahmadi] of the Iranian Mobilized Forces (Basij), noting the intensification of the psychological operations and pressures against Iran, stressed that his troops are fully prepared to encounter “any stupid act by the enemies.”17 (September 9, 2006)
[Brigadier-General Mohammad Hejazi] advised the U.S. to relinquish the idea of invading Iran, stressing that as soon as the U.S. dares to make such a big mistake, it will lose its forged reputation due to its [the U.S. military’s] frequent and shocking defeats from the Iranian troops.18 (September 10, 2006)
[Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Major-General Safavi has warned that Revolutionary Guard] ground troops form a defensive force, but meantime warned that in case any foreign threats are posed to Iran, [assured that the] IRGC adopts an aggressive strategy and hits enemy targets in strategic depth. He also described the southwestern province of Khuzestan as the most strategic region of the country, saying, “Considering that Khuzestan is a border province located at our sensitive borders with Iraq where British and American occupying troops aim at devising cultural and security plots for Khuzestani people through their intelligence organizations and bodies, IRGC and Basij troops should maintain their preparedness at [the] highest levels possible in order to confront and defuse any such measures by the enemies.”19 (September 13, 2006: Also See British Troops Mobilizing on the Iranian Border)
During the August war games, Iranian military commanders claimed, in a gesture directed towards the United States, Britain, and Israel, “that no air force of any power stationed in the Middle East is capable of confronting the Iranian military’s ground forces.”20
This might seem like a psychological tactic to influence morale on both sides and deter any possible aerial assaults against Iran. This statement cannot be easily overruled if a comprehensive analysis is made and studied. In this regard, one must look at Lebanon, where Hezbollah and the Lebanese Resistance were able to withstand Israeli air raids and overcome the Israeli military on the ground. The Lebanese Resistance is reported as being armed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. What would an Iranian defensive of a larger magnitude, with state resources and air capabilities, be like?
The anticipation of a conflict are also coming from Iraq. Iraqi leaders have been charging that the United States and Britain plan on attacking Iran from Iraqi territory. Government representatives of Anglo-American occupied Iraq have asked that Iraq not be turned into a theatre of war between the United States and Iran. “We do not want Iraq to become an arena where other states [i.e., the United States, Britain, and Iran] settle their accounts,”21 said the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih while visiting the Iranian capital, Tehran. This message looked as if it was mainly directed at the United States, as well as Iran.
Iran Always a Military Objective for the United States Washington: “Anyone can go to Baghdad! Real Men go to Tehran!”
According to Michel Chossudovsky (The Next Phase of the Middle East War, September, 2006), the war on Iran is another phase of a “military roadmap” which includes the invasions of Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003) and the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon (2006) as earlier stages.
In May, 2003 after the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, the motto in Washington D.C. was
“Anyone can go to Baghdad! Real men go to Tehran!”
One should ask why "real" men would continue towards Tehran after the invasion of Iraq. This slogan demonstrates that Iran was an objective or a phase in a broader military operation. With that said, Washington would prefer some form of internal "non-violent" regime change in Iran leading to American control of the Iranian economy and oil resources rather than a high-risk and high cost military confrontation. The shape and nature of this conflict, however, is uncertain.
The possibility of conflict with Iran and a major aerial assault are widely known.
The United States has been planning to attack Iran for years. Colonel Sam Gardiner (Retired, U.S. Air Force) has stated that the campaign against Iran is one where “the issue is not whether the military option would be used, but who approved the start of operations already.”
The March to War with Iran and Syria
With time fleeting, the Iranian military is positioning itself in battle formations under the pretext of nationwide war games and other pretexts. Iran has been steadily strengthening its air defenses and air units in preparation for the possibility of strikes. Iranian and Syrian coordination is also intensifying with the passing of time.
An attack on Iran and Syria would be a combination of heavy air bombardment by the U.S. Air Force, including the U.S. Army’s air units. It would also include a ground offensive led by the U.S. Marines and Army from the American bases surrounding both Iran and Syria. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard would predominately manage the theatre of war in the Persian Gulf, with a view to guaranteeing the unimpeded flow of oil through the strategic Straits of Hormuz.
The Israeli military would deal with military operations in the Levant. Both Israeli troops and Israeli public opinion are being prepared for the possibility of another Middle Eastern conflict. In this context, Israel would face the possibility of aerial assaults from Iran. Iran has threatened to retaliate if it is attacked, using its ballistic missiles.
British and Australian forces in southern Iraq would deploy with the strategic aim of occupying the Iranian province of Khuzestan and securing its oil. Khuzestan is where most of Iran’s oil fields are located. Meanwhile a naval build-up is developing in the Persian Gulf which also includes the U.S. Coast Guard and the Canadian Navy.
The United States and its partners meanwhile are continuing to marshal and siphon their forces into the Middle East and Afghanistan. Both the United States and Britain have promised troop reductions in Iraq, but are actually increasing their troop levels. It also seems that a muzzle is being placed on Lebanon to stop any attacks on Israel by the presence of troops from member states of NATO.
Syria also seems to be expecting a possible aerial campaign. A vessel sailing to Syria under the flag of Panama, the “Grigorio I,” has been reported to have been stopped off the coast of Cyprus transporting 18 truck-mounted mobile radar systems and three command vehicles for delivery to Syria. This equipment appears to be part of an air defence system.22
In Iran, the Intelligence Minister has warned that “enemies are seeking to create instability in Iran through different measures, including assassinations, explosions and extensive insecurities” and that “his forces, in cooperation and coordination with other governmental bodies, have defused enemies’ plots in different Iranian provinces, including Tehran.”23
Venezuela has also threatened to halt oil exports in the event of an Anglo-American aggression against Iran and Syria. Venezuela has gone on to caution that it will defend Iran “under threat of invasion from the United States.” This was a warning given to the United States by Venezuela during the Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Cuba.24
The United States has already started to target both Iran and Syria’s financial bodies and institutions in an act of economic warfare. Syria has in step with Iran taken “preventative steps” in early 2006 by switching from using the U.S. dollar to using the Euro for all its transactions. The head of the state-owned Syria Commercial Bank has said that such measures have been taken to protect Syria from American sanctions (economic warfare).25
Actions have been taken against the large, state-owned Bank Saderat of Iran by the United States.26 The Bank Saderat has been cut off from the U.S. financial system and its network(s). This is part of a deliberate objective to financially cut off Iran from the rest of the world. Three large Japanese banks, the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho Corporate Bank and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation have followed in step and will terminate business with Bank Saderat.27
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
1 Seymour H. Hersh, Washing Lebanon: Washington’s Interest in Israel’s War, The New Yorker, August 14 & 21, 2006
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060821fa_fact
2 Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War?, Global Research (CRG), August 21, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DAR20060821&articleId=3027
3 IAEA: US report on Iran “Outrageous,” Aljazeera, September 15, 2006
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/84145EE0-6DF6-467D-AB67-670A83EF307A.htm
4 Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War?, Global Research (CRG), August 21, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DAR20060821&articleId=3027
5 Iran 'successfully' tests new air defence system, People’s Daily, September 5, 2006
http://english.people.com.cn/200609/05/eng20060905_299651.html
Iranian Missile Test; Xinhua News Agency, September 5, 2006
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-09/05/content_5050931.htm
6 Iran tests laser-guided bomb during war games, The Hindu, September 5, 2006
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/003200609051820.htm
7 Iran completes military exercise by testing 2,000-pound bomb, Pravada; September 7, 2006
http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/07-09-2006/84317-weapons-0
8 Iran tests first-ever 2,000-pound guided bomb: Minister; IRNA, September 6, 2006
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-22/0609065169142007.htm
9 Karimi, Nasser; Iran deploys locally-manufactured warplane, Hindustan Times, September 6, 2006
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1787643,00050004.htm, Originally published by the Associated Press
10 Enemy Targets Destroyed by Maverick Missiles, Fars News Agency, September 6, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506140347,
Maverick missiles are American made or developed air-to-surface missiles which are conventionally used to attack armoured units, warships, air defences, military transport and logistics units, and military depots.
11 Iran to Manufacture a New Jet Fighter, Fars News Agency, September 12, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506210548
12 Complicated Dogfight Tactics Exercised during 'Blow of Zolfaqar' War Games, Fars News Agency, September 4, 2006
http://english.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8506130203
Iranian F14s Carry Hawk Missiles Successfully, Fars News Agency, September 4, 2006
http://english.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8506130205
13 Iran says ready to combat electronic warfare, Iranmania, Sunday, March 05, 2006
14 Army Prepared to Force Back Trans-Regional Threats, Fars News Agency, September 6, 2006
http://www.farsnews.com/English/newstext.php?nn=8506140520
Trans-regional powers mean non-Middle Eastern nations with substantial force in the Middle East (the region being talked about).
15 Defense Minister: Any Foreign Aggression Responded by Force; Fars News Agency; September 2, 2006
http://english.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8506110568
16 Defence Minister: Any Military Aggression against Iran Struck Back Heavily, Fars News Agency, September 4, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506130415
17 Mobilize Forces Prepare to Encounter Enemies, Fars New Agency, September 9, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506180167
18 Basij Comander: Enemies Awe Shattered Once they Err, Fars News Agency, September 10, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506190583
19 Commander Warns o IRGC’s Aggressive Strategy in Case of Foreign Threats, Fars News Agency, September 13, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506220539
20 No Air Force Capable of Confronting Iranian Army, Fars News Agency; August 19, 2006 http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8505280544
21 Iraq Not a Place for Others to Settle Accounts, Fars News Agency, September 6, 2006
http://www.farsnews.com/English/newstext.php?nn=8506140551
22 Cyprus finds air-defence systems on Syria-bond ship, Reuters, September , 2006
http://go.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=13449090&src=rss/worldNews
23 Intelligence Minister: Enemies Plots Defused in Tehran, Border Provinces, Fars News Agency, September 13, 2006
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8506220518
24 Chavez pledge support for Iran, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), September 15, 2006 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5347978.stm
25 Syria switches to euro amid sanctions threat, Xinhua News Agency, February 13-14, 2006
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-02/14/content_4177423.htm
26 Lawder, David; US Treasury say Iran pressure can be unilateral, Reuters, September 12, 2006
27 Three big Japan banks decide not to deal with Iran's Bank Saderat, Forbes, September 16, 2006
http://www.forbes.com/markets/feeds/afx/2006/09/16/afx3021822.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related articles, Centre for Research on Globalization:
The Next Phase of the Middle East War 2006-09-04
Baluchistan and the Coming Iran War 2006-09-01
British Troops Mobilizing on the Iranian Border 2006-08-30
Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats 2006-08-24
Beating the Drums of War: US Troop Build-up: Army & Marines authorize "Involuntary Conscription" 2006-08-23
Iranian War Games: Exercises, Tests, and Drills or Preparation and Mobilization for War? 2006-08-21
Triple Alliance": The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon 2006-08-06
The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil 2006-07-26
Is the Bush Administration Planning a Nuclear Holocaust? 2006-02-22
The Dangers of a Middle East Nuclear War 2006-02-17
Nuclear War against Iran 2006-01-03
Israeli Bombings could lead to Escalation of Middle East War 2006-07-15
Iran: Next Target of US Military Aggression 2005-05-01
Planned US-Israeli Attack on Iran 2005-05-01
See also
Rogers, Paul; Iran: Consequences of a War, Oxford Research Group; February, 2006
http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefings/IranConsequences.htm
http://www.iranbodycount.org/ | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Thu Sep 28, 2006 7:16 am Post subject: Are You an Enemy Combatant? |
| http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=576
Are You an Enemy Combatant?
Wednesday September 27th 2006, 1:08 pm
Slowly but surely, the Bush neocons and their perfidious allies in Congress are cobbling together a secret police apparatus that will eventually mirror Hitler’s Gestapo, Stalin’s NKVD, East Germany’s Stasi, and Chile’s Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia, to cite but a few examples.
“The United States could detain more foreigners as enemy combatants under legislation Congress will debate this week after a last-minute change in the bill, lawmakers said on Tuesday,” reports Reuters. “Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a key negotiator on the bill, said enemy combatants would now include those who provided money, weapons and other support for terrorist groups as well as those involved in actual operations.”
Of course, many would argue that the key word here is “foreigners” and this legislation poses no threat to Americans. However, considering previous comments of “key negotiator” Lindsey Graham, we can likely expect this legislation to be used against “fifth columnists,” as the good senator from South Carolina deems all who oppose the neocon doctrine of forever war.
As Graham told the Senate Judiciary Committee in February, “the administration has not only the right, but the duty, in my opinion, to pursue fifth column movements…. And let me tell folks who are watching what a fifth column movement is. It is a movement known to every war where American citizens will sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy. And it’s happened in every war,” never mind that this particular war is undeclared. Naturally, for the neocons, simply opposing the “war” in Iraq and the parallel “war” against terrorism at home is an act of sympathizing with the enemy, that is to say “al-Qaeda,” the black op pseudo gang crafted by the CIA and the Pentagon.
“Graham said U.S. citizens could not be deemed enemy combatants under the bill, but several human rights advocates said the language was so broad that they believed Americans could be detained under it. The Center for Constitutional Rights said even attorneys representing Guantanamo inmates could be deemed enemy combatants,” Reuters continues.
Of course, as everything changed on September 11, 2001, everything will change for the worse once again after the neocons shock and awe Iran, the Iranians retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz with flaming oil tankers, thus sending oil prices through the ceiling and precipitating a world-wide economic crisis.
More than ever, our “way of life” will be on the line and Bush and the neocons will demand you are either “with us or with the terrorists” and the KBR-Halliburton camps will fill up with Graham’s “fellow travelers” who “sympathize with the enemy and collaborate with the enemy” simply due to the fact they will not be calling for mass murder and frantically waving their little plastic American flags made by slaves in China. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2006 3:27 pm Post subject: |
| US set to punish Iran's partners
by
Saturday 30 September 2006 4:29 PM GMT
The measure is seen as a clear warning to Russia and China
The US Congress has approved a new set of sanctions against countries that continue nuclear cooperation with Iran and those that sell it advanced weaponry.
However, mindful of the situation in Iraq, Congressmen warned that nothing in the document should be "construed as authorising the use of force against Iran".
Although it does not name any country, the measure is seen as a clear warning to Russia and China, two key members of the UN Security Council who have been resisting calls for new international sanctions against Tehran in response to its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
Russia has been involved in an $800 million project to help Iran build a nuclear power plant in Bushehr and has been selling it weapons, while China has been accused of supplying it with advanced missile technology.
The bill was passed by the senate on Saturday after clearing the House of Representatives a day earlier. It came as Iran and the EU are engaged in delicate negotiations designed to persuade the former to halt its enrichment work and avoid a major international showdown.
Bill Frist, the US senate majority leader, said: "Enactment of this legislation ensures that ILSA [the Iran and Libya Sanctions Act] will continue to impede Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
"This act also provides important new authority for the administration to block financial transactions related to Iran's weapons of mass destruction programmes, and encourages the administration to use all available leverage over Russia to gain Russian support for multilateral sanctions against Iran."
Reactions
Senator Norm Coleman said: "For the sake of our national security, the US must ensure that the sensitive nuclear technology that we share with partner countries does not fall into the hands of the Iranians.
"Aiding Iran to become a nuclear power, even inadvertently, is unacceptable"
Senator Norm Coleman
"The Iranians have demonstrated that they are deceitful, obstructionist and bent on destroying Israel and all of Western civilization. We know where this path is going to lead. Aiding Iran to become a nuclear power, even inadvertently, is unacceptable."
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Republican Representative and a sponsor of the bill, hailed its passage by saying that it would deny Iran "the technical assistance, financial resources and political legitimacy to develop nuclear weapons and support terrorism".
Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the House International Affairs Committee, argued that the world should use every peaceful means possible "to defeat Iran's reckless nuclear military ambitions".
AFP
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/945EF42F-10AE-4B40-8AE0-EAE041476442.htm
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IAEA rejects Arab call to discuss Israel
by
Friday 30 September 2005 6:09 PM GMT
Israel is believed to have some 200 atom bombs
The UN atomic watchdog has unanimously called for a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East but rejected an Arab call to denounce Israel as a nuclear threat.
A general conference of the 139-nation International Atomic Energy Agency on Friday in Vienna also unanimously passed a resolution welcoming North Korea's agreement to abandon nuclear weapons and called upon Pyongyang to let IAEA inspectors back into the country.
The IAEA conference rejected discussion of "Israeli nuclear capabilities and threat," as proposed in a resolution by Oman, despite a strong push for this by 15 Arab states plus Palestine.
Israel welcomed the idea of such a zone but said it advocates "achieving regional peace and security not arms control per se," in comments by Israeli atomic energy chief Gideon Frank.
Egyptian ambassador Ramzy Ezzeldeiin Ramzy told the IAEA conference that the resolution on a NWFZ invites Israel, believed to be the only nuclear weapons state in the Middle East, "to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and to accept that its various facilities be subject to the IAEA safeguards system."
Israel has not signed the NPT and neither confirms nor denies reports that it has some 200 atom bombs.
The IAEA welcomed Pyongyang's
decision to abandon N-weapons
Frank said that while Israel felt a NWFZ "could eventually serve as a complement to overall efforts to peace and security in the region" the Jewish state wanted a general peace agreement first in the Middle East.
Frank said Israeli actions, such as its withdrawal from Gaza, had created a "window of opportunity to advancing peace and security in the region."
Resentment
Confidence-building, as in creating a nuclear-weapons-free zone, "is a long and enduring process," Frank said.
Friday's conference session was put off for hours as diplomats haggled behind closed doors.
Arab states resent the fact that the IAEA is cracking down on Iran for what the United States charges is a covert nuclear weapons program while US ally Israel avoids such scrutiny.
The agenda item was put off until next year as part of a compromise that has taken place annually since 1998 in which Arab states drop this agenda request in order to win Israeli participation in a consensus on the call for a NWFZ.
Emotions ran high over IAEA
threat to take Iran to UN council
Emotions were high, however, this year after the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors last week found Iran guilty of violating the NPT and threatened to take Tehran to the UN Security Council, which could impose trade sanctions.
The North Korea resolution welcomed the six-party agreement September 19 in Beijing "which accomplished positive progress by taking a first step toward the goal of the verifiable denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula in a peaceful manner."
The IAEA looks forward to new talks in November and "calls upon the DPRK to cooperate with the agency in the full and effective implementation of comprehensive IAEA safeguards," the resolution said.
It was a compromise between the United States and China, with US officials seeking a neutral text that would not worsen problems that have cropped up in the six-party talks.
AFP
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/CFF62E0F-55B6-4555-B7A4-3DB238FF75B4.htm
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'No action' on Israel nuclear activities
by
Friday 22 September 2006 10:47 PM GMT
The head of the IAEA speaks with Iran's representative
Nations pushing for a resolution labelling Israel's nuclear capabilities a threat on the final day of the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual meeting have been defeated.
The draft resolution, which also called upon Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, was backed by 15 Arab countries, along with Cuba, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Venezuela.
But Canada sponsored a 45-29 "no action" ballot on Friday that prevented member states from voting on the motion.
Among those supporting the effort to block the vote were the United States, Israel, France, Germany, Britain and Finland, which was at the conference on behalf of the European Union.
Nineteen countries, including Russia and India, abstained.
Milder resolution
The final session of the UN nuclear watchdog agency's weeklong meeting did pass a milder resolution on Israel which affirmed "the urgent need for all states in the Middle East to accept full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards on all their nuclear activities".
The milder resolution - which had also been initiated by the nations behind the defeated resolution - was passed by 89 votes to two.
Israel and the United States were the two "no" votes.
Double standards
Arab nations have regularly threatened to submit such resolutions at the annual conference, but in past years have opted instead to voice their concerns about Israel's nuclear programme through a statement from the conference president, which carries less weight than a resolution.
The last time such a resolution was submitted at the IAEA conference was in 1991.
But Israel's recent offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon and what is seen as double standards in the differing ways Israel and Iran have been treated over their nuclear activities added new impetus to the call.
Israel neither confirms nor denies its nuclear status but most experts believe it has about 200 nuclear warheads.
Israel said that a regional nuclear arms-free zone was a noble idea in principle but "frivolous" and dangerous as long as some neighbours continued not to recognise it and with Iran openly calling for its destruction.
Agencies
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/81A8D91D-D640-4883-B121-CD0FA10E2BE8.htm
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Russia to send nuclear fuel to Iran
by
Tuesday 26 September 2006 10:47 AM GMT
The plant is expected to produce electricity by November
Russia has agreed to ship nuclear fuel to Iran for its atomic power plant in the city of Bushehr, a senior Russian nuclear official has said.
Sergei Shmatko, head of Atomstroiexport, the state company building the plant, said on Tuesday that the agreement should remedy concerns voiced by Tehran over Russian reluctance on the issue.
Shamtko, who met with Mahmoud Hanatian, vice president of Iran's atomic energy organisation, said the Bushehr plant is expected to be opened in September 2007 and to start producing electricity by November.
Meanwhile, Igor Ivanov, Russia's security council chief insisted on seeking a diplomatic solution to international concerns over Iran's nuclear programme at a meeting with Gholamreza Aghazadeh, Iranian vice president, who heads the country's nuclear organisation.
Aghazadeh (L) with Igor Ivanov in
Tehran
"We are firmly convinced of the need to resolve the question of the Iranian nuclear programme through the negotiating process, at the negotiating table," Ivanov said.
"... Iran should be guaranteed the right to peacefully develop nuclear energy, and also to remove the concerns of the international community regarding obligations under the nonproliferation regime," he said.
International concerns
The five permanent members of the UN security council, plus Germany, have been working to persuade Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment.
The United States and other nations have watched with concern as Russia has pushed towards completing its $800 million plant at Bushehr.
Washington says it fears the plant could be used by Iran to produce fissionable material for weapons.
In an attempt to ease concerns, Iran will ship spent fuel back to Russia, but rejected a proposal to conduct all of uranium enrichment on Russian soil.
Agencies
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B8C2EC6B-5D4B-48AA-879F-DF637DC1A096.htm | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2006 3:35 pm Post subject: |
| On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq
terror group, intelligence officials say
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Thursday April 13, 2006
http://rawstory. com/news/ 2006/US_outsourc ing_special_ operations_ intelligence_ gathering_ 0413.html
The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence channels and turning to a
dangerous and unruly cast of characters in order to create strife in Iran in
preparation for any possible attack, former and current intelligence
officials say.
One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a
right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), which
is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran. They are Baluchistan,
a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent
attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months.
One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due
to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK
shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent
group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of
the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National
Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
“The MEK is run by a husband and wife team who were given bases in northern
Baghdad by Saddam,” the intelligence official told RAW STORY. “The US army
secured a key MEK facility 60 miles northwest of Baghdad shortly after the
2003 invasion, but they did not secure the MEK and let them basically be
because [then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz was thinking ahead to
Iran.”
Another former intelligence official added that the US military had detained
as many as 3,500 members of MEK at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf since the start of the
war, including the highest level ranking MEK leaders. Ashraf is about 60
miles west of the Iranian border.
This intelligence official, wishing to remain anonymous, confirmed the
policy tensions and also described them as most departments on one side and
the Pentegon on the other.
“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of
Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops
team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able
to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to
still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year
when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up
with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their
organization.
“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those
guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and
then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”
Stephen Cambone is the Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence. His office
did not return calls for comment.
Recent bomb attacks in Iran have been linked to former Baathist group
Eight killed in Iran bomb attacks
Bomb blasts hit Iran oil cities
Bomb blasts rock Iran
According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence
officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist
organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian
targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and
military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using
the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential
Iran strike.
“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence
source said.
Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against
non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a
way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of
MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely
tortured, attacked and arrested.
Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a
UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed
MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing
acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni
population.
“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.
Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the
guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained
that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included
unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.
In a stunning repeat of pre-war Iraq activities, the Bush administration
continues to publicly call for action and pursue diplomatic solutions to
allegations that Iran is bomb-ready. Behind the scenes, however, the
administration is already well underway and engaged in ground operations in
Iran.
The British, however, are less enthused about a strike in Iran. British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw has called an American strike on Iran
“inconceivable,” while Prime Minister Tony Blair has said he’s keeping all
his options open. Asked about the MEK, a senior British intelligence
official said that the Brits are not yet sure of what the situation on
Iran’s southern border is, but vehemently condemned any joint activity with
the terrorist organization.
“We don’t know who precisely is carrying out those attacks in the south but
we believe it is MEK,” the British official said.
When asked if the US military is running the MEK, the source was careful to
indicate that while there is a US unit in Iran gathering information, it’s
difficult to say if they are in any way involved with MEK.
“The people who are inside Iran are from a US Special mission unit,” the
source explained. “They are called by codenames, but would not be involved
in the bomb blasts. They want to get in, get the intelligence and go out
with anyone knowing they have been there. But the bomb blasts might be
diversions away from the operations by this US special mission unit. The
British are definitely not involved in any of this.”
Moreover, the British official expressed that any operations with MEK would
violate their own military code and would absolutely not be tolerated.
“We have very strict rules and can’t go consorting with terrorists," the
official added. "We did it in Northern Ireland. No more.”
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