| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:57 pm Post subject: No choice but to bomb Iran says JINSA propagandist Jim Wools |
| No choice but to bomb Iran says JINSA propagandist Jim Woolsey
No wonder Colin Powell conveyed (in Washington Post editor Karen DeYoung's bio book about him) that the 'JINSA crowd' was in control of the Pentagon (via Dick Cheney) as JINSA operatives like Woolsey pushing for an attack on Iran (for Israel) like they did to get US into the Iraq quagmire (see more about JINSA via http://tinyurl.com/obe2j ):
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/14/ldt.01.html
Dobbs: And former CIA Director Jim Woolsey joins me. He says the United States may have no choice but to bomb Iran. James Woolsey joins us here next.
And I'll be talking with former CIA director, Jim Woolsey, who says the United States needs to increase pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program or face the consequences. He'll be our guest here.
Up next, a warning from former CIA Director Jim Woolsey about Iran's rising threat to this nation's national security. He joins us here next.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
DOBBS: The use of Iranian-made roadside bombs to kill our troops in Iraq reached an all time high last month according to the U.S. military. At the same time, Iran is using international demands to end its nuclear weapons program.
My guest tonight says the United States can't afford to ignore that threat any longer.
Former CIA director James Woolsey joins us tonight.
Jim, it's good to have you here.
JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Good to be with you, Lou.
DOBBS: Let's begin with the issue of -- the administration has stated categorically, you know, our generals have stated categorically that as many of the third of the deaths last month, for example, were caused by Iranian support of the insurgency and the provision of those shaped charges killing so many of our troops.
Why is there no reaction by this government and this military?
WOOLSEY: I don't know. The Persians invented chess and the Iranians are doing a pretty good job of moving their pieces -- Muqtada al-Sadr and those explosive devices, and Hamas and Hezbollah around to protect their queen, which is their most lethal piece -- their nuclear weapons program.
And I suppose the administration is focused on that. But the way it's chosen to work on is to, for years, turn it over to the Europeans, who have been stalled by the Iranians and the Iranians continue to work on getting enriched uranium.
I'm afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they could have a bomb.
DOBBS: And that bomb should be a concern to everyone -- European, Asian, South American, African, as well as American.
Why is there not more energy behind those international structures against Iran and demands to end that program?
WOOLSEY: I think it's because the administration has put too much confidence in the diplomatic process. They keep using the word engagement. But while they're engaged, I think they're being abused by the Iranians.
The Iranians are playing this game very cleverly. And if they got fissile material from the North Koreans, with whom they effectively have a joint missile development program, they could have a bomb in relatively short order.
DOBBS: And a deepening relationship, of course, with communist China.
WOOLSEY: Yes.
DOBBS: The idea that the United States would be conducting military policy without offering its troops absolute protection against interference and the support of a state government killing our troops, it seems reprehensible to me, Jim, just to put it straightforwardly.
And it seems to me that if we cannot assure force security, which is the minimum this nation should provide those men and women fighting for us, that we ought to withdraw or we should end the murder of our troops by a foreign state.
WOOLSEY: Well, some of these explosive devices clearly have Iranian fingerprints on them. And they're supplying them to Muqtada al-Sadr. They may have been supplying some, also, to al Qaeda, on the Sunni side of the divide within Islam.
So they are a huge problem. And I share your worries, your concerns. I don't know why we can't effectively stop that -- more troops on the border, even strikes on -- at the border. Something to keep that from happening.
DOBBS: You believe that in order to stop the nuclear weapons program, that the United States should, in point of fact, bomb Iran if that program is not halted.
WOOLSEY: If it's not halted. I don't think we've to make that decision yet. My view is the same as John McCain's, which is that using force, air force, presumably, air power, is the worst option for dealing with Iran except for one other, and that's letting them have a nuclear weapon.
Once they get a nuclear weapon, the Sunni states, six of them, including Saudi Arabia and Egypt, have declared they want nuclear programs, too. And everyone who believes -- anyone who believes that those are going to be for electricity, you know, there's a bridge in Brooklyn they ought to put a bid in on.
DOBBS: And, Jim, the conduct of policy -- we are awaiting now next month David Petraeus, General David Petraeus' assessment of the surge and report to Congress, as well as the president.
What do you think of the conduct of the war to this point and, most recently, the surge and its effectiveness?
WOOLSEY: Well, up until Petraeus' takeover, I thought it was not being fought well. It was being fought very much the way Westmoreland fought search and destroy in Vietnam, and for about the same amount of time.
Once Abrams came in, we made some real progress, at least against the Viet Cong in Vietnam.
And now that Petraeus is in, he's fighting this the way Abrams did and he's making substantial progress on the ground in Diyala Province, in Anbar Province, attacking al Qaeda and the rest.
The problem, I think, is more at the national level and the politics of the Iraqis, not being able to come together in a coherent government.
The -- our troops and some of the Iraqi troops are actually doing, I think, considerably better than was the case a few months ago.
DOBBS: Thank you very much.
Jim Woolsey, the former CIA director.
Good to have you here.
WOOLSEY: Good to be with, you Lou.
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http://thinkprogress.org/?tag=Iran
Woolsey Claims Iran Could Have Nuclear Bomb In ‘A Few Months’ »
During an appearance on CNN’s Lou Dobbs last night, former CIA director James Woolsey, one of the earliest advocates of invading Iraq, claimed that Iran “could have” a nuclear bomb in “a few months.”
“The Iranians continue to work on getting enriched uranium,” said Woolsey. “I’m afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they could have a bomb.” Watch it:
Woolsey is doing nothing more than fear-mongering when he says Iran could have a nuclear bomb in “a few months.” In fact, his assertion of an impending nuclear weapon in Iran is contradicted by experts on nuclear weapons, including the CIA.
“Iran is still probably five to 10 years away from gaining the ability to make nuclear fuel or nuclear bombs,” according to Joseph Cirincione, the director for nuclear policy at the Center for American Progress. In May, Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the UN’s the International Atomic Energy Agency, said “even if Iran wanted to go for a nuclear weapon, it would not be before the end of this decade or sometime in the middle of the next decade,” an estimate that echoed the view of the CIA.
Additionally, Woolsey is a suspect source for claims of urgency when it comes to nuclear weapons, having repeatedly hyped Saddam Hussein’s nuclear capability during the build up to war with Iraq:
“It is urgent that we begin this process of bringing democracy to the Middle East before the region’s most dangerous dictator — Saddam Hussein — gets nuclear weapons.” [5/21/02]
“I think it would be a lot easier to stop Saddam now than it would be two or three years from now when he would be almost certain to have nuclear weapons.” [1/10/03]
Unsatisfied with just invading Iraq, Woolsey is again pushing specious claims of imminent nuclear bombs, hoping the U.S. will move on to Iran next.
Digg It!
Transcript: expand post »
LOU DOBBS: Let’s begin with the issue of — the administration has stated categorically, you know, our generals have stated categorically that as many of the third of the deaths last month, for example, were caused by Iranian support of the insurgency and the provision of those shaped charges killing so many of our troops.
Why is there no reaction by this government and this military?
JAMES WOOLSEY: I don’t know. The Persians invented chess and the Iranians are doing a pretty good job of moving their pieces — Muqtada al-Sadr and those explosive devices, and Hamas and Hezbollah around to protect their queen, which is their most lethal piece — their nuclear weapons program.
And I suppose the administration is focused on that. But the way it’s chosen to work on is to, for years, turn it over to the Europeans, who have been stalled by the Iranians and the Iranians continue to work on getting enriched uranium.
I’m afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they could have a bomb. « collapse post
Filed under: Iran
Posted by Matt August 15, 2007 11:36 am
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Ex-CIA director: U.S. faces 'World War IV'
From Charles Feldman and Stan Wilson
CNN
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) --Former CIA Director James Woolsey said Wednesday the United States is engaged in World War IV, and that it could continue for years.
In the address to a group of college students, Woolsey described the Cold War as the third world war and said "This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War."
Woolsey has been named in news reports as a possible candidate for a key position in the reconstruction of a postwar Iraq.
He said the new war is actually against three enemies: the religious rulers of Iran, the "fascists" of Iraq and Syria, and Islamic extremists like al Qaeda.
Woolsey told the audience of about 300, most of whom are students at the University of California at Los Angeles, that all three enemies have waged war against the United States for several years but the United States has just "finally noticed."
"As we move toward a new Middle East," Woolsey said, "over the years and, I think, over the decades to come ... we will make a lot of people very nervous."
It will be America's backing of democratic movements throughout the Middle East that will bring about this sense of unease, he said.
"Our response should be, 'good!'" Woolsey said.
Singling out Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, he said, "We want you nervous. We want you to realize now, for the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and its allies are on the march and that we are on the side of those whom you -- the Mubaraks, the Saudi Royal family -- most fear: We're on the side of your own people."
Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Bill Clinton, was taking part in a "teach-in" at UCLA, a series of such forums at universities across the nation.
A group calling itself "Americans for Victory Over Terrorism" sponsors the teach-ins, and the Bruin Republicans, UCLA's campus Republicans organization, co-sponsored Wednesday night's event.
The group was founded by former Education Secretary William Bennett, who took part in Wednesday's event along with Paul Bremer, a U.S. ambassador during the Reagan administration and the former chairman of the National Commission on Terrorism.
Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/04/03/sprj.irq.woolsey.world.war | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 7:53 am Post subject: U.S./Iranian relations getting worse |
| THIS WEEK AT WAR
Week's War-Related Events Reviewed
Aired August 19, 2007 - 13:00 ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/19/tww.01.html
FOREMAN: I'm Tom Foreman and here is where we stand in THIS WEEK AT WAR. U.S./Iranian relations getting worse. We'll ask Robin Wright at the "Washington Post" what the fallout will be if the U.S. labels the entire elite military force of Iran a terrorist group.
FOREMAN: Even if you're keeping up with all of the news, you know it's easy to get friends and enemies confused these days. Take Iran, for instance. On Tuesday President Ahmadinejad was in Afghanistan proclaiming solidarity with the U.S.-backed government. On that same day in Washington the State Department used the term battlefields to describe its confrontations with Tehran. And now Zain Verjee reported on Wednesday, the administration is considering naming all or part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard a specially designated global terrorist group.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just last week President Bush warned Iran the U.S. was about to act and now it might.
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: When we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay.
VERJEE: That price could be cutting the financial lifeblood of the Guard, going after their bank accounts as well as businesses that deal with the Guard inside and outside Iran.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: So what is really going on here? Is all of this just diplomatic wordplay, or are we really on the brink of military confrontation? Robin Wright joins us from "The Washington Post" and Ray Takeyh, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations is with me here with me in the studio.
Ray, everybody says we don't want a military conflict. And yet things keep coming up every week that suggest we might be headed that way.
RAY TAKEYH, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, we're in sort a path of incremental escalation. Where there's increasing economic financial pressure and now increasingly declaring the national army as a terrorist designation. Where that leads to, it could lead to sort of a military confrontation, but I don't think we're there yet. We're still trying to use economic tools to dissuade Iran from various actions that we find objectionable.
FOREMAN: I want to remind everybody with the map here basically why this is of such interest to us. Iran right in the middle here, Afghanistan over there, Iraq over there. Important area. Robin, do you think that we're accomplishing something with this sword rattling and if so, what?
ROBIN WRIGHT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, the administration feels very frustrated that after a year of reaching out to Iran, offering it a carrot and stick package, if it suspended its uranium enrichment process which can be used for post for peaceful nuclear energy as well as to develop a nuclear weapon that it's had no response. And tensions have heightened with Iran's deepening intervention in Iraq. It's arming even some of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And the failure of the Security Council to be able to engage in the kind of robust sanctions that might actually pressure Iran. So far, they have been token efforts, for example, the last UN resolution sanctioned 28 members of Iran's military and industrial complex including the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards.
This is a quantum leap in trying to name the whole Revolutionary Guard corps, but its practical impact will probably be economic rather than military. And that for the time being is all the United States is trying to do to squeeze continuously, to try to get Iran to change its behavior rather than to engage in a process that leads to regime change itself.
FOREMAN: I want to show our viewers some of the other businesses of the Revolutionary Guard. They're involved in mass transportation, oil pipeline contracts, natural gas fields, movie production and poultry farming.
Ray, if they get this designation of specially designated global terrorist, what does that do to all these endeavors? Are we just cutting off their money?
TAKEYH: Well, a lot of those business enterprises are domestic. So they're immune from this sort of economic sanctions that we can propose. Second of all, we don't have direct economic relationships with Iran or any sort of a linkage to those Revolutionary Guard companies. So it would have to be Europeans and Asians to do so. And they're unlikely to sign up for that. So the practical economic consequences of this designation is likely to be more limited.
FOREMAN: So is this just a dog and pony show at this point?
TAKEYH: No, it does ratchet up tensions between the two countries. For instance, Russia and China are involved with arms sales. Now the actual beneficiaries are the revolutionary guards. How does that work? Does that mean that Russia and China are selling arms to a terrorist organization? What does that portend for Chinese American or Russian American or European American relations? It could be rather destabilizing.
FOREMAN: Robin, in your reporting, does the U.S. speak with one voice on this? Because it seems like we keep getting messages, one side saying, we want cooperation, the other side then saying thing like this?
WRIGHT: Well, I think just like Iraq, the administration is beginning to feel the pressure of the clock. And that is 17 months left in office. And one of their primary goals is to ensure that Iran is not left behind as an emerging nuclear power. So there is, I think, a sense within the administration that they have to do something far more dramatic to try to produce that kind of result.
There is clearly a difference within the administration. So far, those who are arguing diplomacy, even tough actions like sanctioning the Revolutionary Guards have prevailed. Will they prevail for the next 17 months? It kind of depends on what the Iranians do.
FOREMAN: Let's consider what Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday. "I have significant concerns that a coalition withdrawal would lead to a major Iranian advance." He's talking about Iraq here. "And we need to consider what the consequences of that would be."
Ray, is that a legitimate concern at this point or is that just more of this talk?
TAKEYH: Well, part of the administration's strategy to justify its continued military presence in Iraq. I'm not quite sure what the answer to that is. There will be Iranian influence in Iraq. There will be Iranian influence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Economic, political social and religious.
So the question is to avert that influence, do we stay in Iraq permanently or not? And the ambassador should answer that question, because if the goal of the American policy is to prevent Iran from having any sort of influence in Iraq, then that is a permanent occupation.
FOREMAN: All right. Thank you so much. We're out of time. Robin and Ray, appreciate your insights in all of this.
In a moment, an international land grab, except there isn't any land to grab. It's all in THIS WEEK AT WAR. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOREMAN: OK. Take the North Pole, a cold and barren landscape. Now look at the Middle East. A hot, sandy and also rather barren landscape. What have they got in common? Oil. Billions of gallons of oil. And now a struggle to control all that black gold, particularly at the top of the world. Barbara Starr has the lowdown on this new cold war.
FOREMAN: Tora Bora, a remote mountain region on the Afghan side of the Afghan/Pakistan border. It was the last known location of Osama bin Laden after the defeat of the Taliban in 2001. Now almost six years later, al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are again dug into the caves and ridges of Tora Bora and once again U.S. troops are going in to dig them out. Will they be more successful this time? That's the question. CNN military correspondent Barbara Starr is at her post at the Pentagon. With me in the studio Michael Scheuer, now a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, but in 2001, one of the CIA's top agents in pursuit of Osama bin Laden. Barbara, first of all, what's going on at Tora Bora as we speak?
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Tom, it's really remarkable. The U.S. is back there, the Taliban are back there. What officials tell us is several weeks ago, they noticed a massing of Taliban forces, maybe 100, as many as 200 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters back in those mountains. They've been keeping an eye on it, now they've decided, as you say, to go in and dig them out. The question is the Taliban capability. They can still amass forces. They still may be planning, officials say, for some type of high profile attack. In the last few weeks they've staged several raids against U.S. fire bases, going right for defense lines, trying to breach and get into a U.S. fire base. They aren't giving up any time soon it appears. So the U.S. is chasing them down yet again.
FOREMAN: It is worthwhile considering the history of the Taliban. It was formed back in 1994 by clerics and students, many are former mujahadin (ph). In 1996, they offered refuge, formed an alliance with bin Laden. In 1996 to 2001, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan including the capital Kabul. Then in October 2001, the U.S. attacked the Taliban following the September 11th attacks and they were toppled. And in December of 2001, they were out of power. But, Michael, they retreated to Tora Bora and that's where everybody said we should have gotten Osama bin Laden, but we didn't.
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FMR. CIA SENIOR OFFICER: No, we had the chance to get him there and we didn't do it. We used the Afghans instead of the U.S. military. The battle at Tora Bora now is just an example of the spreading insurgency in Afghanistan. We're fighting them in the south. Now we're fighting them near Kabul. Some Germans got killed in Kabul the other day. So we're really facing a growing insurgency in Afghanistan and we have far too few troops on the ground to counter it.
FOREMAN: On the map, you can see that this is Afghanistan. This is Pakistan over here. This is what used to be controlled by the Taliban basically the whole country. Then they got pushed back, driven down to where at one point we really felt like we sort of had it isolated in the Tora Bora region down here. How did they hold on so long? Did we just not finish the job?
SCHEUER: We hardly started the job, sir. We killed very few of the enemy. We let them go home with their weapons, let al Qaeda go home into Pakistan with its weapons and now they're back. They probably outnumber American forces on the ground if you take the totality of the country.
FOREMAN: So Barbara, do we see this current action in Tora Bora as an isolated limited action or is this a big front in a big war?
STARR: Well, you know, hard to say. Limited at the moment, but there is that bigger picture, Tom. Because of course just across the border in Pakistan, still the U.S. has no idea how many Taliban, how many al Qaeda well dug into that Pakistani frontier area, rearming, training, equipping, continuing to be ready and continuing to come across the border and fight U.S. troops on the Afghan side. There is a long way to go here. And I think Michael really raises the question, is if this is now an insurgency, which many U.S. commanders call it, how does the U.S. really begin to deal with this?
FOREMAN: Michael how do you thing we will begin to deal with it?
SCHEUER: I don't think we will sir. I think we'll eventually find a face-saving way to get out. When Mr. Obama last week spoke about two more brigades for Afghanistan, that is 6,000 troops. It would bring us up to 36,000. Don't consider any discussion serious unless we're talking about half a million troops in Afghanistan.
FOREMAN: How do we have a face-saving way to get out when we have so many intelligence reports saying that if we step out of Iraq, step out of Afghanistan precipitously, that they will become breeding grounds for troubles that will come visit us?
SCHEUER: Well, they're there now, sir. It is not a question of if it will happen. It is happening now. Whether we stay or whether we go from those two countries, they're going to come after us in the United States.
FOREMAN: Isn't that a huge argument for at least not running away from it?
SCHEUER: We shouldn't run away from it, but we should be realistic. We have lots of aircraft carriers and lots of submarines. We don't have a lot of troops. The idea that anyone thought they could control Afghanistan which is the size of Texas with 30,000 troops, a person of that description ought to be hospitalized.
FOREMAN: Barbara, how much do you hear talk at the Pentagon of people saying OK, however we got into these various things, these are concerns for the world community and the world's armies should be joining more in these efforts?
STARR: Well, I think that's a feeling of a lot of U.S. commanders. They think that the U.S. military is really bearing most of the burden in both of these wars that, you know, you hear commanders continue to say Tom is none of these wars are going to be won by the U.S. military. They're insurgencies. They are ideological movements. They are going to be won by fighting on that ideological front and that means other countries. It means diplomacy. It means economics. It means financial sanctions and incentives and perhaps that is something many U.S. commanders believe the world really hasn't grappled with yet.
FOREMAN: Barbara, very briefly, do they have any faith that the world is going to grapple with that any time soon?
STARR: I think they feel that, no, to be honest. I thing they feel that unless there's another mass casualty attack against a western power such as the United States or a country in Europe, that the incentive simply isn't there because of the political environment in the United States and in most of western Europe. Countries are simply exhausted by the last several years of fighting terrorism and yet it is not kinetics, it is not guns and weapons that most people will tell you will win this war.
FOREMAN: Thank you Barbara Starr, thank you Michael Scheuer as well. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 8:38 pm Post subject: |
| The War Won't End in Baghdad (according to Michael Ledeen who is a JINSA - Israel first - Zionist Jew all for the war for Israel in the Middle East):
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110002213
We must also topple terror states in Tehran and Damascus and reform the one in Riyadh.
BY MICHAEL LEDEEN
Wednesday, September 4, 2002 12:01 a.m.
Now that we are set to have our great debate on the war against terrorism, it seems it will be the wrong debate.
By all indications, the discussion will be about using our irresistible military might against a single country in order to bring down its leader. We should instead be talking about using all our political, moral and military genius to support a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples of the Middle East from tyranny. That is our real mission, the essence of the war in which we are engaged, and the proper subject of our national debate.
Saddam Hussein is a terrible evil, and President Bush is entirely right in vowing to end his reign of terror. But this is not just a war against Iraq, it is a war against terrorist organizations and against the regimes that foster, support, arm, train, indoctrinate and command the terrorist legions who are clamoring for our destruction. There are four such regimes: in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia.
These are the true terror masters and they have two common denominators: All actively support terrorism and all are tyrannies. They do not all rest on religious fanaticism; Saddam, for example, has quite low religious standing, having come to power as a secular socialist, and the Assad family dictatorship has similar origins. Nor are they all Arabs; The Iranians still call themselves Persians. They share a common hatred for the Western world and unconcealed contempt for their own peoples. It's no accident that they work together in places like the Syrian-dominated Bekaa Valley in Lebanon with the terrorists of al Qaeda, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
Contrary to much of the conventional wisdom, this war is not new in any meaningful sense. Indeed, it is a very traditional sort of war, one at which the U.S. has always excelled: It is a war against tyrants and in the name of freedom. Our greatest weapon in this war is the people oppressed by tyrannical regimes. They constitute a lethal dagger aimed at the hearts of their rulers. And knowing this, the tyrants fear us.
Despite all the talk about growing anti-Americanism in the Middle East, we inspire their people. We inspired the Iraqis at the end of the Gulf War to rise up against Saddam, only to be abandoned by the American leaders of that unhappy time. We inspired the Iraqis again when we supported the democratic Iraqi National Congress in Northern Iraq until the mid-1990s, only to abandon them again. We inspire the Iranian people today--there have been nearly constant demonstrations against the Tehran regime over the past year. There were also deeply moving pro-American demonstrations on Sept. 11, and again on July 4 of this year.
If we come to Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran as liberators, we can expect overwhelming popular support. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld put it well the other day when he encouraged his media questioners to think about the people in such places as prisoners, not as free men and women. They will join us if they believe we are serious, and they will only believe we are serious when they see us winning. Our first move must therefore show both our power and our liberating intent.
Of the four terrorist tyrannies, Iran seems the easiest to liberate. The president has eloquently described the circumstances there: The Iranian people have clearly and repeatedly demonstrated their desire to be rid of their self-appointed rulers. They deserve our support just as did the Yugoslavs in their desire to be rid of the Milosevic tyranny. We must support them as we supported the Solidarity free trade union in Poland in their desire to be rid of communist tyranny and as we supported the Filipino people in their desire to be rid of the Marcos tyranny.
We know how to do it: broadcasting the truth and funding others who do the same, denouncing the oppression, defending the political prisoners by name, encouraging private American and international organizations to provide money, communications and guidance to the people on the ground. As serious political thinkers like Peter Ackerman keep reminding us, politically savvy and nonviolent internal resistance movements have brought down several tyrannical regimes in the recent past. There is every reason to believe the same can be accomplished quite rapidly in Iran, where such a movement already exists.
The fall of the mullahs in Tehran would dramatically change the Middle East and give us an extremely potent political weapon against the surviving terror masters. We could then address the Muslims of the world: Islamic extremism has now been attempted in both its versions, the Sunni in Afghanistan and the Shiite in Iran. Both failed on all counts. They wrecked the countries, earned the hatred of the people, and fell to the West. Such will be the destiny of all those who emulate them. It is exactly the message we want to send to those tempted by the likes of Hezbollah and al Qaeda.
With a triumph in Iran, the democratic revolution would quickly gain allies in Syria and Iraq, and transform our war against Saddam Hussein from a primarily military operation to a war of national liberation against a hated regime. We should first recognize the democratic Iraqi opposition as the legitimate government of the country, and call upon the Iraqi people to leave Saddam's territory to find freedom in the zones we control in the north and south of the country. It is hard to imagine that Saddam could long resist such a massive challenge to his authority, and our military power would do the rest.
This strategy, or something like it, should be adopted even if we decide to begin the war with Saddam Hussein. And just as a successful democratic revolution in Iran would inspire the Iraqis to join us to remove Saddam, it is impossible to imagine that the Iranian people would tolerate tyranny in their own country once freedom had come to Iraq. Syria would follow in short order. (Bashar Assad's fear of his own people was once again demonstrated last week, when he rounded up three of his muted critics on the usual charges of unpatriotic behavior.)
Once the terror regimes are brought down, we will be obliged to play an active role to ensure that we do not simply replace one dictator with another, as the CIA has so often proposed. We must remember that the defeat of the fascists in World War II was only half the mission of that great American generation. The other half was purging Germany and Japan of those still loyal to, or tempted by, the old order and training, defending and supporting the fledgling democrats until the rules of a free society were assimilated into the national cultures.
The Saudi terror masters are somewhat different from the others, for there are pro-Western, antiterrorist elements within the royal family who will almost certainly gain strength once the tyrants fall in Baghdad, Damascus and Tehran. The destruction of the tyrants will also gravely weaken the attraction of the wildly extremist Wahhabi doctrines now in vogue, and the liberation of Iran, Iraq and Syria will greatly encourage liberal forces within the kingdom, some of whom, like the son of the former oil czar, Sheikh Yamani, are even now openly calling for a considerable democratization of the kingdom's politics.
It will be objected that this mission is too ambitious, and that prudence requires us to move carefully, one case at a time, all the while mending our diplomatic fences with friends, allies and undecideds. But the prudent strategy is actually more dangerous and thoroughly unrealistic. Moving step by step gives the surviving terror masters time to mount a counterattack--time they would use to develop the weapons of mass destruction that rightly concern us, and give urgency to our cause.
Thus the greater danger. And the long period of dawdling since the fall of the Taliban has given the terror masters the opportunity to develop a collective strategy. Military leaders, intelligence chieftains and wily diplomats have flown incessantly between the three capitals. They have exchanged plans, weapons, communications gear and many promises. Iran, Iraq and Syria are now bundled; an armed attack against any one of them will provoke them all, which is yet another reason to begin with Iran. There is little that Saddam or Assad can do to defend the mullahs against the righteous wrath of the Iranian people.
This war cannot be limited to national theaters; we face a regional challenge and must respond accordingly. But it is both a just war and one for which we are marvelously well suited.
We are the one truly revolutionary country on earth, which is both the reason for which we were attacked in the first place and the reason we will successfully transform the lives of hundreds of millions of people throughout the Middle East. God willing, our national debate will drive home the true dimensions of this mission, and strengthen our resolve to see it through to victory.
Mr. Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of "The War Against the Terror Masters," just out from St. Martin's Press.
Copyright © 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
PRINT WINDOW CLOSE WINDOW | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Aug 21, 2007 8:52 pm Post subject: |
| The following seems to be right in accordance with Israeli Oded Yinon's 'divide and conquer' plan for Israel's enemies in the Middle East as discussed by Dr. Stephen Sniegoski in his 'Israeli Origins of Bush II's War' via the following URL:
Israeli Origins of Bush II's War:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/26/the-israeli-origins-of-bush-ii-s-war.php
"Iraq Does Not Exist Anymore": Journalist Nir Rosen on How the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Has Led to Ethnic Cleansing, a Worsening Refugee Crisis and the Destabilization of the Middle East
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/21/1349252
Nir Rosen is an independent journalist and the author of "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq." He is a fellow at the New America Foundation and has reported extensively from Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003. [includes rush transcript]
Earlier this year Rosen wrote a cover story for the New York Time Sunday Magazine called "The Flight from Iraq." He estimated that up to 50,000 Iraqis were leaving their homes each month.
Nir Rosen, independent journalist and the author of "In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq." He is a fellow at the New America Foundation and has reported extensively from Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.
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AMY GOODMAN: Nir Rosen is an independent journalist and the author of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. He is a fellow at the New America Foundation and has reported extensively from Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.
Earlier this year, Nir Rosen wrote a piece, a cover story for the New York Times Sunday Magazine, called “The Flight from Iraq.” He estimated up to 50,000 Iraqis were leaving their homes each month.
Nir Rosen joins us now from our firehouse studio here in New York, just returned from Beirut on Sunday night. Welcome to Democracy Now!
NIR ROSEN: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk further about the refugee crisis? Again, lay out the numbers that we’re talking about inside Iraq and outside.
NIR ROSEN: Outside Iraq, we’re approaching three million refugees who have left since 2003. There were, of course, refugees who left before then, due to Saddam and other factors.
Inside, I think you have a similar number of internally displaced Iraqis fleeing their homes in mixed areas and going to more homogenous areas. Sunnis from Basra are heading to Sunni neighborhoods, Baghdad, or all the way up to Kurdistan. Shias from Diyala province are going to safer areas for Shias. Kurds from Mosul going up to Kurdistan, as well.
And a family like the one we just saw on the show is never going to go back to their home again, actually, it seems.
AMY GOODMAN: Why?
NIR ROSEN: Iraq has been changed irrevocably, I think. I don’t think Iraq even -- you can say it exists anymore. There has been a very effective, systematic ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad, of Shias --from areas that are now mostly Shia. But the Sunnis especially have been a target, as have mixed families like the one we just saw. With a name like Omar, he’s distinctly Sunni -- it’s a very Sunni name. You can be executed for having the name Omar alone. And Baghdad is now firmly in the hands of sectarian Shiite militias, and they’re never going to let it go.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Senator Levin calling for the Maliki and the whole government to disband?
NIR ROSEN: Well, it’s stupid for several reasons. First of all, the Iraqi government doesn’t matter. It has no power. And it doesn’t matter who you put in there. He’s not going to have any power. Baghdad doesn’t really matter, except for Baghdad. Baghdad used to be the most important city in Iraq, and whoever controlled Baghdad controlled Iraq. These days, you have a collection of city states: Mosul, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah. Each one is virtually independent, and they have their own warlords and their own militias. And what happens in Baghdad makes no difference. So that’s the first point.
Second of all, who can he put in instead? What does he think he’s going to put in? Allawi or some secular candidate? There was a democratic election, and the majority of Iraqis selected the sectarian Shiite group Dawa, Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution, the Sadr Movement. These are movements that are popular among the majority of Shias, who are the majority of Iraq. So it doesn’t matter who you put in there. And people in the Green Zone have never had any power. Americans, whether in the government or journalists, have been focused on the Green Zone from the beginning of the war, and it’s never really mattered. It’s been who has power on the street, the various different militias, depending on where you are -- Sunni, Shia, tribal, religious, criminal. So it just reflects the same misunderstanding of Iraqi politics. The government doesn’t do anything, doesn’t provide any services, whether security, electricity, health or otherwise. Various militias control various ministries, and they use it as their fiefdoms. Ministries attack other ministries
AMY GOODMAN: Which is the most powerful militia?
NIR ROSEN: Well, the various Shia ones, such as the Mahdi Army, the Badr Corps, the police, the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army. Of course, the American army is also another militia, and it’s a very powerful militia in Iraq -- maybe not the most powerful. But the Mahdi Army basically controls the police and the Iraqi army. Of course, in the north the police are more in the hands of various Kurdish militias, and the army is in the hands of Kurdish militias. So it sort of depends where you are.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. When we come back, we are going to talk more about the refugees throughout the Middle East. There are not many here in this country. We’re talking to Nir Rosen, independent journalist, author of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Nir Rosen, independent journalist, author of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, a fellow at the New America Foundation, has reported extensively from Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003, most recently has just returned from Beirut, actually on Sunday night, and has particularly focused on refugees. His piece in the New York Times is called "The Flight from Iraq."
Talk about why people go to different countries, why Iraqis go in this -- you’re saying up to three million Iraqis out of a population of what? Some 27 million?
NIR ROSEN: Twenty-six, twenty-seven, originally, yeah. Nobody knows for sure.
AMY GOODMAN: More than -- so, close to 10%.
NIR ROSEN: Yes, and, of course, up to a million have died --
AMY GOODMAN: More than 10%
NIR ROSEN: -- since the occupation began. Well, there are various factors for why they choose different countries. Access is one of them. Syria is the most open and generous of all the countries in the region. They basically take anybody who comes in. And for a long time, they were giving them free healthcare, and they still provide free education. Well, they’ve been -- they are being overburdened, as well, because the Syrian government subsidizes things such as bread. So every loaf of bread an Iraqi buys is actually being paid for in part by the Syrian government. As a result, they’re finding it more and more difficult to bear the cost.
The Jordanians basically closed their borders by the end of 2005, in part because they were being overburdened, and they also have demographic issues to worry about. Half of the small Jordanian population are Palestinian, and now you’ve introduced another million Iraqis. And this is a very fragile regime in the first place, the Jordanian dictatorship.
AMY GOODMAN: What does each country gain by letting in Iraqi refugees?
NIR ROSEN: Well, Jordan took in initially many of the wealthier ones, as did Egypt, and so they certainly gained a great deal of money and investment, and they required for residency a certain amount of money in the bank. But Jordan was a less friendly environment for Shias. Syria, again, is the most friendly environment for really any Iraqi; Shias, Sunnis, Christians each find welcoming neighborhoods there. Lebanon, very difficult to get to, and there’s a likelihood of being expelled by the Lebanese government, but Christian Iraqis have found that the Christians of Lebanon have been generous in protecting them. Shia Iraqis have tended to go into the Shia neighborhoods of Beirut. Egypt closed its borders more or less after about 150,000 Iraqis came in, mostly Sunni. The majority of the Iraqi Arab refugees are Sunnis, despite the fact that Sunnis are a minority in Iraq. And Sweden has taken in, I think, 40,000 or 50,000, as well. They’ve been quite generous. As you’ve said, we took in about 700, which is a laughable amount.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the politics of this, given that the US said they went into Iraq to save the people of Iraq, only allowing in 700 here?
NIR ROSEN: Well, there are various reasons for why they won’t take them in. I think the fact that they’re Arab and Muslim is probably one of them. The main factor is probably that if you take any refugees, you’re admitting that your whole program in Iraq is a failure. If Iraq is exporting refugees, people are fleeing Iraq for their lives, then everything we’ve done is a failure, which indeed it is, of course, failure.
And there are also security reasons. Homeland Security Department is finding it difficult to screen the Iraqis and difficult to even send their people to various embassies to initiate the screening process. That’s taken a painfully long time logistically.
AMY GOODMAN: Why can't they screen them?
NIR ROSEN: I think it’s just incompetence and sort of a lack of interest. And one of the factors that prevents Iraqis from getting visas, for example, if you’ve paid a ransom. Many Iraqis, virtually every family I know of, have been victims of kidnapping. If you pay a ransom to release your relative from kidnapping, according to the US government, you have materially supported terrorism, and therefore you can be prevented from obtaining a visa to the US.
AMY GOODMAN: If you’ve paid any kind of ransom?
NIR ROSEN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Governments have paid ransoms, like the Italian government, for people to be released from Iraq.
NIR ROSEN: Yes, I’m sure the US government has, as well, but this has been an obstacle for Iraqis. And in general, there’s an aversion, it seems, on the part of America to take in Arabs or Muslims, and Iraqis, in particular. I think Christians have a much better time, Iraqi Christians, as informally the West, whether Australia, England, America, are more likely to take in Christians and are more interested in their plight. I think there’s also stronger interest groups in the West, in Canada and the US, who are active on behalf of the Iraqi Christians.
AMY GOODMAN: What does it do to the politics of a country, to Syria, to Jordan, to Lebanon, having the Iraqi refugees come in? And then, I want to broaden that to: what is the effect of the war on these countries?
NIR ROSEN: Well, when we think of the Iraqi refugee crisis, we have to think of the crisis that people in the region think of in relation to that one, and that’s the Palestinian refugee crisis. In 1948, up to 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in Palestine to make way for what became Israel. They went to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan. There were put in refugee camps. Eventually, after a few years, they were militarized, mobilized. They had their own militias. They were engaged in attacks, trying to liberate their homes. And they eventually were instrumentalized by the various governments, whether Lebanon, Syria, Jordan. Different groups used them. And they were massacred, as well, by the Lebanese, by the Jordanians. They contributed to destabilization of Jordan, of Lebanon, as well.
And I think you will see something similar happening with the Iraqis, because we have much larger numbers, approaching three million, and many of them already have links with militias back home, of course, because to survive in Iraq you need some militia to protect you. And there are long-established smuggling routes for weapons, for fighters, etc.
And add to that the very sensitive sectarian issue in Syria, in Jordan. The Syrian regime is a minority regime perceived by radical Sunnis to be a heretical. Syria is a majority Sunni country. The majority of the refugees are Sunni. Syria has a good relationship with a Shia-dominated Iraqi government. There have been various Islamist opposition groups who have sought to overthrow their government in Syria. Jordan, as well, has its own Islamist opposition. We’re likely eventually to see, as Sunnis are pushed more and more out of Baghdad and as the militias are pushed into the Anbar Province, that they might link up with Islamist groups in Syria, in Jordan, in Lebanon.
So I think it’s wrong to think of Iraq as its own conflict. There’s now a regional conflict. It’s going to involve Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon. And I think we’ll see governments being overthrown -- for example, the one in Jordan. What we already see are fighters being exported, for example, the fighting in Lebanon the past few months. Many Iraq veterans have sought shelter in Lebanon among -- in the Palestinian refugee camps, for example.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about that, what’s happening right now in Lebanon with Fatah al-Islam, with, in particular, the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.
NIR ROSEN: Well, Nahr al-Bared refugee camp doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been wiped out completely. The Lebanese army destroyed, flattened completely a refugee camp that at once housed 40,000 people. And they’ve now been made homeless. They left with only their shirts on their backs, basically.
What provoked this conflict was the existence of a group called Fatah al-Islam that declared itself in late 2006. They sort of piggybacked onto a pre-existing Palestinian group, a secular one called Fatah Intifada, taking advantage of, I think, benign neglect on the part of Syria and a very welcoming environment in northern Lebanon, where you have Salafis already work in close reliance with the Sunni-dominated Future Movement. And it seems like, as Sy Hersh explained in his article, the Future Movement, led by Saad Hariri, hoped that they could take advantage of the presence of the Salafis and jihadists in the camps and elsewhere to be sort of the Sunni militia against Hezbollah. But these groups weren’t interested in fighting Shias. They were more interested in fighting Israel, the US, the crusaders, and establishing their own sort of Islamic emirate in the north. And as a result, there’s been a very brutal and bloody clash with the Lebanese army and security forces.
They took advantage of the fact that the Palestinian camps in Lebanon are basically autonomous in terms of security. The Lebanese security forces weren’t allowed, thanks to an agreement several decades ago, to actually enter the camps. And some of these camps, Ayn al-Hilwah, south of Beirut, have long been exporting jihadists to Iraq. What happened about a year ago was that the flow was reversed, and fighters from Iraq began seeking shelter elsewhere. They can’t go to Jordan. They can’t go to Syria. Lebanon was a much more permissive environment -- no strong state, no strong security forces, Palestinian camps already sort of lawless, and a place where Lebanese seek shelter if they’re absconding from the law, and a very friendly environment for Salafis in the Sunni areas because of the increased sectarian tensions in Lebanon.
People in Lebanon are viewing their conflict, especially Sunnis, within a context of the Iraq conflict. They believe in these conspiracy theories about the Shia “Crescent,” about a Shia program, and Iran is exporting its revolution in the region. These are baseless sort of fears, but they’re very strong fears held on the part of Sunnis. And as a result, the Sunnis of Lebanon are looking for their own militia to protect them from what they believe is Hezbollah’s attempts to control the country.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the comments of Seymour Hersh, the investigation that he did, specifically saying that the US and Saudi governments are covertly backing militant Sunni groups like Fatah al-Islam as part of an overarching foreign policy to go after Iran and the Shia influence?
NIR ROSEN: Well, Sy Hersh and I deal with sort of different levels, in the sense that most of my work was on the ground in refugee camps and in poor neighborhoods of Lebanon. So I dealt with the actual militias, not on the geopolitical level with the people who might be sponsoring them. So I found no evidence that the US government or Saudi Arabia were directly involved.
What is clear, however, is that jihadist groups in Lebanon are being sponsored and assisted by various Salafis in Lebanon who are very close with the Lebanese government and who support the March 14 Movement. And money is coming in certainly from Saudi Arabia from rich patrons. They are well armed -- very new weapons compared to the Lebanese army -- laptops, very well fed. And some of their apartments are rented by people who are closely associated with the Lebanese government.
But given where I was, there was no direct US involvement, as far as I can see. It would be very foolish for the US to support these jihadists. I think the Lebanese government and its allies found that it was also very dangerous for them, that they cannot control these people and use them for their own ends. We tried this ourselves in Afghanistan and are still suffering as a result of that. And these groups in Lebanon, I think, actually ended up taking advantage of the Lebanese authorities, instead of the other way around.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Nir Rosen, independent journalist, author of In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. He has just come out of Lebanon, has been looking at refugees, the mass crisis. I mean, you’re putting the numbers now at, well, over five million numbers, with those refugees inside Iraq, the internally displaced, around two million, and then you’re saying three million outside.
NIR ROSEN: I think almost three million inside. I mean, the rate is increasing so fast every day, every month 30,000 to 50,000 are leaving their homes.
AMY GOODMAN: Where does the UN come into this and refugee camps in these countries?
NIR ROSEN: Well, until now, there haven’t really been refugee camps outside of Iraq. Iraqis have sort of blended into the urban environments of Amman, Jordan; Damascus, Syria; Beirut; Cairo. These are urban people who have fled, and they prefer an urban environment. There’s a taboo about refugee camps. And the governments have not set up refugee camps either. So this makes it harder to help them and harder to track them, as well.
Within Iraq, there have been some camps set up for the internally displaced in southern Iraq. But about 150,000 to 200,000 Iraqis have fled to northern Iraq -- Irbil, Sulaymaniyah, Dahuk -- and they have also just rented homes in urban areas in towns.
The UN was very slow to respond, in part because of a lack of funding, in part because the UN was still in a sort of intellectual mode where they were assisting the Iraqi government. There was a reconstruction effort, stability effort, development, not dealing with the humanitarian crisis, because usually it’s the other way around. You solve the refugee crisis first, and then you initiate the reconstruction, development, etc. Iraq was unusual in that sense, in that what initially was a reconstruction effort became a humanitarian crisis. And the UN was reluctant to admit it, that there was a humanitarian crisis, because that would imply the Iraqi government, which is assisting, is a failure. And, in fact, the Iraqi government is a party in the conflict and is one of the main actors in prolonging this conflict, to the extent that we can even say that there isn’t an Iraqi government.
So the UN has been very late, in part because it depends on funders. You can’t blame the UN. The UN is basically America and the donor countries. But there was this lazy intellectual process of recognizing that Iraq is a failure. And, of course, the UN was traumatized by, first, the failure to prevent the war in Iraq -- and it’s been seeking a mission ever since then -- and, of course, the bombing in August 2003, which basically expelled the UN from Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you make of the Syrian prime minister Monday saying that his country will help rebuild Iraq, help Iraqis rebuild Iraq?
NIR ROSEN: I think it’s optimistic. I don’t think anybody can really help Iraq at this point. And Syria lacks the funds. We in the West have been focused too much on Iran and Syria, as if they are the solution to Iraq, or the problem or the cause of the problem, whereas, in fact, this is mainly an internal conflict. And there isn’t much that a country like Syria can do. The US, with all of its troops and all of its money, has failed completely.
Syria does have the advantage of having a good relationship with all the parties in the conflict. It’s been very good at maintaining relations with Sunni resistance groups, with Shia radicals like Muqtada al-Sadr. Maliki, the prime minister, actually lived in Syria for a long time. President Talabani was in exile in Syria when he established his own political party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. So Syria does have a very good relationship, and it could be the key to bringing some of the Iraqi groups together. But at this time, I think there’s actually no hope.
AMY GOODMAN: Nir, what about Iran? What about the whole Bush-Cheney push to attack Iran? And what is the significance of this? And how does it play out in these countries?
NIR ROSEN: Well, I think we’re dealing with a mentality on the part of our administration that nobody else is going to have the guts to take on Iran in the future, the next president, so if we don’t do it, who’s going to do it, and we’ll be vindicated in the future just like Reagan was vindicated, allegedly, for bringing down the Soviet Union. So they have this long-term view of how history will treat them, and if they don’t take down Iran, nobody else will, which is probably the case, although they can’t take down Iran, either.
Iran is not Iraq. You can bomb it, but I think you’d only basically strengthen the support for the government, as always happens when you bomb a country. We saw this in Yugoslavia and elsewhere. And they’ve been blaming Iran for everything under the sun lately, for supporting Sunni radicals in Iraq or attacking the Iranian-backed leadership in Iraq, for attacking -- and then they blame Iran for supporting the Taliban, who, of course, were bitter enemies of Iran. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, the president of Afghanistan, Karzai, coming in and saying Iran is a partner and then receiving Ahmadinejad in Afghanistan, and President Bush at the same time attacking Iran.
NIR ROSEN: Well, the countries in the region know that they can’t lose Iran as an ally and as a neighbor. The US can easily alienate Iran, without suffering too many consequences. But Iraq does depend on Iran as a friendly neighbor, likewise Afghanistan. And if you were to antagonize Iran, of course, the consequences would be much more severe than antagonizing Iraq, which had a very weak army.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the politics? Why is Bush doing this, escalating the rhetoric?
NIR ROSEN: Well, there is a general aversion on the part of the US administration towards any Islamist movement or government. This is why they brought down the Islamic Courts in Somalia, this is why they overthrew the Hamas democratically elected government in Palestine, this is why they refuse to deal with Hezbollah, an overwhelmingly popular movement in Lebanon: I think a fear of any successful Islamist model. And then, we’ve had a long animosity with Iran. We haven’t forgiven them, I think, for the hostage crisis a few decades ago.
And I think we’re now in search of a new enemy. When I wrote my book, I was doing research on LexisNexis, and I found that in May 2003 universally the US press was talking about when do we got to war against Iran? Iraq has been such a success. We brought down Saddam’s regime so quickly. So now, Iran is next, obviously. And everybody was behind this, of course.
AMY GOODMAN: The Lieberman-sponsored resolution condemning Iranians fighting in Iraq for killing US soldiers, but then the report coming out that there are more Saudi fighters in Iraq than Iranian fighters.
NIR ROSEN: It’s difficult for me to understand why the Shias would need Iranian fighters. Iraqis are very good at killing, as we’ve seen. Shias were in the army. They were the majority of the army. Shias were in the Fedayeen Saddam, as well. And they’ve been very eager to fight the Americans -- the Mahdi Army, other groups.
So Iran might be sponsoring various Shia militias, of course. It has its own proxies in Iraq: the Supreme Council, one of our main allies, the Dawa Party, one of our main allies, the Sadr Movement to a lesser extent, and, of course, some of the Kurdish parties, as well. Iran has a very good relationship with various Iraqi movements.
I am skeptical that they are actually sending fighters to Iraq. I just don’t see the need for it. Iraqis are very well trained. They might be sending some weapons. But then again, there’s also a black market in weapons, so just because a weapon is Iranian doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily been sold by Iran. Various groups use American weapons. It doesn’t mean that the Americans are arming people, although, in fact, we are arming militias.
I mean, it’s very hypocritical for the US to complain about any foreign intervention in Iraq in the first place, given that we occupied Iraq and destroyed it, and now we’re arming Sunni militias in various neighborhoods, making the situation much worse. In various Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, we’re creating our own militias. We are the ones who armed the police and the army, who are, in effect, controlled by a sectarian Shia militia. So it’s absurd to take the American accusations seriously, except that they are intending to go to war against Iran.
AMY GOODMAN: On that issue, Nir Rosen, Time magazine ran an article this week called “Prelude to an Attack on Iran.” It ends with a quote from an unnamed US official: “There will be an attack on Iran,” he said.
NIR ROSEN: I mean, this is just such a foolish game to play. American soldiers are basically held hostage in Iraq. They can’t leave, and they can’t stay. And Iran has the ability to make things much more difficult for the Americans. Until now, while we are fighting Shia militias, Shia resistance groups, it’s not a sort of universal uprising on the part of Shias. We did face that a little bit in 2004, and it was very difficult for the Americans. But Iran does have the ability to mobilize Iraqi Shias, of course, against the Americans and, if it wanted to, to sponsor other groups that might want to fight the Americans.
Iran, until now, I think, has been the primary beneficiary of the US war in Iraq, in that their people are the ones in charge, and their main enemy, or one of them after Israel, Saddam Hussein, was removed. So we could have seen Iran as an ally in all this, and I think that we could have seen them as an ally in Afghanistan, as well. But we’ve chosen to invent an enemy where we didn’t have one before.
AMY GOODMAN: David Petraeus, the general, this report that’s coming out, along with the Ambassador Crocker, the second week of September, it’s now reported, they may well be reporting on September 11th to Congress. What is the significance of this?
NIR ROSEN: I don’t think it’s significant. What can they say that would make any impact one way or the other?
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think has to happen?
NIR ROSEN: In Iraq? It’s too late for anything good to happen in Iraq, unfortunately. If the Americans stay, we’ll see a continuation of this civil war, of ethnic cleansing, until all of Iraq is sort of ethnically -- or sectarian, homogenous zones, which is basically what’s already happened. If the Americans leave, then you’ll see greater intervention of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, supporting their own militias in Iraq and being drawn into battle.
But no matter what, Iraq doesn’t exist anymore. Baghdad will never be in the hands of Sunnis again. Baghdad will be controlled by Shia militias. They’ve been cleansing all the Sunnis from Baghdad. So Sunnis are basically being pushed out of Iraq, period. They can go to the Anbar Province, which isn’t a very friendly place. I think you’ll see that there won’t be any more elections in Iraq. Maliki is the last prime minister Iraq will have for a long time. There is neither the infrastructure for elections anymore, nor the desire to have them, nor the ability of Iraqi groups to cooperate anymore. So what you’ll see is basically Mogadishu in Iraq: various warlords controlling small neighborhoods. And those who are by major resources, such as oil installations, obviously will be foreign-sponsored warlords who will be able to cut deals with us, the Chinese. But Iraq is destroyed, and I think we’ll see that this will spread throughout the region, and this will destabilize Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: Before we wrap up, I want to talk about the Occupied Territories, about Gaza and the West Bank, particularly Gaza now, the news out, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza enduring a fifth day of power blackouts. The outages began after the European Union suspended its funding of Gaza’s main electricity plant. What’s happening now?
NIR ROSEN: Well, Hamas was elected democratically in elections that the US President Jimmy Carter and the international community recognized were free and fair. We, of course, were very upset that Hamas won the elections, and we imposed sanctions on them and tried to overthrow the government in a soft coup, by basically strangling the economy. And that didn’t work. As a result, we increased the heat on Hamas. We began training and sponsoring Fatah militias, with the cooperation of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and, of course, Israel, and attempted to overthrow the Hamas democratically elected government. And that, too, failed. And Hamas actually managed to eject the Fatah militias from Gaza.
And, of course, now, thanks to US pressure, the Europeans, who would like to deal with Hamas, who have a much more realistic view of the Middle East, are unable to do so. And, I mean, all you’re doing is actually radicalizing this group. This is one of the more moderate Islamist groups in the region, in fact, and they were willing to negotiate with Israel. But what you do when you allow a group like this to take part in elections, and then when they win you try to overthrow them, is merely radicalize them and encourage the Salafis, those with leanings towards al-Qaeda.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain what you mean by Salafis.
NIR ROSEN: Salafis, like the Wahabis of Saudi Arabia, a much stricter interpretation of Islam, generally they reject any innovations and any form of modernity, any deviations from what they perceive as a true Islam, whether Shiism or influences of modernity, of reform. And they often, as well, believe that if you don’t follow their line of thinking, you’re a heretic, you’re an infidel, and you can be killed. Zarqawi was a Salafi, for example.
And these movements are not very strong in Palestine yet. But what we're doing is taking a moderate group like Hamas and actually encouraging them to be more radical, telling them that negotiations, politics, elections won’t work, all you have is violence. It is such a foolish process, because you can’t push them into the sea, which is what Israel would like to do, of course. But if you keep them in this prison, which is Gaza, and you bomb them every day, which is what Israel is doing, and they’ve killed -- since Israel withdrew from Gaza, they’ve killed over 150 children and hundreds of civilians. So it’s not exactly withdrawal in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think needs to happen there?
NIR ROSEN: What needs to happen at this point is a one-state solution, where Palestinian refugees are allowed to go back to their homes, where Israel is a state for Jews and non-Jews alike, a state for its citizens. And this one-state solution is inevitable. I think the choice that Israeli Jews have is whether they accept it peacefully, following the model in South Africa, or do they wait a few decades and have to deal with a much more violent uprising on the part of the Arab Israeli population and the population in the West Bank and Gaza? But I think, one way or the other, it’s inevitable that Israel can’t exist as a Jewish state that doesn’t give equal rights to its non-Jewish Arab citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: Nir Rosen, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Nir Rosen, independent journalist, his book is called In the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq. He is just back from Beirut, Lebanon.
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James Morris <justicequest2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
Did you read the last sentence of the following 'Prelude to an Attack on Iran' as I just hope you aren't in Iraq when it comes (more than likely when those B-2s have had brackets modified - just up the road in Palmdale - to carry the new 30,000 pound bunker busters in order to try to penetrate the Iranian nuclear facilities):
James Morris <justicequest2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
Saturday, Aug. 18, 2007
Prelude to an Attack on Iran
By Robert Baer
Reports that the Bush Administration will put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list can be read in one of two ways: it's either more bluster or, ominously, a wind-up for a strike on Iran. Officials I talk to in Washington vote for a hit on the IRGC, maybe within the next six months. And they think that as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities. An awe and shock campaign, lite, if you will. But frankly they're guessing; after Iraq the White House trusts no one, especially the bureaucracy.
As with Saddam and his imagined WMD, the Administration's case against the IRGC is circumstantial. The U.S. military suspects but cannot prove that the IRGC is the main supplier of sophisticated improvised explosive devices to insurgents killing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most sophisticated version, explosive formed projectiles or shape charges, are capable of penetrating the armor of an Abrams tank, disabling the tank and killing the crew.
A former CIA explosives expert who still works in Iraq told me: "The Iranians are making them. End of story." His argument is only a state is capable of manufacturing the EFP's, which involves a complicated annealing process. Incidentally, he also is convinced the IRGC is helping Iraqi Shi'a militias sight in their mortars on the Green Zone. "The way they're dropping them in, in neat grids, tells me all I need to know that the Shi'a are getting help. And there's no doubt it's Iranian, the IRGC's," he said.
A second part of the Administration's case against the IRGC is that the IRGC has had a long, established history of killing Americans, starting with the attack on the Marines in Beirut in 1983. And that's not to mention it was the IRGC that backed Hizballah in its thirty-four day war against Israel last year. The feeling in the Administration is that we should have taken care of the IRGC a long, long time ago.
Strengthening the Administration's case for a strike on Iran, there's a belief among neo-cons that the IRGC is the one obstacle to a democratic and friendly Iran. They believe that if we were to get rid of the IRGC, the clerics would fall, and our thirty-years war with Iran over. It's another neo-con delusion, but still it informs White House thinking.
And what do we do if just the opposite happens — a strike on Iran unifies Iranians behind the regime? An Administration official told me it's not even a consideration. "IRGC IED's are a casus belli for this Administration. There will be an attack on Iran."
— Robert Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, the novel Blow the House Down
Find this article at:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1654188,00.html
James Morris <justicequest2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
THIS WEEK AT WAR
Week's War-Related Events Reviewed
Aired August 19, 2007 - 13:00 ET
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0708/19/tww.01.html
FOREMAN: I'm Tom Foreman and here is where we stand in THIS WEEK AT WAR. U.S./Iranian relations getting worse. We'll ask Robin Wright at the "Washington Post" what the fallout will be if the U.S. labels the entire elite military force of Iran a terrorist group.
FOREMAN: Even if you're keeping up with all of the news, you know it's easy to get friends and enemies confused these days. Take Iran, for instance. On Tuesday President Ahmadinejad was in Afghanistan proclaiming solidarity with the U.S.-backed government. On that same day in Washington the State Department used the term battlefields to describe its confrontations with Tehran. And now Zain Verjee reported on Wednesday, the administration is considering naming all or part of Iran's Revolutionary Guard a specially designated global terrorist group.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Just last week President Bush warned Iran the U.S. was about to act and now it might.
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH, U.S. PRESIDENT: When we catch you playing a non-constructive role, there will be a price to pay.
VERJEE: That price could be cutting the financial lifeblood of the Guard, going after their bank accounts as well as businesses that deal with the Guard inside and outside Iran.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FOREMAN: So what is really going on here? Is all of this just diplomatic wordplay, or are we really on the brink of military confrontation? Robin Wright joins us from "The Washington Post" and Ray Takeyh, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations is with me here with me in the studio.
Ray, everybody says we don't want a military conflict. And yet things keep coming up every week that suggest we might be headed that way.
RAY TAKEYH, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, we're in sort a path of incremental escalation. Where there's increasing economic financial pressure and now increasingly declaring the national army as a terrorist designation. Where that leads to, it could lead to sort of a military confrontation, but I don't think we're there yet. We're still trying to use economic tools to dissuade Iran from various actions that we find objectionable.
FOREMAN: I want to remind everybody with the map here basically why this is of such interest to us. Iran right in the middle here, Afghanistan over there, Iraq over there. Important area. Robin, do you think that we're accomplishing something with this sword rattling and if so, what?
ROBIN WRIGHT, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Well, the administration feels very frustrated that after a year of reaching out to Iran, offering it a carrot and stick package, if it suspended its uranium enrichment process which can be used for post for peaceful nuclear energy as well as to develop a nuclear weapon that it's had no response. And tensions have heightened with Iran's deepening intervention in Iraq. It's arming even some of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
And the failure of the Security Council to be able to engage in the kind of robust sanctions that might actually pressure Iran. So far, they have been token efforts, for example, the last UN resolution sanctioned 28 members of Iran's military and industrial complex including the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards.
This is a quantum leap in trying to name the whole Revolutionary Guard corps, but its practical impact will probably be economic rather than military. And that for the time being is all the United States is trying to do to squeeze continuously, to try to get Iran to change its behavior rather than to engage in a process that leads to regime change itself.
FOREMAN: I want to show our viewers some of the other businesses of the Revolutionary Guard. They're involved in mass transportation, oil pipeline contracts, natural gas fields, movie production and poultry farming.
Ray, if they get this designation of specially designated global terrorist, what does that do to all these endeavors? Are we just cutting off their money?
TAKEYH: Well, a lot of those business enterprises are domestic. So they're immune from this sort of economic sanctions that we can propose. Second of all, we don't have direct economic relationships with Iran or any sort of a linkage to those Revolutionary Guard companies. So it would have to be Europeans and Asians to do so. And they're unlikely to sign up for that. So the practical economic consequences of this designation is likely to be more limited.
FOREMAN: So is this just a dog and pony show at this point?
TAKEYH: No, it does ratchet up tensions between the two countries. For instance, Russia and China are involved with arms sales. Now the actual beneficiaries are the revolutionary guards. How does that work? Does that mean that Russia and China are selling arms to a terrorist organization? What does that portend for Chinese American or Russian American or European American relations? It could be rather destabilizing.
FOREMAN: Robin, in your reporting, does the U.S. speak with one voice on this? Because it seems like we keep getting messages, one side saying, we want cooperation, the other side then saying thing like this?
WRIGHT: Well, I think just like Iraq, the administration is beginning to feel the pressure of the clock. And that is 17 months left in office. And one of their primary goals is to ensure that Iran is not left behind as an emerging nuclear power. So there is, I think, a sense within the administration that they have to do something far more dramatic to try to produce that kind of result.
There is clearly a difference within the administration. So far, those who are arguing diplomacy, even tough actions like sanctioning the Revolutionary Guards have prevailed. Will they prevail for the next 17 months? It kind of depends on what the Iranians do.
FOREMAN: Let's consider what Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said on Thursday. "I have significant concerns that a coalition withdrawal would lead to a major Iranian advance." He's talking about Iraq here. "And we need to consider what the consequences of that would be."
Ray, is that a legitimate concern at this point or is that just more of this talk?
TAKEYH: Well, part of the administration's strategy to justify its continued military presence in Iraq. I'm not quite sure what the answer to that is. There will be Iranian influence in Iraq. There will be Iranian influence in Iraq for the foreseeable future. Economic, political social and religious.
So the question is to avert that influence, do we stay in Iraq permanently or not? And the ambassador should answer that question, because if the goal of the American policy is to prevent Iran from having any sort of influence in Iraq, then that is a permanent occupation.
FOREMAN: All right. Thank you so much. We're out of time. Robin and Ray, appreciate your insights in all of this.
In a moment, an international land grab, except there isn't any land to grab. It's all in THIS WEEK AT WAR. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
FOREMAN: OK. Take the North Pole, a cold and barren landscape. Now look at the Middle East. A hot, sandy and also rather barren landscape. What have they got in common? Oil. Billions of gallons of oil. And now a struggle to control all that black gold, particularly at the top of the world. Barbara Starr has the lowdown on this new cold war.
FOREMAN: Tora Bora, a remote mountain region on the Afghan side of the Afghan/Pakistan border. It was the last known location of Osama bin Laden after the defeat of the Taliban in 2001. Now almost six years later, al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are again dug into the caves and ridges of Tora Bora and once again U.S. troops are going in to dig them out. Will they be more successful this time? That's the question. CNN military correspondent Barbara Starr is at her post at the Pentagon. With me in the studio Michael Scheuer, now a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, but in 2001, one of the CIA's top agents in pursuit of Osama bin Laden. Barbara, first of all, what's going on at Tora Bora as we speak?
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Tom, it's really remarkable. The U.S. is back there, the Taliban are back there. What officials tell us is several weeks ago, they noticed a massing of Taliban forces, maybe 100, as many as 200 Taliban and al Qaeda fighters back in those mountains. They've been keeping an eye on it, now they've decided, as you say, to go in and dig them out. The question is the Taliban capability. They can still amass forces. They still may be planning, officials say, for some type of high profile attack. In the last few weeks they've staged several raids against U.S. fire bases, going right for defense lines, trying to breach and get into a U.S. fire base. They aren't giving up any time soon it appears. So the U.S. is chasing them down yet again.
FOREMAN: It is worthwhile considering the history of the Taliban. It was formed back in 1994 by clerics and students, many are former mujahadin (ph). In 1996, they offered refuge, formed an alliance with bin Laden. In 1996 to 2001, the Taliban controlled most of Afghanistan including the capital Kabul. Then in October 2001, the U.S. attacked the Taliban following the September 11th attacks and they were toppled. And in December of 2001, they were out of power. But, Michael, they retreated to Tora Bora and that's where everybody said we should have gotten Osama bin Laden, but we didn't.
MICHAEL SCHEUER, FMR. CIA SENIOR OFFICER: No, we had the chance to get him there and we didn't do it. We used the Afghans instead of the U.S. military. The battle at Tora Bora now is just an example of the spreading insurgency in Afghanistan. We're fighting them in the south. Now we're fighting them near Kabul. Some Germans got killed in Kabul the other day. So we're really facing a growing insurgency in Afghanistan and we have far too few troops on the ground to counter it.
FOREMAN: On the map, you can see that this is Afghanistan. This is Pakistan over here. This is what used to be controlled by the Taliban basically the whole country. Then they got pushed back, driven down to where at one point we really felt like we sort of had it isolated in the Tora Bora region down here. How did they hold on so long? Did we just not finish the job?
SCHEUER: We hardly started the job, sir. We killed very few of the enemy. We let them go home with their weapons, let al Qaeda go home into Pakistan with its weapons and now they're back. They probably outnumber American forces on the ground if you take the totality of the country.
FOREMAN: So Barbara, do we see this current action in Tora Bora as an isolated limited action or is this a big front in a big war?
STARR: Well, you know, hard to say. Limited at the moment, but there is that bigger picture, Tom. Because of course just across the border in Pakistan, still the U.S. has no idea how many Taliban, how many al Qaeda well dug into that Pakistani frontier area, rearming, training, equipping, continuing to be ready and continuing to come across the border and fight U.S. troops on the Afghan side. There is a long way to go here. And I think Michael really raises the question, is if this is now an insurgency, which many U.S. commanders call it, how does the U.S. really begin to deal with this?
FOREMAN: Michael how do you thing we will begin to deal with it?
SCHEUER: I don't think we will sir. I think we'll eventually find a face-saving way to get out. When Mr. Obama last week spoke about two more brigades for Afghanistan, that is 6,000 troops. It would bring us up to 36,000. Don't consider any discussion serious unless we're talking about half a million troops in Afghanistan.
FOREMAN: How do we have a face-saving way to get out when we have so many intelligence reports saying that if we step out of Iraq, step out of Afghanistan precipitously, that they will become breeding grounds for troubles that will come visit us?
SCHEUER: Well, they're there now, sir. It is not a question of if it will happen. It is happening now. Whether we stay or whether we go from those two countries, they're going to come after us in the United States.
FOREMAN: Isn't that a huge argument for at least not running away from it?
SCHEUER: We shouldn't run away from it, but we should be realistic. We have lots of aircraft carriers and lots of submarines. We don't have a lot of troops. The idea that anyone thought they could control Afghanistan which is the size of Texas with 30,000 troops, a person of that description ought to be hospitalized.
FOREMAN: Barbara, how much do you hear talk at the Pentagon of people saying OK, however we got into these various things, these are concerns for the world community and the world's armies should be joining more in these efforts?
STARR: Well, I think that's a feeling of a lot of U.S. commanders. They think that the U.S. military is really bearing most of the burden in both of these wars that, you know, you hear commanders continue to say Tom is none of these wars are going to be won by the U.S. military. They're insurgencies. They are ideological movements. They are going to be won by fighting on that ideological front and that means other countries. It means diplomacy. It means economics. It means financial sanctions and incentives and perhaps that is something many U.S. commanders believe the world really hasn't grappled with yet.
FOREMAN: Barbara, very briefly, do they have any faith that the world is going to grapple with that any time soon?
STARR: I think they feel that, no, to be honest. I thing they feel that unless there's another mass casualty attack against a western power such as the United States or a country in Europe, that the incentive simply isn't there because of the political environment in the United States and in most of western Europe. Countries are simply exhausted by the last several years of fighting terrorism and yet it is not kinetics, it is not guns and weapons that most people will tell you will win this war.
FOREMAN: Thank you Barbara Starr, thank you Michael Scheuer as well.
James Morris <justicequest2000@yahoo.com> wrote:
Iran's Guards: We'll 'punch' US
By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago
Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said they would not bow to pressure and threatened to "punch" the U.S., in their first response to Washington's plan to list them as a terrorist organization, newspapers reported Saturday.
Local press in the Iranian capital of Tehran quoted Revolutionary Guards leader Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi saying that he could understand Washington's ire toward the group because of their "leverage" against the U.S.
"America will receive a heavier punch from the guards in the future," he was quoted as saying in the conservative daily Kayhan. "We will never remain silent in the face of U.S. pressure and we will use our leverage against them."
There was no elaboration on what Safavi meant by the punch or the organization's "leverage."
Washington has accused the Guards of supporting militias and insurgent groups attacking U.S. forces in Iraq — charges Iran denies.
The fact that the remarks, made on Thursday in the central Iranian city of Isfahan, appeared in local newspapers rather than the official state news outlets suggest the comments are for domestic consumption.
Meanwhile, other Iranian officials continued to speak out against Washington's move to register the group as a terrorist organization, with a government spokesman calling the claims "baseless," on the Web site of the state broadcasting company.
"The claims of the U.S. are baseless and have no takers around the world," he said Saturday, noting that "the U.S. has endangered the world many times under the excuse of fighting against terrorism."
On Tuesday, an unnamed official in the Bush administration said the U.S. planned to list the Guards as terrorist group in order to squeeze Iran.
The move was seen as an effort to pressure businesses the corps is thought to control, from construction to oil sectors. It would be the first time the U.S. would put a foreign government's military agency on the list, which includes the al-Qaida network and the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Iranian armed forces spokesman Gen. Ali Reza Afshar hit out precisely against this attempt to declare a state body terrorist in an editorial Saturday in the country's largest circulation newspaper, calling it illegal.
"America's long time hostility against the Guard is clear and understandable, but this move against organization that is part of Iran's armed forces is illegal," he wrote in the daily Hamshahri.
The estimated 200,000-strong Revolutionary Guards is an elite force separate from Iran's regular military and has its own ground, naval and air units.
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Forwarded
..assume you've seen how the bushies are changing the
Nomenclature on Iran's Revolutionary Guards to Terrorist Organization which justifies bombing starting against their bases and Tehran headquarters -- without
Congressional approval as war on terror already authorized
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Thursday, August 16th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/16/1416230
Iran Rejects U.S. “Terror” Label
Iran is brushing off the Bush administration’s vow to label the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist” group. A Revolutionary Guards spokesperson said the Iranian force will continue to grow in size and prepare to retaliate in the event of a U.S. strike. The Washington Post reports European and Arab allies are expressing alarm at the administration’s new policy. Critics inside Iran have long claimed unilateral U.S. actions are strengthening the Iranian government’s control while isolating pro-democracy activists. But State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said the move is justified.
State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack: "They now have tentacles into a range of different activities, into business activities, banking activities, we all know about their support for those groups going after our troops in Iraq, we've also talked about the supplying of arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and there have also been reports about their linkages to Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations."
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As U.S. Steps Up Pressure on Iran, Aftereffects Worry Allies
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/15/AR2007081502199_pf.html
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 16, 2007; A09
America's allies are increasingly concerned about the Bush administration's plans to unilaterally escalate pressure on Iran, fearing that an evolving strategy may also set in motion a process that could lead to military action if Iran does not back down, according to diplomats and officials of foreign countries.
Although they share deep concern about Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions, European and Arab governments are particularly alarmed about new U.S. moves, including plans to cite Iran's entire Revolutionary Guard Corps as a "specially designated global terrorist." The move would block the elite unit's assets and pressure foreign companies doing business with its vast commercial network.
Allies are less concerned about that step than they are about the new momentum behind it, and the potential for spillover in a region reeling with multiple conflicts. "If the region is strewn with crises, then there's potential for real disaster. There's a fear that they will all merge into a super-emergency bigger than any one country can deal with," a leading Arab envoy said.
Language from the State Department yesterday triggered further alarm. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters: "We are confronting Iranian behavior across a variety of different fronts on a number of different 'battlefields,' if you will. We are confronting Iran's behavior in arming and providing material support to those groups that are going after our troops. We confront them on the ground in Iraq. Our military is doing that. We are confronting Iran diplomatically in the international arena with respect to their nuclear program."
European envoys expressed alarm at the use of "battlefield" in describing policy on Iran.
It was a two-way street, however. Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander of the Revolutionary Guard, said yesterday that Iranian missiles can hit warships anywhere in the Persian Gulf. The United States has a carrier battle group in the Gulf.
At home, even lawmakers supportive of tougher sanctions on Iran pointedly urged the administration not to stray beyond diplomacy. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and sponsor of the pending Iran Counter-Proliferation Act, welcomed the move and said foreign banks will think twice about dealing with enterprises linked to the 125,000-strong Revolutionary Guard Corps.
But Lantos also said that the United States is "far from having exhausted all the peaceful options for putting Tehran's leadership on the right path." He added: "Any talk of military intervention is unwise and unsupported by Congress and the American people."
U.S. specialists on Iran also warned about the unintended consequences of designating a state's military force a terrorist group.
"While this step can deal a blow to efforts to utilize diplomacy with Iran to stabilize Iraq, the long-term effects can be even more decisive by further entrenching U.S.-Iran relations in a paradigm of enmity," said Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council.
George Percovich of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said that unilaterally sanctioning the Revolutionary Guard's corporate interests makes sense if it avoids the prospect of not doing so in a new U.N. resolution. But he expressed concern about the political costs. "You have to show that there is a way out, and that the U.S. doesn't have an unending set of demands and isn't going to continue to press on for either military action or regime change, which many other countries think is the real U.S. objective," he said.
Geoffrey Kemp, who worked on the National Security Council staff in the Reagan administration, said that the United States should instead be pressuring Europe to adopt U.S. sanctions dating to 1995 to cut off investment in any Iranian businesses and industry. "That would have a far more significant impact on the debate inside Iran over its nuclear policy," he said.
Michael McFaul of Stanford University also urged more carrots. "If you want democratic regime change and to destabilize the regime, the best thing you could do is to make an offer about massive negotiations about everything -- human rights and state sponsorship in terrorism, as well as lifting [U.S.] sanctions and opening an embassy," he said. "Politically, this step doesn't help the administration undermine the regime -- it helps to consolidate the regime."
On Aug 14, 8:44 pm, Jack <jackNOSPAM6...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is the White House signaling that war with Iran is near?
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
>
> Report: U.S. to Call Iran Revolutionary Guard ‘Terrorists’
>
> The United States will soon be referring to an Iranian military division
> as a “specially designated global terrorist,” the Washington Post
> reported Tuesday.
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,293285,00.html
-----Original Message-----
From: Laber, Natalie <Natalie.Laber@mail.house.gov>
Sent: Wed Aug 15 14:14:11 2007
Subject: Administration's Terrorist Labeling Is A Calculated Plan To Set the Stage For War With IranFor Immediate Release:
Contact: Natalie Laber (202) 225-5871 (o); (202) 365-1040 (c)
Administration's Terrorist Labeling Is A Calculated Plan To Set the Stage For War With IranWASHINGTON, D.C. (August 15, 2007) - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) called the Administration's latest idea to label Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization another step in the lead-up to war with Iran.
"The belligerent Bush Administration is using this pending designation to convince the American public into accepting that a war with Iran is inevitable," Kucinich said.
"This designation will set the stage for more chaos in the region because it undercuts all of our diplomatic efforts.
"This new label provides further evidence for Iran's leaders that there is no point to engage in diplomatic talks with the United States if our actions point directly to regime change, said Kucinich. "Our nation is better served by demanding sensible and responsible diplomatic foreign policy initiatives from the Bush Administration.
"This is nothing more than an attempt to deceive Americans into yet another war-this time with Iran," Kucinich concluded.
###
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U.S. terror listing would squeeze IranBy KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 42 minutes ago
A Bush administration move to blacklist Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist group would ratchet up pressure on businesses from construction to oil that the military corps is thought to control, analysts said Wednesday.
Such a step also would heighten the U.S. confrontation with Iran, giving a pretext for tougher action in the future, they said.
A U.S. official in Washington said the administration had not yet decided whether to sanction the entire Guards organization or just part of it. Either way, the move would be dramatic — the first time the U.S. has put a foreign government's military agency on the list, which includes the al-Qaida network and the Middle Eastern militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
The more confrontational U.S. stance comes after months of diplomatic wrangling over American accusations that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons in violation of its treaty commitments and supplying Shiite Muslim militants in Iraq. Tehran denies doing either.
"The move reflects that there is a lot of frustration that the diplomacy isn't yielding results," said Ray Takeyh, a specialist on Mideast policy at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.
The designation would allow Washington to freeze U.S.-based assets of companies connected to the Guards, but those are believed to be minimal. More importantly, the listing would give the U.S. a cudgel to pressure foreign enterprises to cut off doing business with Guards-linked firms — the threat of being accused of supporting terrorism.
The Revolutionary Guards is an elite force separate from Iran's regular military and has its own ground, naval and air units, with an estimated 200,000 men. It has also become increasingly involved in Iran's vital commercial affairs, with interests in oil, nuclear infrastructure and construction.
A terror listing would signal to Iran that the United States was ready to act against the Guards at some point, analysts said.
"Once they get classified as terrorist, American institutions will have the legitimacy they need to fight the Revolution | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:36 am Post subject: |
| TO: Distinguished Recipients
FM: John Whitbeck
Transmitted below is a current assessment of the prospects for -- and likely consequences of -- an American attack on Iran before George W. Bush leaves office, published in today's ARAB NEWS (Jeddah).
Perhaps the world's best hope is that the writer is wrong when he writes, with respect to American generals and admirals, that "in the end they will do as ordered".
War Against Iran: Hawks Winning the Argument?
Gwynne Dyer
Arab News August 21, 2007
It’s impossible to say whether the United States will attack Iran before President George W. Bush leaves office in 17 months’ time, because nobody in the White House knows yet either. It is easy to predict what would happen if the US did attack Iran, however, and the signs are that the hawks in the White House are winning that argument.
The most alarming sign is the news that the Bush administration is about to brand the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a “terrorist organization.” This is a highly provocative step, for the IRGC is not a bunch of fanatical freelances. It is a 125,000-strong official arm of the Iranian state, parallel to the regular armed forces but more ideologically motivated and presumably more loyal to the ruling clerics.
Almost everybody in the Bush administration believes that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons in order to dominate the region and to attack Israel. (Others are less certain.) The war party, led by Dick Cheney, also believes that the clerical regime in Iran would collapse at the first hard push, since ordinary Iranians thirst for US-style democracy — and that the attack must be made while President Bush is still in office, since no successor will have the guts to do it. Even after all this time, the administration’s old machismo survives: “The boys go to Baghdad; the real men go to Tehran.”
So what will happen if Cheney & Co. get their way? The Iranian regime would not collapse: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is now unpopular due to his mishandling of the economy, but patriotic Iranians would rally even around him if they were attacked by foreigners. What would collapse, instead, is the world’s oil supply and the global economy.
Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, explained how that would be accomplished in a speech on Aug. 15 (though he made no direct reference to the US threat). “Our coast-to-sea missile systems can now reach the length and breadth of the Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” he said, “and no warships can pass in the Gulf without being in range of our coast-to-sea missiles.” In other words, Iran can close the whole of the Gulf and its approaches to oil tanker traffic, and if the US Navy dares to fight in these waters it will lose.
Despite the huge disparity in military power between the United States and Iran, this is probably true. Overcommitted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States cannot come up with the huge number of extra troops that would be needed to invade and occupy a mountainous country of 75 million people. The US can bomb Iran to its heart’s content, hitting all those real and alleged nuclear facilities, but then it runs out of options — whereas Iran’s options are very broad.
It could just stop exporting oil itself. Pulling only Iran’s three and a half million barrels per day off the market, in its present state, would send oil prices shooting up into the stratosphere. Or it could get tough and close down all oil-tanker traffic that comes within range of those missiles — which would mean little or no oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia or the smaller Gulf states either. That would mean global oil rationing, industrial shutdowns, and the end of the present economic era.
Can those missiles do all that? Yes, they can. The latest generation of sea-skimming missiles have mobile, easily concealed launchers, and they would come in very fast and low from anywhere along almost 2,000 km (well over 1,000 miles) of Iran’s Gulf coast. Sink the first half-dozen tankers, and insurance rates for voyages to the Gulf become prohibitive, even if you can find owners willing to risk their tankers.
It’s very doubtful that US air strikes could find and destroy all the missile launchers — consider how badly the Israeli Air Force did in south Lebanon last summer — so Iran wins. After a few months, the other great powers would find some way for the United States to back away from the confrontation and let the oil start flowing again, but the US would suffer a far greater humiliation than it did in Vietnam, while Iran would emerge as the undisputed arbiter of the region.
Many, perhaps most, senior American generals and admirals know this and are privately opposed to a foredoomed attack on Iran, but in the end they will do as ordered. Vice President Dick Cheney and his coterie don’t know it, preferring to believe that Iranians would welcome their American attackers with glad cries and open arms. You know, like the Iraqis did. And Cheney seems to be winning the argument in the White House.
— Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist.
Prelude to an Attack on Iran:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2007/08/20/u-s-forces-tracking-iranians-in-iraq.php
JINSAN Michael Ledeen's dangerous Iran obsession:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2007/08/20/michael-ledeen-s-dangerous-iran-obsession.php | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:48 am Post subject: |
| U.S.: Iran cooperation insufficient
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer 22 minutes ago
A senior U.S. envoy dismissed increased Iranian willingness to answer questions about its nuclear program as a smoke screen on Wednesday and said it would not prevent the U.N. Security Council from imposing additional sanctions on Tehran.
"Iran is clearly trying to take the attention from its continued development of bomb-making capabilities, and I don't think the Security Council will be distracted," said Gregory L. Schulte, the chief U.S. delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We are continuing to move forward with other members of the Security Council on a third resolution."
Schulte was responding to news that Iran and the Vienna-based IAEA — the U.N. nuclear watchdog — had reached an agreement on a timetable to respond to lingering questions over Tehran's controversial nuclear activities.
U.S. officials have previously told The Associated Press that Washington views recent signs of increased openness by Tehran as a "charm offensive" meant only to divide Security Council members and prevent them from agreeing on new sanctions, and Schulte's comments reinforced that view.
"If Iran's leaders truly want the world's trust, they would ... start to cooperate fully and unconditionally and suspend activities of international concerns," said Schulte, alluding to council demands that Tehran freeze its uranium enrichment program and stop construction of a plutonium-producing reactor.
Schulte spoke to selected reporters in a hastily arranged conference call a day after Iranian and IAEA officials announced they had worked out a schedule. The quick U.S. response reflected American concern about possible erosion of support for new sanction through the Islamic republic's decision to stop stonewalling IAEA experts on some aspects of its nuclear program.
Full Iranian cooperation with the agency's nuclear probe is only one of the council's demands, and Schulte said Tehran must also meet all others to avoid new U.N. punishment.
Of most concern to the international community are activities that could lead to the making of nuclear weapons — enrichment, which can produce both fuel and the core of warheads, and the building of the reactor that when finished will produce plutonium — also weapons material.
"These activities are not necessary for peaceful purposes but are necessary to build a bomb," Schulte said.
In Washington, Gonzalo Gallegos, a State Department spokesman, said the United States believed the council "must move forward as soon as possible with additional sanctions."
The State Department said discussions were continuing with the permanent council members on the sanctions "to make clear to the Iranian regime the costs for failing to comply with its nonproliferation obligations."
"Iran has an extensive history of promising cooperation and failing to follow through," Gallegos said. "Plans for cooperation are no substitution for actual cooperation and Iran's actions in the coming weeks will speak louder than its words."
Iranian and IAEA officials announcing their agreement in Tehran on Tuesday did not elaborate or provide more details, including whether Tehran was ready to answer all outstanding questions. But Schulte suggested otherwise.
"We understand there are real limitations with the plan," he said, including Iran's refusal to allow IAEA inspectors broad powers to conduct inspections of suspicious sites on short notice.
A diplomat accredited to the IAEA said there were other "omissions" in the time table. The diplomat, who demanded anonymity for discussing confidential information, declined to elaborate.
Iran has refused to answer questions about secret plutonium experiments in the mid-1990s and IAEA findings that Iran has not accounted for all the plutonium it has said it possessed. IAEA experts also want to know more about unexplained traces of plutonium and enriched uranium found last year at a nuclear waste facility, and about the so-called "Green Salt Project."
Diplomats told the AP last year that the agency was trying to follow up on U.S. intelligence that described the project as linking uranium enrichment-related experiments to nuclear-related high explosives and warhead design. Iran dismissed that intelligence as "based on false and fabricated documents."
Other IAEA findings of concern include traces of enriched uranium found at a military site, and Iranian diagrams the IAEA has seen that explain how to form uranium metal into the shape of a warhead.
Iranian officials have refused to answer questions about those findings for years, leaving the IAEA unable to determine the nature of Iran's nuclear program. Iran's refusal to cooperate prompted U.N. Security Council to become involved last year. The Security Council has imposed two sets of sanctions on Iran over the nuclear standoff.
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On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: http://www.iaea.org | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:24 pm Post subject: |
| 'JINSA John' Bolton is calling for an attack on Iran as well (no surprise as he is currently up at AEI now as well where Wolfowitz will soon be if not already):
http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/10816-former-un-ambassador-absolutely-wants-u-s-to-attack-iran#comments
Donald Jones wrote:
FOX is an LZNP mouthpiece. Their treatment of Palestinian guests has been despicable. FOX is bigotry personified. I don’t pay any attention to what they say. No point and a waste of time.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sent: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 6:01 PM
Subject: Important new video: FOX wants war with Iran
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Robert Greenwald
Sent: Aug 22, 2007 12:25 PM
Subject: Important new video: FOX wants war with Iran
Dear activists, colleagues and friends,
I remember very clearly the daily fearmongering led by FOX as they cheered for war with Iraq . The 24/7 images, sound effects, yelling and threatening were an ever-present drumbeat for war. We had to invade, and we had to invade now.. anyone who didn't see that was a traitor. They viciously attacked those of us who worked to get out the truth.
You'd think that with the complete failure in Iraq , those days would be behind us. Sadly, you'd be wrong.
FOX wants war with Iran .
It's almost too ridiculous to believe, but it's shockingly real. We've already compiled over 4 hours of FOX footage just in the last few months... the same images, sound effects, yelling and threatening that led the U.S. to invade Iraq is happening right now to sell a war with Iran. They are saying the exact same things!!
Here is the video evidence, side-by-side with what they said about Iraq .
http://foxattacks.com/iran?utm_source=rgemail
This time is different though. We're prepared, and we have the means to alert people to what FOX is doing. Everyone has seen the terrible tragedy and the awful price paid by so many Iraqis and Americans. We know this is coming, and we can stop it.
It was about this time in the lead-up to the Iraq war when the other TV networks started following FOX's lead. As CNN's Christiane Amanpour says in the video, they were intimidated by FOX into cheerleading for the Iraq war.
WE CANNOT LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN.
This is a critical moment, and we must send a message to the major television networks urging them to ask tough questions, be skeptical, and tell us what is really happening. They must not follow FOX down the road to another war.
We've put together an open letter to the networks. Will you sign it?
Sign the letter: http://foxattacks.com/iran?utm_source=rgemail
Please forward this message to everyone you know. We must raise our voices now. This is so important, we cannot let history repeat itself.
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Films team
P.S. Here are some recent articles on the Iran issue:
Guardian: "Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran"
Bob Baer, Time Magazine: "Prelude to an attack on Iran"
New York Times: Bush admin labels Iran's 125k Revolutionary Guard troops "terrorists"
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Brave New Films is located at 10510 Culver Blvd. , Culver City , CA 90232 and info@bravenewfilms.org. To stop receiving new videos from us, click here. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Aug 22, 2007 10:48 pm Post subject: |
| Aug 22, 2007 0:39 | Updated Aug 22, 2007 0:39
Iran has remote-controlled launch pads
By YAAKOV KATZ
Preparing for a possible American or Israeli strike on its nuclear installations, Iran has developed a remote-controlled launch system that can be used to operate dozens of unmanned Shihab ballistic missile launchers in underground bunkers, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Behind a poster of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reading: "Missile maneuver of the Great Prophet," Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards tests the long-range Shihab-3 missile in a central desert area of Iran.
Photo: AP [file]
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After recent upgrades, the Shihab-3 ballistic missiles are believed to have a target range of 2,000-kilometers. The missile was initially developed with a 1,300-km. range.
According to informed Western sources, the remote-controlled launch system was developed by the Iranians in conjunction with North Korea and by employing Chinese technology. Iranian Revolutionary Guards Commander Yayha Rahim Safavi said recently that Iran had equipped its Shihab missiles with an advanced guidance system that can control them after they are launched.
Israeli defense officials recently said if Iran were attacked, it would most likely respond by launching Shihab missiles at Israel or US targets in the region. The officials said Israel's Arrow missile defense system was capable of intercepting all of Iran's operational missiles.
Also Tuesday, senior Israeli defense officials expressed doubt that another round of sanctions would be imposed on Iran, which continues to enrich uranium and develop its nuclear program in defiance of the United Nations Security Council.
"The economic sanctions have proven themselves as having an impact on Iran," a senior official said. "But without Russia or China, it is doubtful that the UN will succeed in passing another round of sanctions."
Ahead of this possibility, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, warned Tuesday that any new UN sanctions would doom Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency and render talks with it "fruitless."
According to state television, Larijani also accused the United States of trying to undermine the progress made so far between Iran and the IAEA, to increase tensions and pave the way for new sanctions.
The comments came as senior IAEA and Iranian officials reported progress after a second day of key talks in Teheran, in efforts to resolve the remaining issues surrounding Iran's nuclear enrichment program.
AP contributed to this report. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
