| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:02 pm Post subject: Iran blames US for lack of nuke response |
| Iran blames US for lack of nuke response
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago
VIENNA, Austria (AP — A senior Iranian official blamed the U.S. Sunday for Tehran's refusal to respond to accusations it tried to make nuclear weapons, claiming information provided by Washington was not only fake but came too late for a proper review.
The U.S. dismissed the complaint, saying Iran could have answered concerns about its nuclear program years ago.
Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, also acknowledged that his country's uranium enrichment program was experiencing "ups and downs." It appeared to be the first Iran admitted its enrichment activities were running into some difficulties.
The U.N. has imposed three sets of sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend enrichment, a process that can generate nuclear fuel and the fissile core of warheads. Iran says it is pursuing the technology only to produce nuclear power.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear monitor, released a report last week saying that suspicions about most past Iranian nuclear activities had eased or been laid to rest.
But the report also noted that Iran had rejected documents that link it to missile and explosives experiments and other work connected to a possible nuclear weapons program, calling the information false and irrelevant.
The report called weaponization "the one major ... unsolved issue relevant to the nature of Iran's nuclear programme."
Most of the material shown to Iran by the IAEA on alleged attempts to make nuclear arms came from Washington, though some was provided by U.S. allies, diplomats told The Associated Press. The agency shared it with Tehran only after the nations gave their permission.
But Soltanieh dismissed much of the material as false. In any case, he said, it came too late — three years after U.S. intelligence claimed it had material on a laptop computer smuggled out of Iran indicating that Tehran had been working on details of nuclear weapons, including missile trajectories and ideal altitudes for exploding warheads.
"They should have given it to us three years ago," Soltanieh said of the U.S. material, suggesting Tehran would then have had a more substantive response.
Instead, he said, Iran did not get an offer for a review until mid-February. By that time, he said, the deadline for the conclusion of the IAEA probe into Iran's nuclear past had passed and experts were already working on the agency's report.
"All of a sudden, the Americans notice this thing is going to be closed," he said, alluding to the probe. "So ... suddenly ... they have additional and new documents — these dirty games should be stopped immediately."
The United States denied being at fault.
"Iran did not need to wait for information to answer" the accusations coming from many sides that it was trying to make nuclear arms, said Gregory L. Schulte, the top U.S. delegate to the IAEA.
"Iranian authorities could have started explaining these activities years ago, if only they had made the decision to come fully clean about their program," he told AP.
Soltanieh acknowledged that Iranian experts also were offered some U.S. documents earlier than mid-February. But, he said, "we weren't allowed to take them out of the room," dooming any serious attempt to examine them.
"Some of the drawings were lousy and without any technical justification," he said, dismissing the material as "fabricated and (a) forgery."
On Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the U.S. and its allies to "apologize" for accusing Iran of seeking nuclear weapons. He asserted that the IAEA report vindicated his country and warned that Iran would take unspecified "decisive reciprocal measures" against any country that imposed additional sanctions against his nation.
The IAEA report also confirmed that Iran was defying U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment.
Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders have depicted Tehran's enrichment program as a triumph had dismissed suggestions of technical glitches coming from U.S. intelligence, IAEA officials and independent experts.
Soltanieh also asserted that Iran was "a master of enrichment technology." Still, he acknowledged that "during the process of development, there will be ups and downs and trials and errors."
"The important thing is ultimate success," he said. | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 1:31 pm Post subject: Iraq's Deeply Tragic Future |
| Iraq's Deeply Tragic Future
By Scott Ritter
Any analysis of the current state of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq that relied solely on the U.S. government, the major candidates for president or the major media outlets in the United States for information would be hard pressed to find any bad news. In a State of the Union address which had everything except a "Mission Accomplished" banner flying in the background, President Bush all but declared victory over the insurgency in Iraq. His recertification of the success of the so-called surge has prompted the Republican candidates to assume a cocky swagger when discussing Iraq. They embrace the occupation and speak, without shame or apparent fear of retribution, of an ongoing presence in that war-torn nation. Their Democratic counterparts have been less than enthusiastic in their criticism of the escalation. And the media, for the most part, continue their macabre role as cheerleaders of death, hiding the reality of Iraq deep inside stories that build upon approving headlines derived from nothing more than political rhetoric. The war in Iraq, we're told, is virtually over. We only need "stay the course" for 10 more years.
This situation is troublesome in the extreme. The collective refusal of any constituent in this complicated mix of political players to confront Bush on Iraq virtually guarantees that it will be the Bush administration, and not its successor, that will dictate the first year (or more) of policy in Iraq for the next president. It also ensures that the debacle that is the Bush administration's overarching Middle East policy of regional transformation and regime change in not only Iraq but Iran and Syria will continue to go unchallenged. If the president is free to pursue his policies, it could lead to direct military intervention in Iran by the United States prior to President Bush's departure from office or, failing that, place his successor on the path toward military confrontation. At a time when every data point available certifies (and recertifies) the administration's actions in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere (including Afghanistan) as an abject failure, America collectively has fallen into a hypnotic trance, distracted by domestic economic problems and incapable, due to our collective ignorance of the world we live in, of deciphering the reality on the ground in the Middle East.
Rather than offering a word-for-word renouncement of the president's rosy assertions concerning Iraq, I will instead initiate a process of debunking the myth of American success by doing that which no politician, current or aspiring, would dare do: predict the failure of American policy in Iraq. With the ink on the newspapers parroting the president's words barely dry, evidence of his misrepresentation of reality begins to build with the announcement by the Pentagon that troop levels in Iraq will not be dropping, as had been projected in view of the "success" of the "surge," but rather holding at current levels with the possibility of increasing in the future. This reversal of course concerning troop deployments into Iraq highlights the reality that the statistical justification of "surge success," namely the reduction in the level of violence, was illusory, a temporary lull brought about more by smoke and mirrors than any genuine change of fortune on the ground. Even the word surge is inappropriate for what is now undeniably an escalation. Iraq, far from being a nation on the rebound, remains a mortally wounded shell, the equivalent of a human suffering from a sucking chest wound, its lungs collapsed and its life blood spilling unchecked onto the ground. The "surge" never addressed the underlying reasons for Iraq's post-Saddam suffering, and as such never sought to heal that which was killing Iraq. Instead, the "surge" offered little more than a cosmetic gesture, covering the wounds of Iraq with a bandage which shielded the true extent of the damage from outside view while doing nothing to save the victim.
Iraq is dying; soon Iraq will be dead. True, there will be a plot of land in the Middle East which people will refer to as Iraq. But any hope of a resurrected homogeneous Iraqi nation populated by a diverse people capable of coexisting in peace and harmony is soon to be swept away forever. Any hope of a way out for the people of Iraq and their neighbors is about to become a victim of the "successes" of the "surge" and the denial of reality. The destruction of Iraq has already begun. The myth of Kurdish stability-born artificially out of the U.S.-enforced "no-fly zones" of the 1990s, sustained through the largess of the Oil-for-Food program (and U.S.-approved sanctions sidestepped by the various Kurdish groups in Iraq) and given a Frankenstein-like lease on life in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion and occupation-is rapidly unraveling. Like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, present-day Iraqi Kurdistan has been exposed as an amalgam of parts incompatible not only with each other but the region as a whole.
Ongoing Kurdish disdain for the central authority in Baghdad has led to the Kurds declaring their independence from Iraqi law (especially any law pertaining to oil present on lands they control). The reality of the Kurds' quest for independence can be seen in their support of the Kurdish groups, in particular the PKK, that desire independence from Turkey. The sentiment has not been lost on their Turkish neighbors to the north, resulting in an escalation of cross-border military incursions which will only expand over time, further destabilizing Kurdish Iraq. Lying dormant, and unmentioned, is the age-old animosity between the two principle Kurdish factions in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). As recently as 1997, these two factions were engaged in a virtual civil war against one another. The strains brought on by the present unraveling have these two factions once again vying for position inside Iraq, making internecine conflict all but inevitable. The year 2008 will bring with it a major escalation of Turkish military operations against northern Iraq, a strategic break between the Kurdish factions there and with the central government of Baghdad, and the beginnings of an all-out civil war between the KDP and PUK.
The next unraveling of the "surge" myth will be in western Iraq, where the much applauded "awakening" was falling apart even as Bush spoke. I continue to maintain that there is a hidden hand behind the Sunni resistance that operates unseen and uncommented on by the United States and its erstwhile Iraqi allies operating out of the Green Zone in Baghdad. The government of Saddam Hussein never formally capitulated, and indeed had in place plans for ongoing active resistance against any occupation of Iraq. In October 2007 the Iraqi Baath Party held its 13th conference, in which it formally certified one of Saddam's vice presidents, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, as the supreme leader of the Sunni resistance.
The United States' embrace of the "awakening" will go down in the history of the Iraq conflict as one of the gravest strategic errors made in a field of grave errors. The U.S. military in Iraq has never fully understood the complex interplay between the Sunni resistance, al-Qaida in Iraq, and the former government of Saddam Hussein. Saddam may be dead, but not so his plans for resistance. The massive security organizations which held sway over Iraq during his rule were never defeated, and never formally disbanded. The organs of security which once operated as formal ministries now operate as covert cells, functioning along internal lines of communication which are virtually impenetrable by outside forces. These security organs gave birth to al-Qaida in Iraq, fostered its growth as a proxy, and used it as a means of sowing chaos and fear among the Iraqi population.
The violence perpetrated by al-Qaida in Iraq is largely responsible for the inability of the central government in Baghdad to gain any traction in the form of unified governance. The inability of the United States to defeat al-Qaida has destroyed any hope of generating confidence among the Iraqi population in the possibility of stability emerging from an ongoing American occupation. But al-Qaida in Iraq is not a physical entity which the United States can get its hands around, but rather a giant con game being run by Izzat al-Douri and the Sunni resistance. Because al-Qaida in Iraq is derived from the Sunni resistance, it can be defeated only when the Sunni resistance is defeated. And the greatest con game of them all occurred when the Sunni resistance manipulated the United States into arming it, training it and turning it against the forces of al-Qaida, which it controls. Far from subduing the Sunni resistance by Washington's political and military support of the "awakening," the United States has further empowered it. It is almost as if we were arming and training the Viet Cong on the eve of the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War.
Keeping in mind the fact that the Sunni resistance, led by al-Douri, operates from the shadows, and that its influence is exerted more indirectly than directly, there are actual al-Qaida elements in Iraq which operate independently of central Sunni control, just as there are Sunni tribal elements which freely joined the "awakening" in an effort to quash the forces of al-Qaida in Iraq. The diabolical beauty of the Sunni resistance isn't its ability to exert direct control over all aspects of the anti-American activity in Sunni Iraq, but rather to manipulate the overall direction of activity through indirect means in a manner which achieves its overall strategic aims. The Sunni resistance continues to use al-Qaida in Iraq as a useful tool for seizing the strategic focus of the American military occupiers (and their Iraqi proxies in the Green Zone), as well as controlling Sunni tribal elements which stray too far off the strategic course (witness the recent suicide bomb assassination of senior Sunni tribal leaders). 2008 will see the collapse of the Sunni "awakening" movement, and a return to large-scale anti-American insurgency in western Iraq. It will also see the continued viability of al-Qaida in Iraq in terms of being an organization capable of wreaking violence and dictating the pace of American military involvement in directions beneficial to the Sunni resistance and detrimental to the United States.
One of the spinoffs of the continued success of the Sunni resistance is the focus it places on the inability of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad to actually govern. The U.S. decision to arm, train and facilitate the various Sunni militias in Iraq is a de facto acknowledgement that the American occupiers have lost confidence in the high-profile byproduct of the "purple finger revolution" of January 2005. The sham that was that election has produced a government trusted by no one, even the Shiites. The ongoing unilateral cease-fire imposed by the Muqtada al-Sadr on his Mahdi Army prevented the outbreak of civil war between his movement and that of the Iranian-backed Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and its militia, the Badr Brigade.
When Saddam's security forces dissolved on the eve of the fall of Baghdad in March 2003, the security organs which had been tasked with infiltrating the Shiite community for the purpose of spying on Shiites were instead instructed to embed themselves deep within the structures of that community. Both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade are heavily infiltrated with such sleeper elements, which conspire to create and exploit fractures between these two organizations under the age-old adage of divide and conquer. A strategic pause in the conflict between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military on the one hand and the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade on the other has served to strengthen the hand of the Mahdi Army by allowing time for it to rearm and reorganize, increasing its efficiency as a military organization all the while its political opposite, the SCIRI-dominated central Iraqi government, continues to falter.
Further exacerbating the situation for the American occupiers of Iraq is the ongoing tension created by the war of wills between the United States and Iran. The Sunni resistance has no love for the Shiite theocracy in Tehran, or its proxies in Iraq, and views creating a rift between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade as a strategic imperative on the road to a Sunni resurgence. Any U.S. military strike against Iran will bring with it the inevitable Shiite backlash in Iraq. The Shiite forces that emerge as the most independent of the American occupier will be, in the minds of the Sunni resistance, the most capable of winning the support of the Shiites of Iraq. Given the past record of cooperation between the Mahdi Army and the Sunni resistance, and the ongoing antipathy between Sunnis and SCIRI, there can be little doubt which Shiite entity the Sunnis will side with when it comes time for a decisive conflict between the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, and 2008 will be the year which witnesses such a conflict.
The big loser in all of this, besides the people of Iraq, is of course the men and women of the armed forces of the United States. Betrayed by the Bush administration, abandoned by Congress and all but forgotten by a complacent American population and those who are positioning themselves for national leadership in the next administration, the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who so proudly wear the uniform of the United States continue to fight and die, kill and be maimed in a war which was never justified and long ago lost its luster. Played as pawns in a giant game of three-dimensional chess, these brave Americans find themselves being needlessly sacrificed in a game where there can be no winner, only losers.
The continued ambivalence of the American population as a whole toward the war in Iraq, perhaps best manifested by the superficiality of the slogan "Support the Troops," all the while remaining ignorant of what the troops are actually doing, has led to a similar amnesia among politicians all too willing to allow themselves to seek political advantage at the expense of American life and treasure. January 2008 cost the United States nearly 40 lives in Iraq. The current military budget is unprecedented in its size, and doesn't even come close to paying for ongoing military operations in Iraq. The war in Iraq has bankrupted Americans morally and fiscally, and yet the American public continues to shake the hands of aspiring politicians who ignore Iraq, pretending that the blood which soaks the hands of these political aspirants hasn't stained their own. In the sick kabuki dance that is American politics, this refusal to call a spade a spade is deserving of little more than disdain and sorrow.
While the American people, politicians and media may remain mute on the reality of Iraq, I won't. There is no such thing as a crystal ball which enables one to see clearly into the future, and I am normally averse to making sweeping long-term predictions involving a topic as fluid as the ongoing situation in Iraq. At the risk of being wrong (and, indeed, I hope very much that I am), I will contradict the rosy statements of the president in his State of the Union address and will throw down a gauntlet in the face of ongoing public and media ambivalence by predicting that 2008 will be the year the "surge" in Iraq is exposed as a grand debacle. The cosmetic bandage placed over the gravely wounded Iraq will fall off, and the damaged body that is Iraq will continue its painful decline toward death.
If there is any winner in all of this it will be the Sunni resistance, or at least its leadership hiding in the shadow of the American occupation, as it continues to exploit the chaotic death spiral of post-Saddam Iraq for its own long-term plan of a Sunni resurgence in Iraq. That the Sunni resistance will continue to fight an American occupation is a guarantee. That it will continue to persevere is highly probable. That the United States will be able to stop it is unlikely. And so, the reality that the only policy direction worthy of consideration here in the United States concerning Iraq is the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of American forces continues to hold true. And the fact that this option is given short shrift by all capable of making or influencing such a decision guarantees that this bloody war will go on, inconclusively and incomprehensibly, for many more years. That is the one image in my crystal ball that emerges in full focus, and which will serve as the basis of defining a national nightmare for generations to come.
Scott Ritter was a Marine Corps intelligence officer from 1984 to 1991 and a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. He is the author of numerous books, including "Iraq Confidential" (Nation Books, 2005) , "Target Iran" (Nation Books, 2006) and his latest, "Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement" (Nation Books, April 2007).
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/76318/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19421.htm
The Calm Before the Conflagration
By Chris Hedges
25/02/08 "Truthdig" -- - The United States is funding and in many cases arming the three ethnic factions in Iraq-the Kurds, the Shiites and the Sunni Arabs. These factions rule over partitioned patches of Iraqi territory and brutally purge rival ethnic groups from their midst. Iraq no longer exists as a unified state. It is a series of heavily armed fiefdoms run by thugs, gangs, militias, radical Islamists and warlords who are often paid wages of $300 a month by the U.S. military. Iraq is Yugoslavia before the storm. It is a caldron of weapons, lawlessness, hate and criminality that is destined to implode. And the current U.S. policy, born of desperation and defeat, means that when Iraq goes up, the U.S. military will have to scurry like rats for cover.
The supporters of the war, from the Bush White House to Sen. John McCain, tout the surge as the magic solution. But the surge, which primarily deployed 30,000 troops in and around Baghdad, did little to thwart the sectarian violence. The decline in attacks began only when we bought off the Sunni Arabs. U.S. commanders in the bleak fall of 2006 had little choice. It was that or defeat. The steady rise in U.S. casualties, the massive car bombs that tore apart city squares in Baghdad and left hundreds dead, the brutal ethnic cleansing that was creating independent ethnic enclaves beyond our control throughout Iraq, the death squads that carried out mass executions and a central government that was as corrupt as it was impotent signaled catastrophic failure.
The United States cut a deal with its Sunni Arab enemies. It would pay the former insurgents. It would allow them to arm and form military units and give them control of their ethnic enclaves. The Sunni Arabs, in exchange, would halt attacks on U.S. troops. The Sunnis Arabs agreed.
The U.S. is currently spending hundreds of millions of dollars to pay the monthly salaries of some 600,000 armed fighters in the three rival ethnic camps in Iraq. These fighters-Shiite, Kurd and Sunni Arab-are not only antagonistic but deeply unreliable allies. The Sunni Arab militias have replaced central government officials, including police, and taken over local administration and security in the pockets of Iraq under their control. They have no loyalty outside of their own ethnic community. Once the money runs out, or once they feel strong enough to make a thrust for power, the civil war in Iraq will accelerate with deadly speed. The tactic of money-for-peace failed in Afghanistan. The U.S. doled out funds and weapons to tribal groups in Afghanistan to buy their loyalty, but when the payments and weapons shipments ceased, the tribal groups headed back into the embrace of the Taliban.
The Sunni Arab militias are known by a variety of names: the Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias call themselves “sahwas” (”sahwa” being the Arabic word for awakening). There are now 80,000 militia fighters, nearly all Sunni Arabs, paid by the United States to control their squalid patches of Iraq. They are expected to reach 100,000. The Sunni Arab militias have more fighters under arms than the Shiite Mahdi Army and are about half the size of the feeble Iraqi army. The Sunni Awakening groups, which fly a yellow satin flag, are forming a political party.
The Sunni Arab militias, though they have ended attacks on U.S. forces, detest the Shiite-Kurdish government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and abhor the presence of U.S. troops on Iraqi soil. They take the money and the support with clenched teeth because with it they are able to build a renegade Sunni army, a third force inside Iraq, which they believe will make it possible to overthrow the central government. The Sunni Arabs, who make up about 40 percent of Iraq’s population, held most positions of power under Saddam Hussein. They dominated Iraq’s old officer corps. They made up its elite units, including the Republic Guard divisions and the Special Forces regiments. They controlled the intelligence agencies. There are several hundred thousand well-trained Sunni Arabs who lack only an organizational structure. We have now made the formation of this structure possible. These militias are the foundation for a deadlier insurgent force, one that will dwarf anything the United States faced in the past. The U.S. is arming, funding and equipping its own assassins.
There have been isolated clashes that point to a looming conflagration. A Shiite-dominated unit of the regular army in the late summer of 2007 attacked a strong Sunni Arab force west of Baghdad. U.S. troops thrust themselves between the two factions. The enraged Shiites, thwarted in their attack, kidnapped relatives of the commander of the Sunni Arab force, and American negotiators had to plead frantically for their release. There have been scattered incidents like this one throughout Iraq.
If the U.S. begins, as promised, to withdraw troops it will be harder to keep these antagonistic factions apart. The cease-fire by the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, extended a few days ago, could collapse. And if that happens a civil war, unlike anything U.S. forces have experienced in Iraq, will begin. Such a conflagration, with the potential to draw in neighboring states and lead to the dismemberment of Iraq, would be the final chapter of the worst foreign policy blunder in American history.
Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.“
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jewish Advocates of Pre-Emptive War with Iran Come Under Increasing Criticism:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2008/02/24/how-israel-corrupts-and-controls-the-us-congress-and-media-page-429.php
The Israeli Agenda and the Scorecard of the Zionist Power Configuration for 2008
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/02/24/the-israeli-agenda-and-the-scorecard-of-the-zionist-power-co.php
Finkelstein, a Victim of the Israel Lobby, Denies That It Has Power
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/02/last-fall-norma.html
Yes, There Is a Guerrilla War Against Zionism in the U.S. What Should Jewish Institutions Do?:
http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2008/02/portrait-of-a-h.html
If you do a search for 'Mearsheimer' in the search field at CBSNEWS.COM, the following article that Phil Weiss wrote for 'The Nation' about Mearsheimer/Walt appears as the only reference::
Ferment Over The 'Israel Lobby':
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/28/opinion/main1560594.shtml?source=search_story
Additional about Congressman Howard Berman on Israel and the pro-Israel lobby:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/02/22/congressman-howard-berman-on-israel-and-the-pro-israel-lobby.php
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:38 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 10:42 pm Post subject: |
| If Israel will not let inspectors in to see their nukes why should Iran?
Tehran is not threatening anyone - memri translates Arabic text into English but they change the words to fit the Zionist agenda - an Israeli works with memri so anything they translate you can bet it will benefit Israel - Zionist propaganda
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,773258,00.html
They have never started a war with anyone - if they wanted Israel gone like the whiners wail to the world that Ahmadinejad had said - he would have done it long ago - never trust a Zionist they lie right thru their teeth - Ahmadinejad said the regime occupying Jerusalem should vanish - not the nation of Israel
Israel started the nuclear arms race over there and now they are whining that Iran wants to do also
Ahmedinejad never even used the words, "Israel", "wipe" or "Map".
THE ACTUAL QUOTE:
So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi: "Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".
THE PROOF:
The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
http://www.libertylounge.net/forums...never-said.html | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:04 am Post subject: |
| Iran warns West of reprisals over sanctions (Reuters)
by Aresu EqbaliSun Feb 24, 1:49 PM ET
Iran warned the West on Sunday it would hit back with reprisals to any new UN Security Council sanctions over its contested nuclear programme, as world powers stepped up efforts to punish Tehran.
Britain, France and the United States are pushing for a new sanctions resolution in the coming week after the UN atomic watchdog said it could still not confirm if the Iranian atomic drive was peaceful.
"Some Western countries want to follow the wrong path and we suggest they take heed from their past experiences," Javad Vaeedi, a top national security official, was quoted as saying by the state-run IRNA news agency.
"Choosing the wrong path and adopting a new resolution will have a cost for those countries," he added.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Saturday warned of "firm reprisals" against any country leading the way to impose new sanctions, adding that Iran was "not joking."
"They could spend 100 years passing resolutions but it will not change anything," he said in an interview with state television.
Officials however gave no details over what the reprisals might entail. "We will announce our decision at the right time based on the content of the resolution," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Friday in its latest report that it had made "quite good progress" in its four year-probe into the Iranian nuclear drive.
But crucially for future sanctions, the report said it was still not in a position to determine the "full nature of Iran's nuclear programme" and confirmed Tehran was continuing to defy UN demands by enriching uranium.
The report met with starkly different responses from Western capitals and Tehran.
Iranian officials said the report proved that the nuclear case was now closed, with Ahmadinejad hailing the "historic victory of Iran in its greatest confrontation with the oppressive powers since the Islamic revolution".
But US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the report provided "a very strong case" for moving forward with a third UN Security Council sanctions resolution to punish Tehran's failure to suspend enrichment.
The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Gholam Reza Aghazadeh said on Sunday "a resolution is likely to be adopted" against Iran.
"There will be more political pressure and increased propaganda," he told state television. "But there is a price to pay if we want to reach a high position and our country has accepted that."
Tehran has defied calls in previous resolutions for it to freeze uranium enrichment operations, a sensitive process world powers fear could be used to make nuclear weapons.
Iran, OPEC's number two oil exporter, insists its nuclear programme is peaceful and only aimed at generating atomic energy for a growing population whose immense oil and gas reserves will run out in decades.
Meanwhile, top Iranian cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani accused the United States of unbalancing IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei's "mental state" by submitting secret documents just days before the report.
"The US has submitted a stack of documents to disrupt ElBaradei's mental state and has been successful to some extent," said the head of the elite clerical body the Assembly of Experts, according to the state news agency IRNA.
Washington was to host a new round of talks between world powers on Monday ahead of a Security Council meeting on Wednesday and a vote on the resolution text on Friday, US officials said.
The draft text has been brought forward by Britain and France and it remains to be seen how veto-wielding members China and Russia will respond. Four non-permanent members are also said to harbour reservations.
The draft would impose a travel ban on officials involved in Tehran's nuclear and missile programmes and inspections of shipments to and from Iran if there are suspicions they may contain prohibited goods.
But Hosseini brushed off the prospect of further sanctions, saying that they could only cause "slight problems" for the Islamic republic. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 3:15 pm Post subject: War with both Lebanon and Syria -- with the hope of getting |
| Subject: War with both Lebanon and Syria -- with the hope of getting Iran involved (see top of http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com as well)
Hezbollah and the 'Unknown Knowns'
http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=433564
President Bush's second term in office will expire in one year. For the president who has unconditionally rubber-stamped Israeli policies, one year is not enough to set long-term goals, but it's enough to ignite chaos.
The assassination of a high-profile person like Mugniyah was not merely an opportunity to boast over a classic Mossad operation. It was a major ingredient in a larger scheme, the end result of which may be war with both Lebanon and Syria -- with the hope of getting Iran involved.
Posted Feb 24, 2008 05:10 PM PST
Category: MIDDLE EAST
The big question which Israeli policy makers and its military strategists need to be asking is, relative to how Russia would respond to an attack on Iran, do they really feel that potentially lucky, even with US involvement?
Russian officials have stated consistently that any attack on Iran will be perceived as an attack against Russia.
And what sane person or government really wants to go to war with Russia? | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:55 pm Post subject: |
| Iran dismisses nuke documents as fakes
By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 7 minutes ago
The U.N. nuclear monitoring agency presented documents Monday that diplomats said indicate Iran may have focused on a nuclear weapons program after 2003 — the year that a U.S. intelligence report says such work stopped.
Iran again denied ever trying to make such arms. Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, the chief Iranian delegate to the International Atomic Energy Agency, dismissed the information showcased by the body as "forgeries."
He and other diplomats, all linked to the IAEA, commented after a closed-door presentation to the agency's 35-nation board of intelligence findings from the U.S. and its allies and other information purporting to show Iranian attempts to make nuclear arms.
A summarized U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, made public late last year, also came to the conclusion that Tehran was conducting atomic weapons work. But it said the Iranians froze such work in 2003.
Asked whether board members were shown information indicating Tehran continued weapons-related activities after that time, Simon Smith, the chief British delegate to the IAEA, said: "Certainly some of the dates ... went beyond 2003."
He did not elaborate. But another diplomat at the presentation, who agreed to discuss the meeting only if not quoted by name, said some of the documentation focused on an Iranian report on nuclear activities that some experts have said could be related to weapons.
She said it was unclear whether the project was being actively worked on in 2004 or the report was a review of past activities. Still, any Iranian focus on nuclear weapons work in 2004 would at least indicate continued interest past the timeframe outlined in the U.S. intelligence estimate.
A senior diplomat who attended the IAEA meeting said that among the material shown was an Iranian video depicting mock-ups of a missile re-entry vehicle. He said IAEA Director General Oli Heinonen suggested the component — which brings missiles back from the stratosphere — was configured in a way that strongly suggests it was meant to carry a nuclear warhead.
Other documentation showed the Iranians experimenting with warheads and missile trajectories where "the height of the burst ... didn't make sense for conventional warheads," he said.
Smith and the senior diplomat both said the material shown to the board came from a variety of sources, including information gathered by the agency and intelligence provided by member nations.
"The assumption is this was not something that was being thought about or talked about, but the assumption is it was being practically worked on," Smith told reporters.
He said the IAEA presented a "fairly detailed set of illustrations and descriptions of how you would build a nuclear warhead, how you would fit it into a delivery vehicle, how you would expect it to perform."
The U.N. agency released a report last week saying that suspicions about most past Iranian nuclear activities had eased or been laid to rest. But the report also noted Iran had rejected documents linking it to missile and explosives experiments and other work connected to a possible nuclear weapons program, calling the information false and irrelevant.
The report called weaponization "the one major ... unsolved issue relevant to the nature of Iran's nuclear program."
Most of the material shown to Iran by the IAEA on alleged attempts to make nuclear arms came from Washington, though some was provided by U.S. allies, diplomats told the AP. The agency shared it with Tehran only after the nations gave their permission.
The IAEA report also confirmed that Iran continued to enrich uranium despite demands by the U.N. Security Council to suspend the work. The council has sanctions on Iran for continuing enrichment, which can produce the material needed to make atomic bombs.
Iran says its enrichment program is intended solely to produce lower-grade material for fueling nuclear reactors that would generate electricity.
Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazee, said the intelligence information turned over to the IAEA was "baseless" and alleged it was fabricated by an Iranian opposition group.
"I'm afraid to say that, according to my information, some of these allegations were produced or fabricated by a terrorist group, which are listed as a terrorist group in the United States and somewhere else in Europe," Khazee said told the AP in New York.
He appeared to be referring to the Mujahedeen Khalq, also known as the People's Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, which was listed as a foreign terrorist group by the U.S. government in 1997 and the European Union last year.
___
Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 11:58 pm Post subject: Generals to quit if US strikes Iran |
| http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=44700§ionid=351020101
Generals to quit if US strikes Iran
Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:49:33
Some senior US military commanders are prepared to resign if President Bush orders a military strike against Iran, a new report says.
“There are four or five generals and admirals we know of who would resign if Bush ordered an attack on Iran,” The Sunday Times quoted Monday a source with close ties to British intelligence .
“There is simply no stomach for it in the Pentagon, and a lot of people question whether such an attack would be effective or even possible,” the source added.
If proven true a revolt on such a scale would be unprecedented because 'American generals usually stay and fight until they get fired,” said a Pentagon source.
Robert Gates, the defense secretary, has repeatedly warned against striking Iran and is believed to represent the view of his senior commanders.
Iran has announced that in face of any aggression it will respond like a 'tsunami'.
MT/DT
Count of views : 538
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fallon 'may lose job over Iran war'
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=46317§ionid=3510203
Secret U.S. Air Force team planning Iranian strike, led by Jews:
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/3717
Additional at following URL:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/02/24/war-with-iran-real-risk-according-to-former-cia-operative-page-63.php
http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Mar 08, 2008 8:58 am; edited 2 times in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Tue Feb 26, 2008 11:54 am Post subject: |
| Just received the following reply from a contact/friend who is retired and was a consultant for the CIA and Janes:
From: "Donald Jones"
To:
Subject: RE: Generals to quit if US strikes Iran
Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 21:00:32 -0500
I would bet that 300 top generals would oppose Bush if he ordered an attack on Iran . It would require moving every American soldier in the world to a staging area. There is no staging area. If Bush ordered troops into Iraq to attack Iran , Muqtada al Sadr would attack the staging points and the Iranians would send 250,000 troops into Iraq . It would take Bush six months to assemble such a force and a huge tax increase to pay for it. We have about 500,000 army regulars, 180,000 Marine regulars, 850,000 reserves, and about 30,000 Marine reserves. Iran can put 6,000,000 regulars, reserves and militia on a battle field. Half the US reserve equipment is worn out. Ammunition and bomb stocks are inadequate to fight Iran . No intelligent general who cares about his troops is going to go along with a fight in Iran . Bush should keep his mouth shut and concentrate on fixing Florida ’s potholes. | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
