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Bush doesn't rule out military strike in Iran

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 34 minutes ago

President Bush on Wednesday raised the possibility of a military strike to thwart Tehran's presumed nuclear weapons ambitions, speaking aggressively even as he admitted having been unwise to have done so previously about Iraq.

Bush's host in two days of meetings at a baroque castle, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, made clear her views on the saber-rattling — however subtle — without directly countering her guest. "I very clearly pin my hopes on diplomatic efforts," Merkel said, reflecting the deeply held European opinion that military action against Iran is nearly unthinkable.

Merkel joined Bush in urging further sanctions against Iran if it fails to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Iran's leader weighed in, too. Speaking before thousands in the central Iranian city of Shahr-e-Kord, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Bush "won't be able to harm even one centimeter of the sacred land of Iran" and promised continued defiance over Iran's nuclear activities. Iran says it is enriching uranium to generate electricity, not build a bomb — a claim the West doubts is true.

"In the past two, three years, they employed all their might, resorted to propaganda ... and sanctions," Ahmadinejad said. "If the enemy thinks they can break the Iranian nation with pressure, they are wrong."

Bush has alternated lately between slightly more conciliatory and slightly more forceful language on Iran.

Within the coded language of the U.S. attitude toward Iran, several small changes in Bush's rhetoric Wednesday added up to a difference. Three times, he called a diplomatic solution "my first choice," implying there are others. He said "we'll give diplomacy a chance to work," meaning it might not. He also offered, without even being asked a question about Iran, that "all options are on the table" — a longtime standard refrain, not heard as much lately, that neither confirms nor denies an intention to use military force.

Last week, Bush talked tough on Iran with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, where fears of Iran's growing might run high and discussion is becoming increasingly common of military action to keep Tehran in check. But in Slovenia on Tuesday, at a summit with the European Union, Bush's approach was milder. He emphasized the need for tough new sanctions but made no mention of "all options" being on the table.

There is no indication the U.S. actually plans any sort of military action, and experts believe it would be an extremely difficult feat tactically for many reasons. Bush's back-and-forth talk appears designed more to both remind Iran that the U.S. is serious about keeping it from developing a nuclear bomb and to try to finally corral sometimes reluctant allies behind a common firm stand.

Judy Ansley, Bush's chief aide on Europe, said Bush and Merkel did not discuss a military option in their meetings, only the diplomatic route.

But the German leader was strong on the need for new sanctions — through the United Nations but also possibly unilaterally by the EU — if a package of incentives and penalties does not persuade Iran to halt its enrichment program. The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, is visiting Tehran soon to present the offer, an updated version of one developed five years ago by the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China and ignored by Iran.

In Paris on Wednesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that the world has lost patience with Iranian foot-dragging, and she said Iran won't be allowed to use the fresh diplomatic overture as an excuse for further delay. She said that "no one is of a mind to allow them to stall very much longer."

Merkel pointed to a recent report by the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency as proof that Iran is a problem. The group said that Iran has stonewalled its attempts to delve into allegations that several Iranian projects appear to represent different components of a nuclear weapons program. "We need to react to this ... with further sanctions, if necessary," she said.

Merkel also said European nations are newly committed to enforcing the three rounds of mild U.N. sanctions that already are on the books.

"We are under quite a considerable pressure to act together and in concert," she said. "We in the European Union will do everything to see to it that this actually happens."

And she said the EU will consider measures meant to curtail dealings with Iranian banks and thus squeeze the oil-rich country.

Her remarks were notable, as she is in a tough spot politically, leading a divided coalition government that faces elections next year. Merkel also has to answer to German businesses. Germany has considerable financial dealings with Iran, a major energy supplier, though exports to Iran fell to $5 billion in 2007 from $6.8 billion in 2006.

"What we should do from the U.S. standpoint is not ask Merkel to do things she cannot do until the election is behind her," said Simon Serfarty, a global security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

On Iraq, Bush repeated his lack of regrets about waging the war.

But he publicly acknowledged a mistake, saying he had not explained well enough in the time leading up to the invasion that had tried to exhaust all diplomatic options first and that he didn't like the idea of war. "I could have used better rhetoric," he said, referring to terms such as "dead or alive" to describe Osama bin Laden and "bring them on" in reference to Iraq.

Over dinner Tuesday, and then breakfast, meetings, a stroll around the castle's formal, manicured gardens and lunch, Bush and Merkel further developed U.S.-German ties that have mostly flourished since she succeeded Gerhard Schroeder, with whom Bush had stormy relations. Bush's visit to the cream-colored, lakeside Schloss Meseberg was the diplomatic equivalent of Merkel's stay at the president's ranch in Texas. Remaining far outside Berlin in the Germany countryside also shielded Bush from the kind of protests he usually sees in the big cities of Western Europe.

Other top topics besides Iran included efforts to secure a new, global pact to combat climate change, the Mideast, Afghanistan, and trade. The leaders emphasized their similarities when they appeared together before reporters in a stately cobblestone courtyard.

Merkel went so far as to characterize her relationship with Bush, despite some policy differences and his enormous unpopularity in Europe, as "fun" and "actually nice."

Bush flew from Germany to Rome, where he spends two nights while on a grand farewell tour around Europe.

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The Transparent Cabal, Neoconservative Agenda, Israel War:

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http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/06/transparent-cabal-neoconservative.html

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Hedges: It's Insane to Attack Iran, Devastating Consequences:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIlyj6D5qmk&feature=PlayList&p=E99D8873F5892DD5&index=0&playnext=1

Here is a tiny URL for the above one:

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http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/05/hedges-its-insane-to-attack-iran.html

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President Bush plans to attack Iran in Coming Months:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/05/20/president-bush-intends-to-attack-iran-in-coming-months.php

We Want Bush Impeached, We Support the Kucinich Resolution. See the video and pass it on

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Here is the tiny URL:

http://tinyurl.com/58e96a

Please help get the word out by spreading this video around which promotes in its video description the links to the petition and emails for our Representatives.

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Nancy Pelosi is owned by AIPAC... No difference between her and Republicans when it comes to supporting the war for Israel in Iraq as she has voted to fund it all the way and has made it easier for Bush to go to war with Iran next for Israel as well:

Ron Paul: Nancy Pelosi pulled Iran bill on orders of Israel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWLBhgTQ46o

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Alpha

Subject: FW: A virtual declaration of war against Iran
Date: Thursday, June 12, 2008, 12:35 PM

From: RayClose
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 3:31 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients
Subject: A virtual declaration of war against Iran

A virtual declaration of war against Iran .

The following is from retired USAF Colonel Sam Gardiner today:

It is amazing how far Members of the Congress will go in support of Israel . Hidden within a resolution now being considered on the Hill is what amounts to a suggested declaration of war against Iran .

Representative Mark Kirk from Illinois is circulating a Sense of the Congress Resolution (H. Con. Res 362). The resolution now has 47 co-sponsors and "demands that the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend its nuclear enrichment activities by, inter alia, prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran..."

This option in the resolution is being pushed by the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee. At the AIPAC meeting in Washington last week both Senators McCain and Obama mentioned an embargo of refined products without any details.

I don't how the United States inspects aircraft flying from Moscow to Tehran . I don't know how the United States inspects trucks going from Azerbaijan and Pakistan into Iran . The ships part, however, produces a fairly clear image. The United States Navy operating inside and outside the Gulf stops and searches all ships entering Iranian ports. If the ships are carrying refined products, they are ordered to leave the area. If they refuse, warning shots will be fired. If they continue to refuse, lethal action will be initiated.

Since destination is not always clear, on occasion the United States Navy will have to enter Iranian territorial waters. The United States Navy will be stopping Russian ships and searching them. The United States Navy will be stopping Chinese ships.

To their credit, the McCain campaign must have begun to understand the implications. A spokesman issued a statement yesterday that the Senator was talking about, "a voluntary withdrawal from the Iranian markets of the companies providing gasoline is one option."

One hopes there can be equal wisdom in the "Sense of the Congress."

Sam Gardiner
Colonel, USAF (retired)

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http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12972

'Faster, Please!'
Senate report exposes key role of the Israel lobby in fomenting war with Iran
by Justin Raimondo
June 11, 2008

Scott McClellan, the most significant defector from behind the Iron Curtain of the War Party's domain, doesn't think we were lied into war. According to him, it was all due to the "partisan" attitudes that dominate Washington discourse on every issue. As he puts it, "the permanent campaign" atmosphere made them do it: "I don't think that this was some deliberate, conscious effort to mislead the American people."

In an interview with Keith Olbermann the other night, he disdained the very idea as a "conspiracy theory." McClellan seems to believe that the need to bias intelligence is inherent in the American political system, the inevitable consequence of the Washington ethos as defined by the struggle between the two major parties. He denies any "criminal intent" in the actions of the administration and its flunkies, and he trivializes the matter by referring to "people sitting around a table" making plans to dupe Congress and the American people. The evidence, however, points in the other direction, as "Phase Two" of the long-awaited and deliberately-delayed report of the Senate Intelligence Committee makes clear [.pdf].

In spite of Keith's effusive reference to McClellan as "the Rosetta Stone" for helping us understand what we've endured during the past eight years, the former White House spokesman seems incapable of deciphering what he saw and participated in, as the first section of the "Phase Two" Senate report shows. All the prewar "talking points" of the administration, and the flimsy-to-nonexistent "evidence" used to back them up, are here debunked, and the pattern of deceit is all too clear. However, it is the second section of the report – which deals with the activities of the Office of Special Plans and other parallel intelligence-gathering operations set up by the neocons – that suggests something more sinister than extreme partisanship is motivating the actors in this drama of deception.

In 2001, as the wheels that would eventually drive us to war with Iraq began to turn, the groundwork was being laid for the inevitable denouement of that historic error: the present looming conflict with Iran.

Leafing through the story of the secret Rome meetings conducted by Michael Ledeen and Manucher Ghorbanifar – set up by a "foreign intelligence service," as the report avers – this section of the Senate report reads like a spy thriller set in the future, a future in which we are about to go to war with Iran.

Neocon warlord Ledeen isn't just one of the War Party's most tireless polemicists. The fun part about being a foreign agent disguised as a "commentator" is that you get to rail away at the Bushies for not being enthusiastic enough about the Grand Plan of "liberating" the Middle East, demanding "faster, please!" Yet Ledeen isn't just one of those armchair types who merely pontificates from his pundit's perch: this student of Italian fascism is a man-of-action, too.

Indeed, that's a considerable understatement. He and Ghorbanifar are longtime partners in crime, having been the two biggest spiders at the center of the Iran-Contra web, in which Ledeen and Ghorbanifar deployed their contacts in Israel – and within the Iranian government – to broker the mid-1980s arms-for-hostages deal.

As the Senate report reveals, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar, together with a group centered around the Office of Special Plans – and including a former Pentagon official convicted of engaging in espionage on behalf of Israel – met with a group of Iranians and officials of a certain "foreign intelligence service" that is never named. The purpose of the meeting: regime change in Iran.

The Office of Special Plans was one of several neocon-created "parallel institutions" designed to circumvent the ordinary vetting process for intelligence gathered by U.S. agencies. Two analysts from the neocons' DoD policy shop, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, were assigned to the Rome meetings. Franklin was once Douglas Feith's top Iran analyst. His career ended in 2005 when he was convicted of stealing U.S. state secrets on behalf of Israel.

Rhode, an expert on the Middle East, speaks a good number of languages, including Farsi, Turkish, and Hebrew, and was the key organizer for and advocate of the Iraqi National Congress in the U.S. He was described by one CIA hand as "living out of [Ahmed] Chalabi's office" during his time in Iraq. Indeed, Rhode served as Chalabi's American agent, rallying support for the American Enterprise Institute's Che Guevara when Chalabi's offices were raided by U.S. forces. It later came out that Chalabi was doing just what Franklin was doing – stealing U.S. secrets on behalf of a foreign power.

In a UPI piece by Richard Sale, a "former senior intelligence official" who served in the Coalition Provisional Authority is quoted as saying that "'Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel,' and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was 'mind-boggling.'"

As for Franklin, his activities on behalf of the Israeli intelligence services, acting through the American-Israel Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC), have been covered extensively in this space. Together with Ledeen – founding president of JINSA – and Ghorbanifar, whose extensive and long-standing links to the Israelis are common knowledge, the provenance of this whole Rome operation seems beyond dispute. The Senate report informs us that the Rome meetings were coordinated and facilitated by this mysterious, unnamed "foreign intelligence" entity, and then mentions the presence of at least one official of SISMI, a personal friend of Ledeen's, but the report's language is ambiguous – although it isn't hard to figure out that the Italian connection is just a diversion.

So here we have American officials, without the full knowledge or consent of their superiors, including the president, traveling around on the taxpayers' dime, in concert with and apparently under the direction of the Israeli government, plotting regime change in Iran, and rehearsing all the talking points that we hear today from the Pentagon and the White House. At one point, we are told, Ghorbanifar wrote down his plan for regime change on a napkin in a bar, telling Franklin he would need at least $5 million to start initial "disruptions" in and around Tehran, but that the bill would get higher as the "revolution" progressed.

The idea was to set up Ghorbanifar as the sponsor of an Iranian version of the Iraqi National Congress, a network that would disseminate intelligence on Tehran's inner workings as well as work to overthrow the regime. As in the case of Chalabi, who bilked the U.S. out of millions, cash considerations figured prominently in the schemes of the Rome cabal. At one point, the report informs us:

"The proposed funding for and foreign involvement in Mr. Ghorbanifar's plan for regime change were never fully understood. A synopsis of the Rome discussions averred that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar advised Mr. Franklin and Mr. Rhode that the [foreign government support] for this information collection opportunity and financing by [ foreign] corporate enterprises midway through the interviews. The costs would be in the millions."

The bill would be picked up by this not-so-mysterious "foreign government" generously supplemented by a "multi-million dollar business deal that the foreign government arranged for the two Iranian interlocutors" – and, of course, by the U.S. taxpayers.

Here is the quintessential neocon recipe for regime change, involving a lot of cash floating in a thick soup of ideology, with a bold flavor of espionage pervading the dish.

It's interesting that a lot of the most incriminating material was gleaned from interviews with Franklin, no doubt pried out of him with the charges of espionage hanging over him. He was sentenced to a mere 12 years in prison and a hefty fine for delivering sensitive materials stolen from his Pentagon office to Israeli embassy officials. Using AIPAC as the go-between, the Israelis ripped off intelligence about terrorist activities in Central Asia and U.S. operations in Iraq, and when Franklin was caught, he spilled the beans but good in a frantic effort to avoid spending the rest of his life in the big house. Perhaps the release of the Senate report – and the starring role played in its narrative by Franklin, the convicted spy – will bring renewed attention to the case against Franklin's handlers, former AIPAC bigshot Steve Rosen, and the group's point man on Iran, Keith Weissman.

For years, the Justice Department has been trying to prosecute Rosen and Weissman without releasing vital U.S. secrets and compromising our national security. The defense – the best money can buy – has engaged in a strategy of "graymail" from the beginning and stymied what are probably not the Justice Department's best efforts. The chief prosecutor in the case recently announced he was leaving for greener pastures, and there has been a lot of political resistance to this case for all the usual reasons, and then some.

"Oh, everyone does it," is the standard defense. That's what Washington is all about: trading information. Baloney. These two were caught red-handed receiving vital U.S. secrets from Franklin and passing them on to their Israeli handlers in what was a classic spying operation. That's not "trading information," it's espionage. It's embarrassing to have to point this out, but in the present atmosphere, in which any indication that Israel might be undermining the interests of its major benefactor is dismissed as evidence of resurgent anti-Semitism, the plain truth needs to be stated in unequivocal terms.

For years, I've been saying that the only way to understand the Iraq war – a war that hurt, rather than advanced, American interests – is to see it as a successful covert action carried out by the Israelis and their American collaborators. The "Clean Break" scenario, launched by American "advisers" to then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, laid it all out in 1996. That was the theory, the practice of which is revealed in second section of the Senate intelligence report. It's no accident that two individuals involved in creating that seminal blueprint for the "transformation" of the Middle East, Doug Feith and David Wurmser, are intimately connected with the activities examined in the Senate report.

The entire report is a goldmine of information that gives us a fascinating overview of the lies that lured us into war. And lies they were, whatever McClellan may say or believe. This is another mark of Empire: when the superpower, as the Old Right polemicist Garet Garrett pointed out more than half a century ago, is taken hostage by its own satellites. A globe-spanning Empire becomes, in effect, "a prisoner of history," driven by foreign lobbyists and their domestic constituencies, and is no longer cognizant of distinctly American interests.

Yes, we are prisoners of history. Our invasion of Iraq has led directly to a looming confrontation with Iran, just as the war-planners knew it would. What the second portion of the Senate report shows, however, is that we are also prisoners of the Israel lobby, which is inexorably pushing us into war with Iran. That lobby exercises enormous power in Washington and beyond, effectively policing not only the media but the government for the least sign of "anti-Israel" (i.e., pro-American) activity, relentless in pursuit of its goals – and its enemies.

Yet there is growing resistance to the Lobby's hegemony, especially within intelligence, counter-intelligence, and law enforcement circles. They, after all, are expected to put up with Israeli shenanigans conducted on American soil and stand by while the White House and the Pentagon let our alleged best friends get away with the crown jewels, the family silver, and the quarters in the cookie jar to boot.

Now the Senate report has blown away much of their cover; that and the recent exposure of Ben Ami Kadish, an Israeli spy handled by the same spook who directed Jonathan Pollard, constitute a double body-blow to Israel's fifth column in America – which is, today, just another name for the War Party and its top leadership.

As Ledeen might put it: "Faster, please!"

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

Get yourself on over to Taki's Magazine, and check out my latest: “Libertarianism's Divergent Roads,” an adaptation (with a new introduction) of my recent talk at the Future of Freedom conference.

And the first review of the new edition of my Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement is in the Western Standard, is out, written by the perceptive Kalim Kassam, along with a wonderful video illuminating the book's theme by Jack Hunter, “the Southern Avenger,” a regular columnist for the Charleston City Paper.

~ Justin Raimondo

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Bush doesn't rule out military strike in Iran