Relentless Propaganda Alert! U.S. says Iran has missile that could hit Europe

Excellent comment about this from Signs of the Times:

Enough already! with this “Iran wants to destroy the world” nonsense. It is repeated ad nauseam, like some insane machine. This rabid ranting comes from the one regime that DOES seem hell bent on destroying the world, and as such represents the highest level of hypocrisy imaginable. Of course, this should be patently obvious to anyone willing to follow the threads of cause and effect, as documented daily here on SoTT, but somehow it still exerts its hypnotic and extremely dangerous effect on public opinion.

Source: David Morgan, Reuters.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday that Iran has the ability to launch a ballistic missile capable of hitting sections of eastern and southern Europe.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, director of the Missile Defence Agency, told reporters he believes Iran now has a missile with a range of 2,000 km, but he declined to say whether the weapon has been test-fired.

Iran said last week it conducted two missile tests involving a number of weapons including what Iranian state television called a “new” Shahab-3 missile, a medium-range missile that could be used to strike Israel.

Tensions over Iran’s missile arsenal and accusations from the United States and its allies that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons have roiled international financial markets with fears of a possible military confrontation.

Iran denies it wants nuclear weapons and says its nuclear program is designed to produce electricity to increase its output of oil and natural gas.

Older versions of the Shahab-3 have a 1,300-km range. But a new extended version is believed to have a range of up to 1,250 miles, making it capable of hitting targets as far away as Greece, Serbia, Romania and Belarus.

Iran is also developing a solid-fuel missile known as the Ashura with a range of 1,250 miles, according to the Pentagon.

U.S. officials and independent missile experts have said last week’s tests involved no new or enhanced technology, or even the latest generations of missiles known to be in Iran’s arsenal.

Obering did not dispute those assertions in a briefing for Pentagon officials on Tuesday.

But his description of Iran’s missile capability was stronger than what U.S. officials have said up to now.

“The Iranians themselves are describing … a 2,000-km range missile launch,” Obering said of last week’s tests, adding that Iran also claimed to have such a missile in November.

“I believe, based on what I have seen, that they have the ability to do that and to continue to advance in the future, based on what I have seen so far from those (Iranian state media) reports and from the intelligence reports,” he added.

“I won’t go into detail as to what was fired when. That’s something I think the intel community should answer,” he said.

The Pentagon’s Defence Intelligence Agency, which monitors major weapons threats to the United States and its allies, was more vague in its February 27 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“Iran continues to develop and acquire ballistic missiles that can hit Israel and central Europe, including Iranian claims of an extended-range variant of the Shahab-3 and a new 2,000-km medium range ballistic missile called the Ashura,” DIA director Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples told the panel.

U.S. officials and analysts dismissed last week’s missile tests as an angry Iranian response to recent military exercises including an Israeli air exercise in June that some have called a rehearsal for an attack on Iran.

The Bush administration has used concern about Iranian missiles to press forward with plans for a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, capable of protecting both Europe and the United States from attack.

Washington and the Czech Republic signed an agreement last week to place missile-tracking radar on Czech soil. U.S. officials are now hoping for a deal to station the system’s interceptor missiles in Poland.

Ex Weapons Inspector: Iran Not Pursuing Nukes, But U.S. Will Attack Before ’09

This is one of the more rational assessments of Iran’s nuclear “threat.”

Source: Jason Leopold, The Public Record.

In 2002, Scott Ritter, the former Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector In Iraq, publicly accused the Bush administration of lying to Congress and the public about assertions that Iraq was hiding a chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

By speaking out publicly, Ritter emerged as one of the most prominent whistleblowers since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in the early 1970s.

Ritter’s criticisms about the Bush administration’s flawed prewar Iraq intelligence have been borne out by numerous investigations and reports, including one recently published by the Senate Armed Services Committee that found President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other senior administration officials knowingly lied about the threat Iraq posed to the United States.

Now Ritter, who was a Marine Corps intelligence officer for 12 years, is speaking out about what he sees as history repeating itself regarding U.S. policy toward Iran and the inevitability of a U.S.-led attack on the country, which he believes will happen prior to a new president being sworn into office in January 2009.

“We’re going to see some military activity before the new administration is sworn in.” Ritter said. But he added that “Iran is not a threat to the United States and Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. That’s documented.” Ritter teamed up with the Los Angeles-based U.S. Tour of Duty’s Real Intelligence, a nonprofit organization that represents former intelligence officials who openly discuss domestic and foreign policy issues. Ritter went on the road nearly a year ago to promote his recently published book, Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. But over the past several months, issues related to Iran have dominated his discussions.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Public Record, Ritter said he has been keeping close tabs on the issue for years and continues to approach the issue as if he were still employed as an intelligence officer. He explained why he believes the U.S. is gearing up toward launching a military strike in Iran and how the media has misrepresented a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) regarding Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium.

AIPAC

He said one of the reasons he believes Democratic lawmakers have been reluctant to address the issue is the powerful Israeli lobby, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC has been pressuring the Bush administration to be even tougher on Iran. The lobby is largely responsible for drafting a resolution calling for stricter inspections and harsher economic sanctions against the country, which is expected to be voted on by the House next week.

Resolution 362 introduced by Congressman Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, has 170 Democratic and Republican co-sponsors.

The bill “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; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.”

The resolution calls on President Bush to impose “stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran”

Ritter says AIPAC’s involvement in Iran policy is partially the reason Democrats have not been been willing to take a stand against the Bush administration’s hard-line tactics toward Iran.

“Congress has linked Iran policy to Israel. In this day and age of presidential politics no one wants to take on the Israeli lobby. That’s just the facts,” Ritter said. “You have to find a way to address this issue that sidesteps Israel. Some people may object to that. On the other hand, if you couch this thing in economic terms I think you now empower Congress to address this issue in a manner that sidesteps Israel.”

Last week, a Senate committee approved legislation to strengthen sanctions against Iran by restricting the import of Iranian carpets, caviar, and nuts to the United States.

“The strong sanctions we’ve approved today will work to deter the Iranian government from producing a nuclear weapon,” said Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Ritter said the public would likely become more outspoken on the Bush administration’s policies toward Iran if they understood how an attack on Iran could lead to an economic collapse here at home.

“You have to talk about what’s going to happen to the price of oil, the price of food. People have to focus on that. Iran does not pose a threat whatsoever to the average American. We’ve got this hyped up threat. We need people to understand that they are being sold a bill of goods. There is no threat. Our welfare is going out the door right now because of this policy. We have to find a way to get this to resonate.”

Intelligence vs. Smoking Guns

One of the first questions Ritter says he is asked when he explains why the administration is planning an air assault against Iran is “where’s the smoking gun.”

“People will say ‘how do you know for certain,’” Ritter said. “You know I was in the in the intelligence business for a long time and we don’t make a living off of smoking guns. That’s what politicians do. We evaluate the totality of the available information and we make informed assessments and we do it in a systematic fashion. And that’s what I’ve been doing on the issue of Iran.”

Ritter said the increased rhetoric toward Tehran by various White House officials is a key indicator in understanding the Bush administration’s intent.

“I don’t like the word intent usually because the Bush administration used that with Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction,” he said. “Intent void of a factual basis is speculation. But here we do have documentation. We have a national security strategy. We have repeated statements by the current players themselves that they seek regional transformation in the Middle East inclusive of regime change in Iran. This is the policy objective of the Bush administration.

“So we have the intent. Now with the intent we have the escalation of rhetoric. So we not only have stated intent we now have statements that reinforce those intents and seek to activate this intent,” Ritter added. “And then you have the rhetoric that’s matched with the capabilities. Clearly you have the capabilities deployed in the region to act on this. We’ve seen the nature of the strike be defined down to a limited strike to one or two strikes inside Iran affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard command. So you have all of these facilitators taking place.”

IAEA Report

In May, the media characterized a report by the IAEA into Iran’s uranium enrichment program as evidence that Tehran is actively pursuing a nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration held up that report as evidence that Iran is a grave threat to the United States and Israel.

But Ritter said the media misrepresented the report and likely did not thoroughly review its findings.

“We have a situation where the IAEA has published several technical reports all of which state there is no evidence Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. None. Zero,” Ritter said.

Ritter explained how the IAEA report was drafted.

“Information has been provided to the IAEA by member nations, intelligence information. Now the IAEA has to be very circumspect when it says this but we all know that it’s basically intelligence provided to the agency by the United States of America, a nation openly hostile to Iran, a nation that has a track record of fabricating, exaggerating, and misrepresenting intelligence data. The data that’s been provided to the IAEA has derived from a laptop computer which even the IAEA claims is of questionable providence,” he said.

Ritter said that because the United States has such a dominating role in the United Nations Security Council and in the Board of Governors the IAEA couldn’t ignore the information it receives from the United States about Iran.

“The IAEA can’t go to Iran with information that isn’t serious. So they say it’s serious and it needs to be investigated. So they go to Iran and the Iranians say, correctly so, ‘this is bullshit.’ You’re basically serving as a front to the CIA. The CIA is asking intelligence based questions about issues that are not relevant to the safeguards agreement, which, by the way, is the legally binding mandate that gives the IAEA the authority to do its work in Iran. You have to read the small print.

“The IAEA acknowledges that what it’s asking Iran to answer has nothing to do with its mandate of the nuclear non proliferation treaty. It is related to Security Council resolutions calling for the suspension of uranium and an investigation into a nuclear weapons program but the bottom line is what the IAEA has said is that Iran has not been forthcoming and Iran is saying it’s not their job to answer the CIA’s questions. So the IAEA reports that Iran is not being forthcoming on these issues and now it’s unnamed diplomats, i.e. American and British diplomats, who say they are very concerned because Iran’s refusal to cooperate only reinforces their concern that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

“This is purely CIA instigated tripe. When we get down to the nuts and bolts of the technical question of Iran’s uranium enrichment program and whether or not there’s any infrastructure in Iran that supports a nuclear weapons program and the IAEA technical find says there is none,” Ritter said.

Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, said in an interview last week with Al Arabiya Television that he would resign from the agency if Iran is attacked and warned that a military strike against the country would be catastrophic.

“I don’t believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time … it would make me unable to continue my work,” ElBaradei said. “A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball,” he said, emphasizing that any attack would only make the Islamic Republic more determined to obtain nuclear power.”

Israel Not Involved

Ritter said an attack on Iran would come in the form of a “sustained aerial bombardment.” He added that a military strike would not involve Israel as asserted last weekend by John Bolton, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who told Fox News that Israel would attack Iran after the presidential election in the fall. Moreover, Ritter said a report in The New York Times last week that alleged Israel conducted a major aerial exercise over the eastern Mediterranean as a warning to Iran is simply untrue.

“Only a few analysts have reflected on what I’ve said all along: Israel cannot initiate and sustain an air strike against Iran,” Ritter explained. “They’re incapable of it because they don’t have the military force. They don’t share a common border [with Iran]. They have to fly over sovereign states. The immediate international outcry would be tremendous. When we sought to fly U2 aircraft into Iraq when I was a weapons inspector if we felt that the Iraqis delayed in their acknowledgement the United States Air Force would SORTE a support package to go in. That included electronic warfare aircraft, refueling aircraft, etc. Just to get one U2 to fly a mission over Iraq with a support package involved 80 aircraft.

“For Israel to strike Iran, and remember Iran isn’t Iraq, Iran has a viable air-defense system, an Air Force, radar, and Israel would have to suppress it all and it can’t do it,” Ritter added. “Israel just doesn’t have the capability. Israel does not have the ability to initiate and sustain major combat operations against Iran. Israel is not going to start this fight. It will be the United States. All this talk about Israel getting involved I minimize that. Israel’s not going into Iran.”

Ritter said Bolton’s comments is an indicator that the “clock is running out” for ideologues in the Bush administration.

“It’s becoming increasingly clear that John McCain is not going to become the next president of the United States of America, which means the next administration has the potential of deviating in a meaningful fashion away from the policies of the current administration,” Ritter said. “Clearly, the Bush administration is populated by ideologues that are very serious about what they want to accomplish. They aren’t playing games here. They aren’t children. They are serious. They believe there is a threat to the United States and that the United States has to take action. Why I bring this up is that the clock is running out for them.”

Congress Refuses to Act

Ritter had some tough words for Washington lawmakers for continuously failing to put any obstacles into place to block the Bush administration from even attempting to attack Iran without first consulting Congress.

“We see not only has Congress not seeking to put any obstacles in the way of this policy but in fact Congress is actively facilitating this policy by refusing to enact legislation that would require the president to get the consent of Congress before going into Iran,” Ritter said. “The fact that Congress has opted out from tying the president’s hands reinforces, at least in the Bush administration’s mind, that Congress is legitimizing the potential of action.

“So when you put all of this together you start to see that there is not only a real risk of war but that those who would like to do it see that there aren’t any obstacles being put in the way of their accomplishing this, which makes the likelihood of military action even greater. Everyday that goes by without Congressional action is another day that reinforces that there will be a military strike against Iran.”

Ritter has been trying to pass along his intelligence analysis on Iran to Congress for some time. He said “given the political situation that exists I don’t think you’re going to find any politician on either side of the political spectrum reaching out to me or talking with me directly.”

But he has been able, at the very least; distribute his intelligence to middlemen who can get the information to Congress.

“What I am saying to you is being said to the powers that be in Washington so there is no way [Democrats and Republicans] can say that they haven’t been made aware of this analysis,” Ritter said. “Ideally, there would be hearings and I would be invited to testify. So that not only these words would be given to the policymakers but it would be done in a way that the constituents would be cognizant of the fact that this is an analysis that was made available to policymakers who chose to act upon it or ignore it at their own risk.”

I contacted aides in the Democratic leadership offices of both Houses over the past week and also spoke to aides in minority offices. No one would comment on the record about the Bush administration’s policies toward Iran or discuss whether they have been made aware of Ritter’s intelligence analysis on the issue.

An aide to John Conyers, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, pointed to the congressman’s May 8 letter sent to President Bush stating that Conyers would initiate impeachment proceedings if an attack on Iran was launched without first receiving approval from Congress.

“Late last year, Senator Joseph Biden stated unequivocally that ‘the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach’ the president,” Conyers’ letter says. “We agree with Senator Biden, and it is our view that if you do not obtain the constitutionally required congressional authorization before launching preemptive military strikes against Iran or any other nation, impeachment proceedings should be pursued..”

Ritter was critical of the letter Conyers sent to Bush, saying the congressman is still avoiding the issue.

“John Conyers is so off base on this one,” Ritter said. “I appreciate his passion, but the fact is rather than Conyers say [to President Bush] if you attack Iran I am going to impeach you why doesn’t Conyers reflect on the fact that there is no basis for impeachment because he’s been constitutionally empowered by Congress. If Conyers is so worried about this what Conyers needs to do is work with Congress to revoke the two existing war powers resolutions concerning Afghanistan and Iraq and then reconfigure the president’s war powers authority in a manner which constitutionally permits ongoing combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan but tells the president that if you seek any expansion of your authority you have to get the consent of Congress. Now if the president attacks Iran you can impeach him.”

Conyers office declined to comment.

Ritter said he understood that the hotly contested presidential election makes it difficult for Democratic lawmakers to address the issue of Iran.

“Let’s talk about political reality here. You cannot expect a politician, especially Democrats who want to retain control of Congress and want a Democrat to be president of the United States, to commit political suicide,” Ritter said.

The Panic Of ’08 – Oil, War And Denial

Source: Gerald Celente, Trends Alert.

06-07-2008

RHINEBECK, NY — The Panic is “On.” Each day brings more bad news and it just got much worse.

On Friday, oil super-spiked nearly $11 to close above $138 a barrel and the Dow dumped nearly 400 points. The dollar is back on its losing streak and gold is back above $900 an ounce. Job losses increased for the fifth month in a row and the unemployment rate had its biggest jump since 1986.

Chain stores are closing, credit keeps tightening and economic conditions are worsening. The government is going broke, the people are broke, the nation’s fighting two costly wars and losing both and the President warns there may be more.

Avoiding intelligent discussion of the dire implications of the oil shock, the next credit crisis and President Bush’s warnings that Iran is a potential military target, the nation’s news has been focused on the elimination rounds of The Presidential Reality Show.

And while rumors of an attack on Iran by the US are generally ignored or denied, the undercurrent of Middle East war is another speculative factor driving oil prices higher. Among them, Israel announced new construction of 900 homes in the occupied West Bank and threatened a major military offensive to put down the worsening Gaza uprisings.

Iran, who Israel accuses of supplying weapons to the Palestinians, has also become a military target. On Friday, Israeli deputy Prime Minister, Shaul Mofaz, said, “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.” And, according to reports, the US also has plans to launch a military strike against Iran. (“Limited US attack on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases in sight” (DEBKAfile, 3 June 2008); (“Bush intends to attack Iran before the end of his term,” The Jerusalem Post, 20 May 2008.) Note: Yielding to pressure from Washington, The Jerusalem Post pulled the May 20th headline story from its website.

Trend Analysis: With commodity speculators currently being blamed for the oil spike, the threat of war and how it relates to high oil prices, until just recently, was absent from national debate as are the devastating global implications that would result from a Persian/US/Israel war.

Unless oil prices swiftly and dramatically decline, the American people will suffer the worst socioeconomic conditions in living history. Utility bills won’t be paid, foreclosures will escalate, crime will dramatically increase tax revolts, gas riots, strikes and protests will ensue. Millions of elderly, those on fixed incomes and paycheck-to-paycheck people won’t be able to heat their homes, fuel their autos or cover their expenses.

It’s pure and simple. For the working majority, wages are falling, home equity is evaporating, investments are failing, pensions are lost, benefits are scarce and each day it costs more to live.

Forced to choose between filling the gas tank or feeding the family, trying to make ends meet is a losing game. In the real world, despite the government’s adjusted-for-manipulation core inflation index, which omits food and fuel from its calculations, the working class is going under as prices of life’s essentials keep going higher.

Without money to make up for rising costs, credit cards will be increasingly used as the finger in the bursting financial damn that will eventually drown debt burdened Americans who won’t be able to meet their monthly card payments.

But over the past weeks, the word from those who didn’t see the financial storm coming were now claiming that the worst of it was over. The US Treasury Secretary, the Federal Reserve Chairman and the presidents of the biggest banks and brokerages have declared that the credit crisis is closer to the end than the beginning.

Publisher’s Note: Throughout the millennia and regardless of country, economic hardship, not moral justification, has often been used as a political pretext to wage war and as the public rationale to support one.

For example, when asked why the US launched the First Gulf War against Iraq over their oil dispute with Kuwait in 1991, US Secretary of State James Baker said, “It’s about jobs, jobs, jobs” and the American people agreed.

Similarly, with high oil prices inflicting wide socioeconomic damage, an attack upon an oil rich country, such as Iran, under the guise of maintaining global stability, could be sold as an excuse for war by politicians and supported by an economically depressed public as a rationale to wage one.

Gerald Celente
Founder/Director
The Trends Research Institute ®
E-mail: gcelente@trendsresearch.com
Website: http://www.trendsresearch.com
Media Relations: 845.876.6700 Ext. 311
cheri@trendsresearch.com

US/IRAN: Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

Source: Gareth Porter, IPS.

Washington: Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier “launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran”, citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make “a policy decision about how far the administration would go — what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks.”

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of the Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East.

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran, knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD “knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question”.

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defence Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. “It’s clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue,” he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran, according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post Jul. 20, 2007 in which he gave no hint of Cheney’s proposal, but referred to “options” for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran “smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers”.

Gerson cited two possibilities: “Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran.” But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has “escalation dominance” in its conflict with the United States.

That meant, according to Gerson that, “in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs.”

Carpenter’s account of the Pentagon’s position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran’s ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran.

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney’s proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by President Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in “the tank” at the Pentagon on Dec. 13, 2006 and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according a report by Time magazine’s Joe Klein last June. After he become head of the Central Command in March 2007, Adm. William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran’s nuclear programme and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney’s proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons — especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) — and training to Shiite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with Gen. David Petraeus.

As IPS reported earlier this week, Cheney had already used Gen. David Petraeus’ takeover as the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney’s proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shiites that would require U.S. forces beyond his control.

At that point, Adm. Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon’s forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become CENTCOM chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

Chronology of a Lie: Iran and EFPs

Source: Gary Leupp, CounterPunch.

In his Antiwar.com columns investigative journalist and historian Gareth Porter has been doing a masterful job of exposing Dick Cheney’s relentless campaign to vilify Iran, build a case for an attack, bomb the country and produce regime change before the administration’s term ends. The campaign as many have noted parallels in several ways the propaganda blitz that preceded the War in Iraq. Cheney and his neocons cabal seek to skew the reports of mainstream intelligence agencies to confirm their allegations (in this case, the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an immanent threat to Israel and the U.S., Iranian Quds Force training of Iraqi “insurgents” in Iranian camps, Iranian provision of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) to these “insurgents,” Iranian contacts with al-Qaeda, etc.). If they fail to do this, they circumvent the intelligence community and find ways of disseminating disinformation through their own announcements, editorials by their supporters, and stories planted in the corporate press. Since Cheney got Bush to sign an Executive Order giving his office the same powers to classify as the president has, his operations are shrouded in secrecy.

In his latest piece Porter follows the campaign to blame Iran for supplying EFPs to those attacking U.S. occupation forces in Iraq. In January 2007 some military officials asserted that EFPs that could penetrate U.S. armored vehicles were being manufactured in Iran and supplied to Iraqi Shiite militias by the Iranian government. They prepared a draft for a proposed military briefing to announce this claim, which then circulated in Washington and was leaked to the press. However, the document “met with unanimous objection from the State Department, Defense Department, and the National Security Council (NSC) staff, as administration officials themselves stated publicly.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley all wanted to build upon the negotiations with Iranian officials which had occurred in Iraq to that point. These had been based on the desire of both sides to support the Maliki government, which has warm ties with Tehran. The Cheney camp had opposed those talks.

In a press briefing on Jan. 24, 2007, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Department Spokesman Sean McCormack was asked if the government has any evidence for Iranian supply of EFPs to Iraqi forces. He answered indirectly: “You don’t necessarily have to construct something in Iran in order for it to be a threat to the U.S. or British troops from the Iranian regime.” He implied that outsiders might be instructing Iraqis on how to produce EFPs.

On February 2, Hadley distanced the National Security Council from the draft report. “The truth is,” he told reporters at a news briefing, “quite frankly, we thought the briefing was overstated. We sent it back to get it narrowed and focused on the facts.” Meanwhile the intelligence community was preparing a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that did not support the claim about EFPs but merely accused Iranians of training fighters of Mahdi Army led by Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiery nationalist who is not Iran’s favorite Iraqi politician although he may be the most popular man in the country. Rice and Gates both stated their expectation that the planned briefing on Iranian involvement in Iraq would reflect the views contained in the NIE.

Then Cheney made his move. On Feb. 9 presidential spokesperson Dana Perino was asked when the briefing would be held. “Decisions on that,” she replied, “are being made out in Baghdad.” Gen. David Petraeus (whom former CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon, a known opponent of an Iran attack, has described as an “ass-kissing little chicken-shit”) had just arrived to assume command of U.S. forces in Iraq. On February 11 three military officers in Iraq gave a briefing to the press in which they stated that the EFPs could only have been manufactured in Iran and were being supplied to Iraqi militiamen by the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards with the knowledge of the Iranian government.

“Cheney,” Porter writes, “had used the compliant Petraeus to do an end-run around the national security bureaucracy. Petraeus had already reached an agreement with the White House to take Cheney’s line on the EFPs issue and to present the briefing immediately without consulting State or Defense.” This circumventing of normal channels is of course Cheney’s modus operandi, as scathingly documented in the four-part series about Cheney in the Washington Post last July by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, stated that he could not “from his own knowledge” confirm that the Quds Force was providing bomb-making kits to Iraqis, and one of the officers at the briefing backed off the claim of Iranian complicity. Still, the story was “out there,” in the press, and as Porter writes, “Cheney now had a potential casus belli against Iran.” Or one might say, another one to try to foist upon an impressionable public. This, from the only top official who’s never backed off his claim that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9-11.

In September 2007, Congress passed the neocon and AIPAC-backed Kyl-Lieberman resolution designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization. In October the Treasury Department designated the Quds Force “terrorist”—”for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations.” Very creative thinking there. Iran’s religious leadership hates the Taliban and almost went to war with Afghanistan when it was led by the group in 1998. It supports U.S.-backed Afghan puppet president Hamid Karzai, who told the Washington Post in January 2008: “We have had a particularly good relationship with Iran in the past six years. It’s a relationship that I hope will continue. We have opened our doors to them. They have been helping us in Afghanistan. The United States very wisely understood that it is our neighbor and encouraged that relationship.”

On May 8 Los Angeles Times correspondent Tina Susman reported from Baghdad: “A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was cancelled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran.” Don’t you just love the matter-of- fact tone of that? They planned to lie, but somebody opposed to the lie and its consequences was apparently able to abort the effort. Isn’t it obvious that Cheney and the neocons in general believe it perfectly permissible to lie to the people in order to justify wars? And they just hate it when somebody gets in their way.

Remember how a member of Bush’s inner circle (Karl Rove?) told the New York Times’ Ron Suskind in summer 2002 the “the reality-based community” had it all wrong, that the world doesn’t “really work anymore” on the basis of “judicious study of discernible reality.” “We’re an empire now,” he boasted, “and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Combine that Nazi-like faith in the Big Lie; the liars’ smug confidence that the system will continue to protect them even as they’re exposed by the “reality-based” folks whom they find laughable; and the obvious fact that the Congress and media lack the will to call them on their lies. These evidences of system-wide bankruptcy are grounds for profound pessimism in the short term.

NBC’s Keith Olbermann last week talked with former Bush spokesperson Scott McClellan about the prospect for a U.S. attack on Iran. “So knowing what you know,” he asked, “if Dana Perino gets up there and starts making noises that sound very similar to what you heard from the administration, from Ari Fleischer in 2002, from other actual members of the administration and the cabinet, you would be suspicious?” “I would be,” replied McClellan. “I would be. I think that you would need to take those comments very seriously and be skeptical.”

We Americans are being hit by EFP (Extremely False Propaganda) designed to do much worse than penetrate the thin armor of our media-numbed and infotainment- conditioned brains. It’s designed to hurl us and our children into a Long War against the Islamic world. And those of us who are skeptical—or more than skeptical: aware, disgusted and alarmed—will I fear wake to the fait accompli of an attack before Cheney and Bush hand over power to successors who will patriotically go along with the program.

What we need is not mere skepticism, but the toppling of the liars.

Rumors of War: Is Bush Gearing Up to Attack Iran?

I wonder if a False Flag operation is in the works, to drum up opposition to Iran.

By Conn Hallinan, Portside.

The May 8 letter from U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-MI), chair of the House Judiciary Committee, to George W. Bush, received virtually no media coverage, in spite of the fact that it warned the President that an attack on Iran without Congressional approval would be grounds for impeachment. Rumor has it several senators have been briefed about the possibility of war with Iran.

Something is afoot.

Just what is not clear, but over the past several months, a number of moves by the White House strongly suggest that the Bush Administration will attack Iran sometime in the near future. According to the Asia Times, “a former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community” said an air attack will target the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps? (IRGC) Quds Force garrisons. Not even the White House is bonkers enough to put troops on the ground amid 65 million Iranians.

There is a certain disconnect to all this, particularly given last December’s National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) concluding that Iran had abandoned its program to build a nuclear weapon. The NIE is the consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence services. At the time, the report seemed to shelve any possibility of war with Iran.

However, shortly after the intelligence estimate on Iran was released, the old “into Iraq gang” went to work undermining it.

According to Newsweek, during his Middle East tour in January, President Bush “all but disowned the document” to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A “senior administration official” told the magazine, “He [Bush] told the Israelis that he can’t control what the intelligence community says but that [the NIE's] conclusions don’t reflect his own views.”

Neither do they reflect the views of Vice-President Dick Cheney or Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In an interview with ABC during his recent 10-day visit to the region, Cheney downplayed the NIE: “We don’t know whether or not they’ve [the Iranians have] restarted.” Cheney also said Iran was seeking to build missiles capable of reaching the U.S. sometime in the next decade.

On April 21, Gates said that Iran was “hell bent” on acquiring nuclear weapons, and, while he was not advocating war with Iran, the military option should be kept on the table.

A month before Gates’ comment, the White House quietly extended an executive order stating that Iran represented an ‘ongoing threat’ to U.S. national security. The Bush Administration claims that the 2002 resolution that led to the war in Iraq gives it the right to strike at ‘terrorists’ wherever they are. Last September, the Kyl-Lieberman Sense of the Senate resolution designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a “terrorist organization.”

The Administration has sharply increased its rhetorical attacks on Iran in a way that is disquietingly similar to the campaign that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Take the current charge that the Quds Force is arming anti-American groups in Iraq and providing them with high tech roadside bombs and sophisticated rockets.

General David Petraeus, the new head of Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “special groups” are “funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran’s Quds Force” It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds at Iraq’s seat of government” in the Green Zone.

Patraeus replaced Admiral William “Fox” Fallon, who had openly opposed a military confrontation with Iran.

But the U.S. has never presented any evidence to back up those charges. U.S. officials say the rockets pounding the Green Zone have Iranian markings on them, but they have yet to show any evidence to that effect. And, as for the special roadside bombs, or explosively formed penetrators (EFP), the evidence is entirely deductive.

The U.S. argues that the copper cores used in these bombs requires using a heavy machine press and that Iraq has no such presses. But before the invasion, Iraq was the most industrialized Arab country, with a sophisticated machine tool industry, and a study by Time magazine says the cities of Basra, Karbala and Najaf “may indeed have such presses.”

The Time article, “Doubting the Evidence Against Iran,” concludes, “No concrete evidence has emerged in public that Iran was behind the weapons [EFPs]. U.S. officials have revealed no captured shipments of such devices and offered no other proof.”

The lack of evidence has hardly cooled down the rhetoric. President Bush said in a speech at the White House that “two of the greatest threats to America” were Iran and al-Qaeda.

U.S. preparations for war, however, have been more than rhetorical.

According to the Israeli website, DEBKAfile, Cheney’s trip to the Middle East in March was seen in the region as a possible harbinger of war. “The vice-president’s choice of capitals for his tour is a pointer to the fact that the military option, off since December, may be on again,” DEBKA concluded. “America will need the cooperation of all four [countries he visited] – Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Turkey.”

There has also been a steady build-up of naval and air power in the region. A new aircraft carrier battle group has been assigned to the area, Patriot anti-missile missiles have been deployed, and U.S. naval forces in the Eastern Mediterranean have been beefed up.

What would likely happen if the U.S. did elect to attack?

Militarily there is little Teheran could do in response.

Iran’s army is smaller than it was during the Iran-Iraq war, and in a recent ‘show of force’ its air force mustered a total of 140 out-of-date fighters. It navy is mostly small craft, and while it has anti-ship missiles, Teheran would probably think twice about trying to shut down the Gulf. The current regime depends on the sale of oil and gas to shore up its fragile economy.

While the White House portrays the militias in Iraq and Hezbollah as Teheran’s cats’ paws, that is nonsense. The militias in both countries will act on the basis of what is in their interests, not Iran’s.

There is talk that Iran might target Israel, but the Israelis have made it clear that any such attack would be met with a massive retaliation, probably nuclear. “An Iranian attack will prompt a severe reaction from Israel,” National Infrastructure Minister Binyamin Ben-Elizer warned, “which would destroy the Iranian nation.”

In any case, it is far more likely that Israel would attack Iran than vice versa.

Any American attack would further isolate the U.S. in the Middle East. Ethan Chorin, of the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies, says U.S. threats against Iran are running cross current to efforts by other nations in the Gulf region to establish a détente with Teheran. “The U.S. seeks to defend the Arabs from Iran, but they are increasingly trying to defend themselves from the U.S. efforts to defend them against Iran,” he wrote in a recent commentary in the Financial Times.

All the war talk, says Chorin, “is translating into increasing open sympathy on the part of many Gulf Arabs for Iran and increasing skepticism about U.S. efforts to isolate the country.”

A U.S. war would deeply divide Europe as well, and might lead to a German withdrawal from Afghanistan. What Russia’s, China’s and India’s response would be is not clear. China and India are major clients for Iranian natural gas.

Domestically, the Bush Administration may see this as its only opportunity to hold on to the White House. The Republicans know they are going to lose seats in the House and the Senate, but at this point the race for the presidency is still tight. Might a new war against the demonized Iranians make voters stick with ‘war hero’ John McCain? It’s a long shot, but this administration has always had a major streak of riverboat gambler about it.

All this talk of war, of course, could be sound and fury signifying nothing. But it might also be the run up to a limited conflict, maybe one set off by a manufactured incident.

Once unleashed, however, no one controls the dogs of war. As hard as it is to imagine, war with Iran might top the Iraq War as a foreign policy disaster.

SOTT FOCUS: Batten down the free-speech hatches, it’s time to bomb Iran

Source: Signs of the Times Editors.

The recent network related attack on SOTT.net known as ARP poisoning which redirected traffic to sites hosting malicious software comes at a curious time. While presidential candidates are pledging allegiance to Israel at AIPAC meetings, the Israeli Prime Minister is ordering Bush to prepare for strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

His warning also comes on the heals of former German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, warning of an impending Israeli strike against Iran:

As a result of misguided American policy, the threat of another military confrontation hangs like a dark cloud over the Middle East. The United States’ enemies have been strengthened, and Iran – despite being branded as a member of the so-called “axis of evil” – has been catapulted into regional hegemony. Iran could never have achieved this on its own, certainly not in such a short time.

A hitherto latent rivalry between Iran and Israel thus has been transformed into an open struggle for dominance in the Middle East. The result has been the emergence of some surprising, if not bizarre, alliances: Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and the American-backed, Shiite-dominated Iraq are facing Israel, Saudi Arabia, and most of the other Sunni Arab states, all of which feel existentially threatened by Iran’s ascendance.

The danger of a major confrontation has been heightened further by a series of factors: persistently high oil prices, which have created new financial and political opportunities for Iran; the possible defeat of the West and its regional allies in proxy wars in Gaza and Lebanon; and the United Nations Security Council’s failure to induce Iran to accept even a temporary freeze of its nuclear program.

…

Anyone following the press in Israel during the anniversary celebrations and listening closely to what was said in Jerusalem did not have to be a prophet to understand that matters are coming to a head. Consider the following:

First, “stop the appeasement!” is a demand raised across the political spectrum in Israel – and what is meant is the nuclear threat emanating from Iran.

Second, while Israel celebrated, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying that a life-and-death military confrontation was a distinct possibility.

Third, the outgoing commander of the Israeli Air Force declared that the air force was capable of any mission, no matter how difficult, to protect the country’s security. The destruction of a Syrian nuclear facility last year, and the lack of any international reaction to it, were viewed as an example for the coming action against Iran.

Fourth, the Israeli wish list for US arms deliveries, discussed with the American president, focused mainly on the improvement of the attack capabilities and precision of the Israeli Air Force.

Fifth, diplomatic initiatives and UN sanctions when it comes to Iran are seen as hopelessly ineffective.

And sixth, with the approaching end of the Bush presidency and uncertainty about his successor’s policy, the window of opportunity for Israeli action is seen as potentially closing.

The last two factors carry special weight. While Israeli military intelligence is on record as saying that Iran is expected to cross the red line on the path to nuclear power between 2010 and 2015 at the earliest, the feeling in Israel is that the political window of opportunity to attack is now, during the last months of Bush’s presidency.

In the meantime, Israel is preparing for its next genocidal assault on Gaza, “nearing the day of reckoning in the Gaza Strip” as Defense Minister Ehud Barak is quoted as saying.

With all the warnings of an impending attack on Iran, the Bush-Israel axis isn’t even going to bother with a coordinated propaganda campaign to rally the masses for the bombing, not with Bush’s historically low job rating. They know it won’t work again this time. So instead they’re just going to try to shut down the dissenting media, launch their attack, control the flow of information and the fascist state apparatus will get the support after the fact. They may be picking on sott.net to see how fast it can recover before moving on to the all bigger sites. Or could this whole thing be a “cover” for something else? Who knows? One thing is for certain, it’s not just the Chinese who can hack into a computer network. Consider this recent exercise to bring down a network.

But they can’t just launch an attack (well, they could). Even the “frightening monster” has its own image of itself to uphold. No, their plans are more devious, but don’t look to the US media to uncover this story. Remember Valerie Plame and the forged Niger documents that the Bush cartel used to justify the invasion of Iraq, where now more than 1 million Iraqis have been killed. The Washington Post thinks the only reason Cheney leaked her identity was nepotism:

The CIA sent Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to the African nation of Niger in 2002 to assess reports that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material for weapons there. He concluded that the reports were groundless. Later, when Bush and his aides repeated them anyway, the former envoy accused the president of twisting his findings to justify the invasion.

Prosecutors maintained that administration officials, including Libby, leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity and CIA position to insinuate that the agency had chosen Joseph Wilson for the Niger mission because of nepotism. Defense attorneys said Libby had not sought to deceive investigators but had innocently misremembered what he knew and said about Valerie Wilson because she was insignificant to him.

Unmentioned by the Post‘s story (but not surprisingly) is that Valerie Plame was working specifically on Iran as a clandestine CIA officer to counter nuclear proliferation. Her outing caused significant damage to U.S. national security.

One former counterintelligence official described the CIA’s reasons for not seeking Congressional assistance on the matter as follows: “[The CIA Leadership] made a conscious decision not to do a formal inquiry because they knew it might become public,” the source said. “They referred it [to the Justice Department] instead because they believed a criminal investigation was needed.”

The source described the findings of the assessment as showing “significant damage to operational equities.”

…

Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to “ten years” in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson’s identity.

So the arm of the CIA directly involved to counter nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has been shut down for ten years. Well, you can’t have a bomb without blue prints.

Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation. The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old [S]wiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who in 2004 admitted leaking nuclear secrets and is under house arrest in Islamabad.

…

While the Swiss government maintains the treasure trove of nuclear intelligence was destroyed for reasons of national security, the Americans may have been involved because Tinner is believed to have also been working for the CIA. Albright said Tinner was recruited by the American agency from 1999-2000.

…

“The Swiss were doing other people’s dirty work,” said an international official familiar with the investigation into the Khan network. “The allegation is that Urs was on the CIA payroll for a very large sum of money.”

Olli Heinonen, deputy director general at the IAEA, has led the investigation into the Khan network for years. Last year his office sought and gained access to the Tinner files and some of his officials were also summoned to witness their destruction.

The Americans were also present, according to the international official. “The Americans were involved in the destruction. They were calling the shots,” he said. The IAEA refused to comment publicly on the case. A former senior IAEA official said: “I am quite astonished. It’s very unusual to see people destroying documents like this. They should be put somewhere very safe.

It now appears that there’s a concerted effort by the Bush/Cheney underworld to have a nuclear bomb go off somewhere and blame it on Iran.

The involvement of the CIA in the black market sale of nuclear secrets was revealed by whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish language translator for the FBI following the 9/11 attacks. According to her:

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

And what does the US do about nuclear black market whistleblowers?

A senior customs investigator could face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act over suspicions that he exposed how US and British intelligence agencies interfered in his attempts to halt an international nuclear smuggling ring.

Police and officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have searched the home of Atif Amin for evidence that he passed classified information to the American authors of a book about the worldwide nuclear proliferation network.

Amin was in charge of Operation Akin, an investigation into links between British companies and the illegal network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani scientist who helped build that country’s nuclear arsenal.

The investigation is the subject of a book recently published in the US, America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. Its authors, David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, contend that in 2000 Amin uncovered evidence in Dubai of the Khan network’s involvement in establishing Libya’s nuclear programme but was ordered to drop his inquiries and return home, at the request of the CIA and MI6.

The Libyan programme and the Khan network were not exposed and halted until 2003. The book argues that in the intervening three years the network continued to sell nuclear technology and possibly weapons designs to Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries, under the noses of US and British intelligence.

It quotes a frustrated Amin as telling colleagues: “They knew exactly what was going on all the time. If they’d wanted to, they could have blown the whistle on this long ago.”

Another interestingly timed revelation is that ‘Halliburton sold nuke components to Iran‘. When one examines things a little more closely, it appears that these are only nuclear power reactor components, not weapons, and were sold to a private oil company. However, once the shouting starts, no one will care. It smacks of a trail of recrimination being setup in advance, to be revealed at the right emotionally-loaded moment. One can imagine the reaction: “See? that’s where they got ‘em!”. Of course the revelation would be ‘embarrassing’, but would still coincidentally serve the anti-Iran agenda.

This is rather reminiscent of other mind-boggling ‘mistakes’ in the handling of deadly weaponry, such as when ballistic missile parts were “mistakenly” shipped to Taiwan, or when a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown across the country. Perhaps this is the idea, to create the meme of weapons-handling incompetence? In this way Western weapons of mass destruction can be used in a clandestine operation anywhere, whilst being plausibly attributed to whatever faction is desired. In the meantime they can purge the ranks of the disloyal in preparation for the bombing and use these ‘mistakes’ as the publicly stated reasons to do it.

The black ops program to set off a nuclear bomb somewhere in the West and blame it on Iran or some other cartoonish “Axis of Evil” character to justify future wars of aggression is well established and going as planned.

US, Israel and the media charade on Iran!

By Debbie Menon, Khaleej Times.

The US actions on the ground in the past six years speak louder than words, but, the world media has been busily debating and discussing the smoke and mirrors which US-Israel throws out in its charade. Peace Laureates Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu et al have been lamenting and wringing their hands about the truth, in recent weeks. But everyone will continue swallowing the stories and distractions thrown up by US-Israel charade, as if they were the real thing, which they are not.

US and Israel have been effectively and efficiently destroying Palestine now for sixty years, and the debate and discussions in the media still go on today, just as serious and hopeful as ever, as if it were real; and now they talk about the same threat from Iran that they spoke of Iraq, as if it were real! C’mon!

The mainstream media will ignore a lot of facts and history which say that the Iran objective is not a question of policy change, nuclear armament or disarmament, or even simple regime change in Iran, but is, instead the same as it has always been, to wit: Israel wants Iran destroyed as a state and Balkanized in the manner in which they have done Palestine, and the US has done in Iraq and will settle for nothing less! All else is wind. A charade!

The name of the game is “Destroy Iran”. Not because it is a threat to Israel, because it isn’t, not because they are a nuclear threat, for they aren’t; but simply because it stands in the way of Israeli domination of the entire Middle East, and all that oil under their soil belongs to America, anyway, so let’s go get it like they did Iraq!

To rationalise, discuss, describe and debate the non-issues of policy, regime change, nuclear weaponry, peaceful nuclear power development and all this US-Israeli cover story which US mainstream media peddles is to play into the hands of the US-Israel propaganda campaign, as if it were real, and ignore their actual motives and objectives: Destroy Iran! Utterly!

Most mainstream journalists have always been fence straddlers, go along-get along types, and has, and have simply failed to come to grips with the bottom line in this US-Israel plot either because they are too ignorant, too timid, or like their jobs too much. So while everyone else bickers and dickers over the non-issues which these journalists and their brothers write about, the US-Israeli, Zionist-American panzer is on the road and rolling and their target is Teheran. Keep your eye on the left hand, and you will never see what the right hand is doing… it is picking your pocket, and stealing the rabbit out of your hat.

The Zionist plan is incredible; the ramblings of anti-Semites, madmen, a phoney anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about ‘The Elders Of Zion’ who do not even exist, and all of that…so, the Plan is not real. But what is happening on the ground, and has been happening for 60 and more years, is real. And when you compare notes, it sounds as if someone is playing the score perfectly and not missing a single note!

It looks like the same thing, and is having the same affect whether “planned” or not! One by one, create dissention and division among each and all of Israel’s neighbors, until they are so embroiled in their own turmoil that they are not only no longer a threat to Israel, but a pushover like Palestine for eventual occupation. Well, Palestine has not become the “pushover” they thought it was going to be, but Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, et al have become.

There are parallels, between the media rhetoric about Iraq’s nuclear threat prior to the US invasion and the rhetoric about Iran’s nuclear programme today. In repeatedly misinterpreting the statements of Iran’s Ahmadinejad, the US-Israel media paints him as the Hitler of the Middle East. There was no reality check before Iraq and there is no reality check now.

The Iranian military is a fifth rate force, equivalent to a National Guard army with no defensive capabilities or ability to take troops across water. Iran has no air force because US sanctions prevent Iran from buying spare parts for its aircraft. And Iran is left with virtually navy after the US sank the Iranian fleet in an unpublicised attack during the first Gulf War in 1991. The endless sanctions imposed on Iran are really about the US-Israel campaign to cripple Iran’s economy.

Concerning Iran’s nuclear threat, Mohamed ElBaradei of IAEA has repeatedly said that there is no evidence of Iran using nuclear material for military use. But – as in the case of Iraq in 2003 – the US Administration argues that Iran has dangerous intentions concerning nuclear ambitions. The administration seems to think that this is enough to justify a US intervention. The “threat” that the US would have the world believe is not consistent with reality.

The excuses, arguments, issues, et al, are all a charade and have nothing to do with the why and what, of what America and Israel are doing to all these states in the Middle East, and what they are going to do to Iran. Iran has been around a helluva lot longer than America and most of Europe. They have had better days. Why should they dance to some petty carnival fiddler’s tunes when they have a history of having had some of the finest orchestras that the world has ever known?

The much-talked about Mafioso offer made recently to Iran by the six power nations “that just cannot be refused,” works only in places like America, and American movies. When offered to men of principle, who have centuries of moral conviction and history behind them, it’s a laughingstock proposition…the suggestion of a fool!

With the failure of US leadership in the Middle East, or more correctly, their diminishing ability to “twist arms,” and make offers which no one can refuse, there seems to be a power vacuum. In such a situation, there is the possibility that the Middle Eastern countries themselves might work out their problems – as they did in Lebanon last week. An even-handed settlement is what Qatar put together. It succeeded.

It is possible. Whether it is probable, we will never know until they have been given the opportunity to try. They have never had, or been allowed the opportunity, so what is there to lose except of course Western hegemony which has been the real obstacle to Middle East peace and prosperity, since the days of Richard Coeur de Leon?

The patient has been sick for a long, long time. He will be a long time recovering!

Latest Al-CIA-duh graphic backfires, wildly popular with regular Americans

Source: Wake Up From Your Slumber.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – It appears that the neocon’s latest attempt to beat the drums for an Iranian attack has backfired badly. A recent computer graphic showing a post apocalyptic Washington, D.C. has generated a positive response in what is commonly called “flyover country”, the vast area between the east and west coast.

A poll taken Saturday showed that 72% of those surveyed reacted positively to the picture. Comments like “Good, glad to be rid of all those bloodsucking parasites” made by Mable Goyson, age 72, of Frankville, Kansas, were widely heard. Truck driver Mike Sufferingson, who recently lost his address and lives in his truck, said ” Now that IS change I can believe in! No more taxes!!”

None of the neocons were available for comment on the survey results.

“Washington is laid to waste. The Capitol is a blackened, smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead. This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb. The computer-generated image below was posted on an Islamic extremists’ website yesterday….”

Last pieces to move into position: Israel proposes naval blockade of Iran

“The present economic sanctions [against Iran] have run out of steam,”

That’s because no one believes the U.S./Israeli fairy tales about Iran’s nuclear program.

Source: RIA Novosti.

The Israeli prime minister has proposed that a U.S. naval blockade be imposed on Iran to stop the Islamic Republic from moving ahead with its uranium enrichment program, an Israeli newspaper said on Wednesday.

According to the Haaretz daily, at a meeting in Jerusalem with the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, Ehud Olmert said, “The present economic sanctions [against Iran] have run out of steam,” and proposed “a naval blockade of Iran,” using the U.S. navy to limit movement in and out of the Islamic Republic by Iranian merchant ships.

As an alternative, he proposed placing restrictions on Iranian aircraft, businessmen and senior Iranian officials at airports throughout the world.

“Iranian businesspeople, unable to land anywhere in the world, would pressure the regime,” Haaretz quoted Olmert as saying.

Iran has defied three rounds of relatively mild United Nations Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, which many Western countries say is being used by Tehran as a cover for nuclear weapons development. Iran says the program is of an entirely peaceful nature and is necessary for energy production.

Russia and China, which have strong trade links with Iran, have so far prevented stronger sanctions against the Islamic Republic, using their vetoes on the Security Council.

Olmert reiterated that drastic measures to stop Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons did not necessarily mean violence.

The newspaper did not provide a U.S. response to the Israeli proposals for a naval blockade. However, the White House yesterday categorically denied a report in the Jerusalem Post that U.S. President George W. Bush intended to attack Iran before the end of his final term of office in January 2009.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the article was “not worth the paper it’s written on.”

The country’s nuclear program has contributed to tensions between Washington, with Bush refusing late last year to rule out military action against Teheran despite a report by the country’s intelligence community which suggested that the Islamic Republic had halted attempts to create a nuclear bomb in 2003.

Olmert is planning to visit Washington in June to discuss the Iranian nuclear program and prospects of U.S.-brokered peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.