Another Zionist war: US Troops on the ground in Pakistan
Forwarded:
JD wrote:
The Zionists and neocons were keeping a secret war in Pakistan. It’s just a matter of time before war in Iran.
Damn neocon FAIL and BLOWBACK coming.
U.S. Says 200 Troops on the Ground in Pakistan
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/us-says-200-troops-on-the-ground-in-pakistan/#ixzz0edtbqQWE
By Noah Shachtman, February 4, 2010
The U.S. military has 200 troops on the ground in Pakistan. That’s about the double the previously-disclosed number of forces there. It’s a whole lot more than the “no American troops in Pakistan” promised by special envoy Richard Holbrooke. And let’s not even get into the number of U.S. intelligence operatives and security contractors on Pakistani soil.
The troop levels are one of a number of details that have emerged about the once-secret U.S. war in Pakistan since three American troops were killed yesterday by an improvised bomb. The New York Times reports that the soldiers were disguised in Pakistani clothing, and their vehicle was outfitted with radio-frequency jammers, meant to stop remotely-detonated bombs. “Still, the Taliban bomber was able to penetrate their cordon. In all 131 people were wounded, most of them girls who were students at a high school adjacent to the site of the suicide attack,” the paper reports.
The military tells the Times that in addition to yesterday’s deaths, “12 other service members had been killed in Pakistan since Sept. 11, 2001.”
The slain U.S. troops have been referred to alternately as Special Operations forces as and as “civil affairs” troops — military nation-builders. It’s quite possible they were both. American forces “have been quietly working on development projects” in Pakistan. It’s supposedly part of an effort to train local forces in population-centric counterinsurgency. But the effort has been kept low-key, out of fears that it could hand the Taliban a propaganda win. “Last summer, for example, the American military trainers helped distribute food and water in camps for the more than one million people displaced from the Swat Valley by the fighting [there]. But that American assistance, too, was kept quiet.”
But keeping the American involvement secret — only to have it revealed in such dramatic fashion — may give militants an even bigger propaganda victory. “People are going to be very suspicious,” said Khalid Aziz, a former chief secretary of the North-West Frontier Province. “There is going to be big blowback in the media.”
Israel Threating To Use Nuclear Weapons On Iran!
Israel has not ruled out nukes and threatens to support a naval blockade (an act of war):
Israel Threating To Use Nuclear Weapons On Iran!
DEBORCHGRAVE Commentary: Hawks on the war path
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/2010/02/08/Commentary-Hawks-on-the-war-path/UPI-36941265643445/17612~12656556014904~h/
Commentary: Hawks on the war path
Published: Feb. 8, 2010 at 10:37 AM
By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE
UPI Editor at Large
A $1.6 trillion deficit for the current fiscal year to be followed by $1.35 trillion for the 2011 budget and an authorized increase of almost $2 trillion in the national debt to $14.3 trillion is a road map for a fiscal catastrophe. The last half-trillion-dollar spending bill signed by Obama included more than 5,000 earmarks worth some $7 billion — pork funds forced upon the executive by legislators in return for their votes.
Deficits between now and 2020 are forecast to add up to $30 trillion. The total amount of U.S. dollars in circulation worldwide (known by the Fed as M3) is $14.3 trillion. Some financial and economic experts believe the Obama administration’s remedial measures thus far are tantamount to slightly rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. In his new book “Freefall,” Joe Stiglitz, a member of President Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers, says, “In the Frankenstein laboratories of Wall Street, banks created new risk products without mechanisms to manage the monster they had created,” while innovation simply meant “circumventing regulations, accounting standards and taxation.”
Kevin Phillips, whose latest book — “Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism” — is an equally devastating indictment, writes, “The financial industry will most likely block any far-reaching overhaul, even though it will not be able to put its own broken Humpty Dumpty back up on the wall. That bleak conclusion may not be too far from what Joe Stiglitz himself thinks.”
Obama is floundering as he tries to reset his presidency on economics. Defense is sacrosanct. Either taxes go up or entitlements go down, or both. On Capitol Hill, it’s still burned toast for the president.
For centuries, leaders faced with insuperable domestic problems found escape in foreign distractions. In some cases, the distractions occurred suddenly and fortuitously, such as World War II, which started in Europe and pulled America out of the Great Depression.
Obama isn’t looking for such a distraction, but others have no pangs illuminating what they think is the way out of the “clueless in Washington” dilemma. Right-wing scholar-activist Daniel Pipes, a neocon icon, could not be more blunt: Obama can “save” his presidency by bombing Iran. The fact that this could also cost him the presidency is not deemed worthy of discussion.
Pipes was in good company. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair now says the world may have to take on Iran as the mullahcracy and its Revolutionary Guards are more of a threat today than Iraq was when U.S. and British troops invaded in 2003. Blair, addressing a joint session of Congress, gave President Bush a powerful oratorical assist on the historical need to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime and its nuclear and chemical weapons. There was also much disinformation about an alleged alliance between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. At one stage, 60 percent of the American people believed the canard Saddam was behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed 3,000 Americans.
While under questioning by a British panel investigating his decision to join the U.S.-led war against Iraq, Blair kept coming back to Iran — no less than 58 times. If Saddam hadn’t been eliminated, Blair said, today Iraq and Iran would be competing in supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.
Pipes, a powerful voice in Israel’s corner, says Obama “needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him … preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.” Such an opportunity now exists, to wit: “Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons capacity. It would have the advantage of sidelining healthcare, push Republicans to work with Democrats, make Tea Party-ers jump for joy, conservatives and neoconservatives would swoon ecstatically.”
In 2003 President George W. Bush appointed Pipes to the board of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Today he is part of a powerful lobby in Washington that pooh-poohs the repercussions predicted by the Iran war naysayers, a group that includes three former U.S. CENTCOM commanders. Gen. Anthony Zinni, one of the three, says, “If you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll love Iran.” They can see how one bomb on Iran would trigger the theocracy’s impressive asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities up and down the entire Persian Gulf — and beyond.
To reinforce the war party’s arguments, Pipes also says, “the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran” could eventually “launch an electro-magnetic pulse attack on the U.S., utterly devastating the country.” His detractors dismiss EMP alarmism as flimflam. But they are wrong. EMP is a very real concern of those who ponder future asymmetrical threats.
In his latest book “One Second After,” New York Times best-selling author William R. Forstchen looks at EMPs “and their awesome ability to send catastrophic shockwaves throughout the U.S. within seconds.” One Scud-type nuclear missile, fired from the cargo hold of a freighter off the East Coast, set to explode 75 miles up, could fry everything electrical in one-third of the United States, from every cellphone and computer to aircraft, trains, vehicles, elevators, and the entire government, including the Pentagon.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak disappointed the war hawks by saying the inability to negotiate a peace deal with the Palestinians is a greater threat to the Jewish state than a nuclear Iran. National security adviser Gen. James L. Jones added Israel is acting “responsibly” on Iran and “we’re working very closely with them.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suddenly cooed too, offering the West its low-enriched (3.5 percent) uranium, then taking it back once enriched at 20 percent. Within 48 hours Iran’s chief obfuscator was barking again, announcing the production of highly enriched uranium at 20 percent and the building of 10 new enrichment sites in 2010. Weaponization requires 90 percent. U.S. Defense Secretary Bob Gates said he is now certain Iran is going for the bomb and it’s time for tough new sanctions. But Russia and China are not aboard.
Will Obama Opt for War on Iran?
Two articles, one by anti-war conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan and the other by neoconservative Daniel Pipes, deal with the issue of Obama moving toward war on Iran for political reasons. In “Will Obama Play the War Card?,” Patrick Buchanan points out that this option is certainly a political temptation for Obama especially since Congress is pushing him in that direction. Buchanan cites Congress’ effort to impose very stiff sanctions on refined petroleum exports to Iran as a move toward war.
[On January 28, 2010, the U.S. Senate passed by voice vote the “Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act of 2009” (S. 2799). The bill now goes to conference committee to be reconciled with a similar bill from the House of Representatives, the “Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act” (H.R. 2194), which passed the House in December 2009. Because of the similarity of the two bills and the strong bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress, a final bill incorporating the essence of the Senate bill is almost guaranteed to be passed by both houses of Congress. The Obama administration has expressed objections, but there is no indication that Obama would dare to veto the final bill—and given the overwhelming congressional support, any presidential veto could be easily over-ridden.]
“Senate bill 2799,” Buchanan writes, “would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.” He argues that “cutting off a country’s oil or gas is a proven path to war.” And he cites the examples of Japan attacking the US in 1941 after the US embargo on oil supplies and Israel attacking Egypt in 1967 after Nasser threatened to close the Straits of Tiran through which Israel received 95 percent of its oil. While the implementation of the current sanctions would not cause Iran to attack the United States, it certainly would increase tensions and help to lead to war. Iran will certainly try to get around the sanctions and any American naval efforts to prevent gasoline from entering Iran could precipitate war.
“The Senate,” Buchanan writes, “is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war.”
Buchanan also hits the mark by pointing out that “U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.” The sanctions obviously will tend to unify the country behind the regime. Of course, the neocon/Israel goal is not to bring in the reformers—who also tend to support the Palestine resistance and seek to develop nuclear power—but to destabilize the country by war. This can best be achieved by keeping the demonized Ahmadinejad in power.
In the second article, “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran,” neocon Daniel Pipes naturally encourages Obama to opt for war. “He [Obama] needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.
“Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.”
Pipes candidly admits that the imposition of “crippling” sanctions on Iran would not contribute to a peaceful settlement but would help to put the United States “on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war.”
Pipes correctly observes that “Obama’s attempts to ‘reset’ his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics.” There are no simply no easy answers for the economic problems that beset America.
Now Pipes is obviously not out to help Obama, but what he says about the political benefits of war are certainly true. If Republican Party leaders were half-way intelligent, they would realize that pushing the country to war is not in their political interest. But the Republican Party is not called the “stupid party” for nothing, and it is in the thrall of the neoconservatives—at least indirectly, since the neocons control Murdoch’s Fox News and strongly influence the popular right-wing radio broadcasters such as Rush Limbaugh. Republicans already did irreparable damage to their party by giving whole-hearted support for the war on Iraq, so the Republicans are quite likely to snatch defeat from the hands of victory.
Pipes presents something on the order of the spurious claim of Saddam’s super dangerous WMD to justify the need for a US bombing attack on Iran. “Eventually, they [Iran] could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country. By eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat, Obama protects the homeland and sends a message to American’s friends and enemies.” Of course, an Iranian electromagnetic pulse attack is highly theoretical. A high altitude explosion would cause damage to electronic communication devices (a nuclear atmospheric test explosion 800 miles from Hawaii in 1962 knocked out a small percentage of the island’s civilian electronic devices) but that it would disrupt all communications devices to the point of preventing a devastating counter strike is highly questionable. Perhaps China, Russia, and the US possess the capability of developing a weapon that could deliver a knockout blow that would prevent nuclear retaliation (though tests to determine this with certitude would seem almost impossible to conduct), but the likelihood that Iran could do this or would dare to take such a risk would seem very remote compared to threats from other countries against the US that would increase every time the US made an unprovoked attack on another country—the more the US engages in allegedly preventive wars, the more likely it is for a fearful nuclear power to launch a preventive war against the US.
Despite the fantasy aspect of an Iranian electromagnetic pulse threat, it is reasonable to believe that such a claim, if publicized widely, could resonate with a substantial proportion of the American public and help to cause the US to launch a preventive war. In fact, this would seem to be the element that is currently lacking in the existing war propaganda —the American people have not yet been made to believe that Iran really threatens the US homeland.
A previous essay of mine provides similar arguments:
“Strengthening US Defenses in the Gulf as a Step Toward War”
Transparent Cabal Website:
http://home.comcast.net/~transparentcabal/
Amazon listing of The Transparent Cabal:
Best,
Stephen Sniegoski
__________________________________________________________________
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35508&s=rcme
Human Events
Will Obama Play the War Card?
by Patrick J. Buchanan Posted 02/05/2010 ET
Updated 02/05/2010 ET
Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play.
Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the “crippling” sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war.
And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate.
Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the president’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator.
Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.
And cutting off a country’s oil or gas is a proven path to war.
In 1941, the United States froze Japan’s assets, denying her the funds to pay for the U.S. oil on which she relied, forcing Tokyo either to retreat from her empire or seize the only oil in reach, in the Dutch East Indies.
The only force able to interfere with a Japanese drive into the East Indies? The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967 threatened to close the Straits of Tiran between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to ships going to the Israeli port of Elath. That would have cut off 95 percent of Israel’s oil.
Israel response: a pre-emptive war that destroyed Egypt’s air force and put Israeli troops at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.
Were Reid and colleagues seeking to strengthen Obama’s negotiating hand?
The opposite is true. The Senate is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war — a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.
Sound familiar?
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made clear the Senate is seizing control of the Iran portfolio. “If the Obama administration will not take action against this regime, then Congress must.”
U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.
For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran’s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.
Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.
And despite the hysteria about Iran’s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.
The low-enriched uranium at Natanz, enough for one test, has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad this week offered to take the West’s deal and trade it for fuel for its reactor. Iran’s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. watch. The number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000. There is speculation they are breaking down or have been sabotaged.
And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb, why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007 finding and given us the hard evidence?
U.S. anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf. Anti-missile batteries are being deployed on the Arab shore. Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the regime.
Nevertheless, the war drums have again begun to beat.
Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post — “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” — urges Obama to make a “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue” by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will “presumably rally around the flag” when the bombs fall.
Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,” in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.
Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”
———————————————————————————-
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE www.nationalreview.
Also:
http://www.danielpipes.org/7921/bomb-iran-save-obama-presidency
Daniel Pipes
February 2, 2010 12:00 A.M.
How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran
Circumstances are propitious, and the American people would support it.
I do not customarily offer advice to a president whose election I opposed, whose goals I fear, and whose policies I work against. But here is an idea for Barack Obama to salvage his tottering administration by taking a step that protects the United States and its allies.
If Obama’s personality, identity, and celebrity captivated a majority of the American electorate in 2008, those qualities proved ruefully deficient for governing in 2009. He failed to deliver on employment and health care, he failed in foreign-policy forays small (e.g., landing the 2016 Olympics) and large (relations with China and Japan). His counterterrorism record barely passes the laugh test.
This poor performance has caused an unprecedented collapse in the polls and the loss of three major by-elections, culminating two weeks ago in an astonishing senatorial defeat in Massachusetts. Obama’s attempts to “reset” his presidency will likely fail if he focuses on economics, where he is just one of many players.
He needs a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a light-weight, bumbling ideologue, preferably in an arena where the stakes are high, where he can take charge, and where he can trump expectations.
Such an opportunity does exist: Obama can give orders for the U.S. military to destroy Iran’s nuclear-weapon capacity.
Circumstances are propitious. First, U.S. intelligence agencies have reversed their preposterous 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, the one that claimed with “high confidence” that Tehran had “halted its nuclear weapons program.” No one other than the Iranian rulers and their agents denies that the regime is rushing headlong to build a large nuclear arsenal.
Second, if the apocalyptic-minded leaders in Tehran get the Bomb, they render the Middle East yet more volatile and dangerous. They might deploy these weapons in the region, leading to massive death and destruction. Eventually, they could launch an electromagnetic pulse attack on the United States, utterly devastating the country. By eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat, Obama protects the homeland and sends a message to American’s friends and enemies.
Third, polling shows longstanding American support for an attack on the Iranian nuclear infrastructure:
Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg, January 2006: 57 percent of Americans favor military intervention if Tehran pursues a program that could enable it to build nuclear arms.
Zogby International, October 2007: 52 percent of likely voters support a U.S. military strike to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon; 29 percent oppose such a step.
McLaughlin & Associates, May 2009: When asked whether they would support “using the [U.S.] military to attack and destroy the facilities in Iran which are necessary to produce a nuclear weapon,” 58 percent of 600 likely voters supported the use of force and 30 percent opposed it.
Fox News, September 2009: When asked “Do you support or oppose the United States taking military action to keep Iran from getting nuclear weapons?” 61 percent of 900 registered voters supported military action and 28 opposed it.
Pew Research Center, October 2009: When asked which is more important, “to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action,” or “to avoid a military conflict with Iran, even if it means they may develop nuclear weapons,” 61 percent of 1,500 respondents favored the first reply and 24 percent the second.
Not only does a strong majority — 57, 52, 58, 61, and 61 percent in these five polls — already favor using force, but after a strike Americans will presumably rally around the flag, sending that number much higher.
Fourth, if the U.S.limited its strike to taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities and did not attempt any regime change, it would require few “boots on the ground” and entail relatively few casualties, making an attack more politically palatable.
Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene. It would sideline health care, prompt Republicans to work with Democrats, and make the netroots squeal, independents reconsider, and conservatives swoon.
But the chance to do good and do well is fleeting. As the Iranians improve their defenses and approach weaponization, the window of opportunity is closing. The time to act is now, or, on Obama’s watch, the world will soon become a much more dangerous place.
— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University
Will Obama Play the War Card?
Will Obama Play the War Card?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.creators.com/opinion/pat-buchanan.html
February 05, 2010 “CS” — Republicans already counting the seats they will pick up this fall should keep in mind Obama has a big card yet to play.
Should the president declare he has gone the last mile for a negotiated end to Iran’s nuclear program and impose the “crippling” sanctions he promised in 2008, America would be on an escalator to confrontation that could lead straight to war.
And should war come, that would be the end of GOP dreams of adding three-dozen seats in the House and half a dozen in the Senate.
Harry Reid is surely aware a U.S. clash with Iran, with him at the president’s side, could assure his re-election. Last week, Reid whistled through the Senate, by voice vote, a bill to put us on that escalator.
Senate bill 2799 would punish any company exporting gasoline to Iran. Though swimming in oil, Iran has a limited refining capacity and must import 40 percent of the gas to operate its cars and trucks and heat its homes.
And cutting off a country’s oil or gas is a proven path to war.
In 1941, the United States froze Japan’s assets, denying her the funds to pay for the U.S. oil on which she relied, forcing Tokyo either to retreat from her empire or seize the only oil in reach, in the Dutch East Indies.
The only force able to interfere with a Japanese drive into the East Indies? The U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Egypt’s Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1967 threatened to close the Straits of Tiran between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba to ships going to the Israeli port of Elath. That would have cut off 95 percent of Israel’s oil.
Israel response: a pre-emptive war that destroyed Egypt’s air force and put Israeli troops at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Straits of Tiran.
Were Reid and colleagues seeking to strengthen Obama’s negotiating hand?
The opposite is true. The Senate is trying to force Obama’s hand, box him in, restrict his freedom of action, by making him impose sanctions that would cut off the negotiating track and put us on a track to war — a war to deny Iran weapons that the U.S. Intelligence community said in December 2007 Iran gave up trying to acquire in 2003.
Sound familiar?
Republican leader Mitch McConnell has made clear the Senate is seizing control of the Iran portfolio. “If the Obama administration will not take action against this regime, then Congress must.”
U.S. interests would seem to dictate supporting those elements in Iran who wish to be rid of the regime and re-engage the West. But if that is our goal, the Senate bill, and a House version that passed 412 to 12, seem almost diabolically perverse.
For a cutoff in gas would hammer Iran’s middle class. The Revolutionary Guard and Basij militia on their motorbikes would get all they need. Thus the leaders of the Green Movement who have stood up to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah oppose sanctions that inflict suffering on their own people.
Cutting off gas to Iran would cause many deaths. And the families of the sick, the old, the weak, the women and the children who die are unlikely to feel gratitude toward those who killed them.
And despite the hysteria about Iran’s imminent testing of a bomb, the U.S. intelligence community still has not changed its finding that Tehran is not seeking a bomb.
The low-enriched uranium at Natanz, enough for one test, has neither been moved nor enriched to weapons grade. Ahmadinejad this week offered to take the West’s deal and trade it for fuel for its reactor. Iran’s known nuclear facilities are under U.N. watch. The number of centrifuges operating at Natanz has fallen below 4,000. There is speculation they are breaking down or have been sabotaged.
And if Iran is hell-bent on a bomb, why has Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair not revised the 2007 finding and given us the hard evidence?
U.S. anti-missile ships are moving into the Gulf. Anti-missile batteries are being deployed on the Arab shore. Yet, Gen. David Petraeus warned yesterday that a strike on Iran could stir nationalist sentiment behind the regime.
Nevertheless, the war drums have again begun to beat.
Richard Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post — “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” — urges Obama to make a “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue” by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will “presumably rally around the flag” when the bombs fall.
Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,” in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.
Patrick Buchanan is the author of the book “Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War.” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
———————————————————————–
Report: Israeli warships on way to Persian Gulf
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118083§ionid=351020205
|
Strengthening US Defenses in Gulf as a Step Toward War
|
U.S. Senator Lieberman: Impose sanctions on Iran or attack it
General (Ret) James David wrote the intro below as he is mentioned on the cover of the third edition of former Republican Congressman Paul Findley’s ‘They Dare to Speak Out’ book (about the power/influence of the pro-Israel lobby on the US political system and media):
General David wrote:
U.S. Senator Lieberman: Impose sanctions on Iran or attack it – Haaretz – Israel News
Date: Saturday, February 6, 2010, 12:58 PM
The world faces a stark choice between imposing tough sanctions on Iran to stop its nuclear program, or attacking it, United States Senator Joe Lieberman said Saturday.
Lieberman is the influential chairman of the Senate committee on homeland security. He was speaking a day after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that his country was ready to accept an international swap of uranium, but only under certain conditions.
“We have a choice here: to go to tough economic sanctions to make diplomacy work or we will face the prospect of military action against Iran,” Lieberman told the annual Munich Security Conference.
 |
Advertisement |
Top U.S. commanders are already working out how such a strike should be conducted, and although “no-one wants this to happen … unless we together act strongly and do more than talk that is exactly what will happen,” Lieberman said.
A nuclear-armed Iran would provoke chaos in the Middle East, send world oil prices soaring and end any hope of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lieberman said.
IAEA chief seeks ‘accelerated’ dialogue with Iran
Earlier Saturday, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said, after talks with Iran’s foreign minister on a nuclear fuel swap plan, that he sought an accelerated dialogue with Tehran.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Yukiya Amano told reporters after his talks in Munich with Mottaki that dialogue on Iran’s nuclear program is continuing.
Asked if he was confident of a breakthrough, Amano told reporters on the sidelines of an annual security conference in the German city “I prefer not to provide my perspective. Dialogue is continuing, this should be accelerated. That’s the point.”
Meanwhile, Mottaki described his meeting with the IAEA chief as “very good,” but repeated Iran’s insistence on determining the amount of fuel to be exchanged and said it might be less than the 1,200 kg of low-enriched uranium (LEU) which world powers have asked it to part with in one go.
In exchange, Iran would receive uranium of a higher grade which it could use to fuel a Tehran research reactor producing medical isotopes.
“It is very common that in business, the buyer talks and offers about the quantity, and the seller only offers the price,” Mottaki told reporters at the Munich Security Conference.
In the proposed swap, he said, “we determine the quantity on the basis of our needs and we would inform the parties about our requirements. Maybe it is less than this quantity you have already mentioned [1,200 kilograms] or a little more than the quantity we may need for our reactor.”
From the point of view of the United States and others, the proposed swap would reduce the risk of Iran enriching its low-grade uranium to the degree required for potential use in a nuclear weapon – an intention Tehran denies.
“We discussed and exchanged views on a wide range of issues – views about the proposal that is on the table,” Mottaki said.
“I tried to explain the views of the Islamic Republic of Iran for the Director-General,” Mottaki said.
He was elaborating on comments he made on Friday, suggesting an agreement was close. The United States and Germany on Saturday voiced skepticism about Iran’s intentions and said those remarks had not gone far enough.
Mottaki rejected a questioner’s suggestion that Iran’s leadership was divided over the proposed uranium deal.
“In Iran there is only one voice about the issue. And that is, the exchange of fuel has been accepted and recognized. As I told you before, there have been certain doubts about it, and efforts were made to remove these doubts,” he said.
Mottaki did not address the timing of a proposed swap, a problematic issue in negotiations. On Friday he spoke of a ’simultaneous’ swap, whereas the six-power group wants Iran first to ship its LEU abroad and then receive it back when sufficiently enriched to use in Tehran reactor.
The IAEA’s last report in November said Iran had registered a total of 1,763 kilograms of LEU, a quantity experts say would be more than enough for one nuclear bomb if it were enriched to the level of 90 percent.
Pro-Israel Lobbies Work on Europe
Pro-Israel Lobbies Work on Europe
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50190
By David Cronin
BRUSSELS, Feb 2, 2010 (IPS) – Defenders of Israel’s aggressive stance have for many years been recognised as a powerful force shaping United States foreign policy. A less well-known fact is that the pro-Israel lobby has been making a concerted effort to strengthen its presence in Europe.
The lobby’s determination to make an impression on European Union policy-makers was exemplified by a new booklet published on Jan. 28.
Titled ‘Squaring the Circle?: EU-Israel Relations and the Peace Process in the Middle East’, the booklet advocates that EU should “rebalance its priorities” and pursue closer relations with Israel regardless of whether progress is made in resolving the conflict with the Palestinians.
Unlike the plethora of publications on EU affairs that quickly fade into obscurity, there are good reasons to believe that this one will not go unnoticed in the corridors of power.
First, it was published by the Centre of European Studies, the official think-tank for the network of Christian Democrat and conservative parties that dominate European governments.
Secondly, its author, Emanuele Ottolenghi, has already demonstrated his capability to catch the eyes of politicians by penning several pamphlets for Labour Friends of Israel, a group that boasts of the top figures in Britain’s ruling party among its members.
Ottolenghi is the director of the Transatlantic Institute. Also styling itself as a think-tank, this Brussels-based institute was set up by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) in 2004.
“The AJC is the foreign policy wing of the Israel lobby,” says Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, a researcher in Scotland’s University of Strathclyde, who monitors the activities of hawkish pro-Israel groups for the website neoconeurope.eu “The two places that it has decided to focus on most are Latin America and Europe. This is because it has a sense that American power might be in decline.”
The AJC has been successful in convincing the EU that many criticisms of Israel can be considered as a general slur on Jews. In 2005, the EU’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (which has been subsequently renamed the Fundamental Rights Agency) published a working definition on anti-Semitism, admitting that it had been drawn up in consultation with the AJC and the like-minded Anti-Defamation League.
According to this definition says that criticisms of Israel, which contend that the establishment of that state was a “racist endeavour” or which compare Israel’s attacks on the Palestinians to the behaviour of the Nazis during the Second World War, should be considered as anti-Semitism. Ottolenghi’s new booklet invokes that definition to call on the EU to declare campaigners critical of Israel ineligible for funding from those sections of Union’s budget dealing with the promotion of human rights and democracy. It is “curious,” he argued that EU financial support has gone to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) “whose work depicts Israel as a racist society and an apartheid regime.”
“In other words, EU Commission money is helping certain NGOs spread a message that, according to another EU agency, is considered to be anti-Semitic and thus against EU values,” he wrote.
Ottolenghi has been active, too, in urging the EU to adopt a tough line against Iran’s nuclear ambitions. His book ‘Under a Mushroom Cloud,’ which was published last year, posited the theory that Arab leaders are unconcerned by how Israel had developed nuclear weapons of its own decades before Iran started work on its nuclear programme.
“Arab leaders sleep soundly under the shadow of Israel’s nuclear umbrella; it is Iran’s nuclear quest which gives them nightmares,” Ottolenghi wrote. “They know – they have always known – that Israel’s military prowess serves its survival and does not seek to impose a political diktat on its neighbours. The same cannot be said of Iran, with its hegemonic ambitions, and its desire to refashion the region.”
Yet since the book was published Arab governments sponsored a resolution on Israel passed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The resolution noted that Israel is the only state in the region that has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a 1968 agreement designed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons. This was the first such call directed at Israel approved by the IAEA, an official body of the United Nations, in 18 years.
Along with the AJC, several other pro-Israel lobby groups have opened new offices in Brussels over the past decade. These include the European Jewish Congress and B’nai B’rith. Another group, the European Friends of Israel (EFI), has been formed as a cross-party alliance of members of the European Parliament (MEPs).
During Israel’s offensive against Gaza last year, the EFI circulated briefing papers that defended the killing of Palestinian civilians. According to the EFI, it was impossible for Israel to avoid civilian deaths because Hamas, a Palestinian resistance movement, had ordered its members “to discard uniforms and dress in regular clothes that made them indistinguishable from the civilian population”.
Michael Gahler, a German Christian Democrat MEP who describes himself as pro-Israel, said that such lobby groups have “always been very influential” in Europe. Gahler argued, though, that the groups should not ignore the widespread opposition in Europe to Israeli actions in the occupied Palestinian territories. “They should be here and listen,” he told IPS. “They should not only be a loudspeaker.”
Luisa Morgantini, a former vice-president of the European Parliament and a veteran Palestinian solidarity activist, said that all forms of racism and anti-Semitism must be opposed.
But Morgantini also suggests that pro-Israel groups are exploiting the history of Jewish suffering in Europe to dissuade its modern-day politicians from taking robust action against Israeli oppression in Palestine. “They are using the holocaust as blackmail,” she said. “It is time for us to stop this blackmail.”
————————————————————
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUGVPBO9_cA&feature=player_embedded
AIPAC officials duplicated classified document before returning to Gov’t – IRmep
Subject: AIPAC officials duplicated classified document before returning to Gov’t – IRmep
Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010, 9:43 AM
Today IRmep’s Israel Lobby Archive publicly released on the Internet a declassified FBI investigation file into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for espionage and theft of government property:Document (PDF): http://IRmep.org/ila/economy/FD302.pdf
News Release: http://www.cnbc.com/id/35237324*********************************************************Release*********************************************************
AIPAC officials duplicated classified policy documents before returning to US government – IRmepWashington – Top officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee duplicated a stolen classified US government policy document before returning it under order of the US Trade Representative. The newly released FBI form FD-302 is available for download at http://IRmep.org/ila/economy/FD302.pdf .
Testimony about AIPAC’s executive director and top lobbyist reveals AIPAC duplicated the classified report “Probable Economic Effect of Providing Duty Free Treatment for U.S. Imports from Israel” after covertly receiving it from Israeli Minister of Economics Dan Halpern:
“REDACTED immediately called REDACTED at the USTR to make arrangements to return the document. The report was subsequently returned to the USTR by a member of the AIPAC office staff. Prior to returning this document, REDACTED asked to have a duplicate copy made so that the staff of the AIPAC could further examine the report….He stated that REDACTED retained the duplicate copy of the report and that the original report was returned to the USTR.”
The classified 300 page report contained business confidential information and trade secrets provided by 76 American industry and worker groups lobbying against a bilateral intergovernmental managed trade pact with Israel. The fight pitted Monsanto, the U.S. Bromine Alliance, Sunkist Growers Inc., the American Farm Bureau and the AFL-CIO against the Israeli government, AIPAC, and the American Israel Chamber of Commerce and Industry. After the trade deal passed, the US cumulative trade deficit with Israel grew to $71 billion; equivalent to 100,000 lost US jobs each year over the past decade. The report is still considered so sensitive neither the USTR nor the International Trade Commission will release it under the Freedom of Information Act.
This warrants close public scrutiny according to IRmep director of research Grant Smith, “AIPAC is again pushing legislation that undermines American industries, workers, shippers, financial institutions and our most valuable trading partners. These startling AIPAC testimonials to law enforcement officials, published online for the first time, reveal the subordination of US interests and our advice and consent democratic process of governance to the AIPAC and its foreign principals.”
The Israel Lobby Archive, http://IRmep.org/ila is a unit of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington. The Archive digitizes declassified documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act filings with law enforcement, economic, diplomatic and intelligence agencies. IRmep is a Washington-based nonprofit that studies U.S. Middle East policy formulation.
**************************************************************
If you no longer wish receive communications from email
list, please send a blank email to:Friends and colleagues may subscribe and receive Archive
updates at:
Killing Americans as “Defined Policy”
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=32221
| Posted by Phil Giraldi on 02/04/10 8:45 PM [Older: Taking Out the CIA] |
I was shocked by yesterday’s House Intelligence Committee comments by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair and am astonished that his statement is not the featured front page item in every news medium today. Blair said that US citizens abroad might be killed by CIA or the Defense Department if they are “taking action that threatens Americans.” He added that in so doing the government would “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed” and described the policy as designed to “protect most of the country.”
Well, I guess it’s just tough luck if you’re not one of the “most” while a “defined policy” being overseen by a Washington bureaucrat whose mission is to kill terrorists might reassure some. One recalls, however, that Washington officials approved waterboarding, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition. I must admit to having a problem with extrajudicial killing unless someone is absolutely caught in flagrante in a murderous act because, as a former intelligence officer, I know full well how bad intelligence can be. Would we be killing someone without any due process just because someone else bearing a grudge manages to plant some false info, as has occurred all too often in Afghanistan? If it is true that something like 19 civilians die in drone strikes for every bad guy we manage to get, there is something seriously wrong with the intelligence and about the system in general.
And who makes the judgment of what constitutes something that ”threatens Americans”? Blair went on to explain that being targeted might be based on being “involved in a group that is trying to attack us.” Involved? What does that mean? That would seem to be a First Amendment issue to me. If I send $5 to an apparent charity that turns out to be a part of Hezbollah can I expect a black helicopter overhead in minutes? The Blair comment is particularly scary in that it is a complete denial of the rights guaranteed to US citizens, including the right to a fair trial. It is also an admission that the White House sees such targeted killings as perfectly acceptable. I would add that no one on the Intelligence Committee protested much either. When a government is selectively targeting and killing its own citizens isn’t it a sign that something is very, very wrong? -Phil Giraldi, American Conservative Defense Alliance
Shoot Me, I’m American (by Phil Giraldi)
I would have thought that yesterday’s House Intelligence Committee comments by Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair would have provided an “I can’t believe it” moment, but apparently not. The ACLU might be preparing a position paper, but so far not a bleat out of anyone. Blair said that US citizens abroad might be killed by CIA or the Defense Department if they are “taking action that threatens Americans.” He added that in so doing the government would “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed” and described the policy as designed to “protect most of the country.”
Well, I guess it’s tough luck if you’re not one of the “most” and I will definitely sleep better knowing that there is a “defined policy” being overseen by some dude at CIA or the Pentagon whose promotion prospects depend on killing terrorists.
I must admit to having a problem with extrajudicial killing unless someone is absolutely caught in flagrante because, as a former intelligence officer, I know full well how bad intelligence can be. Would we be killing someone without any due process just because someone else bearing a grudge manages to plant some false info, as has occurred all too often in Afghanistan? If it is true that something like 19 civilians die in drone strikes for every bad guy we manage to get, there is something seriously wrong with the intelligence and about the system in general. And who makes the judgment of what constitutes something that ”threatens Americans”? Blair went on to explain that being targeted might be based on being “involved in a group that is trying to attack us.” Involved? What does that mean?