Archive for October, 2009
Alliances as Transmission Belts of War
Alliances as Transmission Belts of War
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=284
DEBORCHGRAVE COMMENTARY: Israel of the Caucasus?
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/04/israel-of-the-caucasus/
Additional at following URL:
Russia: Georgia sending war signals
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/08/01/russia-georgia-sending-war-signals/
Confessions of an AIPAC Veteran
Confessions of an AIPAC Veteran
By Helena Cobban
This article appeared in the November 2, 2009 edition of The Nation.
October 14, 2009
Helena Cobban: Reclaiming Palestinian territory in East Jerusalem looks to be new frontier for Israeli expansionism.
My jaw dropped. I caused sleepless nights to Tom Dine in the 1980s? How about all those sleepless nights he caused me back when I was trying to argue in Washington that Palestinians are people like everyone else and he was the much-feared executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who took down the careers of people like me without a second thought?
Damascus, with its long tradition of conversions, seems a good place to launch this story. But step back to 1982, when Dine, figuratively speaking, picked up veteran Illinois Representative Paul Findley by the lapels and slammed him against the wall of electoral defeat–to make an example for any other members of Congress who might want to take even a half-step away from AIPAC’s rigidly pro-Israel orthodoxy. (Four years earlier, Findley had met twice with PLO leader Yasir Arafat, eliciting from him a statement that offered guarded support for a two-state solution and, according to Findley, “de facto recognition” of Israel.) Dine was also the man who, as he told me recently, spent many Saturday mornings sitting with Secretary of State George Shultz, conferring closely–no aides present–on key aspects of US Middle East policy, especially arms sales.
Today AIPAC is just as much a powerhouse lobby as it was during Dine’s thirteen-year reign, but it is much more pro-Likud than it was back then. And it is still working hard to drum up opposition to Syria. Dine left AIPAC in 1993 and has moved noticeably toward the peace camp since then. Recently he worked with the broadly dovish Israel Policy Forum (IPF), which advocates a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians. And for the past year, Dine has been heading a small group dedicated to improving US-Syrian relations.
Dine has taken a long journey, from drinking Scotch one-on-one with Yitzhak Rabin in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel–at a time when Rabin, as defense minister, was calling publicly for his soldiers to “break the bones” of unarmed Palestinians during the first intifada–to caucusing with well-connected Syrians in Damascus, two decades later.
Tom Dine was born in 1940 in Cincinnati, a city perched on the edge of the Old South. He told me he hated racial discrimination from an early age. The Dines were members of the Isaac M. Wise Temple, named for the rabbi who established the founding tenets and institutions of Reform Judaism. For young Reform Jews in 1950s Cincinnati, there were no bar or bat mitzvahs; there was “confirmation.” And once Dine was confirmed, he pursued further religious studies at the city’s Wise-founded Hebrew Union College (HUC).
“While I was there, the rabbinic students did a petition in support of Martin Luther King’s bus boycott,” he recalled. “The head of HUC, Nelson Glueck, opposed their petition–well, certainly the visibility of it; I don’t know about the sentiment. But the students defied his authority and stood up for their principles…. I was 15. Those are heavy influences.”
At Colgate University, Dine joined the Congress of Racial Equality. Later he served with the Peace Corps in the Philippines, got a master’s degree in South Asian history at UCLA, then took a job at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington. “I got this terrible, terrible disease the moment I got off the plane there: it’s called Potomac Fever. I never got over it!” he said.
In Washington he met Joan Corbett, daughter of a prominent Unitarian family in Portland, Oregon, and soon thereafter they married. They spent two years in New Delhi, where Dine was assistant to US Ambassador Chester Bowles. After returning to Washington, Dine worked five years for Senator Frank Church, four years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under Edmund Muskie and one year with Ted Kennedy. “With Ted Kennedy, I was ostensibly doing defense policy, but really I was orchestrating his Jewish-vote efforts,” he said.
In 1979 Kennedy launched his bid for the presidency, running in the primaries against President Jimmy Carter. Dine worked hard for Kennedy: “It was in the course of that campaign I met the organized Jewish community…. They were the kings in every city!” The campaign was troubled from the start, but in March 1980 Kennedy won a surprise victory in the New York primary. By all accounts, that win was propelled by the support he got from the Jewish community–particularly after Carter’s UN ambassador failed to protect Israel from a Security Council vote denouncing its West Bank settlements. Meanwhile, in Washington, the AIPAC board offered Dine the job of executive director. “I said I would go with [Kennedy] as far as it goes,” Dine recalled. “Then in July or so, Carter gets renominated…. And I said yes to AIPAC.”
Dine said he thought the style of his AIPAC predecessor, Morris Amitay, had been too arrogant. He wanted to return to the slightly more discreet approach pioneered by Isaiah “Si” Kenen, who had founded the organization in the 1950s. But, Dine admitted, “I did give AIPAC visibility. You can’t grow an institution unless people know about it.” In 1981 he fought hard to block the Reagan administration’s proposed sale of AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia. He narrowly lost that one, “but you never really want to have this kind of confrontation,” he told me. “It’s not good for the executive branch, not good for the legislative branch and probably not good for AIPAC.”
George Shultz was apparently convinced by that argument and started hosting those quiet Saturday one-on-ones with Dine. “We’d talk about future arms sales so it would never come to that confrontation again,” Dine said. “It was one of the nicest things that ever happened to me, associating myself with George Shultz.” Did Dine talk about the administration’s proposed arms sales with people in Israel before he went to the meetings? “Sometimes, sometimes not. Definitely with people throughout the executive branch, and people on the Hill that I respected.”
In September 1982 Reagan announced a new plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The New York Times called Dine for a reaction. “I said there were some positive elements in the plan,” he recalled. “That went into the paper, above the fold. The president of the AIPAC board called me up and yelled me out. People were furious in the Jewish community and said, ‘How dare you defy [Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin [who opposed the plan]?’ I said, ‘I don’t work for Begin.’”
Dine said he had four main goals when he took the AIPAC job. “First, I wanted to run something. Second, I wanted to stimulate Jewish participation in American political life like it had never happened before. Third, I had always felt the US-Israel relationship was precarious, even though it might not seem that way if you’re on the other side…. But [I wanted to] give some meat to it, make it close and strong. And fourth, if you make it close and strong…and if you’ve really increased Jewish political participation…then Israel can take risks for peace.”
Dine said he frequently tried out that last idea on Begin. “He looked at me as if I was coming from another planet. I barely said it to [Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak] Shamir, because he didn’t understand it either. But Shimon Peres understood it, when he was prime minister for a couple of years, 1984 to 1986,” Dine said, adding, “I believe in strong bilateral relations. But not in a Likud foreign policy. We tried the latter for so long, and it didn’t get us very far.”
The effects of Dine’s campaign to stimulate Jewish participation in US political life were soon felt throughout the land. Findley was not the only legislator who, having crossed some AIPAC red line, suddenly found an opponent awash in funding mobilized through Dine’s nationwide network of donors. After Findley lost his re-election bid in 1982, he published They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby. The book tracks campaigns AIPAC waged in the early 1980s that Findley thought helped defeat other Congressional candidates, people like Charles Percy and Adlai Stevenson III.
AIPAC’s greatest strength, friends and foes agree, lies at the Congressional district level. There its organizers deploy networks of committed Israel supporters who build early relationships with up-and-coming political figures and keep close tabs on actions and attitudes regarding AIPAC’s concerns. The headquarters aids that process by distributing timely bursts of information on how each legislator has voted on matters of interest to AIPAC. In 1982 Dine hired M.J. Rosenberg to be a key distributor of that information by editing the biweekly Near East Report, which AIPAC sent out to members and supporters.
Rosenberg has also long since departed from AIPAC and moved to the left, and to a greater extent than Dine. He disputes the notion that AIPAC’s disfavor has ever been the decisive factor in taking down Congressional candidates. “There were cases, like Cynthia McKinney, where the candidate was already damaged goods, and AIPAC helped push the candidacy over the edge,” Rosenberg said. “But they still don’t dare take down people in good standing in their constituencies, like [Virginia Representative] Jim Moran, even though he does a lot of things AIPAC doesn’t like.” Rosenberg–like, not surprisingly, Dine himself–therefore challenges the argument John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have made about the all-prevailing nature of AIPAC’s power in Congress.
Dine says he has “no regrets” about his AIPAC years. Some of his fondest memories of those days are of times he spent with Rabin. “It’s no secret that he was an alcoholic–or anyway, that he really liked his drink. I used to buy him his Johnny Walker Red. He would drink a whole bottle at a time. The best conversations I had with him were in the 1980s when he was out of office, conversations at a deep intellectual level.” Nearly all those discussions were about Israel’s defense, Dine said. “The first intifada was a turning point for him: when he came back into office [as prime minister] in 1992, he was ready for peace.”
Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory brought exultation to the pro-Israel community. Clinton had, after all, beaten George H.W. Bush just months after Bush had forced a showdown with Yitzhak Shamir over Israel’s West Bank settlements by threatening to link $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel’s compliance with a settlement freeze. And Clinton had many pro-Israel advisers. His first National Security Council staff member on Middle East issues was Martin Indyk, a hurriedly naturalized Australian citizen who had been AIPAC’s deputy director of research before leaving in 1985 to found a strongly pro-Israel think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
But Dine didn’t last long in the Clinton era. In 1993 he had to resign after an Israeli journalist published a book that quoted him saying, “I don’t think mainstream Jews feel very comfortable with the ultra-Orthodox…. Their image is ‘smelly.’” Rosenberg told me Dine’s firing was engineered by a man Dine had hired, Steve Rosen, “mostly because Dine was always a liberal, whereas Steve Rosen has always been a Likudnik and a neocon.”
Rosen would attract great notoriety in 2005, when he was indicted under the Espionage Act, along with AIPAC colleague Keith Weissman, for passing classified information to Israeli government officials (the Justice Department finally dropped the charges in May). Dine said the espionage indictments were bad for AIPAC in two ways. First, they spread “a black cloud” over the organization–”and it still hasn’t gone away. And then AIPAC said it would fundraise around this, and it has done very well by attracting funding mainly from people who practice orthodoxy…. If you think there’s a conspiracy out there, you’ll give money. So AIPAC’s fundraising has gone way up. But in doing so, I think it’s gotten its eye off the ball. It no longer talks about peace, no longer thinks about the two-state solution.”
Dine took his firing hard, but he eventually landed another intriguing job: president of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. When he took over, the stations faced an acute challenge: the end of the cold war had prompted Congress to pass legislation that would end their funding in 1999. If Dine wanted to save RFE/RL, he would need to find another mission. In the fall of 1997 he was reading the Washington Post “and there, above the fold, were two stories, one about Iran and one about Iraq…. I snapped my fingers and said, ‘That’s it! We’re going to be like NATO, and we’re going to go out of area!’”
Dine saved RFE/RL from extinction by turning it into an important lever of US soft power in a broad swath of Muslim (and some non-Muslim) countries. It retained the relatively high journalistic standards it had followed in Eastern Europe, now broadcasting from the Balkans to Afghanistan, from Moldova to Iran. (Washington’s later foray into “surrogate broadcasting,” with the Bush-launched Al Hurra TV station and Radio Sawa in Iraq, was far less professional. Dine has just been hired by their parent company as a consultant to burnish their image.)
Close engagement with people from other cultures can turn out to be a two-way street. Of his eight years at RFE/RL’s Prague headquarters, Dine said, “My world became more Muslim-oriented. And I started asking, Who are these people?… And Joan and I befriended them socially…. I care a lot about these people. So when I left the radios, I could look with a fresh set of eyes and sensitivities at the Palestinians and other Arabs and ask what was this hate all about?”
In 2007 Dine returned to Washington, where he became a senior policy adviser with the liberal Israel Policy Forum. He also took part in the US-Muslim Engagement Project, which issued a thoughtful bipartisan report in September 2008. In mid-2008 the DC-based nonprofit Search for Common Ground was looking for someone to lead a small, discreet project to improve Washington’s badly frayed relations with Syria. Dine took the job, and has since made four trips to Syria. When he describes his early impressions of Syria, and the well-connected Syrians with whom he works, Dine’s bony face lights up with enthusiasm. “They are so warm. They have so many of the same concerns as us.” When I have seen him with his Syrian counterparts, it seems clear they have built warm working relationships.
Improving US-Syrian relations has, however, proven difficult. Syria has been on the State Department’s terrorism list since the late 1970s. In late 2003, when AIPAC’s supporters were still joyous about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, they persuaded Congress to pass the Syria Accountability Act, which tightened sanctions on Damascus. Two years later President Bush signaled his displeasure at Syria’s alleged (but unproven) involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri by withdrawing the US ambassador.
Many Barack Obama supporters hoped that after his inauguration he would act fast to mend ties with Damascus. President Bashar al-Assad’s government is, after all, a key player in Arab-Israeli diplomacy and in restoring stability to Iraq. It has demonstrated its readiness to cooperate with Washington in these two spheres, and in Lebanon as well. In June the administration finally informed Syria it would send an ambassador to Damascus, but months later it still has not named anyone. This relationship–like Obama’s Arab-Israeli diplomacy more broadly–seems stuck in the doldrums. Not even the involvement of the once-feared Tom Dine has been able to free the logjam. Meanwhile, the newer, more liberal kids on the US Jewish lobby block, like IPF and J Street, have shown themselves ready to go much further than Dine in openly challenging the AIPAC orthodoxy–especially on the Palestinian issue.
Dine may have worked for IPF, but he still seems reluctant to challenge AIPAC’s hardline approach on Israel-Palestine. I asked him a couple of times whether he thought Obama should push the Israeli government harder on this front. At one point he cautiously recalled, “There have been episodes along the way when the US used the instruments of its national power to prod Israeli change on peace issues–but not since the days of Bush I and [Secretary of State James] Baker…. And yes, the Bush-Baker policy did help persuade the Israelis to vote for Rabin [against Likud's Shamir].” But Dine avoided saying whether he thought Obama should engage in a similarly tough-minded pursuit. Another time I asked why he thought solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was in America’s interest. Instead of answering, he explained why solving it is in Israel’s interest.
The differing attitudes Dine displays toward Palestinians and Syrians seem to spring in good part from the different degree of familiarity this very hands-on, sociable man has with the two peoples. At one point he said bluntly, “I don’t know very many Palestinians.” Surveying the Jewish community more broadly, however, he noted that many more Jewish Americans had gotten to know Palestinian Americans, and other Palestinians, over the past fifteen years than had been the case back when he was head of AIPAC. “So yes, there has been a new level of exchange and understanding.” Dine has not, up till now, gone as far in embodying that new understanding as the more fearless Jewish activists and organizers in J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace. But he–like many other Americans–has traveled a long way since the 1980s. For many, perhaps including Tom Dine, that journey continues.
The Dark Side of the ‘Special Relationship’ (Spy vs. spy, Israel vs. America)
The Dark Side of the ‘Special Relationship’
Spy vs. spy, Israel vs. America
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/10/20/the-dark-side-of-the-special-relationship/
US Scientist Accused of Trying to Spy for Israel
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/10/19/us-scientist-charged-with-spying-for-israel/
Asia Times: The [Israeli] spy who lost his thumb drives
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ23Ak01.html
Accused Israeli spy told FBI both his parents were Jewish
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/10/national-security-and-dual-loyalty-watch.html
Israeli espionage against the US:
US scientist charged with spying for Israel
US Scientist Accused of Trying to Spy for Israel
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/20/headlines#7
A Maryland scientist has been arrested for attempted espionage after he offered to sell military secrets to an undercover FBI agent that he believed was an Israeli spy. The scientist, Stewart Nozette, used to work for the Department of Energy, where he had top secret clearance and access to nuclear weapon design information. Nozette is also alleged to have worked as a consultant for an Israeli aerospace company from 1998 up until last year.
US scientist charged with spying for Israel
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8315538.stm
Source: NASA investigation opened doors to espionage probe
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=109101§ionid=3510203
Israeli spy in US wanted $2 million for his secrets
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=109966§ionid=3510203
Asia Times: The [Israeli] spy who lost his thumb drives
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ23Ak01.html
Accused Israeli spy told FBI both his parents were Jewish
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/10/national-security-and-dual-loyalty-watch.html
Alleged Israeli Spy: ‘I Thought I Was Working for You Already’
Israeli drones operating over Iraq and Afghanistan:
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/12/03/israeli-drones-operating-over-iraq-and-afghanistan/
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US scientist charged with attempted spying for Israel
(AFP) http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hzSuUWAoHfqUsAXeT4wBk8Hzk97w
WASHINGTON — The US authorities arrested Monday a leading American scientist who had worked for the Pentagon and NASA and charged him with attempted spying for Israel.
Stewart Nozette, 52, was apprehended after a sting operation involving an undercover FBI agent, the Department of Justice said, adding that there was no wrongdoing by Israel.
He is charged with “attempted espionage for knowingly and willfully attempting to communicate, deliver, and transmit classified information relating to the national defense of the United States to an individual that Nozette believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer.”
Nozette, who was arrested in the Washington suburb of Chevy Chase, Maryland and taken into custody, could make his first court appearance Tuesday on the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
“The conduct alleged in this complaint is serious and should serve as a warning to anyone who would consider compromising our nation’s secrets for profit,” said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security.
Nozette, 52, developed an experiment that fueled the discovery of water on the south pole of the moon, and previously held special security clearance at the Department of Energy on atomic materials.
In addition to stints with NASA and the Department of Energy, Nozette worked at the White House on the National Space Council under then-president George H.W. Bush in 1989 and 1990.
“From 1989 through 2006, Nozette held security clearances as high as top secret and had regular, frequent access to classified information and documents related to the US national defense,” the Justice Department said.
In early September, Nozette received a phone call from a person “purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer, but who was in fact an undercover employee of the FBI,” the DOJ said.
“Nozette met with the UCE (undercover employee) that day and discussed his willingness to work for Israeli intelligence,” informing the agent that “he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to US satellite information.”
The scientist offered to “answer questions about this information in exchange for money.”
Over the next several weeks, Nozette and the undercover agent exchanged envelopes of money for answers to lists of questions about US satellite technology.
“In addition, Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems,” DOJ said.
FBI agents retrieved a manila envelope left by Nozette in a designated location this month that “contained information classified as both top secret and secret that concerned US satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.”
In 1987, the United States sentenced Navy analyst Jonathan Pollard to life in prison for providing Israel — from May 1984 to his arrest in November 1985 — thousands of confidential military documents on US spying, particularly in Arab nations.
Israel has appealed for his release repeatedly, and in vain. And Pollard supporters in Israel and the United States have done the same for the man who since has obtained Israeli citizenship.
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US Pentagon scientist arrested for ‘agreeing to be Israeli spy’
By AP AND JPOST.COM STAFF
WASHINGTON A scientist who worked for the US Defense Department, a White House space counsel and other agencies was arrested Monday on espionage charges. The Justice Department said Stewart David Nozette, 52, of suburban Chevy Chase, Maryland, was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information to an individual he believed to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated US law. Officials in Jerusalem refrained comment on Monday night, telling Israel Radio they were not familiar with the case. Nozette was arrested Monday by FBI agents. He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. In an affidavit supporting the complaint that was unsealed Monday, FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on September 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The caller was an undercover FBI agent. Nozette agreed to meet with the agent later that day at a hotel in Washington and in the subsequent meeting the two discussed Nozette’s willingness to work for Israeli intelligence. Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to US satellite information, the affidavit said. Nozette also was alleged to have said he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The affidavit said the agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box. Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the government alleged. |
Spy Nozette 09 10 22 distressing
| NOZETTE AND NUCLEAR ROCKETRYStewart D. Nozette, who was arrested and charged this week under the Espionage Act, is an unusually gifted and accomplished technologist. The allegation that he provided classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer in exchange for cash is distressing on several levels.Among other things, Nozette had exceptionally broad access to a range of classified programs in defense, space and nuclear technology. According to an FBI affidavit, Nozette stated that he “held a DOE Q clearance from 1990-2000, which involved insight into all aspects of nuclear weapons programs. Held TS/SI/TK/B/G clearance 1998-2006,… Held at least 20+ SAP [special access program clearances]… from 1998-2004.” http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/nozette-complaint.pdf In fact, however, Nozette’s participation in Department of Defense special The discovery of the hyper-classified Timber Wind program was an Timber Wind was canceled shortly after it became public, and other nuclear An idiosyncratic new memoir by Tony Zuppero, one of the would-be nuclear Dr. Nozette, myself and the Federation of American Scientists make a few http://www.neofuel.com/inhabit/inhabit.pdf —————————————————————————— |
The Dark Side of the ‘Special Relationship’
Spy vs. spy, Israel vs. America
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/10/20/the-dark-side-of-the-special-relationship/
Israeli espionage against the US:
http://www.counterpunch.org/husseini08302004.html
Iran threatens U.S. and Britain after Guard bombing
Iran threatens U.S. and Britain after Guard bombing | U.S. | Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59H0AH20091019
Iranian official blames deadly bombing on US and UK:
Game Plan: If Israel Strikes Iran
Retired General Says Israeli Attack to Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Facilities Not Only Possible, the U.S. Should Join In
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/18/notebook/main5394593.shtml?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel
U.S. Middle East policy motivated by pro-Israel lobby
The AIPAC propagandist Dennis Ross moves over to the National Security Council
‘Israel may attack Iran after December’
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/10/15/israel-may-attack-iran-after-december/
http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.COM
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews author Tom Ricks – Afghanistan & Pakistan
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviews author Tom Ricks – Afghanistan & Pakistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaLrq2WK-Rk
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/05/10/the-rule-of-the-experts/
The Bottom Line (to the Afghan quagmire):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdNlNuQJuf0
US-led war in Afghanistan ‘unwinnable’
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/10/15/us-led-war-in-afghanistan-unwinnable/
Israel to rely on US veto
Israel to rely on US veto
http://www.theage.com.au/world/israel-to-rely-on-us-veto-20091018-h2vv.html
White House phones Jewish leaders to promise veto on Goldstone
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/09/white-house-phones-jewish-leaders-to-promise-veto-on-goldstone.html
UNHRC endorses Goldstone report, angers Israel
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/10/16/unhrc-endorses-goldstone-report-angers-israel/
Israel feels the heat over UN meeting on Gaza war
http://america-hijacked.com/2009/10/14/israel-feels-the-heat-over-un-meeting-on-gaza-war/
US Israel Lobby after Iran and out to suppress Goldstone report
From: The Israel Project [mailto:info@theisraelproject.org]
Sent: Sunday, October 18, 2009 9:12 AM
Subject: TIP Action Alert
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Iranian official blames deadly bombing on US and UK
Iranian official blames deadly bombing on ‘U.S. actions’:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/10/18/iran.suicide.attack/index.html
Suicide Blast in Iran Kills 42, Including Six Iranian Commanders
In Iran, six senior commanders in the country’s elite Revolutionary Guard were assassinated Sunday in a suicide bombing that killed as many as thirty-six others. The bombing occurred in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan near the Pakistani border. It has been described as the most serious attack against Iran in more than twenty years. The Sunni militant group Jundallah claimed responsibility for the attack. The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has vowed to “retaliate” against the United States and Britain after accusing them of backing Jundallah. Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Pakistan of also having links to the bombers.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: “We ask the Pakistani government not to delay any longer in the apprehension of the main elements in this terrorist attack. And also, we were informed that some security agents in Pakistan are cooperating with the main elements of this terrorist incident, and we regard it as our right to demand these criminals.”
Six Senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commanders Killed in Suicide Bombing, Iran Blames US and Pakistan
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/19/six_senior_iranian_revolutionary_guard_commanders
Iran urges UNSC to strongly condemn deadly blast
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=109130§ionid=351020101
Tensions Rise between Iran and Pakistan:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/19/world/main5395154.shtml?tag=topnews
US denies involvement in Iran suicide attack
Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in Iran bomb – washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/18/AR2009101800596.html?hpid=topnews
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/10/18/national/a030754D60.DTL#ixzz0UHrkuhxv
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Iran threatens U.S. and Britain after Guard bombing
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE59H0AH20091019
America and Great Britain’s Secret Support of Jandullah
http://watchingamerica.com/News/15111/america-and-great-britain-support-jandullah/
Ex-CIA agent confirms US ties with Jundullah
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=109453§ionid=351020101
Seymour Hersh: US Training Jundullah for Bombings in Iran
by Solve_et_Coagula » Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:18 pm
According to an interview with Seymour Hersh, the US is training terrorist groups to cause chaos inside Iran, provoking an aggressive reaction from the Iranians, which will serve as a pretext for military action from the US.
Source: CASMII
Seymour Hersh: US Training Jondollah and MEK for Bombing preparation
In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield’, the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration’s executive power, about the US recognition of Iran’s overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.
Hersh explains that the aim of the US covert operations inside Iran is to create a pretext for attack with the goal of regime change. “The strategic thinking behind this covert operation is to provoke enough trouble and chaos so that the Iranian government makes the mistake of taking aggressive action which will give the impression of a country in acute turmoil”, he said. “Then you have what the White House calls the ‘casus belli’, a reason to attack the country. That is the thinking and it is very crazy.”
On Iran’s role in Iraq, Hersh points out: “There is absolutely no clear evidence known to the American government that the Iranian leadership has any interest in provoking trouble with the United States in Iraq by sending in people to cause mayhem or kill Americans. There is just no evidence for it.” He continues further on: “Frankly, the guys I know in the inside– in the Special Forces, high up in DoD, high up in the intelligence community–if you push them hard enough, they tell you that Iran has been more of a force for stability in Iraq than negative”.
Hersh comments that the decision to launch these covert operations was prompted by the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate’s verdict that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme and that the approval by the US Congress leadership of the $400 million budget for the operations “is totally an expansion” of the executive powers of the Bush Administration.
He explains how the Bush Administration’s policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” has led the US to support the Baluchi organisation Jondollah and the MEK (Mujahideen-e-Khalq a.k.a PMOI), both of which have clear track records of terrorist activities including against the US. He reiterates that the US has been giving arms and cash to the terrorists in the MEK for years and reveals that “most of the [MEK] leaders have been taking our money and cashing it in an awful lot of bank accounts in London.” He also reveals for the first time that the US has trained MEK teams in the state of Nevada and that “they do a lot of crazy stuff inside Iran”.
Hersh warns that “we have been moving cruise missiles there for a few months now”, and that the US military is ready. “Our submarines are there, our destroyers are there with cruise missiles aboard, our aircrafts are there, our soldiers are there” to attack Iran within “10 to 12 hours” of the go-ahead order by President Bush, he says, stressing that troops have to go on the ground in Iran in order to destroy Iran’s defensive systems.
He finally points out that Bush “is going to be a very active president, I am afraid, until 11:59:59 seconds on January 20, 2009” and raises the alarm about an “October surprise”, a military attack on Iran, in particular if Obama continues to have a lead in the polls.
Listen to the whole interview here: http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=92025860&m=92028303
For more information or to contact CASMII please visit http://www.campaigniran.org
- Subverting Iran
Washington’s Covert War on Iran: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20070323&articleId=5165
Bloody attack in southern Iran: US-British-Israeli terror attack
MOSCOW, 18 Oktober (RIA Novosti). Behind today’s bomb attack on a high military in southern Iran, that killed 31 people, according to the latest data to suspect Iranian authorities of Great Britain.
The Iranian state television circulated a statement for an “informed source” who said Britain “immediately” was behind the attack. The London-based Foreign Office condemned the atrocity in Iran, without commenting on allegations from Tehran.
The assassination of a high commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards had been committed in the south of the country. The high military was killed. A suicide bomber had detonated his bomb outside a conference hall in the city of Sarbaz, when there commanders and tribal elders had gathered for a meeting. Among the casualties, there are several officers.
To the suicide attack, apparently the worst in the Islamic Republic for years, yet no one claimed responsibility. The Iranian parliament chief and ex-Atomchefunterhändler Ali Larijani in turn made the U.S. responsible for the attack, as reported the AFP. Before that had already expressed a spokesman for the Revolutionary Guard that were behind the murder “foreign elements” who are “connected with the U.S..”
In 1979 gebldete the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a conservative special unit of the army, which is tasked with monitoring the regime loyalty. They had also come in the war against Iraq (1980/88) are used.
A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html