National Security Archive Update, January 14, 2008
In 1974 Estimate, CIA Found that Israel Already Had a NuclearStockpile and that
"Many Countries" Would Soon Have Nuclear Capabilities
Washington DC, January 14, 2008 - In the wake of the Indian "peaceful nuclearexplosion" on May 17, 1974 and growing concern about the spread of nuclear
weapons capabilities, the U.S. intelligence community prepared a Special National
Intelligence Assessment, "Prospects for Further Proliferation of Nuclear
Weapons," published today by the National Security Archive.
The 1974 Indian test created shock waves in the U.S. government, not only becauseof its broader implications, but because the intelligence community had failed to
detect that it was imminent (This failure led to an intelligence post-mortem.)
The possibility that the Indian test might lead to a nuclear arms race in South Asia
and create new pressures for nuclear proliferation elsewhere induced the U.S.
government, which under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had treated this problem
as a lower-level issue, to begin viewing developing policies to curb proliferation
as a higher priority.
That the SNIE estimated that "many countries" would have the economic andtechnological capability to produce nuclear weapons by the 1980s underlined
the seriousness of the problem, as did another statement:
"Terrorists might attempt theft of either weapons or fissionable materials."
Noting that there were over 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world, the report
observed that
"absolute assurance about future security is impossible."
The CIA released the 1974 SNIE in response to a FOIA request by National SecurityArchive senior fellow Jeffrey Richelson, author of Spying on the Bomb: American
Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea
(New York: W.W. Norton,2006). Quicker than usual, the CIA posted the SNIE on
its Web site before the National Security Archive published the document.
In response to the CIA posting, the estimate has already received some play
in the U.S. and Israeli press, as well as on www.armscontrolwonk.com.
Interestingly, twenty years ago, the CIA released an excised version of the
"Summary and Conclusions" of this document in response to a FOIA request by
the Natural Resources Defense
January 17, 2008
NSA: 1972 CIA NIA showed Isreal had nuclear stockpile
December 02, 2007
Naomi Wolf: America's Fascist Coup
Naomi Wolf: America's Fascist Coup Owes to Bush's Nazi Grandfather
Author of "10 steps" speaks publicly for the first time about legacy of modern-day tyranny
Prison Planet | November 29, 2007
Paul Joseph Watson
Author Naomi Wolf, who made headlines earlier this year after she identified the ten steps to fascism that were being followed to a tee by the Bush administration, spoke publicly for the first time yesterday about the origins of what we see unfolding today, Prescott Bush's attempt to launch a Nazi coup in 1930's America.
Speaking on the Alex Jones Show, Wolf said that she was first alerted to begin researching America's slide into fascism when her friend, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, warned her that the same events that laid the foundations for the rise of the Third Reich in early 1930's Germany, when it was still a Parliamentary democracy, were being mirrored in modern-day America.
"A small group of people began very systematically to use the law and dismantle the Constitution and put pressure on citizens to subvert the law - and that opened the door for everything that followed," said Wolf.
"When I started reading, not only are tactics and strategy being reproduced exactly right now by the Bush administration - but actual sound bytes and language and images and scenarios are being reproduced," she added.
Wolf's essay, Fascist America, In 10 Easy Steps , has received plaudits for how it succinctly describes the ways in which dictatorships the world over thro ughout the 20th century have evolved by following the exact same blueprint for tyranny that we see unfolding in America today.
"Everybody that wants to close down a Democracy does the exact same ten things, the same classic steps and unfortunately we're starting to see these ten steps being put in place in the United States," said Wolf.
For the first time publicly, Wolf traced the origins of contemporary developments back to President Bush's Nazi grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his plan to launch a fascist coup in the 1930's.
"There was a scheme in the 30's and Prescott Bush was one of the leaders of this scheme, an industrialist who admired fascism and thought that was a good idea - to have a coup in the United States along the lines of the coup they saw taking place in Italy and Germany," said Wolf, referring to the testimony of Marine Corps Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, who was approached by a wealthy and secretive group of industrialists and bankers, including Prescott Bush - the current President's grandfather, who asked him to command a 500,000 strong rogue army of veterans that would help stage a coup to topple then President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
 Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker Bush. |
A recent BBC radio report confirmed that there was an attempted coup led by Prescott Bush.
"Smedley Butler had been involved with violent regime change throughout his career, but he was approached by these conspirators, including Prescott Bush, and he outed them and he testified to Congress that they were planning a coup in the United States - it's in the Congressional record," said Wolf, adding that the coup was being bankrolled by German industrialist and one of Hitler's chief financiers Fritz Thyssen.
"What is amazing to me and resonant to me is that when the Nuremberg trials were finally put in place, these Nazi industrialists, some of whom had colluded with Americans including IBM, were about to be brought to trial and sent to prison - there was a moment at which they were going to look into turning the spotlight on their American partners," said Wolf.
The author added that laws such as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 were consciously designed to protect current President Bush and his co-conspirators from being indicted for war crimes, harking back to Prescott Bush's history.
"The family history is that you can make so much money uniting corporate interests with a fascist state that violently represses people, that's why when I saw the recycling of so much Nazi language, Nazi tactics, Nazi strategies, Nazi imagery in the Bush White House and then finally belatedly people brought to me this history of Prescott Bush's attempted coup and Smedley Butler's revelations - it gives me absolute chills," said Wolf.
The fact that Bush's grandfather was a Nazi cannot be presented alone as proof that President Bush is carrying on the legacy, but his policies and rhetoric, which in her essay Wolf clearly documents are borrowed from the Nazi playbook, and in particular the recent move to smear administration critics as potential terrorists, are evidence that George W. Bush is the figurehead for a modern-day fascist coup in America led by the Neo-Cons.
Wolf concluded that history shows the only safe course for preserving freedom in such a climate is to prosecute and jail the protagonists of the coup as early as possible, a process many would argue should have been enacted several years ago.
Click here to listen to the MP3 interview with Naomi Wolf.
November 18, 2007
This is NOT how I would say it.
It will bring CANADA to its knees (or has), too. Although short term, Canada will look "good" sticking with today's present agenda. The Canadian dollar is about to take an UPWARD turn, again - and will get people lost in a slew of PROPAGANDA once again, making it appear as if The Harper is right. He is right of course, RIGHT OF the RIGHT WING, but WRONG in terms of sustaining the planet.
The "thing" is that we must keep a focus on what is good for ALL, and the current geopolitical alliances are certainly not that. We will just get more and more and more war with no focus on NEEDS of everyone.
By continuing the current short-sighted (what the right wingers' term mid-range strategy), we just get more and more and more war and no focus on how to end peak population, peak oil, peak money (Peak GLOBAL US dollar, about to collapse), peak climate change and so on from being SOLVED and that is where the POWER PLAYERS continue to play us all for PATSIES and SITTING DUCKS. We must get up to speed OURSELVES and learn about "economic" and power realities while the Magician does his sleight of hand tricks.
We are, in FACT, about to see a HUGE GLOBAL FALLOUT for the messing up of policy for many, many decades, based on BANKRUPT morality.
It is fueling the drive to use NUKES and nuclear power (see my OTHER BLOG, www.lowlevelradiation.blogspot.com if you want some documentation on what "they" are up to. And I mean the Chinese and Russian ruling elites, OPEC and ALL of them - as the "alternative energy" markets are being rapidly MONOPOLIZED during this recent currency/subprime crisis continues.
As for the STRAUSSITE, global rebels? Well, consider .. the US is left with ONLY the Isreali's and PAKISTANI dictators as allies these days. and this is despite Cheney having backed ALL SIDES. Putin is certainly capitalizing on that situation and all things are truly in flux.
The US people who trust any US politician outside of mainly Kucinich or Ron Paul (or Barney Frank, MAY BE) are just falling for the AIPEC lobby itself and its highly organized PROPAGANDA machine. (Ditto the Council on Foreign Relations' interweb of agencies.) or they are apathetic or just don't CARE.
They seem to think laughing at Jon Stewart and Colbert with a cold beer is highly preferential to figuring things out. Or just escaping into endless hockey nights .. SLAM! BANG! watch those pukes get the anger out, sideways of COURSE.
But their hard-earned money is going to fuel constant rounds of jet testing and war scenario games run by the Isrealis and the US and to keep them military bases comfortable. This is why The Harper gave all that money to the war-promoting BANKERS and to build nuclear fortifications in the Arctic. All he asks IN RETURN is that BuZh NOT call him "Steve" but rather STEPHEN. Aren't WE all lucky??
But to hand a world like this over to our children is avoiding our moral responsibility and we JUST MIGHT be able to save Iran from being toast. The US did enough damage in IRAK and AFGHANISTAN to last for hundreds of years. Sigh. (and do not forget Chernobyl, which is what happens when idiots are running things and use POISONS to prop up a political system obsessed with POWER ...) I do not wish to see nuclear winter in my lifetime nor hand that over to my sons, my grandsons nor any of their friends or potential friends, who are worldwide. Canada bailing out the US' ass in Irak by keeping forces stationed to keep them poppies making heroin is a horrible legacy for Canada .. and that IS what is happening.
My comments proceed down below in red.
It is totally clear to me that the CORPORATE PLUTOCRACY (give that a blog search, and the revision of the Canadian Senate "issue") is too blind to see its own morally depraved governmental "structures" will not even get us to the end of the 21st century. Their "culture" totally mitigates against finding Real Solutions to sustainability. Sigh. It is based on LOYALTY, mentorship, networking and not the Tough Love it is going to take to bail out this mess. It cannot create the type of structures will need to survive as it has Blind Spots, a result of the corrupt educational (and medical) culture.
I just refuse to sit quietly as CANADA goes down the NATO tubes. I cannot hand an unsafe Canada over to my son and his friends, as the Canada/Isreali ties are further cemented by a MADMAN named HARPER- and the resultant Israeli computerization database gets established in CANADA is happening.
All this is - and MORE - IS documented on this blog. Maybe one more of you chancing to c0me by this blog, can see the underlying framework and understanding I have been building for nearly 2000 posts.
Kapish???
Veeger
By Charley Reese
11/16/07 "<http://www.antiwar. com/reese/ ?articleid= 11920>Antiwar" -- - It is long past time for American politicians to quit carrying water for the state of Israel and its powerful U.S. lobby. Congress' craven obedience to the lobby is a disgrace.
America's strategic interests in the Middle East lie with the Arab countries. Israel is a strategic and economic liability. The U.S. government's slavish support of Israel brands us as a hypocrite and is responsible for most of the hostility toward the U.S.
Americans have been brainwashed into believing that it's the Arabs, and the Palestinians in particular, who don't want peace. That is a big lie. The Palestinians made an enormous concession when they agreed to settle for a state on 18 percent of Palestine. Saudi Arabia proposed several years ago a peace plan in which all of the Arab countries would recognize Israel in exchange for Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories. The Israelis rejected it out of hand, just as they reject Arab efforts to have the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.
Israel's goal is and always has been to take all of Palestine and to get rid of the Palestinians. The Israelis employed ethnic cleansing in 1948 and again in 1967 to make hundreds of thousands of Palestinians refugees. For 40 years, the Israelis have refused to give back the Palestinian and Syrian lands they seized in war. They have blatantly violated international law by building settlements on occupied land, and by violating the airspace of other sovereign countries.
Palestinians are the victims, not the villains, in this case. The Israelis make their lives miserable in the hope they will give up and leave. At the same time, the Israelis, in cahoots with the American government, maintain a charade of proposed peace talks. They of course never come to fruition. The Israeli government is not about to allow the Palestinians to have a viable state. If they give the Palestinians anything, it will be a patchwork of enclaves completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Having created 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Israelis have from the beginning refused to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses, all of which Israel confiscated on the specious grounds that they were "abandoned property."
Without U.S. aid, which now is conservatively estimated to total $108 billion (think of the infrastructure and schools that amount could build in the U.S.), and without the U.S. wielding its veto every time the United Nations tries to act, none of this would be possible.
It is not just the Muslim world that hates our pro-Israel foreign policy, for sound reasons that it is unjust and cruel. Europeans and others around the world are contemptuous of America's slavelike obedience to a small foreign power. It has gotten to the point that to be seen as an ally of the United States is viewed negatively.
The Arab and Muslim people, with the exception of al-Qaeda, (remember it is CIA funded, btw - they need them DRUGS to prop up all the OTHER dishonest relationships with so-called allies; thanks to Richard Gehlen! and project paperclip .. ) don't hate America or Americans. It is the pro-Israel foreign policy and, of course, our invasions of two Muslim countries that they hate. Virtually all of the anti-Arab and anti-Muslim propaganda generated in this country has its source in the Israeli lobby and in Israel itself. (which again is not JEWS nor the bulk of the Isreali population, anymore than the US Congress represents "the will of The "People" ... )
Thanks to the unconstitutional largess of the cowardly Congress, Israel is a rich country and one of the world's leading military powers. It doesn't need American aid. (IT does however need URANIUM .. and that is another place CANADA comes in.) It is time to quit dancing to the tune of a lobby with dual loyalties and to pursue America's interests. (However, take INTO account the US feels dependent on maintianing THEIR military bases in Israel with their "bookends" policy - Isreal and Pakistan as their ONLY allies. So this is SYMBIOTIC. Better to SWITCH to some REAL DIPLOMATIC intiatives, eh? Oh, no! The US would rather IRAN bash, even insulting their President on US soil. Barf.)
Americans are being betrayed by their own politicians, and it's time to treat those scoundrels with the contempt they deserve.
(And ditto CANADA ... as The Harper, and does he HARP! takes CANADA further and further INTO The Mess. If the LIBERALS want to see some support and money, all they have to do is QUESTION these highly awful NATO alliances built by Rick Hellier to start AND then get down to building a VISION for Canada that is SUSTAINABLE, nothing short of that is going to WORK.)
October 07, 2007
Beautiful Christian music from Kurdistan
Fakepolitik
If Realpolitik is "diplomacy based primarily on practical considerations, rather than ideological notions", then it's almost funny that letter written by EIGHT former US Secretaries of State asking Speaker Pelosi not to introduce the genocide bill has to be fakepolitik. Why fakepolitik? Well they cannot even show a real, concrete, practical consideration which would make you think that recognition of the genocide would be bad for US interests. What reasons do they site for not wanting to see the bill passed? In their own words, no doubt written by someone paid by Turkey:
We are writing to express concern that H. Res. 106 could soon be put to a vote. Passage of the resolution would harm our foreign policy objectives to promote reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia. It would also strain our relations with Turkey, and would endanger our national security interests in the region, including the safety of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So, let's analyze this shall we?
# They are concerned with harm to promoting Turkish-Armenian reconciliation???? This is of course the richest of all their reasons. There is nothing close to a reconciliation, or even a process, or even relations that could develop into reconciliation. This is of course all thanks to a Turkey which refuses to establish relations with a country it is mad at for not disappearing off the face of the earth during WWI like it was supposed to. Do they think they can't promote reconciliation once the historical facts that everybody already knows are recognized by a congress Turkey knows very well the US President and State Department can't control? Has it occurred to them they can better promote it once the bill passes?
# Strain relations with Turkey. This one of course is the reason they really want to drive home. Scare Congress with Turkey's reaction, just like they scare Americans out of their rights, simply by hinting at a possible threat of terrorism. What is Turkey realistically going to do? It's going to cry and whine a bit, and cancel contracts, just like it did with France and Switzerland. Then it will move on and get over it, in true Realpolitik style, and face the fact that everybody in the world recognizes the genocide, despite all their crying and threatening and huffing and puffing.
# The safety of our troops in Iraq AND Afghanistan is threatened? By what? The only possible lever Turkey would realistically use is the temporary closure of Incirlink air base. So what? The US has over a hundred thousand troops in Iraq, let them keep their planes there too.
Anyway, the fact that this letter was even written makes me wonder what upheaval is going on in Turkey, and the State Department. But in any case, bravo to the Armenian Government (in the person of Vardan Oskanian) for slamming these former secretaries. He quite rightly states that "I regret to say that there is no process in place to promote normalization of relations between Armenia and Turkey. Expressing concern about damaging a process that doesn’t exist is disingenuous", and goes on to say that he'd like to "express our deep concerns and to dismiss as unfounded any implication that a resolution that addresses matters of human rights and genocide could damage anyone’s bilateral relations."
September 30, 2007
To hear the nation’s top economic officials tell it, the worst effect of the reckless mortgage lending during the housing bubble is not mass foreclosures, bankruptcies, investor losses or credit seizures. It is the possibility that the turmoil could lead to new regulation.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. has inveighed against a “rush” to regulation following the mortgage meltdown, and two Treasury under secretaries, writing recently in The Financial Times, criticized calls for “immediate” regulation.
There is nothing sudden about the push for regulatory reforms. Consumer advocates have been warning for years about unfair and deceptive lending that has taken place in plain view of do-nothing regulators. All along, they have presented detailed analyses and recommendations for regulatory action. And yet, Mr. Paulson has dismissed even the suggestion that a lack of regulation may have precipitated today’s financial turmoil, saying that “history says it’s very difficult for policy to keep up with innovation.” His under secretaries chalked up the current mess to “benign” market conditions that bred “complacency” and impaired “discipline.”
That’s all way off. Turning a profit by making rotten loans to uncreditworthy borrowers — ruining families and neighborhoods in the process — requires a lot more creativity than selling the Brooklyn Bridge to a gullible immigrant. But it is hardly the kind of innovation we want to encourage. Financial bubbles are not benign. And “undisciplined” is inapt, to put it politely, to describe lender behavior that ranged from amoral to deceptive, predatory and fraudulent — and that was enabled by bankers and investors at the other end of the transactions.
During the bubble, regulators allowed financial market participants to run amok. To help ensure that does not happen again, consumer protections that have languished, like providing loan disclosures in a borrower’s native language, need to be reinvigorated and violators prosecuted. Loan-making standards need to be subject to regulatory scrutiny, both at banks and nonbanks. The system must be rid of perverse incentives that made it profitable for brokers and lenders to make reckless loans.
And to ensure that market participants have the information they need to make rational decisions — a crucial underpinning of orderly markets — hedge funds and other secretive investors need to be held to strict disclosure standards and government monitoring.
The Treasury Department has pledged to work internationally to develop regulatory responses to the current instability. That rings hollow from a department that has a clear antiregulatory bias and that has previously blown off multilateral regulatory efforts.
Congress should welcome whatever input the Treasury may offer. But it is clearly up to lawmakers to set a new course. They should act with due speed and due deliberation, mindful of the balance between protecting consumers and fostering economic vitality.
September 27, 2007
B-52 Nukes Headed for Iran, Not For Decommissioning: Airforce Refused
-- SPECIAL REPORT --
Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater
By Wayne Madsen
Sept. 24, 2007
Author's website
WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.
Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional
weapons.
The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an effort in damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been informed by a knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of PINNACLE.
Just as this report was being prepared, Newsweek reported that Vice President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago that Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.
WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George Bush's three remaining "Axis of Evil" states -- Syria, Iran, and North Korea -- to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria and a massive U.S. military attack on Iran.
WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic that there was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as the Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented U.S. Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for Iran since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working on the joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.
PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the /Times of London/, is a program that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran that involves a "decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets in the country. Stutzriem and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear weapons incident.
Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring "information blockades," such as that imposed by the Israeli government on the Israeli media regarding the Syrian air attack on the alleged Syrian "nuclear installation." British intelligence sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria was a "true flag" attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air Force push back against transporting the six cruise nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.
The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a media "perception management" is waged against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This involves articles such as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's and Walter Pincus' bylines in yesterdays /Washington Post/. The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear," quotes a number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that such an incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the "nuclear business" since 1966 and has never been aware of an incident "more disturbing."
Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now waging an internal war against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S. government and military chain of command who are intent on using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.
CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a pre-emptive U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to our sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections to Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington, including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member of Parliament; Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for Iran were delayed.
Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to /Military Times/ on September 5, the day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear installation in Syria and the day planned for the simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking of classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or movement to the media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the sending of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force authorities on the disclosure of classified Air Force information to the media.
In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before the Air Force has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of no confidence in the official investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air Combat Command.
Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look into the BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force investigation has reportedly been delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded research contractor that operates three research centers, including one for Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and another for the National Security Agency. One of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin Capital Group and wife of former CIA director and arch-neocon James Woolsey.
WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State Department nor the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian installation was a joint nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater capabilities.
The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States wants imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution, titled "Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by the 144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions. The only two countries to vote against were Israel and the United States. However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic nations that voted for the resolution.
This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the White House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance of the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47 abstentions were described as votes "against" the resolution even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and Georgia, all abstained.
Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not available either at the IAEA's web site -- www.iaea.org -- or in the media.
The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells in the Bush administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's nuclear program, not on Israel's. Any international examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a covert from Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad "honey trap" named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held against his will in Israel ever since.
Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would focus on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including its program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame 1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to January 1981, voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons programs of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 /New York Times/ article titled, "3 Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts." The journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller. Adelman felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility from the Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by Iran, North Korea, and other "Axis of Evil" nations so designated by the neocons in the Bush administration and other governments.
There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship between Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's /Dominion Post/ reported that three Mossad agents were involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati, was expelled by Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth Mossad agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan (aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former Israeli Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is also the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the /Sydney Morning Herald/ as trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in North Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens from leaving.
The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and the breakdown in America's command and control systems have every major capital around the world wondering about the Bush administration's true intentions.
NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in reporting the events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and other military services. Any source with relevant information and who wishes to contact us anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at or send mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The Front Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20045.
September 08, 2007
From al-Qaeda to al-Quds
By Pepe Escobar
PARIS –In 2002, in the runup to the war against Iraq, the George W Bush administration changed the subject from its failure to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan to Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
In 2007, in the run-up to the coming war against Iran, the administration has changed the subject from its abject failure in Iraq to Iran's also non-existent nuclear weapons. The manufacture-of-consent techniques are exactly the same - the apocalyptic 2007 Bush forecast of an Iranian-orchestrated "nuclear holocaust", echoing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's apocalyptic 2002 prediction of a Saddam Hussein-orchestrated "mushroom cloud".
Vastly experienced European diplomats, from Paris to the European Union headquarters in Brussels, confess their helplessness and impotence. They also confirm off the record that Bush's brand-new European poodle, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, is convinced the US president will order the bombing of Iran's nuclear sites –not to mention general infrastructure. A number of chancelleries are already working under this premise.
The Democrat-controlled US Congress, for its part, has elevated its irrevocable irrelevance to the starry skies by virtually - and ignominiously - playing itself out of the Bush administration's decision to attack Iran. In the unlikely event Congress would object, Rice already has the anti-virus vaccine: the stamping out of the Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami - known in the West as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) - as a "terrorist organization".
It doesn't even matter - from the point of view of the Bush administration - if the whole 125,000-strong IRGC or just its elite Quds Force is branded as terrorists. The transition will be covered by the Authorization for the Use of Military Force issued on September 18, 2001. Moreover, the US Senate has already approved - by a Stalinist 97 votes to 0 - an amendment accusing Iran of committing acts of war against the US.
It also doesn't matter that Gabriel Kolko - arguably the best historian of the Vietnam War - keeps stressing that since 1950, the US has never lost a battle; but it has never won a war either.
And now for the laundry list
Every serious observer of the hysterical manufacture-of-consent rampage is now aware of Vice President Dick Cheney's mandate for US corporate media and selected think-tanks to declare war on Iran - that is, the Office of the Vice President telling the Wall Street Journal, Fox News and assorted usual suspects what to do, all under the aegis of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the de facto policy think-tank of the Bush administration. AEI's stalwart Michael Ledeen's new book - a prodigy of subtlety titled Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealot's Quest for Destruction - is a key part of this package.
Everyone is aware of the shrill Pentagon-concocted blitzkrieg about made-in-Iran explosive devices and roadside bombs penetrating Bradleys and Abrams tanks and killing scores of US soldiers in Iraq - with no proof being volunteered to, or asked for, by cowed mainstream media.
Many are now aware of the report by Daniel Plesch and Martin Butcher summarized last month by the Raw Story website [1], according to which the Pentagon, in the impossibility of a land invasion, plans a "massive, multi-front, full-spectrum" new "shock and awe" against Iran, destroying not only the Quds force and the IRGC but all nuclear energy sites and the country's whole economic infrastructure. The objective is clearly "regime change" - or at least to reduce Iran to Iraq status, that is, a feeble, failed state.
The paper was written by British scholar and arms expert Dan Plesch, director of the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former director of the British American Security Information Council and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.
The neo-conservatives for their part are plugging a new "shock and awe" in a slightly watered down version - the destruction of no less than 1,200 Iranian military/nuclear targets in a mere three days (no attacks on civilian infrastructure are mentioned).
The to-be-destroyed list certainly includes the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant; the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz; a heavy-water and radioisotope plant in Arak; the nuclear fuel unit in Ardekan; the uranium conversion and nuclear technology center in Isfahan; the Tehran Nuclear Research Center; the Tehran molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production plant; and the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories. No one of course is talking about "collateral damage", or the fact that hundreds of Russian experts may be obliterated in Bushehr (how about that as a declaration of war?), or the fact that hundreds of thousands of civilian residents of fabled Isfahan may become victims of radiation provoked by US mini-nukes.
Meanwhile, Bush and "new Adolf Hitler" Mahmud Ahmadinejad keep feeding on each other. The Iranian president has dismissed a US attack ("they cannot implement it") as well as the new, Sarkozy-coined ("he's inexperienced") Western choice: "The Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran." As far as Ahmadinejad is concerned, "Iran's nuclear case is closed. Iran is a nuclear nation and has mastered the nuclear fuel cycle."
Cleverly diverting attention from gargantuan US problems - from the economy to energy dependence to the emergence of multilateral powers - the Bush administration nevertheless seems to be winning the propaganda war as well, at least in the US, Western Europe and great swaths of the Arab world. Iran, internationally, looks very much isolated.
Asymmetrical war ahead
The Iranian regime anyway is clearly getting ready to face the coming attack.
Kazemi Qomi, the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, hails from the IRGC. Speaking this week to official news agency IRNA, he has indirectly warned the US in no uncertain terms "any change in [Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-] Maliki's government will lead to the outbreak of a security crisis in Iraq". This could be code, for instance, for the IRGC-trained Badr Corps giving to the Iranians the precise coordinates of American forces to be targeted inside Iraq.
This past Saturday, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei named the vastly experienced General Mohammad Ali Jafari as the new leader of the IRGC. The former leader for the past 10 years, Yahya Rahim Safavi, has been catapulted upwards and is now the "military advisor" for the supreme leader. Sources in Tehran say this move was not a reaction to the US threat. Both commanders told the Iranian press the decision had been made in early July.
US neo-cons may be oblivious to it, but it's always crucial to remember that in Iran the IRGC as well as the regular army are under the control of a civilian cleric, the supreme leader. New commander Jafari himself, in a press conference in Tehran, defined the IRGC as "a precautionary force at the service of the commander-in-chief in order to rush to the help of other organizations wherever help is necessary".
The IRGC, a former popular army that blossomed out of the 1979 Islamic Revolution must, according to the country's constitution "guard the revolution and its achievements". The regular army for its part "guards the independence, territorial integrity, and political order of the Islamic Republic".
During the revolution, Jafari was a student at the elite architecture school at the University of Tehran. According to his own biography he "was active in the takeover" of the American Embassy. He went to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s as a member of the Basij militia, and then joined the IRGC when he was 25 (he's 50 today), and soon became a commander. After the war he was a commander of the IRGC' ground forces. In 2005, the supreme leader put him in charge of the IRGC's Strategic Center, developing a new Iranian military strategy.
This fine strategist identifies the IRGC's role as mostly "deterrence and defense". More importantly, he characterizes the IRGC as a popular organization excelling in asymmetrical war - "similar to the one Hezbollah fought against Israel" in his own words - and, one might add, similar to what Iran will fight against the US. His message to the US after his appointment was clear: "I suggest that they end their presence and interact with Islam and countries of the region from afar. This will surely be to their benefit and I suggest that they leave the region as soon as possible."
The eternal Rafsanjani
This past Tuesday, former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani became the head of the Council of Experts - the supreme, secretive body of 86 clerics that chooses the supreme leader's successor. He won by 41 to 33 votes, with 11 abstentions and one spoiled ballot.
Rafsanjani had already been the most voted in the December 2006 elections for the council, but he was still number two to Ayatollah Ali Meshkini, who died at the end of June. A key "spoiler" figure - ultra-hardliner Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, Ahmadinejad's mentor - did not even contest this latest election; it was Ayatollah Janati, a protege of Yazdi, who lost to Rafsanjani.
First of all, this means a new, although narrow, defeat of the ultra-hardliners. It also shows how fierce is the competition among at least four factions at the top of the Iranian system. But most of all it fully restores Rafsanjani - a pragmatist very much in favor of an accommodation with the US - to the limelight. He is now the head of both the Expediency Council (for which he was nominated by Khamenei) and the Council of Experts. He now even has the power to depose the supreme leader if he sees fit. US conservatives would be certainly thrilled with the prospect.
Rafsanjani's perception in Iran is mixed. He's very popular among Tehran's middle classes. The faraway provinces mostly support populist Ahmadinejad. Arguably the richest man in the whole country, he may also be one of the most corrupt. His presidency (1989-1997), according to reformists in Tehran, was a disaster. The justice system in Argentina has issued an international warrant for his arrest, related to an anti-Israeli bombing in Buenos Aires in 1994 which killed 85 people.
Rafsanjani would use all his privileged back channels in Washington to avoid war. He is very much aware of the stakes, declaring after his election, "The United States plan for the Great Middle East, which was drawn up after September 11 [2001] seriously threatens our region." But he may be as helpless to defuse the situation as dejected European diplomats.
The only guiding logic of the US far right in power is permanent war. The hellish mechanism is already in place. Any pretext will do for Bush to order an attack on the Quds force inside Iran. The IRGC will retaliate. And there it is, the precious casus belli for "shock and awe" remixed. First the bombing of Quds; then the bombing of Bushehr, Natanz and Isfahan. The whole of Iran, out of Persian national pride, will rally behind Ahmadinejad, the supreme leader, the IRGC and the theocratic police state. So much for regime change.
Note
1. Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
July 20, 2007
Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq
Message to the Congress of the United States Regarding International Emergency Economic Powers Act
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:
Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:
(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or
(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;
(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or
(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.
Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:
(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;
(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and
(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.
Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.
Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.
Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.
Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 17, 2007.
