Middle east roundup (sigh, sigh, sigh)

Fighting pushing Lebanon toward another civil war

Fierce eruption grim reminder of 1975-90 conflict

Shi'ite opposition militiamen checked weapons yesterday during clashes with pro-government supporters in Beirut. (AFP/Getty Images)

By Borzou Daragahi Los Angeles Times / May 9, 2008

BEIRUT - Lebanon's long-simmering political crisis lurched deeper into violent civil conflict yesterday as rival bands of Shi'ite and Sunni gunmen battled in the streets for a second day and politicians took to the airwaves to denounce one another for pushing the country toward war.

more stories like this

• Israel celebrates its 60th birthday
• Sunnis, Shiites clash for a second day in Lebanon
• Clashes erupt in Lebanon as Hezbollah stages strike
• 7 Kuwaitis charged over eulogy of slain militant
• Israeli disaster drills test children
• 

Explosions and ferocious bursts of gunfire rattled central Beirut as groups allied with the Hezbollah-led opposition and the US-backed government fired machine guns, assault rifles, and rocket-propelled grenades toward each other and into the air in apparent shows of strength. The deep thuds of occasional mortar fire shook the earth as night fell.

Throughout the day, panicked civilians scurried for cover or loaded up on basic supplies, emptying supermarket shelves of frozen meats. Gunmen had blocked roads to the country's sole international airport as well as the main highways to Damascus, the capital of Syria, and to southern Lebanon, effectively placing the capital under siege.

Lebanese news sources said at least four people were killed in yesterday's fighting and a female bystander died of wounds sustained in the previous day's clashes. But information was scant as paramedics and security officials avoided areas of intense fighting that witnesses said resembled the scope of the all-out civil war that engulfed the country from 1975 to 1990.

By late night, US-backed government allies were calling for "dialogue" with Hezbollah even as fighting continued and allegations mounted that Shi'ite militiamen were raiding homes and offices of government supporters.

The violence came amid heightened regional tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which strongly back the government, and Iran and Syria, which support Hezbollah and the opposition. The US blamed Hezbollah for the current unrest in Lebanon.

"Hezbollah needs to make a choice: Be a terrorist organization or be a political party, but quit trying to be both," US national security council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said yesterday. "They need to stop their disruptive activities now."

Tensions escalated Tuesday after the US-backed government voted to outlaw Hezbollah's communications network, which the group allegedly was expanding, and sack the Hezbollah-allied head of security at the international airport, who allegedly had begun harassing visitors suspected of political ties to the government.

The fiercest battles erupted following a televised speech yesterday afternoon by Hassan Nasrallah, the chief of the Shi'ite militia Hezbollah.

Nasrallah warned that the Lebanese Cabinet's decision to declare the group's fiber-optic system illegal was tantamount to a declaration of war and put the government squarely in the camp of Hezbollah's enemies, Israel and the United States, which consider the Shi'ite militia and political party a terrorist organization.

"This decision is first of all a declaration of war and the launching of war by the government . . . against the resistance and its weapons for the benefit of America and Israel," Nasrallah told reporters via teleconference.

"The communications network is the significant part of the weapons of the resistance," Nasrallah said. "I had said that we will cut the hand that targets the weapons of the resistance. . . . Today is the day to fulfill this decision."

Saad Hariri, leader of Lebanon's Sunni community and head of the parliamentary majority, appeared on television saying the government would ask the army to enforce the government's decision to uproot the telecommunications network and remove the head of airport security. "You say you don't want Sunni-Shi'ite strife and we don't want this to happen either," he said.

An analyst called the proposal a "small retreat" by Hariri's camp as the Lebanese Army lacks the strength or unity to confront Hezbollah or any other of Lebanon's major political groups. The army also coordinates closely with Hezbollah on security matters and has affirmed its support for "resistance" to Israel.

Supported by Iran and Syria, Hezbollah operates as a state within a state in Lebanon, with strongholds in southern and western Lebanon and southern suburbs of the capital. Its armed wing fought Israel to a standstill in a summer 2006 war. Although Hezbollah claimed victory in that conflict, the war upset Lebanon's fragile sectarian balance and precipitated an ongoing political crisis that has left the country without a president since November.

'We won't cut Iran, Hizbullah ties'
Jerusalem Post, Israel - 27 minutes ago
COM STAFF Syrian President Bashar Assad on Friday rejected Israel's demand that Syria cut its ties with Iran and Hizbullah. He said that detaching his ...

Fighting pushing Lebanon toward another civil war
Boston Globe, United States - 56 minutes ago
The violence came amid heightened regional tensions between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which strongly back the government, and Iran and Syria, ...
Shi'ite gunmen seize control of Beirut neighborhoods Jerusalem Post
Gunmen force pro-government Beirut TV off air Reuters
Shiite gunmen seize control of Beirut neighborhoods, 11 people killedInternational Herald Tribune

NORAD is flexing its muscles now, folks!! With that help from the Heritage Foundation, to boot!!

Let's see from now on how spooked they can get everyone!!

This if from the Air force Times ..

This comes complete with quotes from Ariel Cohen!! Man he is just the expert on IT ALL, eh? Did a great job with his Middle East analysis..

I've posted on this before. I suspect that there will be a continuing set of items on this as CENTCOM/Central Canada Command merge ..

V

Russian bombers flying more off Alaska coast

16 intercepts by U.S., Canadian jets since July

By Erik Holmes - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Apr 6, 2008 17:38:53 EDT

More and more American and Canadian fighter jets are scrambling and intercepting Russian bombers flying off the Alaskan coast, exacerbating tensions between the former Cold War foes.

There have been 16 such intercepts since July, Pacific Air Forces Commander Gen. Howie Chandler told the Anchorage Daily News on March 27. That compares with just one in 2005, and none in the previous 10 years, Chandler said.

The Air Force and North American Aerospace Defense Command would not grant an interview and were unable to confirm those numbers by press time.

The most recent incident occurred March 25, when two F-15s from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, scrambled to intercept two Russian Tu-95 Bear heavy bombers.

None of the Russian bombers has entered American airspace, which extends 12 miles out from U.S. soil, said Maj. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for NORAD’s Alaska region. Rather, the bombers have been intercepted after entering the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone, a buffer that extends even further out.

The intercept sorties have most often been flown by F-15s, though on at least one occasion, in November, two F-22 Raptors greeted the Russians.

There also has been no indication that the bombers were carrying weapons or opened their bomb bay doors, Herritage said.

Russia experts interviewed by Air Force Times said the close encounters undoubtedly increase tensions between the two nations but do not indicate a return to the climate of the Cold War.

Ariel Cohen, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the bomber patrols are part of a broader pattern of Russia flexing its military muscle since February 2007, when President Vladimir Putin gave a speech in Munich, Germany, signaling a more aggressive posture toward the West.

Putin followed the speech by announcing in August that Russia would resume long-range bomber patrols that were suspended in 1992. The U.S. and Russia have also been engaged in high-profile disputes about issues such as the U.S. plan to place portions of its missile defense system in Eastern Europe and allowing the former Soviet states of Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO.

Since Putin’s speech, Cohen said, the Russian military has increased bomber patrols throughout the Pacific —including near Alaska and Guam — held naval exercises off the coast of France and refurbished its Mediterranean naval bases in Syria.

Such moves are intended to demonstrate that the Russians are rebounding from their problems of the 1990s, a decade that saw Russia’s military deteriorate and its international standing plummet, said Mark Conversino, who teaches courses on Russia and Ukraine at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

Russian military has problems

Russia has embarked on a long-term military modernization effort estimated at between $200 billion and $1 trillion, Cohen said, but its military still has serious problems. Its Bear bombers are prop-driven aircraft developed in the 1950s that are inferior to the American B-52, Cohen said, and Russia is believed to have lost the capability to manufacture spare parts for the Tu-160 Blackjack (!! what??) , a supersonic bomber comparable to the B-1. Russia’s military also faces significant problems with recruiting and training, he said.

Still, Conversino said, Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal — which the Center for Defense Information estimates at about 10,000 warheads — makes it the only nation capable of destroying the United States. And that makes its bomber patrols worth paying close attention to.

“Even if … this is just their way of poking a finger in our chest, for us not to react I think would be not in our best interest,” Conversino said.

“If nothing else, I think it does heighten the fact that … continental defense and the NORAD mission is one that we can’t ignore.”

The bomber patrols also raise the possibility that a routine encounter between Russian bombers and American fighters could escalate beyond the intentions of either side, Conversino said.

“Things like this run the risk of an accident or some other unintentional event,”

he said.

“There’s certainly a risk there.”

But the flip side is that the bomber patrols encourage the U.S. military to be more vigilant, Cohen said. “It puts us on a higher level of alert. It makes us less complacent. And whether we’re thinking about … speedboats in the Persian Gulf … or Bear [bombers] or Chinese activities, our Navy and the Air Force have to be … shipshape and [on] as great a state of alert as they can be.”

DISCUSS: Is Russia becoming un"bear"able

important coming war with Iran update (or is it Syria?)

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag."

-- Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1981-1940) Major General USMC. Source: from a speech in 1933

Re: Paul Craig Roberts: "A Third American War Crime in the Making"

I spend my days crying most of the day.

How I live I would not wish on anyone else. And I do not wish it on anyone else, either. I see little hope of escaping either. I stood up and got counted and now I must PAY.

I think muchly about my sisters around the world - the ones who have had their illusions and dreams stripped away. Most are in remote places and don't even know I exist. But I know much about their plights and those of their daughters and sons.

I make it my business to know, you might say.

I try to harness my incredible brain power to try to help them -- reading, researching and writing away at all hours of the day and night and even my dreams I pretend I am their diplomat and that I can convince young people to take up the "Unpopular causes." Causes that must be taken up if this planet is to have any sanity left.

I analyze away using a higher brain function than most, and try to keep my feelings attached which is no small feat.

People are not too interested in what I have to say for many reasons. I refer to myself as a Cassandra - the woman who tells the future that no one wants to hear.

For I am a woman who has been living with the effects of The Big Lie for nearly 40 years. That lie is that "all men are created equal" and that somehow the US government is the protector of certain inalienable rights granted by God.

Unless a person is absolutely brain dead, that fact that the US is anything BUT a protector of such views and was founded on a phony premise. The premise is that under a court of law, equal justice will applied to all parties. In fact, it is to my mind a ridiculous premise to assume that most law cases where justice is demanded will even make it to court. And should it fall into some other venue, well, the same standard of equality is not a basic premise.

I was denied my rights in America. I came to Canada expecting to find (with God's help) equal justice as asylum seeker. Boy! was that ever naive. Yes, after a long and horrible wait, I seemed to achieve something like fairness and life was good for about six months and then the carpet was pulled out from under me, my son and my husband. And then "the wheels of justice" ground on so interminably that all three of us had bodies that just gave out. The human body can really only take so much stress when under the weight of oppression.

Eight years after I came here, I was denied refugee status in a kangaroo court where I was not even really allowed to speak in my own defense. Lots of attorneys got paid a bundle of money to be in on the "photo opportunity" though. Plenty of money was spent on the exercise of holding all the court sessions, generally. Plenty of money was spent surveilling me. Everyone went home from that courtroom in 2001 feeling "justice" had been served. Not surprisingly my son and I did not feel justice was served.

No one apologized. These people - 7 highly paid attorneys - all live comfortably now surrounded by their families, I am sure. They have letters after their names and also, they can insulate themselves from ongoing human pain.

I have an ex husband I put through law school. He is very very comfortable indeed. He has a very low moral standard, in actual fact and doesn't hold himself accountable the law to his own personal legal obligations. He owes me thousands of dollars. Dollars which I will never see. Years of outstanding child support payments which were ridiculously low to begin with, were never paid to me. This doesn't pain him one little bit. It pains me a great deal. I could surely use that money even without factoring interest payments. He's used that money he owed me to build his fame, his prestige in a community that we both grew up in. His reputation goes untarnished; I am disappeared. That was so very convenient.

Would he eat dinner with Richard Cheney? Would he eat dinner with me?

These seem like trivial questions: I assure you that that are not.

These are the kinds of questions that people from nice society are not supposed to ask. But these are fundamental questions that show how a lack of seeing the real consequences of one's choices can affect many people. Choices can have catastrophic effects on the lives of others.

Today, I watched in horror as I found myself set up by David Swanson's deceit just one more time. I fell for it once before and no one questioned why he did what he did. I don't think David Swanson would eat dinner with Richard Cheney; but then I think Richard Cheney wouldn't allow that. But I do think that David Swanson would eat dinner with John Conyers.

In fact, in my morose state tonight, laying in bed, hurting so badly with no one around, I had a distinct picture of David Swanson in a DC bar or coffee shop "hobnobbing" with those on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee after today's "action" - and I began to cry again.

I became one of the 9-year old prostitutes in Syria dancing and having sex with psychopathic men to make sure my mother had food to eat. She had this to say:

I wondered why David Swanson and his compatriots sold me out AGAIN in that big palace that they have where they make deals to fund the war in Iraq. I thought that they wanted an end to the war so that I could go back home to Baghdad again. Maybe in Baghdad we would find others who would help us plant a little garden. But I think David Swanson and his friends in that big palace forgot about that today.

I wondered why David Swanson had so many people supporting him today, but my diplomat had so little reach. Why did no one listen to her? Why was no one really was concerned with what she had to say. I so badly wanted to see someone acting on my behalf. I think everyone in the United States must be deaf these days! I know my diplomat keeps a picture of me on a table. This makes me feel better. She has one of me as a baby and one of me here, where I dance for the men, two different pictures!! She must care about me!!

I wondered why my diplomat works long hard hours to find out why my family and I got treated this way, but no one allows her to publish her findings, and no one asks her to speak on my behalf.

Today, I thought about my cousins who work in Saudi Arabia who make good money working in the oil fields but never sent my mother any money. They don't send anything and they don't even write us. I wonder how my cousins get through Ramadan and what treats they might eat after sunset when they need to replenish their energy. Ramadan is time to think about Mohammad might do, figure out what must be done to get back to doing right and then to atone. But I am not sure what that atonement means to older people. For me it means never forgetting that I sometimes scream at my sister for bossing me around - and then saying to her, that I love her anyway.

I wondered today if my cousins in Saudi Arabia go to other towns and have fun with other nine-year old girls like me, getting high and crazy with other Saudi Arabian men and having fun. And then I wonder: Do those men send checks to their Iraqi cousins? Or do they keep those cheques all for themselves like my cousins do.

The man who owns my club - he likes me and not my sister. Maybe I can get him to give me a little something extra one night and I can share that with my sister and my mother. We talk about being able to get enough money to buy gas masks if the shooting starts here, as it did in Baghdad - in that long ago time when my father was still alive and before my brother lost his leg.

I do not understand adults at all. But maybe I will when I grow up. I can act very adult now, but sometimes I just do not understand it all. I'd like to school but I cannot. My sister and I must be breadwinners and that's all we really have time to do. We must make sure our hair looks nice, that we have proper cosmetics. Fashions change - the magazines say so and we are always buying new ones!! When we look nice people fuss over us which is better than being ignored and sometimes then we make more money.

We would really like to buy some gas masks but the money just gets spend so quickly. There is so rarely enough money now. The magazines in the shops I go to don't have advertising for gas masks in them and we wonder how we would get them if we had the money.

I have to go now. Someone has asked me to dance. Do you think someone will speak for us in Washington DC tomorrow? Or will they forget about me and my sister and my brother here in Syria? Will they have drinks with my Saudia Arabian cousins instead? If I keep thinking about these hard things, I'll forget to smile, and no one will throw any money at me on the dance floor. Going home with no money will make the next day very hard for me, my mother and my brother.

I will write to my diplomat again. Maybe she will show people how sweet I am ask them to help me and my sister and my mother just one more day. I would really like to go home to Baghdad one day. At least I could go see where I used to live. But I don't want to go there until all the tanks are gone. And I not sure what I could do to make money if I went now so I can help my mother and my brother! I have another cousin in an orphanage in Baghdad - and I'd like to share some of my clothes with her; I have many clothes now and she might like some of them.

I really must go now. They are getting very angry with me.

I am sure the reader is confused why I write this. What possible connection can there be between me and this nine-year old girl? Why is my story like hers? Am I too presumptuous in thinking that there is?

No, I am not. People were presumed in the US government to be looking after our best interests. But they were not. People responsible for our well-being who were paid to look after our interests and keep our families together did not. Instead, we watch in horror as those we loved were taken away from us. The girl as yet, the one in my mind, is not yet a motherless daughter but one day, inevitably, unless the girl gets a STD or some other horrible form of physical decay sets in will probably outlive her mother and THEN she will be an orphan. This will have many many effects on her for the rest of her life. This is something I know quite a bit about - the emotional cost.

That's why despite my pain (and plenty of it) I get up each day and run from site to site, from email to email to try to keep people AWAKE and demand real justice. It's quite a tiring job, really. It demands constant, vigilant ability on my part to not go into the "disconnect zone".

Today, I noted with interest how many on the ACLU team going down to Guantanamo Bay to defend detainees were women. There were quite a number and I was very very proud of them all!! Some of them are really "sticking it" to Richard Cheney too!! RAH!! Not everyone is emotionally disconnected as Cheney and Halliburton/KBR make super profits off human misery, leaving death, destruction and the rape of souls in their wake. Some people got up today and DID THE RIGHT THING - and were doing their best.

I wish I could say the same thing about David Swanson and my ex husband. But I cannot. In my life time, I have seen many people not DO THE RIGHT THING when it comes to the interests of me and my sisters around the globe.

What follows now is a strategic summary by Paul Craig Roberts about the Cheney war plans - war plans that don't take women and children's into account in any way.

Roberts assessment is probably close to true - I am sure he has many sources "leaking" away to him.

Webster Tarpley will look like the idiot - for now - as setting up the war planning is taking up a lot of time. I think that using outsourced agents for intel is a factor in that time lag - Webster said 6 April, but I don't expect an attack this week myself, based on what I read in Seymour Hersch's article in The New Yorke.

Bill Gates, George Dubya, Dick Cheney and Isreali's running the White House are just going to have wait a bit to get that "VICTORY!" that they think history demands of them. As victors, surely, surely no one is going to come after them for WAR CRIMES. And the 2009 proposed US budget for defense will HAVE to be approved, eh? Can't let our troops down by not giving them what they need to get the job done? And the money is so easily printed now - by the time the full weight of the attack and the consequences for America are know, all US forests can be taken to print more lovely US dollar bill$.

I cannot definitely call the target of the next war of AGGRESSION. THEY, as I know refer to THEM, may go after Syria, using Israel as a proxy. They may expect that "doing" Syria may bring Iran to kowtow to Israeli government demands that Iran be without nuclear abilities. Take note: the failure to stop this is now equally the result of the Warcast Media and the "The Democratic Party" - and in my opinion the codepedent nature of the so-called US antiwar movement which still thinks being coopted time after time after time after time is stil the way to "go".

Here then, is Roberts' assessment of the next chapter in The MADMAN as Ruler of the World section of this phase of global history.

I would dispute his title: Many are the war crimes that have been committed. And I type those words with despair in my heart. I would like my nine-year old girl inside me living in Syria to make it back home to Baghdad some day. I would like to see the Witch Tree in Grand Portage one more time.

She has a lot of grieving to do to stay whole, a huge amount of crying needs to be done by her and her sister. They don't have time to shed them; they are too busy making money.

I may subcumb to the illness I have because my immune system is shot and my liver with it. And ditto on my thyroid. Small wonder about the thyroid. Constant stress is hard on me and my sister's around the world's thyroids.

Those young girls in Syria dance. I just continue to type away ...

Have you gone deaf yet? Can you hear what I am trying to tell you all?

Things are NOT right; people are not doing THE RIGHT THING.

IMPEACHMENT NOW, not after an attack!!

John Conyers, you are the biggest CRYBABY I have ever seen on this planet.

And ICH, a forum I once I held dear -- I am sick of you leaving us women FACELESS. Maybe then people would truly GET FED UP. Many of us women are SUFFERING daily. Right now, I don't want to go back. I got censored when I wrote about the women and children, even in the threads there. If some people miss me there, well, that remains to be seen.

Veeger


A Third American War Crime in the Making

By Paul Craig Roberts

31/03/08 "<http://www.informat ionclearinghouse .info/>

ICH" -- -- The US Congress, the US media, the American people, and the United Nations, are looking the other way as Cheney prepares his attack on Iran.

If only America had an independent media and an opposition party. If there were a shred of integrity left in American political life, perhaps a third act of naked aggression-- a third war crime under the Nuremberg standard--by the Bush Regime could be prevented.

On March 30, the Russian News & Information Agency, Novosti, cited "a high-ranking security source: "The latest military intelligence data point to heightened US military preparations for both an air and ground operation against Iran." <http://en.rian. ru/russia/ 20070327/ 62697703. html>http://en.rian. ru/russia/ 20070327/ 62697703. html

According to Novosti, Russian Colonel General Leonid Ivashov said "that the Pentagon is planning to deliver a massive air strike on Iran's military infrastructure in the near future."

The chief of Russia's general staff, Yuri Baluyevsky, said last November that Russia was beefing up its military in response to US aggression, but that the Russian military is not "obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans." <http://www.mnweekly .ru/national/ 20071115/ 55289883. html>http://www.mnweekly .ru/national/ 20071115/ 55289883. html

On March 29, OpEdNews cited a report by the Saudi Arabian newspaper Okaz, which was picked up by the German news service, DPA. The Saudi newspaper reported on March 22, the day following Cheney's visit with the kingdom's rulers, that the Saudi Shura Council is preparing "national plans to deal with any sudden nuclear and radioactive hazards that may affect the kingdom following experts' warnings of possible attacks on Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactors." <http://empireburles quenow.blogspot. com/2008/ 03/worried- yet-saudis- prepare-for- sudden.html>http://empireburles quenow.blogspot. com/2008/ 03/worried- yet-saudis- prepare-for- sudden.html

And Admiral William "there will be no attack on Iran on my watch" Fallon has been removed as US chief of Central Command, thus clearing the way for Cheney's planned attack on Iran.

The Iranians don't seem to believe it, despite the dispatch of US nuclear submarines and another aircraft carrier attack group to the Persian Gulf. To counter any Iranian missiles launched in response to an attack, the US is deploying anti-missile defenses to protect US bases and Saudi oil fields.

Two massive failures by the American media, the Democratic Party, and the American people have paved the way for Cheney's long planned attack on Iran. One failure is the lack of skepticism about the US government's explanation of 9/11. The other failure is the Democrats' refusal to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush for lying to the Congress, the American people, and the world and launching an invasion of Iraq based on deception and fabricated evidence.

If an American president can start a war exactly as Adolf Hitler did with pure lies and not be held accountable, he can get away with anything. And Bush and his evil regime have.

Hitler launched World War II with his invasion of Poland after staging a "Polish attack" on a German radio station. On the night of August 31, 1939, a group of Nazis disguised in Polish uniforms seized a radio station in Germany. Hitler announced that "last night Polish troops crossed the frontier and attacked Germany," a claim no more true than the Bush Regime's claim that "Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. " Hitler's lie failed, because his invasion of Poland, which began the next day allegedly in reprisal for the Polish attack, had obviously been planned for many months.

Iran is a beautiful and developed country. It is an ancient civilization. It has attacked no one. Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Iran is permitted by the treaty to have a nuclear energy program. The Bush Regime's case against Iran is based on the Bush Regime's desire to deny Iran its rights under the treaty.

The International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have repeatedly reported that they have found no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Despite all the disinformation from US Gen. Petraeus and other Bush Regime military lackeys, Iran is not arming the Iraqis who are resisting the American occupation.

If Iran were arming insurgents, the insurgents would have two weapons that would neutralize the US advantage in the Iraqi conflict: missiles to knock down US helicopter gunships and rocket-propelled grenades that knock out American tanks. The insurgents do not have these weapons and must construct clumsy anti-tank weapons out of artillery shells. The insurgents are helpless against US air power and cannot mass forces to take on the American troops.

Indiscriminate American violence has reduced Iraq to rubble. The civilian infrastructure is essentially destroyed--electric ity, water and sewer systems, medical care and schools. Depleted uranium is everywhere poisoning everyone, including US troops. There is no economy, and half or more of Iraqis are unemployed. Literally no Iraqi family has escaped an injury or a death as a consequence of the US invasion. Millions of Iraqis have become displaced persons. A developed country with a professional middle class has been destroyed because of lies told by the President and Vice President of the US. The Bush Regime's lies are echoed by a neoconservative media, and have gone unchallenged by the opposition party and an indifferent American public.

In Afghanistan, death and destruction rains on even the smallest village from the air. America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wars against the civilian populations.

Just as the world could not believe Hitler's next horror and thus was always unprepared, the Iranians despite all the evidence cannot believe that even the Great Satan would gratuitously attack Iran based on nothing but lies about non-existent nuclear weapons.

Iran's only chance would be to strike before the US delivers the first blow. Instead of using its missiles to take out the Saudi oil fields and to sink the US aircraft carriers, instead of closing the Strait of Hormuz, instead of arming the Iraqi Shi'ites and moving them to insurgency, Iran is perched like a sitting duck in denial even as the US and its Iraqi puppet Maliki move to eliminate Al Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite militia in order to avoid supply disruptions and a Shi'ite rebellion in Iraq when the US attack on Iran comes.

It is important to emphasize that Iran is making no moves toward war. Having tamed, blackmailed, and purchased Congress, the US media, and US allies and puppets, Cheney might delight in the arrogance with which he can now attack Iran free of any restraint or fabricated provocation. On the other hand, he might cover himself by orchestrating an "Iranian provocation" to justify his attack as a response. But like Hitler's planned attack against Poland, Cheney's attack on Iran has long been in the works.

On March 29 the Associated Press reported that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi "poured contempt on fellow Arab leaders" at the Arab summit that day. Gadhafi told the Arab "leaders," many of whom are on the American payroll, that their American masters would turn on them all, just as America turned on Saddam Hussein after using him to fight a proxy war against Iran.

Saddam had once been an ally of Washington, Gadhafi reminded the Arabs, "but they sold him out." Gadhafi told the American puppets, "Your turn is next."

Gadhafi asked,

"Where is the Arabs' dignity, their future, their very existence?"

If Arabs remain disunited, he predicted,

"they will turn themselves into protectorates. They will be marginalized and turn into garbage dumps."

Indeed, it is this disunity that permits the US to bomb and murder at will in the Middle East.

Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.

The soulness of necons .. Iraqi girls in Syria

America pimps 6 year old Iraqi girls

6 year old Iraqi girls forced into prostitution

As a result of the Iraqi invasion many Iraqi girls have fled the violence to Syria. In order to support their families many girls resort to prostitution.

If this video doesn't make you oppose the War then you have no heart.

Added: March 30, 2008

1 comments:

Iman Abdelazim Mohamed said...

And ofcourse the west , America & Europe have no concious what so ever, this reality don't shock them , their hands are clean from
this killing inosence & purity

of young girls & children , making

women & girls horrs for the rest
of their lives.

G.W Bush & his followers are satisfied with their major

accomplish , making the middle east a tragic ,desastoress zone!
To win Petrolium money we sell
everything ,humanity, rights

we create zoo conflict if you're
not eaten , you eat everything& everyone.
Hasbia Allah We Namah alwakeel!!!
حسبي الله و نعم الوكيل

April 1, 2008 6:09 AM

Post a Comment

Links to this post

AmeriKa: The World's Pimp

More elistist BS .... thanx WaPo ..

More of the TOTAL bullshit from the assholes. They cause the headaches, the death and destruction and then come on as if they are "human rights activists". Give me a break!

Why don't they write a book together if they are SO keen to get this issue on the table?
Why aren't they stumping around the media about Guantanamo Bay EVERY SINGLE DAY of their lives?
Where is the pressure coming from them to have a red phone installed between the US and Iran?

Yeah, such friggin bullshit. Makes me sick.

Why not suggest the closure of ALL black sites - including the ones in Canada and the UK and Diego Garcia and ..

I know that they intend to build one single HUGE black site in Afghanistan, built by Halliburton - I know The Plan. This public posturing to "kill time" is pathetic as in fact, it's the same old, same old going on. US insanity is the card on the table.

This is mere propaganda against Syria, that's ALL it is ..

OH! And Henry the K is the BIGGEST LIAR OF THEM ALL. (but all are jerks)

The US as madman theory of dominance continues to rule as official policy. Beware! Big Brother is insane is the message to the world.

Veeger

5 Former U.S. Secretaries Of State Urge Closure Of Guantanamo, Talks With Iran

Five former U.S. secretaries of State on Thursday urged the next presidential administration to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and open a dialogue with Iran.

The former chiefs of American diplomacy, who served in Democratic and Republican administrations, reached a consensus on the two issues at a conference in Athens, Georgia, aimed at giving the next president some bipartisan foreign policy advice.

Each of them said closing the prison in Cuba would bolster America's image abroad.

"It says to the world: 'We are now going back to our traditional respective forms of dealing with people who potentially committed crimes'," said Colin L. Powell, who served as President Bush's first secretary of State.

Powell was joined by Henry A. Kissinger, James A. Baker III, Warren Christopher and Madeleine K. Albright, who sat in a round-table discussion sponsored by the University of Georgia at a sold-out conference center in downtown Athens.

Kissinger called Guantanamo a "blot on us" and agreed it should be closed, but wondered aloud about the consequences of a closure.

Baker, a lawyer who served in President George H.W. Bush's Cabinet, said he had struggled with its legal implications.

"It gives us a very, very bad name, not just internationally," he said. "I have a great deal of difficulty understanding how we can hold someone, pick someone up, particularly someone who might be an American citizen - even if they were caught somewhere abroad, acting against American interests - and hold them without ever giving them an opportunity to appear before a magistrate."

The former secretaries of State also urged that the U.S. open a line of dialogue with Iran, each saying it was important to maintain contact with adversaries and allies alike.

Albright stressed the importance of finding "common ground," and Christopher urged diplomats to explore opening contact with other "vectors of power," such as clerics and former political leaders. Albright and Christopher served under President Clinton.

Baker suggested the dialogue could center on a common dilemma, saying a "dysfunctional Iraq, a chaotic Iraq, is not something that's in the interest to Iran. There's every incentive on their part to help us, the same way they did in Afghanistan."

Kissinger urged an open - if delicate - line of communication with Iran.

"One has to talk with adversaries," said Kissinger, who served the Nixon and Ford administrations.

Powell compared the potential talks to difficult visits he made to Syria while he served as America's chief diplomat.

"They are not always pleasant visits," he said. "But you've got to do it."

Report: Israeli mole provided photos of Syrian nuclear facility
By Haaretz Service and Reuters

Israel had obtained detailed pictures of a Syrian complex from an apparent mole, which supported an Israeli belief the facility was nuclear and led to an air strike on it last month, ABC News reported on Friday.

Media reports have speculated that the IAF targeted a North Korean nuclear facility in its air strike on Syria last month. Neither Israel nor Syria has confirmed these speculations.

ABC, citing a senior U.S. official, said the person had provided several pictures of the complex from the ground, and Israel showed the images to the CIA. The U.S. spy agency helped pinpoint "drop points" to assist in potential targeting, ABC said.

Israel urged the United States to destroy the complex, but Washington hesitated because no fissionable material was found that would prove the site was nuclear, ABC said.

The network quoted the official as saying the facility was of North Korean design and that Syria must have had "human" help from North Korea.

The White House and the CIA declined to comment on the report, in keeping with a strict U.S. refusal to discuss the issue.

The complex struck by Israel was in a remote area about 100 miles (160 km) from the Iraqi border and along the Euphrates River, ABC said.

It said the official described the pictures as showing a large cylindrical structure, still under construction, with thick reinforced walls. There was also a secondary structure and a pump station with trucks around it.

"It was unmistakable what it was going to be. No doubt in my mind," ABC quoted the official as saying.

The U.S. had begun to consider ways to destroy the complex, such as a special forces raid using helicopters, ABC said. But it said the White House sent word the U.S. would not carry out a raid and urged Israel not to do it either.

Report: Syria dismantling facility targeted by IAF
Syria has begun dismantling the ruins of a site that was bombed by the Israel Air Force on September 6, the Washington Post reported Friday.

According to the report, which quotes senior U.S. officials, this could be an attempt by Syria to avoid an international inspection of the bombed facility.

The Washington Post quoted top U.S. officials as saying that photos taken from the air reveal that that the site had the characteristics of a small but significant nuclear reactor, similar to those found in North Korea.

The dismantling of the facility, a process which appears to be underway, could make it difficult for inspectors to determine the exact nature of the facility, and what Syria's intentions for it had been, the paper reported.

Syria, which possesses a small nuclear reactor for research purposes, has denied allegations that it aims to expand it nuclear program. However, U.S. officials with knowledge of the Israeli strike described the target as a nuclear facility, built with North Korean assistance.

Last week Syria presented to reporters and film crews a facility they claimed was the targeted site, but in fact was a different site, the report continued, in efforts to substantiate its claim that the IAF had struck an empty structure.

While most American officials believe that Syria does in fact have nuclear aspirations, they are divided over the degree of the threat posed by these aspirations. Arms specialists have said with near certainty that Syria would have taken several years to complete the nuclear reactor, and a much longer time to produce significant amounts of plutonium for possible use in a nuclear weapon.

The paper quoted weapons experts as saying that Israel and the U.S. decided not to approach the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency with their concerns over Syria's plans because they feared that the agency's weak response would encourage the country to continue its nuclear work.

Meanwhile, diplomats reported Friday that United Nations experts have been provided with satellite imagery of the facility and are analyzing it for signs that it might have been a secret nuclear site.

One of the diplomats indicated that the photos came from U.S intelligence. Another said the images, which have been studied by experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency since being received on Thursday, do not at first examination appear to substantiate reports that the target was a nuclear installation, but emphasized that the images were still being looked at.

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

This is definitely something to think about. The TRUTH.

Syria and Iran: The Threats That Aren't - http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/09/
syria-and-iran-threats-that-arent.html

September 6, 2007

by Michael Scheuer

In reference to coercive British rule, Tom Paine once told Americans that there is something absurd about the idea that the entire continent of North America should be forever ruled by the little island of Great Britain. Paine, as always in his work, was trying to make Americans think for themselves and, in this case, to see that their own geographic size, rising wealth, and potential power made it ridiculous for them to forever acquiesce to rule from London.

Paine's lesson is apt today in regard to both Syria and Iran. Since I was a young man – now a fading memory – I have heard U.S. politicians warn of the threat presented to America by Syria. There is, of course, something superficially plausible about this. We know that Syria is another of the Muslim world's family-run dictatorships – most of the others are U.S. allies – and that the Assad boys are murderous autocrats and thugs. Likewise, our Israeli friends and their Israel-first American supporters have long harped on the idea – and thereby have misled Americans – that Syria is a military threat to the United States.

But look at the map. Syria is a tiny country, dirt poor except for weapons, and ruled by a dentist. It also is being slowly undermined by the Islamists who the Assads have foolishly tried to co-opt. It is an insignificant dot on the map that poses no threat whatsoever to the United States. If Damascus allows Islamist fighters into Iraq to attack coalition forces, America should take steps to end that situation. But as much as we talk about the issue, we do nothing about it, probably because the inflow from Syria is not as large as the inflow from our great and good ally Saudi Arabia. Besides, allowing the inflow from Syria to continue gives Senator Lieberman – the current poster boy of America's Israel-firsters – the ability to beat the war drum against the supposedly mighty Syrians. Surely, if Senator Lieberman truly believes the Syrians are a threat to America, the people of Connecticut have sent – hopefully unwittingly – someone akin to the agent of a foreign
power to the U.S. Senate. Syria might be a threat to Israel, but the idea that it is a threat to the United States, that the armored Syrian horde may sweep across the Bronx, occupy Manhattan, and lasciviously ogle New Jersey, should be met with the most appropriate response possible – convulsive and derisive laughter.

And then there is Iran. How does one explain the U.S. governing elite's fear of Iran? Here we have a country that admittedly is led by one of the world's more histrionic politicians, but one that also is ringed by U.S. military bases and surrounded by an overwhelmingly more numerous Sunni world that hates Shi'ites far more than it hates Westerners. Iran‘s Islamic regime, moreover, is helplessly watching the final stages of the march of its energy resources toward oblivion, and preparing for the impoverishment and resulting internal political instability that event will usher in.

So where in this portrait is the threat to the United States? While Iran is a threat to Israel, there is surely no threat to America in Iran's less-than-impressive military forces, nuclear development program, or unattractive public diplomacy. No, the threat to the United States comes from two sources. First, the relentless "Iran is the new Nazi Germany" propaganda pushed by Israel and the American citizen Israel-firsters, and, second, the multi-decade failure of the U.S. Congress to seriously address the national-security issues of energy, borders, and immigration.

As in the case of Syria – although for fewer years because Iran's previous tyrant was on America's side until the Mullahs seized power in 1979 – most American adults have grown up with the idea that Iran is a dire threat to U.S. national security. Sparked mainly by memories of the U.S. embassy hostages held for 400-plus days while President Carter diddled, Americans have been ripe for the delusions induced by the periodic visits of Binyamin Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians, and their well-staged rants that equate the creaky, mostly foreign-purchased, and slightly more than tin-pot military machine of the Ayatollahs with Hitler's Wehrmacht, the product of an extremely modern industrial economy, a united populace ready for revenge against its conquerors, and the Germans' apparently genetic talent and taste for war. To say that Netanyahu, other Israeli politicians, and their American Israel-first supporters are being disingenuous in pushing the Iranian threat would
be incorrect. They are consistently and blatantly lying.

No, the threat to the United States from Iran is not military, it is rather from America‘s most dangerous home-grown terrorists – the U.S. Congress. Iran threatens America economically because it has the capability to disrupt oil production in Saudi Arabia's Eastern province. Such an Iranian effort would be a casus belli for the United States only because the U.S. Congress has done nothing more substantial than advance Daylight Savings Time by three weeks since the Saudi-led embargoes of the 1970s. Thirty-five years of the Congress' utter failure to address energy security as a top priority national interest has made Iran a threat to America that it otherwise could not be.

Likewise, the terrorist threat from Iran – which is genuine – must be labeled by the U.S. Congress. Neither Iran's government or its Revolutionary Guard Corps, or their Lebanese semi-surrogate Hezbollah are going to launch a terrorist first strike in the United States. All of these entities are rational actors and they know a first-strike from their side would earn them a catastrophic response. But the rub comes for America from the fact that each of the just-mentioned entities have a terrorism infrastructure established in North America – in the United States, Canada, and Mexico – that could and would be used in response to a U.S. or Israeli first strike on Iran. And that response would be effective inside America because – thanks to the Congress' knowing failure to control borders and immigration – no level of U.S. law enforcement has anything near a complete handle on the size, intentions, capabilities, and targets of our potential Iranian attackers.

So perhaps its time for Americans to reread Mr. Paine, begin thinking for themselves, and recognize the expensive and potentially war-causing absurdities that have been foisted on them regarding the "threat" from Syria and Iran by their bipartisan governing elite and its deserving-to-be-indicted co-conspirators, Israel's government and its American Israel-first acolytes. If viewed with a realistic eye rather than one clouded by propaganda, the claims that two decaying blotches on the map named Syria and Iran constitute severe national-security threats to the United States would earn the dismissive scorn they so richly merit.

Michael Scheuer is a 22-year veteran of the CIA and the author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

ShareThis

~ What must be done next ~

Website: http://www.MoveToAmend.org Mission: We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to: * Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights. * Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count. * Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments. Company Overview: On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, The People rule.

~ Please sign and pass on ~

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

Search This Blog

Related articles: Syria: Israel is spreading false reports in order to justify war Report: Syria, North Korea hold high-level talks in Pyongyang CNN: Israeli gov't 'very happy with success' of IAF strike on Syria UN blames interpreter's error for report Syria has nuclear facility