From Information Clearing House:

Michel Chossudovsky: Nuclear War against Iran:

The launching of an outright war using nuclear warheads against Iran is now in the final planning stages. Coalition partners, which include the US, Israel and Turkey are in "an advanced stage of readiness".

http://tinyurl.com/7lepw

The article is very long, thus I have not posted it here...

but it details specific exercises that have been conducted which put us in an "advanced state of readiness", the armaments which will likely be used (nuclear bunker busters with about 1/3rd the yield of a Hiroshima weapon), and the "diplomatic-level" talks between the US and Turkey (reported elsewhere here at CGCS), and the role of Israel, and more.

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international best seller "The Globalization of Poverty " published in eleven languages. He is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, at www.globalresearch.ca . He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His most recent book is entitled: America’s "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005.

His concluding remarks:

The implications are overwhelming.

The so-called international community has accepted the eventuality of a nuclear holocaust.

Those who decide have swallowed their own war propaganda.

A political consensus has developed in Western Europe and North America regarding the aerial attacks using tactical nuclear weapons, without considering their devastating implications.

This profit driven military adventure ultimately threatens the future of humanity.

What is needed in the months ahead is a major thrust, nationally and internationally which breaks the conspiracy of silence, which acknowledges the dangers, which brings this war project to the forefront of political debate and media attentiion, at all levels, which confronts and requires political and military leaders to take a firm stance against the US sponsored nuclear war.

Ultimately what is required are extensive international sanctions directed against the United States of America and Israel.

---

Perhaps, the only prayer left to consider is the prayer that family and friends will not become unsuspectd victims of a nuclear blast and radiation. Hey, the Big Warmongering movers and shakers have their secret underground bunkers to flee to... you and I, and us breathe the open air.

Nice try doin' that, buddy.

Yes... Gwynne Dyer noted “Pax Americana requires the destruction of the UN. That is the long and the short of it because the principles are opposed. The UN’s founding principle is that war is now illegal. You cannot attack another country. The Pax Americana project’s core rule is that the United States will decide what countries are dangerous and will take them down, unilaterally, without consultation, and without help, if necessary. It will be judge, jury and executioner. You can have one or the other, but you can’t have both. The invasion of Iraq was illegal by UN rules. It was compulsory under Pax Americana."

Remember that mega-group hit "We are The World"?

Now it's "We got the weapons, and the rest of you are nada."

So the only sanctions that might work anymore are the ones brought by the US Congress and the US people. Nothing else stands in the way of mega-force, the Darth Vader that the US has become. And not too many of them are standing up to be counted...

It's getting to where talking politics isn't just talking politics anymore.

Sounds like more of the same from the sorts of people who have, to borrow a phrase from Tomyhe, have predicted 50 of the last 0 wars.

No one here remembers rather confident predictions of our military strike on Iran last June? Or how we would be setting up a base in Lebanon last year? Or the U.S. invasion, or at least U.S. urged Israeli invasion, of Syria last Spring?

Even my 5-year old daughter knows the story about the boy who cried wolf. Yes, the wolf did come once. But that didn't mean that the boy was reliable in his warnings.

I would urge people to actually read this article. It isn't that long, and it has a number of rather big whoppers that tend to refute its premise.

Very interesting reading...both the link and the
links from the linked article to other, related articles.

Such planning has been a part of DOD and the
Military-Industrial Complex since the 1950s...
and this is the current evolution of that planning.

Can it happen? Sure. Will it?
Good question...and probably the
challenge accepted by the author's
pre-emptive strike in writing it.

As the world speeds up through technology and
resources are consumed faster than that technology
can produce equivalent comforts...it gets scarier as
a possibility. But, not being one who lives in fear,
I balanced the emotional influence of the knowledge
by going to:

HGTV Dream House: register to win drawing

And, I'll work to get back to a balance of power
in Washington, D.C. - starting with the exposing
of current corruption and megalomania, and continuing
through the '06 midterm...and hopefully beyond.

And Pax Americana is the one who gets all the $$$ when we go to war, too. War is big business. Now why would they let the UN go do something like spreading peace and making war illegal? Sheesh - think of the loss in revenues. How will Cheney build his fortresses? Pay for his dove hunting?

Until your post, Magmak, I never really understood why the neocons hate the UN - and now I do. Peace means no more money for warmongerers.

The price of empire is America’s soul, and that price is too high.
– Sen. J. William Fulbright

But all the neocons have to do is ignore the UN. They don't have to "destroy" it. Unless countries, especially the more important countries such as the U.S., cooperate, the UN cannot do anything. Actually, through simply ignoring the UN, the U.S. could destroy the UN for all intents and purposes. (I'm not saying the U.S. should ignore the UN, I think it should work with the UN, but I'm pointing out what I think should be a pretty obvious fact.)

The UN outlawing war? Why not have the UN outlaw the bird flu while we're at it?

Not a bad idea. the UN could and should outlaw the conditions that breed bird flu.
The US and other developed nations could and should support programs to
correct the conditions that breed bird flu, and starvation, and "terroism" and......

But seriously, the UN could propose a great program for dealing with bird flu (in fact, isn't there a UN agency currently working on it?), but unless the relevant countries cooperate with it, either voluntarily or being pressured into doing so by more powerful countries, it would go for naught. The notion of the UN attempting to "outlaw" anything is rather pathetic, at least in today's world.

That doesn't mean that the UN cannot, or for that matter hasn't, done a lot of good work, or that the U.S. shouldn't strengthen the UN.

But my previous point was that the idea that the neocons "fear" the UN is rather silly, not to put too fine a point on it. They don't like it, they may try to use it scare people like cruel adults use the bogeyman to scare kids, but they have no need to "conspire" against it.

Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad
Axis of Fanatics

By NORMAN SOLOMON


With Ariel Sharon out of the picture, Benjamin Netanyahu has a better chance to become prime minister of Israel.

He's media savvy. He knows how to spin on American television. And he's very dangerous.

Netanyahu spent a lot of his early years in the United States. Later, during the 1980s, he worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and then became Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. By the time he moved up to deputy foreign minister in 1988, he was a star on U.S. networks.

The guy is smooth -- fluent in American idioms, telegenic to many eyes -- and good at lying on camera. So, when Israeli police killed 17 Palestinians at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque in October 1990, Netanyahu led a disinformation blitz asserting that the Palestinians were killed after they'd rioted and pelted Jewish worshipers from above the Wailing Wall with huge stones. At the time, his fable dominated much of the U.S. media. Later even the official Israeli inquiry debunked Netanyahu's account and blamed police for starting the clash.

Now, with Netanyahu campaigning to win the Israeli election for prime minister in late March, he's cranking up rhetoric against Iran. His outlook seems to be 180 degrees from the world view of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yet in tangible political ways, they're well-positioned to feed off each other's fanaticism.

The election that gave the presidency of Iran to Ahmadinejad last summer was a victory for repressive fundamentalism. Results have included a negative trend for human rights in the country and a more bellicose foreign policy.

When Ahmadinejad declared in late October that "Israel must be wiped off the map," he did a big favor to the most militaristic of Israel's major politicians -- Benjamin Netanyahu -- who demanded that Prime Minster Sharon take forceful action against Iran. Otherwise, Netanyahu said in December, "when I form the new Israeli government, we'll do what we did in the past against Saddam's reactor, which gave us 20 years of tranquillity."

Netanyahu was referring to Israel's air attack on the Osirak reactor in June 1981 to prevent Iraq from developing nuclear weapons. But now the idea of bombing Iran is nonsensical even to many analysts who are enthusiastic about Israel's large nuclear arsenal, estimated at 200 warheads.

"Preemptive military attack is not a strategy for stopping the spread of nuclear weapons anymore; the changes in technology have made it obsolete." That's the current assessment from Larry Derfner, who often writes about Israeli politics for the Jerusalem Post. "Concealing a nuclear start-up is so much easier now than it was in 1981 and it's only going to get easier yet. Throwing fighter jets, commandos and whatnot at Iran is more than risky; it's almost certainly futile if not altogether impossible. Better for Israel and Israelis to forget about it and instead meet the Iranian threat by making this country's deterrent power even more intimidating than it already is."

Derfner added: "A nuclear Iran isn't a cause for indifference but neither is it a cause for dread and certainly not for recklessness. A nuclear Iran is actually acceptable. We can live with it. The truth is we've been living here with threats very much like it all along."

But Netanyahu has repeatedly emphasized that he wants to launch a military strike on Iran. "This is the Israeli government's primary obligation," he said. "If it is not done by the current government, I plan to lead the next government to stop the Iranians."

The specter of Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad fueling each other's madness as heads of state is frightening. In such a circumstance, the primary danger of conflagration would come from nuclear-armed Israel, not nuclear-unarmed Iran.

Candidate Netanyahu is a standard bearer for nuclear insanity. He's also an implacable enemy of basic Palestinian human rights. Many Israelis understand that Netanyahu is an extremist, and polls published on Jan. 6 indicate that the post-Sharon era may not be as hospitable to Netanyahu as initially assumed.

For that matter, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not serve out his full four-year term as Iran's president. Evidently the hardline clerics who dominate the Iranian government got more than they bargained for when they threw their weight behind the Ahmadinejad campaign last June. In recent months, Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has shifted more power to the governmental Expediency Council headed by the shady magnate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a relatively moderate political hack who lost in the presidential runoff last year.

Ahmadinejad is good at making statements that cause international uproars, but he's having a difficult time exercising presidential leverage. "Even in Iran's mostly conservative parliament, the hard-line president has found himself unable to get traction," the Los Angeles Times noted on Jan. 2. "In a first for the Islamic Republic, lawmakers turned down four of the ministers Ahmadinejad asked them to approve. It took him three months and four candidates to seat an oil minister. Some reformist legislators even agitated for hearings on the president's lack of political competence.'"

Using religious claims to bolster their quests for power, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Benjamin Netanyahu each stand to gain by pointing to the menacing fanaticism of the other. Yet many Iranians and Israelis recognize the grave dangers of such posturing.

As tensions mount and pressures intensify, the White House might end up acceding to an Israeli air attack on Iran. Or the Bush administration may prefer to launch its own air strike against Iran.

Iran. Israel. The United States. Each country has the very real potential to move in a better direction -- away from lethal righteousness. But in every society, that will require more effective grassroots efforts for peace and justice.

Norman Solomon is the author of War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon01062006.html

I pretty much see Bolton as Bush's hatchet man sent to neutralize whatever power the UN has to be a positive influence in the world. I do think the democratic party should make their support for both reforming the UN and granting it more power
explicit in their campaigns.

We can ignore the UN, of course, but it's very bad PR to just ignore it. And it delegitimizes their wars when the UN doesn't give it it's stamp of approval. Which makes the UN a big thorn in their side. The UN gives Russia and Germany and France the opportunity to slam the US in the court of public opinion. And it does represent a real check to moral authority of the United States. If it wasn't very important to neutralize, if not destroy, the UN, they wouldn't have fought so hard to send Bolton.

Totally agree. If we can find a way to spin it right.

If Sen. J. William Fulbright said it I'd be suspicious, after all, he was a signatory on the "Southern Manifesto".

It was a different time in America but J. William Fulbright was a bigot and a racist.

Well, I anticipated that someone would say this.....but it doesn't make his statement incorrect now does it?

I think that neutralization would be enough for their purposes. Sure the UN is a thorn, but to the neocons its a nuisance rather than a crippling handicap. (Although their pundits like to frighten people by pretending differently.) And what is Bolten's and the neocons' MO? It is to be contemptuous of the UN and those in the international community who question U.S. leadership in general (remember Rumsfeld's "Old Europe.") In other words ignore the UN, and delight many "America Firsters" by projecting a message of "we won't let the UN and those foreigners tell the U.S. what to do!" So I'm not sure that they see the PR as bad, or at least uniformly bad.

I tend to have the same frame of reference that you have in terms of the importance of international legitimacy of U.S. actions, including that imparted by the UN, but I think that we have to realize that not everyone has that same frame of reference.

Here's another "piece" on the issue, courtesy of Information Clearing House, and which comes from the conservative side of the aisle:


An Attack on Iran is Inevitable:

A military confrontation with Iran is inevitable. Israel will need to destroy as much of Iran’s nuclear weapons capability as possible. If it does not, Iran’s ayatollahs will launch nuclear-armed ballistic missiles at Israel.

http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_11190.shtml


Here's one excerpt:

“War Footing offers a number of steps the U.S. and the rest of the world can take. Its authors dismiss any “détente” or negotiated resolution. They recommend such measures as making freedom in Iran a declared U.S. policy; an active effort to delegitimize the Tehran regime, declaring it a threat to humanity; waging economic and political warfare, inside and out of Iran; and supporting resistance movements, among the options available.

In the end, the experts conclude that military power may be the only option. I believe this will prove to be the only way to avoid a nuclear Armageddon."

---
And I believe that it may prove to be a perfectly senseless way to create one...

I guess y'all didn't hear.....Russia is going to manage the enrichment of Iran's nuclear fuel on Russian territory so Iran won't need the enrichment facilities. No enrichment facility, no way to enrich to weapon grade material.

Marine,

That's good news if true....I couldn't find any recent articles with that info all I saw was that talks were continuing...do you have anything in print?

Attack on Iran: A Looming Folly

By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 09 January 2006

The wires have been humming since before the New Year with reports that the Bush administration is planning an attack on Iran. "The Bush administration is preparing its NATO allies for a possible military strike against suspected nuclear sites in Iran in the New Year, according to German media reports, reinforcing similar earlier suggestions in the Turkish media," reported UPI on December 30th.

"The Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel this week," continued UPI, "quoted 'NATO intelligence sources' who claimed that the NATO allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. This 'all options are open' line has been President George W Bush's publicly stated policy throughout the past 18 months."

An examination of the ramifications of such an attack is desperately in order.

1. Blowback in Iraq

The recent elections in Iraq were dominated by an amalgam of religiously fundamentalist Shi'ite organizations, principally the Dawa Party and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Both Dawa and SCIRI have umbilical connections to the fundamentalist Shi'ite leadership in Iran that go back decades. In essence, Iran now owns a significant portion of the Iraqi government.

Should the United States undertake military action against Iran, the ramifications in Iraq would be immediate and extreme.

In the first eight days of January, eighteen US troops have been killed in Iraq, compounded by another twelve deaths from a Black Hawk helicopter crash on Saturday. Much of the violence aimed at American forces is coming from disgruntled Sunni factions that have their own militias, believe the last elections were a sham, and hold little political power in the government.

If the US attacks Iran, it is probable that American forces - already taxed by attacks from Sunni factions - will also face reprisal attacks in Iraq from Shi'ite factions loyal to Iran. The result will be a dramatic escalation in US and civilian casualties, US forces will be required to bunker themselves further into their bases, and US forces will find themselves required to fight the very government they just finished helping into power. Iraq, already a seething cauldron, will sink further into chaos.

2. Iran's Armaments

Unlike Iraq, Iran has not spent the last fifteen years having its conventional forces worn down by grueling sanctions, repeated attacks, and two American-led wars. While Iran's conventional army is not what it was during the heyday of the Iran-Iraq war - their armaments have deteriorated and the veterans of that last war have retired - the nation enjoys substantial military strength nonetheless.

According to a report issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in December of 2004, Iran "has some 540,000 men under arms and over 350,000 reserves. They include 120,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards trained for land and naval asymmetrical warfare. Iran's military also includes holdings of 1,613 main battle tanks, 21,600 other armored fighting vehicles, 3,200 artillery weapons, 306 combat aircraft, 60 attack helicopters, 3 submarines, 59 surface combatants, and 10 amphibious ships."

"Iran is now the only regional military power that poses a significant conventional military threat to Gulf stability," continued the CSIS report. "Iran has significant capabilities for asymmetric warfare, and poses the additional threat of proliferation. There is considerable evidence that it is developing both a long-range missile force and a range of weapons of mass destruction. It has never properly declared its holdings of chemical weapons, and the status of its biological weapons programs is unknown."

A MILNET brief issued in February 2005 reports, "Due to its position astride the Persian Gulf, Iran has constantly been a threat to the Gulf. The so called 'Tanker' wars in the late 1980s put Iran squarely in the bullseye of all nations seeking to transport oil out of the region. Even the small navy that Iran puts to sea is capable enough to harass shipping, and several cases of small boat operations against oil well heads in the Gulf during that period made it clear small asymmetrical tactics of the Iranian Navy could be quite effective."

"More concerning," continued the MILNET brief, "is the priority placed on expanding and modernizing its Navy. The CSIS report cites numerous areas where Iran has funded modernization including the most troublesome aspect, anti-shipping cruise missiles: 'Iran has obtained new anti-ship missiles and missile patrol craft from China, midget submarines from North Korea, submarines from Russia, and modern mines.'"

It is Iran's missile armaments that pose the greatest concern for American forces in the Gulf, especially for the US Navy. Iran's coast facing the Persian Gulf is a looming wall of mountains that look down upon any naval forces arrayed in those waters. The Gulf itself only has one exit, the Strait of Hormuz, which is also dominated by the mountainous Iranian coastline. In essence, Iran holds the high ground in the Gulf. Missile batteries arrayed in those mountains could raise bloody havoc with any fleet deployed below.

Of all the missiles in Iran's armament, the most dangerous is the Russian-made SS-N-22 Sunburn. These missiles are, simply, the fastest anti-ship weapons on the planet. The Sunburn can reach Mach 3 at high altitude. Its maximum low-altitude speed is Mach 2.2, some three times faster than the American-made Harpoon. The Sunburn takes two short minutes to cover its full range. The missile's manufacturers state that one or two missiles could cripple a destroyer, and five missiles could sink a 20,000 ton ship. The Sunburn is also superior to the Exocet missile. Recall that it was two Exocets that ripped the USS Stark to shreds in 1987, killing 37 sailors. The Stark could not see them to stop them.

The US aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt is currently deployed in the Persian Gulf, with some 7,000 souls aboard. Sailing with the Roosevelt is the Tarawa Expeditionary Strike Force, which includes the USS Tarawa, the USS Austin, and the USS Pearl Harbor. The USS Austin is likewise deployed in the Gulf. The Sunburn missile, with its incredible speed and ability to avoid radar detection, would do terrible damage these ships if Iran chooses to retaliate in the Gulf after an American attack within its borders.

Beyond the naval threat is the possibility of Iran throwing its military muscle into the ongoing struggle in Iraq. Currently, the US is facing an asymmetrical attack from groups wielding small arms, shoulder-fired grenades and roadside bombs. The vaunted American military has suffered 2,210 deaths and tens of thousands of wounded from this form of warfare. The occupation of Iraq has become a guerrilla war, a siege that has lasted more than a thousand days. If Iran decides to throw any or all of its 23,000 armored fighting vehicles, along with any or all of its nearly million-strong army, into the Iraq fray, the situation in the Middle East could become unspeakably dire.

3. The Syrian Connection

In February of 2005, Iran and Syria agreed upon a mutual protection pact to combat "challenges and threats" in the region. This was a specific reaction to the American invasion of Iraq, and a reaction to America's condemnation of Syria after the death of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, which was widely seen as an assassination ordered from Damascus. An attack on Iran would trigger this mutual defense pact, and could conceivably bring Syria into direct conflict with American forces.

Like Iran, Syria's military is nothing to scoff at. Virtually every credible analysis has Syria standing as the strongest military force in the Middle East after Israel. Damascus has been intent for years upon establishing significant military strength to serve as a counterweight to Israel's overwhelming capabilities. As of 2002, Syria had some 215,000 soldiers under arms, 4,700 tanks, and a massive artillery capability. The Syrian Air Force is comprised of ten to eleven fighter/attack squadrons and sixteen fighter squadrons, totaling somewhere near 650 aircraft.

Syria also possesses one of the largest arsenals of ballistic missiles in the region, comprised primarily of SCUD-derived systems. Iran, North Korea and China have been willing providers of state-of-the-art technologies. Compounding this is the well-based suspicion that Syria has perhaps the most advanced chemical weapons capability in the Persian Gulf.

4. China and the US Economy

While the ominous possibilities of heightened Iraqi chaos, missiles in the Gulf, and Syrian involvement loom large if the US attacks Iran, all pale in comparison to the involvement of China in any US/Iran engagement.

China's economy is exploding, hampered only by their great thirst for petroleum and natural gas to fuel their industry. In the last several months, China has inked deals with Iran for $70 billion dollars worth of Iranian oil and natural gas. China will purchase 250 million tons of liquefied natural gas from Iran over the next 30 years, will develop the massive Yadavaran oil field in Iran, and will receive 150,000 barrels of oil per day from that field. China is seeking the construction of a pipeline from Iran to the Caspian Sea, where it would link with another planned pipeline running from Kazakhstan to China.

Any US attack on Iran could be perceived by China as a direct threat to its economic health. Further, any fighting in the Persian Gulf would imperil the tankers running China's liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Hormuz. Should China decide to retaliate against the US to defend its oil and natural gas deal with Iran, the US would be faced with a significant threat. This threat exists not merely on a military level, though China could force a confrontation in the Pacific by way of Taiwan. More significantly, China holds a large portion of the American economy in the palm of its hand.

Paul Craig Roberts, writing for The American Conservative, said in July of 2005 that "As a result of many years of persistent trade surpluses with the United States, the Japanese government holds dollar reserves of approximately $1 trillion. China's accumulation of dollars is approximately $600 billion. South Korea holds about $200 billion. These sums give these countries enormous leverage over the United States. By dumping some portion of their reserves, these countries could put the dollar under intense pressure and send U.S. interest rates skyrocketing. Washington would really have to anger Japan and Korea to provoke such action, but in a showdown with China - over Taiwan, for example - China holds the cards. China and Japan, and the world at large, have more dollar reserves than they require. They would have no problem teaching a hegemonic superpower a lesson if the need arose."

"The hardest blow on Americans," concluded Roberts, "will fall when China does revalue its currency. When China's currency ceases to be undervalued, American shoppers in Wal-Mart, where 70 percent of the goods on the shelves are made in China, will think they are in Neiman Marcus. Price increases will cause a dramatic reduction in American real incomes. If this coincides with rising interest rates and a setback in the housing market, American consumers will experience the hardest times since the Great Depression."

In short, China has the American economy by the throat. Should they decide to squeeze, we will all feel it. China's strong hand in this even extends to the diplomatic realm; China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, and could veto any actions against Iran proposed by the United States.

5. American Preparedness

American citizens have for decades taken it as a given that our military can overwhelm and overcome any foe on the battlefield. The rapid victory during the first Gulf War cemented this perception. The last three years of the Iraq occupation, however, have sapped this confidence. Worse, the occupation has done great damage to the strength of the American military, justifying the decrease in confidence. Thanks to repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, recruiting is at an all-time low. Soldiers with vital training and know-how are refusing to re-enlist. Across the board, the American military is stretched to the breaking point.

Two vaunted economists - one a Nobel Prize winner and the other a nationally renowned budget expert - have analyzed the data at hand and put a price tag on the Iraq occupation. According to Linda Bilmes of Harvard and Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University, the final cost of the Iraq occupation will run between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, surpassing by orders of magnitude the estimates put forth by the Bush administration. If an engagement with Iran envelops our forces in Iraq, and comes to involve Syria, our economy will likely shatter under the strain of fighting so many countries simultaneously. Add to this the economic threat posed by China, and the economic threat implicit in any substantial disruption of the distribution of Mideast petroleum to the globe.

If Iran and Syria - with their significant armaments, missile technologies and suspected chemical weapons capabilities - decide to engage with the relatively undersized US force in Iraq, our troops there will be fish in a barrel. Iran's position over the Gulf would make resupply by ship and air support from carriers a dangerous affair. In the worst-case scenario, the newly-minted American order of battle requiring the use of nuclear weapons to rescue a surrounded and imperiled force could come into play, hurling the entire planet into military and diplomatic bedlam.

Conclusion: Is Any of This Possible?

The question must be put as directly as possible: what manner of maniac would undertake a path so fraught with peril and potential economic catastrophe? It is difficult to imagine a justification for any action that could envelop the United States in a military and economic conflict with Iraq, Iran, Syria and China simultaneously.

Iran is suspected by many nations of working towards the development of nuclear weapons, but even this justification has been tossed into a cocked hat. Recently, Russian president Vladimir Putin bluntly stated that Iran is not developing its nuclear capability for any reasons beyond peaceful energy creation, and pledged to continue assisting Iran in this endeavor. Therefore, any attack upon Iran's nuclear facilities will bring Russia into the mess. Iran also stands accused of aiding terrorism across the globe. The dangers implicit in any attack upon that nation, however, seem to significantly offset whatever gains could be made in the so-called "War on Terror."

Unfortunately, all the dangers in the world are no match for the self-assurance of a bubble-encased zealot. What manner of maniac would undertake such a dangerous course? Look no further than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

George W. Bush and his administration have consistently undertaken incredibly dangerous courses of action in order to garner political power on the home front. Recall the multiple terror threats lobbed out by the administration whenever damaging political news appeared in the media. More significantly, recall Iraq. Karl Rove, Bush's most senior advisor, notoriously told Republicans on the ballot during the 2002 midterms to "run on the war." The invasion of Iraq provided marvelous political cover for the GOP not only during those midterms, but during the 2004 Presidential election.

What kind of political cover would be gained from an attack on Iran, and from the diversion of attention to that attack? The answer lies in one now-familiar name: Jack Abramoff. The Abramoff scandal threatens to subsume all the hard-fought GOP gains in Congress, and the 2006 midterms are less than a year away.

Is any of this a probability? Logic says no, but logic seldom plays any part in modern American politics. All arguments that the Bush administration would be insane to attack Iran and risk a global conflagration for the sake of political cover run into one unavoidable truth.

They did it once already in Iraq.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010906I.shtml

http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarti...,%20250%20km%20

White House says Iran could face Security Council

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON, Jan 10 (Reuters) - The United States warned Iran on Tuesday that the international community would have no choice but to seek action in the U.N. Security Council if Tehran continued to pursue sensitive nuclear activities.

Washington's reaction came after Iran removed U.N. seals at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant and resumed nuclear fuel research.

"If the regime in Iran continues on the current course and fails to abide by its international obligations there is no other choice but to refer the matter to the Security Council," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

If Iran started nuclear enrichment and reprocessing it would be considered a "serious escalation," he said.

But U.S. officials said a referral to the U.N. Security Council was not definite and it was unclear whether Russia and China would support such a move.

The United States may be waiting for Europe, which has taken the lead in negotiating with Iran, to announce next steps.

The United States has for more than a year failed to persuade International Atomic Energy Agency members to refer Iran to the Security Council. That has infuriated some members of Congress and pro-Israel supporters who believe bringing Iran's case to the United Nations is long overdue.

Iran is the world's fourth-largest exporter of crude oil and many countries are loathe to jeopardize access to these supplies.

But Tehran's nuclear activities have long been a sore point in relations with the West, with friction increasing in recent months after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the Holocaust was a myth and that Israel should be "wiped off the map."

President George W. Bush early in his administration said Iran was part of an "axis of evil," and more recently called Ahmadinejad an "odd guy."

'IRAN IS NOT IRAQ'

The United States has repeatedly made clear it would try other diplomatic tools at the Security Council -- like a council president statement -- before turning to sanctions.

But some countries fear Washington will not only employ sanctions but possibly also military action, as with Iraq.

Bush has made it clear that "Iran is not Iraq," McClellan said. "We are working with the international community to resolve this in a peaceful and diplomatic manner."

The United States and its European allies have accused Iran of seeking to manufacture weapons. Tehran insists it only wants to produce civilian energy aimed at satisfying the country's booming demand for electricity.

"Any resumption of enrichment and reprocessing activities would be a further violation of Iran's agreement with the Europeans," McClellan said. "So such steps would be a serious escalation of the nuclear issue by Tehran."

European diplomats have said they would seek an emergency meeting of the IAEA board of governors, perhaps as early as next week. U.S. and European officials say it is most likely that Russia -- and probably China too -- would abstain if the IAEA board votes for referral to the Security Council.

The United States was in close consultation with France, Britain and Germany, which have been negotiating with Iran on the nuclear issue -- as well as other members of the IAEA board of governors, on possible next steps, U.S. officials said.

McClellan said if Iran mastered the technology of uranium enrichment, it could apply that technology to weapons.

"The concern within the international community is well-founded," he said. "The regime in Iran has shown that it cannot be trusted."

An Iranian exile told reporters on Tuesday he had new information suggesting Tehran was farther along in being able to produce a significant bomb-grade atomic fuel at Natanz than many suspected.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, former spokesman of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which disclosed Iran's covert nuclear program in 2002, provided names of companies and individuals involved in the work but no real proof.

What's most amazing and distressful is that, even if Congress voted 535 to 0 against the use of nukes, and even if our President signed it, he would cross his fingers behind his back and create a 'signing memo' saying he would do it only if he had wanted to.

You are right, WinstonSmith, and the only two groups that can stand up to that attitude about power are Congress and the American people... and, at this stage of the game, I'm afraid that the only way that is going to happen is through impeachment... and hopefully quickly.

But it won't happen quickly. It just won't. Unless a super-huge bombshell emerges.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/53948.html

Israelis plan pre-emptive strike on Iran

Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources.
The news comes as Germany yesterday warned Tehran's regime that it would face "consequences" if it removes UN seals from portions of its atomic programme and resumes enrichment of fuel which could be diverted for military use in breach of international agreements.
The Israeli raids would be carried out by long-range F-15E bombers and cruise missiles against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons programme back by up to two years.
Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions.
The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process.
Sources say one, possibly two airfields in Kurdish northern Iraq have been earmarked as launch-points to reduce flying time over Iran.
The Iranians have meanwhile dispersed production facilities across hundreds of miles of remote countryside to make a single, knockout blow more difficult.
They have also ringed the sites, some of them deep underground, with missile batteries and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns.
Part of the reason for an acceleration of Israel's contingency strike plans is that Russia agreed last month to sell Tehran £700m-worth of advanced SA-15 Gauntlet mobile missile systems.
Some are believed to be destined for defence of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant on the Gulf coast, which Russian engineers are helping to build.
Although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.
An Israeli source said: "We believe Iran will have useable nuclear weapons by 2007 unless something is done to prevent it. If Tehran is allowed to start enrichment of uranium, it will be too late.
"Underground facilities have to be supplied with air, water and fuel from the surface. They also have entrances which are vulnerable to conventional attack. Close down the infrastructure and you close down the facility."

against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons programme back by up to two years.
Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions.
The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process.
Sources say one, possibly two airfields in Kurdish northern Iraq have been earmarked as launch-points to reduce flying time over Iran.
The Iranians have meanwhile dispersed production facilities across hundreds of miles of remote countryside to make a single, knockout blow more difficult.
They have also ringed the sites, some of them deep underground, with missile batteries and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns.
Part of the reason for an acceleration of Israel's contingency strike plans is that Russia agreed last month to sell Tehran £700m-worth of advanced SA-15 Gauntlet mobile missile systems.
Some are believed to be destined for defence of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant on the Gulf coast, which Russian engineers are helping to build.
Although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.
An Israeli source said: "We believe Iran will have useable nuclear weapons by 2007 unless something is done to prevent it. If Tehran is allowed to start enrichment of uranium, it will be too late.
"Underground facilities have to be supplied with air, water and fuel from the surface. They also have entrances which are vulnerable to conventional attack. Close down the infrastructure and you close down the facility."

Sources say one, possibly two airfields in Kurdish northern Iraq have been earmarked as launch-points to reduce flying time over Iran.
The Iranians have meanwhile dispersed production facilities across hundreds of miles of remote countryside to make a single, knockout blow more difficult.
They have also ringed the sites, some of them deep underground, with missile batteries and radar-controlled anti-aircraft guns.
Part of the reason for an acceleration of Israel's contingency strike plans is that Russia agreed last month to sell Tehran £700m-worth of advanced SA-15 Gauntlet mobile missile systems.
Some are believed to be destined for defence of Iran's Bushehr nuclear plant on the Gulf coast, which Russian engineers are helping to build.
Although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.
An Israeli source said: "We believe Iran will have useable nuclear weapons by 2007 unless something is done to prevent it. If Tehran is allowed to start enrichment of uranium, it will be too late.
"Underground facilities have to be supplied with air, water and fuel from the surface. They also have entrances which are vulnerable to conventional attack. Close down the infrastructure and you close down the facility."

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticl...UCLEAR-IRAN.xml

Blair urges U.N. to consider action on Iran

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Prime Minister Tony Blair called on Wednesday for the U.N. Security Council to consider action against Iran after it resumed nuclear fuel research, but former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said any sanctions would be futile.

Iran removed U.N. seals at uranium enrichment research facilities on Tuesday and announced it would resume "research and development" on producing uranium fuel, prompting angry reactions from Washington, the European Union and Russia.

Blair vowed to haul Iran before the Security Council, which can impose punitive measures.

"I think the first thing to do is to secure agreement for a reference to the Security Council, (if) that is indeed what the allies jointly decide as I think seems likely," Blair told parliament.

"Then .. we have to decide what measures to take and we obviously don't rule out any measures at all," he added.

Blair made no direct reference to military force, but his remarks seemed stronger than those of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who said on Tuesday military action was not on Britain's agenda and that he believed it was not on anyone else's.

Iran says its nuclear programme is entirely peaceful and the U.N. nuclear watchdog has found no firm proof to the contrary.

"Adopting harsh measures like imposing sanctions cannot bring about the desired outcome," Rafsanjani said at Tehran University in a sermon to mark the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival.

The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain will meet in Berlin on Thursday to discuss the crisis caused by Iran's move to reactivate a nuclear fuel programme mothballed under a November 2004 deal with the EU trio.

European diplomats say they expect an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors to take place, probably towards the end of the month.

EU diplomats say there is a clear simple majority on the IAEA's 35-nation board in favour of referring Iran to the Security Council. However, they said EU and U.S. officials would work to achieve as much consensus as possible.

Russia and China, which have major energy interests in Iran, have previously opposed moving the dispute to the Security Council, where they both wield veto powers.

However, Iran's latest action appears to have disconcerted Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed the row with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by telephone.

"Both sides...expressed deep disappointment about Tehran's decision to abandon the moratorium," a Russian foreign ministry statement said.

Iran's action rattled oil markets on Tuesday, helping push up the price of crude for a while.

Rafsanjani said diplomacy, not confrontation, remained the best way to solve the dispute.

"We will stand by our right to nuclear technology. They will regret creating any problems for us," he told worshippers.

Any embargo on Iranian oil exports would be a double-edged sword -- Iran is the world's fourth biggest crude oil exporter.

The United States already has a full embargo against Iran, but the EU could impose trade restrictions.

Neither the EU nor Washington is actively calling for sanctions against Iran, but any referral of the Islamic republic to the Security Council would bring that possibility closer.

The Council could impose sanctions ranging from travel curbs on government officials to a full trade embargo such as those previously imposed on Libya and Iraq.

EU3 TO BREAK OFF TALKS WITH IRAN

German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler said the "EU3" had no choice but to end talks with Iran unless it promised not to begin enriching uranium.

He said Iran's plan to resume research on uranium enrichment, a process that can produce fuel for atomic energy or weapons, violated a 2004 agreement in which Iran pledged to freeze enrichment-related work to ease fears it wants the bomb.

"There can be no further negotiations without a guarantee from Iran that it will not conduct any activities related to (uranium) enrichment," Erler told German radio.

Germany has issued some of the harshest EU condemnations of Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has said he doubted the Holocaust happened and called for the destruction of Israel.

Rafsanjani, head of the Expediency Council which arbitrates on legislative disputes, called for more diplomacy.

"They cannot take this (nuclear) know-how from us. The issue could be resolved through patience and wisdom," he said.

The EU has not ruled out further talks with Iran but has made clear that Tehran would first have to re-suspend its nuclear fuel programme. Iran began reactivating this in August 2005 when it resumed uranium processing at its Isfahan plant.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-01/...ent_4035871.htm

US has no plan to attack Iran: White House

WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (Xinhuanet)-- The United States said on Tuesday that it has no plan to attack Iran and remains committed to diplomacy over the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear program.

"The president (George W. Bush) made it pretty clear, he said previously that Iran is not Iraq," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told a news briefing.

"We're working with the international community to solve this in a peaceful and diplomatic manner, that's what we've been doing and continue to do," McClellan said.

McClellan made the remarks after Iran announced it had resumed sensitive atomic research.

The spokesman also reiterated possibility to refer Iran's nuclear issue to the Security Council of the United Nations.

"In terms of options ... he (Bush) never takes options off the table," he said, noting that if Iran breaches its international obligations, "there's no other choice but to refer the matter" to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.

The United States and the European Union suspect Tehran is trying to develop weapons under cover of a civilian atomic energy program, a charge Iran vehemently denies. Enditem

Which means a quarter of the DOD is working on one.

Pray, let America not be the nation to start a Nuke War. It's already a disgrace that we were the first to FATHER nuke bombs!

Russia Won't Block U.S. on Iran

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6011102124.html

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 12, 2006; Page A18

The Bush administration, working intensely to galvanize international pressure on Iran, has secured a guarantee from Russia that it will not block U.S. efforts to take Tehran's nuclear case to the U.N. Security Council, American and European officials said yesterday.

The commitment, made in a Tuesday night phone call between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will likely help the United States and its European allies win support from key countries weighing a tougher line in response to Iran's resumption of sensitive nuclear work.

Vice President Cheney and British Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested yesterday that Iran now faces the possibility of U.N. economic sanctions if it does not halt nuclear enrichment research it began Tuesday.

According to three senior diplomats who were briefed on the call, Lavrov told Rice that Russia would abstain, rather than vote against U.S. efforts to move the issue from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the Security Council. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed to reporters that Rice had spoken with Lavrov and other foreign ministers but did not divulge details.

Russia's pledge was good only for when a vote takes place inside the IAEA. U.S. officials said they remain uncertain as to how Moscow, a traditional ally of Iran's, would react if the issue gets to the Security Council, where Moscow is one of five countries with veto power.

Still, Bush administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity saw the Russian decision as a victory and said they would spend the next several weeks lobbying China for a similar commitment. "We spent much of our time working on the Russians, but we're now moving the focus to China," said one administration official who would only discuss the backroom diplomacy on the condition of anonymity.

The White House is hoping the IAEA board will refer Iran's case to the Security Council before President Bush delivers the State of the Union address at the end of the month, according to two senior administration officials.

Four years ago, in his annual address, Bush referred to Iran as a one of three "axis of evil" countries, along with Iraq and North Korea. But his administration has been criticized by friends and opponents for failing to come up with a strategy to curb Iran's nuclear program.

The White House has been pushing for more than two years to bring Iran's case before the Security Council, but only now -- as a result of Iran's recent actions -- has it found a chance to win enough international support to do so. The timing is ideal, U.S. officials said. John R. Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, takes over the presidency of the Security Council for one month beginning on Feb. 1, giving Washington the opportunity to place Iran at the top of the council agenda.

In an interview yesterday with Fox News Radio, Cheney said "the number one item on the agenda" at the Security Council would be a "resolution that could be enforced by sanctions." He cautioned that the process, still in flux, was "speculative at this point" but added, "that will be the next step once the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency meets and concludes that the diplomatic track they've been on isn't going to work."

In London, Blair told parliament that sanctions are a serious option. "We don't rule out any measures at all," Blair said. "It is important Iran recognizes how seriously the international community treats it."

The foreign ministers of France, Britain and Germany, who are now closely allied with Washington's position on Iran, are expected to call today for an emergency meeting of the IAEA board to vote on sending Iran's case to New York.

They are assured of winning a majority of the votes from the board's 35 members. But diplomats from all three countries, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the meeting may not take place in time for Bush's speech, saying they may need several more weeks to lobby China and other influential board members, such as India. Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns will travel to India next week to press for its support.

"We expect the meeting will most likely take place around the beginning of February," one European official said.

Robert Einhorn, who was assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation until 2001, said it would be best to press Russian and China for more than abstentions. "What we need to do now is get the Russians and Chinese to tell the Iranians they won't be in a position to help them out in the [Security] Council if they go forward with this work," he said. "If the Russians and Chinese told them that, it would have quite an impact in Tehran."

Iran says its program is designed solely to generate electricity, but the Bush administration is convinced Tehran is using it as a pathway to a nuclear bomb. So far, the IAEA has not found proof of a weapons program, but Iran's cooperation with inspectors has been shaky, and many questions remain unanswered.

Spurious attempt to tie Iran, Iraq to nuclear arms plot bypassed U.S. intelligence channels:

Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003.

(courtesy of Information Clearing House)

Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: January 11, 2006


Update: Retired Paris CIA station chief Bill Murray confirms and corrects.

Several U.S. and foreign intelligence sources, along with investigators, say an Iranian exile with ties to Iran-Contra peddled a bizarre tale of stolen uranium to governments on both sides of the Atlantic in the spring and summer of 2003.

The story that was peddled -- which detailed how an Iranian intelligence team infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war in March of 2003, and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program -- was part of an attempt to implicate both countries in a WMD plot. It later emerged that the Iranian exile was trying to collect money for his tales, sources say.

By all credible accounts, the source of this dubious tale was Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms dealer who used middle-men and cut-outs to create the appearance of several sources. Ghorbanifar played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal that threatened to take down the Reagan administration, in which the U.S. sold arms to Iran and diverted the proceeds to Nicaraguan militants.

While the various threads of the larger story of Ghorbanifar and his intelligence peddling began in December of 2001, meetings in Paris in 2003 are far more important in illustrating -- as a microcosm -- the larger difficulties faced in untangling the facts relating to global intelligence trafficking.

Tall Tale of Uranium

During the spring and summer of 2003, Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) made several visits to Paris to meet with a source believed to have important military intelligence information.

Unbeknownst to Weldon, the informant, who he would dub simply "Ali," was already peddling a tale of stolen uranium traveling between Iraq and Iran that had been deemed false by most intelligence agencies.

As reported by American Prospect and confirmed by intelligence sources, Ali is a pseudonym used to identify a former minister in the Shah's Iran, Fereidoun Mahdavi. Mahdavi himself is a secretary to Ghorbanifar, the originating source of the uranium fable.

The American Prospect's reporters wrote, "'Ali' is actually a cipher for Manucher Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealer and accused intelligence fabricator -- and the potential instrument of another potentially dangerous manipulation of American policy in the Persian Gulf region."

The Washington Post discusses Ali as follows: "'These secrets,' he says, come from 'an impeccable clandestine source,' whom Weldon code-names 'Ali,' an Iranian exile living in Paris who is a close associate of Manucher Gorbanifar. Gorbanifar is a well-known Iranian exile whom the CIA branded as a fabricator during the 1980s but who was used by the Reagan White House as a middleman for the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran."

According to several intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic, the tale that "Ali" tells Weldon and others was as intricate as it was false.

"Ali provided information that indicated Iranian intelligence had sent a team to Baghdad to extract highly enriched uranium (weapons grade) from a stockpile hidden by Saddam Hussein," one intelligence source said.

Ali asserted that an Iranian intelligence team had infiltrated Iraq prior to the start of the war and stole enriched uranium to use in their own nuclear weapons program, sources say.

Ghorbanifar said "the team successfully extracted the stockpile but on the way back to Iran contracted radiation poisoning," one source remarked.

Upon learning this information Weldon says that he immediately notified then-CIA director George Tenet.

"Tenet appeared interested, even enthusiastic about evaluating Ali and establishing a working relationship with him," Weldon wrote in his book, Countdown to Terror. "He agreed to send his top spy, Stephen Kappes, the deputy director of operations, along with me to Paris for another debriefing of Ali.

"On the day of our scheduled second meeting with Ali in Paris, Kappes bowed out, claiming that "other commitments" compelled him to cancel," Weldon continued. "Later, the CIA claimed to have met with Ali independently. But I discovered this to be untrue... Incredibly, I learned that the CIA had apparently asked French intelligence to silence Ali."

But according to the Prospect and several sources in intelligence abroad, the CIA did investigate, as did the Department of Defense. According to the Post, the agency tasked then-Paris station chief Bill Murray with investigating the claim, who ultimately found Ali to be a "fabricator."

The CIA, understanding Ali to be Ghorbanifar, did not think him a credible source.

Intelligence sources and a source close to the UN Security Council tell RAW STORY Murray took Ali (either Ghorbanifar or his agent) to Iraq in order to retrace the footsteps of the alleged mission in which the uranium was stolen from Saddam's own stockpile and taken back to Iran. In the end, sources say, the entire event proved a wild goose chase because Ali's earlier clarity all but evaporated.

"Soon it became apparent that Ali and his sources were fabricators and were trying to extract large sums of money," one intelligence source said.

Murray says he did meet with the source, but was not part of a trip to Iraq.

"I did not make any such trip," Murray said. "I met with the source, found that he was not credible, forwarded the information he gave us to Washington, where it was thoroughly analyzed by many people and found not to add anything new to what we knew about Iran. The sensational charges that the source made could not be substantiated."

Weldon's office declined to comment for the record after several extended conversations. RAW STORY delayed the article for a day to give Weldon's office a chance to comment.

The neoconservative movement has long expressed an inherent distrust of the CIA. Many neoconservatives note that the agency undercounted Russia's nuclear stockpile in the waning days of the Soviet Union, and believe that it routinely underestimates foreign threats.

Weldon, who had been led to believe the CIA never opened an investigation into the information he provided, took his case directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld then pressured the CIA to investigate further.

"CIA reluctantly, after pressure from Rumsfeld, followed up by detaching one of their weapons experts from the team that was hunting WMD in Iraq," one former CIA officer who asked to remain anonymous said.

Sources say that this second investigation resulted in another wild goose chase. The question of motive, however, seems to either have been entirely missed or simply glossed over.

Weldon seen caught in web

By all accounts, Weldon seems to be more of an innocent bystander taken in by an internationally known con-man and the lure of spook-like activities than an inside player with an agenda or material participant in these events.

The Ali composite seems to have used Weldon as a conduit by which to provide the CIA with information.

There was good reason to be cautious of Manucher Ghorbanifahr, who, along with his secretary, made up the "cipher" of Ali.

The CIA had already had issued two burn notices against Ghorbanifahr as early as 1984 and his role in Iran-Contra as a middleman between the hardline neoconservative and another Iran-Contra figure, Michael Ledeen.

In his book, Weldon said he met Ghorbanifahr after being approached by a Democratic congressman.

"On March 7, 2003, a former Democratic member of Congress and my good friend Ron Klink called and asked to meet with me. . . . The source was Ali. My contacts with him were at first by telephone. Subsequently, Ali sent faxes to my home on a regular basis from different hotels in Paris, where he lives in exile. Eventually, as the information became more detailed and critical, I decided on a face-to-face meeting." (Countdown to Terror, p. 4).
Why such highly important information would be provided to Klink and then Weldon as opposed to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee remains unclear.

Neoconservative Leeden explains meetings

Ghorbanifahr has strong ties to Michael Ledeen, and both of them were involved in a controversial meeting in Rome of 2001. That meeting, whose purpose is unknown, included high level officials in Italian intelligence, Iranian nationals and Larry Franklin, a former Defense Department analyst who current pled guilty to charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Also in attendance was Middle East expert Harold Rhode, also under investigation for charges of passing classified information to Israel and Iran. Both Rhode and Franklin worked for Feith in the Office of Special plans.

Ledeen was consulting for OSP when all three were dispatched to Rome in 2001. He says the meetings had nothing to do with Iraq.

"The Rome meetings had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, but with Iran and Afghanistan," Ledeen wrote in an email. "I don't think a single word was pronounced, by anyone, on Iraq."

Later, in a phone conversation, Ledeen explained that the Rome meeting had to do with what his sources told him was going on on the ground in Afghanistan, namely that Iran was allegedly fueling the Afghan insurgency.

"I reported this back," Ledeen said. "This information saved American lives."

According to James Risen's New York Times article dated December of 2003, Ledeen was a paid consultant to the National Security Council at the time of the meeting. Risen reports that National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was informed of the plans for the meeting and that Hadley expressed reservations given Ledeen and Ghorbanifahr's background.

The Office of Special Plans, however, authorized the meeting without notifying any other agency, violating protocol. They did not notify the Rome CIA station chief or the U.S. Ambassador to Italy, Mel Sembler.

Ledeen, however, says that Hadley had authorized the trip. This would also implicate Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then-National Security Advisor.

"Hadley authorized it and he could not have done so without reporting it to his direct superior," said Ledeen.

Ledeen also denies that he had anything to do beyond that first meeting in December of 2001.

"I was involved in one meeting, in Rome, in December 2001," Leeden said. "Period."

Paris, Again

The uranium story peddled to Weldon is strikingly similar to the story told to Ledeen.

"I approached a variety of government officials, lots of them, and told them that I had a reliable source that told me about how and where the Iranians stole enriched uranium from Iraq," Ledeen said.

Ledeen says his source then went on to explain that the "stash" was buried in an underground facility and recounted, much like Weldon did, that neither the CIA, the Defense Department or the State Department would listen to his concerns.

Asked if his source was Ghorbanifahr, Ledeen said "No," but was unable to tell the identity of his source for fear said source might be "put in danger."

Who arranged the meetings and their ultimate purpose remains unclear. One intelligence official, however, described the series of events and the market of intelligence trafficking as follows: "If you were going to launder intel to make up a war, you could easily send some fool on an errand."

Hardball is trumping up Nuclear Iran it's coming people

But a nuclear Iran is a real concern. And saying it does not necessarily mean that they would try something as stupid and reckless as to make a massive attack on Iran. On the other hand I see no guarantee that they aren't as stupid and reckless as that.

I think that is the sad thing is that we can't trust them. I truely wish I could trust them on this but it scares the heck out of me. I honestly wish there were no articles to post on this because it isn't a problem. The fact remains it is out there and a lot more is coming out now a days.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200601120005

O'Reilly: "It's just a matter of time ... before we have to bomb" Iran

Summary: Bill O'Reilly declared on his radio show that "it's a matter of time before the United States of America and Great Britain will have to bomb the country of Iran."

On the January 10 broadcast of his syndicated radio show, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly declared that "it's just a matter of time ... before we have to bomb that country [Iran]." O'Reilly's remark came during a discussion about Iran's removal of seals earlier this month on equipment and materials related to uranium enrichment at a plant in Natanz, after more than two years of suspending enrichment-related activities. Iran asserted that the government's decision to resume work was for research purposes. According to a January 10 statement by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), "IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei expressed his serious concern about Iran's decision to unravel the suspension of enrichment-related activities requested by the IAEA Board of Governors before the Agency has clarified the nature of Iran's nuclear programme."

During O'Reilly's discussion, when co-host E.D. Hill said, "I thought France and Germany were handling this Iran situation," O'Reilly responded: "That was E.D. Hill in the Land of Oz, ladies and gentlemen. So, it's a matter of time before the United States of America and Great Britain will have to bomb the country of Iran."

From the January 10 edition of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: Here's the important story of the day that no one will tell you about. The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog program, Mohamed ElBaradei, has told the United Nations that Iran will begin uranium enrichment work, contradicting previous statements from the mullahs who run Iran. So look, it's just a matter of time, ladies and gentlemen, before we have to bomb that country. So it's like the bird flu. You know, bird flu, we gotta keep an eye on it 'cause it's -- it looks like its coming here.

HILL: I thought France and Germany were handling this Iran situation.

O'REILLY: Yeah, OK. That was E.D. Hill in the Land of Oz, ladies and gentlemen. So, it's a matter of time before the United States of America and Great Britain will have to bomb the country of Iran. Get set. Get set. 'Cause they're not gonna leave it to Israel to do it this time, because you can't allow that country to get nuclear weapons. Now, the nutty left will say, "Oh, yeah, let 'em have nuclear weapons." Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is why you've gotta walk away from those people. Because once that happens, once a country like Iran gets the ability to manufacture a nuclear weapon of any kind, Al Qaeda's gonna get it, and they're gonna use it. I mean, that's what's gonna happen. So no sane person could take that chance. Therefore, it's just a matter of when we're gonna bomb the country of Iran. And that's gonna set off a worldwide catastrophe, because there are millions of people who believe that we, the United States, are the terror state. Harry Belafonte said it yesterday: We're the cause of all this.

The Bush Who Cried Wolf

By Robert Dreyfuss
TomPaine.com

Thursday 12 January 2006

The deteriorating international crisis over Iran is a direct result of the Bush's administration's ham-handed and mendacious Iraq policy.

Under normal circumstances - that is, under any previous US administration - the battle over Iran's pugnacious effort in pursuit of nuclear technology would be amenable to a diplomatic solution. But, by insisting on a national security strategy of pre-emptive war, by illegally and unilaterally invading Iraq on false pretenses, and by hinting that the White House would tolerate an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear plants, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have made a successful diplomatic resolution of the Iran crisis nearly impossible.

Speaking yesterday at the Council for National Policy, Larry Wilkerson - the former top aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell who caused a stir last fall when he accused Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld of operating a "cabal" - said that it is likely that Pentagon officials are polishing contingency plans for a strike against Iran. Iran, said Wilkerson, is the "principal winner" from the war in Iraq. As a result of the power of the Shiite religious forces in Iraq, he said, the Iranians "own the south" of Iraq. Wilkerson insisted that the United States ought to "talk to the people who really matter in Iran" - i.e., to the ayatollahs. But he said that US policy has failed so utterly that the door to negotiations with Iran is virtually closed. "When you close the door to diplomacy, you have no other option but to rely on military power," he said. "I hope to hell we don't have to use it."

Without diplomatic tools, the looming showdown with Iran is potentially even more dangerous than the Iraq war. Iran is a far larger and more complex country, with the capability of retaliating against a US/Israeli attack by fomenting civil war in Iraq, by creating regional chaos in the Gulf, and by mobilizing its significant international terrorist capability against Western targets.

As it did in the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration - along with Israel - is content to exaggerate the threat from Iran. The ayatollahs appear to be at least five years or more away from a serious nuclear capacity, according to US intelligence reports. Iran's recent decision to restart one part of its nuclear research is indeed a serious threat to diplomatic talks aimed at resolving the matter peacefully. But the issue is nowhere near an end-game stage. There is plenty of time, years in fact, for a back-and-forth effort to secure Iran's compliance with International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.

By crying wolf over Iraq, through claiming that Saddam Hussein's regime had an active nuclear arms program, the United States lacks credibility when it now asserts that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. And by its illegal, unilateral invasion of Iraq, without allowing the UN and the IAEA to proceed with inspections there, the United States has made other countries extremely wary of taking Iran to the UN Security Council, out of fear that it might give the United States or Israel a pretext to attack Iran unilaterally.

But the international community's justified fear that the United States is controlled by a war party seeking to attack Iran makes other states' diplomacy even harder. Normally, the five UN Security Council powers would take up the matter with some urgency, adopt a resolution demanding Iran compliance, and threaten political and economic sanctions against Iran for non-compliance. But Moscow, Beijing and Paris remember what happened in Iraq. That matter was taken to the UNSC, a resolution passed - and then Washington declared unilaterally that Iraq had violated it, and went to war. So the world's capitals may be forgiven for being reluctant to drag Iran into the UNSC in 2006.

The fact that John Bolton, the belligerent, war-mongering neoconservative who serves as US ambassador to the UN, takes over as president of the Security Council in February doesn't help.

Bolton, Cheney and their allies are pushing for a showdown in the UNSC, even though it is highly unlikely that either Russia or China would support anti-Iran sanctions. India, the Arab League and other countries would strongly oppose such measures. And even Western Europe, furious over Iran for its latest effrontery, doesn't view sanctions on Iran as a happy outcome. Their resistance to anti-Iran measures comes despite a string of outrageous provocations from Iranian President Ahmadinejad, from demanding that Israel be "wiped off the map" to pooh-poohing the Holocaust to haughtily restarting Iran's nuclear research.

It is impossible to deny that Iran is a dangerous, out-of-control regime - yes, a "rogue" regime. But, had the Bush administration maintained a consistent policy of seeking a dialogue with Iran, had the neocons refrained from demanding regime change and military action, had President Bush not referred to Iran as part of a mythical "axis of evil," and had the United States not immensely strengthened Iran's position by handing it Iraq on a silver platter, diplomacy would stand a better chance. A package deal, giving Iran political acceptance and economic incentives, combined with a regulated nuclear technology regime, in exchange for Iran's backing down from its hard-line stance, could likely have been reached over time. It may still, but it seems highly unlikely now.

So we are left with persistent reports that both the United States and Israel are planning to strike Iran, and soon. Not only would such an attack result in a vastly wider conflict in Iran, Iraq and the Gulf, but it would also probably push oil prices well over $100 a barrel, making $5-a-gallon gas a reality. Perhaps, because the international community wants to avoid such a catastrophe, and because the United States is exerting enormous pressure on Russia, China and other world powers, first the IAEA and then the UNSC might vote to sanction Iran. If so, Iran will certainly not back down. And as a result, the United States will have the pretext it seeks to go to war once again.

Some Democrats - and even a fair number of moderate and libertarian Republicans - expect the November 2006 elections to take place against the backdrop of a failed occupation of Iraq. Instead, those same elections might take place in the midst of yet another crisis manufactured by the Bush administration.




http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011206D.shtml

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Iran: The nuclear nightmare
Tehran's defiance sparks fears of a regional showdown
By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor
Published: 13 January 2006
The confrontation between Iran and the West deepened yesterday as both sides hardened their positions over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany announced that more than two years of negotiations with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons programme were at a "dead end" and they urged the UN nuclear watchdog to call an emergency board meeting to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, accusing Tehran of a "documented record of concealment and deception". Diplomats said the talks at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would probably be held in the first week of next month.

The Iranian leadership stood firm in response. "We are not worried about our nuclear case being sent to the Security Council," Gholamreza Rahmani-Fazli, the deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said on Iranian television. Earlier, the former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani said on radio that the stand off had "become very serious and has reached its climax". He said Iran intended to press on with its nuclear programme and had no intention of complying with " colonial taboos".

Western fears that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon have been fuelled by statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since his election in June last year. He has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" , and Iran has taken steps since August to reverse commitments to the international community on freezing its uranium-related activities. The most serious step came on Tuesday, when the Iranians broke UN seals at its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, which can be used to produce weapons-grade material.

As a result, Iran is faced with the real possibility of being referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions for the first time after more than two years of talking to the Europeans about curbing its nuclear activities.

Iran insists that its intentions in pursuing nuclear technology are peaceful. But the West has continued to harbour suspicions because of the Iranians' refusal to come clean on the extent of its nuclear programme, which was concealed from inspectors for 18 years. There also questions as to why oil-rich Iran, with its vast energy reserves, is so keen to develop nuclear energy.

Last week, a leaked EU intelligence assessment provided more details about companies and middlemen used by the Iranians in their search for nuclear suppliers in Europe and the former Soviet Union. The report provided no proof, however, that the materials were destined for a nuclear weapon.

Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector who headed the UN nuclear watchdog, said: "I think some of the Iranians want to go to nuclear weapons." He pointed to a 40-megawatt heavy-water plant at Arak, which could produce enough plutonium for a nuclear bomb, as a sign that Iran may not have purely peaceful intentions.

A former Israeli general said he recently met Iranian figures in Europe who told him Tehran was "very determined" to acquire nuclear weapons. Uzi Dayan said his informants had an Iranian academic and civil servant background and represented "the official Iranian position". Israel has refused to rule out a possible pre-emptive military strike on Iran.

The European statement issued after the ministers' talks in Berlin stressed that the current dispute is "about Iran's failure to build the necessary confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme. Iran continues to challenge the authority of the IAEA Board by ignoring its repeated requests and providing only partial co-operation to the IAEA." The statement noted that this is not just a dispute between Iran and Europe "but between Iran and the whole international community" . It said it was important for the credibility of the non-proliferation regime, as well as the stability of the Middle East region, "that the international community responds firmly to this challenge".

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, urged the UN Security Council to maintain the pressure on the Iranians.

However, Iran argues that it has a right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium, and has informed the IAEA that it only intends to conduct small-scale enrichment at Natanz . The Europeans and US could face difficulties in referring Iran to the UN Security Council for breaking a moratorium which was voluntary in the first place, and without the IAEA declaring Iran to be in breach of its obligations.

The Europeans and the US stressed that they still hope for a diplomatic solution to the stand off. But some analysts said it was a mistake by the Europeans and the Bush administration in recent days to use threatening language that could force Iran into even more extreme positions.

Sounds familiar?
IRAQ

WMD

Signatory of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty accused of holding weapons of mass destruction including a nuclear arms programme. UN weapons inspectors were expelled from the country on the eve of the 2003 war.

CONCEALMENT

Confirmed to UN in 1995 that it had a clandestine nuclear weapons scheme following revelations by Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law who had defected. Before 2003 invasion, regime was accused of concealing WMD from UN inspectors.

MISCALCULATION

Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, 5 March 2003: "It serves the interest of no one for Saddam to miscalculate. It doesn't serve the interest of the United States or the world or Iraq for Saddam to miscalculate our intention or our willingness to act."

SECURITY COUNCIL

November 2002: Iraq threatened with military action unless it co-operates with UN inspectors. US leads invasion without Security Council backing.

IRAN

WMD

Signatory of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty accused of working on nuclear weapons programme. UN weapons inspectors are at work in the country.

CONCEALMENT

Confirmed to UN in 2002 that it had a clandestine nuclear programme after revelations by Iranian dissidents. Iran was accused by Britain, France and Germany yesterday of "concealment and deception".

MISCALCULATION

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 11 January, 2006: "The Iranian regime has made a serious miscalculation.If negotiations have run their course and Iran is not going to negotiate in good faith, then there's no other option but to refer the matter to the Security Council."

SECURITY COUNCIL

12 January 2006: Britain, France and Germany call for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Failure to reach agreement could give US hawks - and Israel - an excuse for unilateral military action.

The confrontation between Iran and the West deepened yesterday as both sides hardened their positions over the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany announced that more than two years of negotiations with Iran over its suspected nuclear weapons programme were at a "dead end" and they urged the UN nuclear watchdog to call an emergency board meeting to refer Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, accusing Tehran of a "documented record of concealment and deception". Diplomats said the talks at the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would probably be held in the first week of next month.

The Iranian leadership stood firm in response. "We are not worried about our nuclear case being sent to the Security Council," Gholamreza Rahmani-Fazli, the deputy secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said on Iranian television. Earlier, the former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani said on radio that the stand off had "become very serious and has reached its climax". He said Iran intended to press on with its nuclear programme and had no intention of complying with " colonial taboos".

Western fears that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon have been fuelled by statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since his election in June last year. He has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map" , and Iran has taken steps since August to reverse commitments to the international community on freezing its uranium-related activities. The most serious step came on Tuesday, when the Iranians broke UN seals at its uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, which can be used to produce weapons-grade material.

As a result, Iran is faced with the real possibility of being referred to the UN Security Council for sanctions for the first time after more than two years of talking to the Europeans about curbing its nuclear activities.

Iran insists that its intentions in pursuing nuclear technology are peaceful. But the West has continued to harbour suspicions because of the Iranians' refusal to come clean on the extent of its nuclear programme, which was concealed from inspectors for 18 years. There also questions as to why oil-rich Iran, with its vast energy reserves, is so keen to develop nuclear energy.

Last week, a leaked EU intelligence assessment provided more details about companies and middlemen used by the Iranians in their search for nuclear suppliers in Europe and the former Soviet Union. The report provided no proof, however, that the materials were destined for a nuclear weapon.

Hans Blix, the former chief UN weapons inspector who headed the UN nuclear watchdog, said: "I think some of the Iranians want to go to nuclear weapons." He pointed to a 40-megawatt heavy-water plant at Arak, which could produce enough plutonium for a nuclear bomb, as a sign that Iran may not have purely peaceful intentions.

A former Israeli general said he recently met Iranian figures in Europe who told him Tehran was "very determined" to acquire nuclear weapons. Uzi Dayan said his informants had an Iranian academic and civil servant background and represented "the official Iranian position". Israel has refused to rule out a possible pre-emptive military strike on Iran.

The European statement issued after the ministers' talks in Berlin stressed that the current dispute is "about Iran's failure to build the necessary confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear programme. Iran continues to challenge the authority of the IAEA Board by ignoring its repeated requests and providing only partial co-operation to the IAEA." The statement noted that this is not just a dispute between Iran and Europe "but between Iran and the whole international community" . It said it was important for the credibility of the non-proliferation regime, as well as the stability of the Middle East region, "that the international community responds firmly to this challenge".
The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, urged the UN Security Council to maintain the pressure on the Iranians.

However, Iran argues that it has a right under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty to enrich uranium, and has informed the IAEA that it only intends to conduct small-scale enrichment at Natanz . The Europeans and US could face difficulties in referring Iran to the UN Security Council for breaking a moratorium which was voluntary in the first place, and without the IAEA declaring Iran to be in breach of its obligations.

The Europeans and the US stressed that they still hope for a diplomatic solution to the stand off. But some analysts said it was a mistake by the Europeans and the Bush administration in recent days to use threatening language that could force Iran into even more extreme positions.

Sounds familiar?
IRAQ

WMD

Signatory of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty accused of holding weapons of mass destruction including a nuclear arms programme. UN weapons inspectors were expelled from the country on the eve of the 2003 war.

CONCEALMENT

Confirmed to UN in 1995 that it had a clandestine nuclear weapons scheme following revelations by Saddam Hussein's brother-in-law who had defected. Before 2003 invasion, regime was accused of concealing WMD from UN inspectors.

MISCALCULATION

Colin Powell, US Secretary of State, 5 March 2003: "It serves the interest of no one for Saddam to miscalculate. It doesn't serve the interest of the United States or the world or Iraq for Saddam to miscalculate our intention or our willingness to act."

SECURITY COUNCIL

November 2002: Iraq threatened with military action unless it co-operates with UN inspectors. US leads invasion without Security Council backing.

IRAN

WMD

Signatory of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty accused of working on nuclear weapons programme. UN weapons inspectors are at work in the country.

CONCEALMENT

Confirmed to UN in 2002 that it had a clandestine nuclear programme after revelations by Iranian dissidents. Iran was accused by Britain, France and Germany yesterday of "concealment and deception".

MISCALCULATION

White House spokesman Scott McClellan, 11 January, 2006: "The Iranian regime has made a serious miscalculation.If negotiations have run their course and Iran is not going to negotiate in good faith, then there's no other option but to refer the matter to the Security Council."

SECURITY COUNCIL

12 January 2006: Britain, France and Germany call for Iran to be referred to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Failure to reach agreement could give US hawks - and Israel - an excuse for unilateral military action.

January 13, 2006
War, Lies, and Videotape
They fabricated the case against Iraq –
now they're moving on Iran
by Justin Raimondo
As the U.S. gets ready to move on Iran, under the pretext of a gathering Iranian nuclear threat, the news that the War Party got creative when WMD were nowhere to be found in Iraq should give us pause. According to a report in Raw Story by Larisa Alexandrovna, the Office of Special Plans (OSP) – a parallel intelligence agency set up by the neoconservatives to do an end run around the mainline U.S. agencies – was sent into Iraq in 2003 in order to cook up phony "evidence" of "weapons of mass destruction." As Alexandrovna relates:

"Three U.S. intelligence sources and a source close to the United Nations Security Council say that the Pentagon civilian leadership under the guidance of Stephen Cambone, appointed to lead Defense Department intelligence in March 2003, dispatched a series of 'off book' missions out of the ultra-secretive Office of Special Plans (OSP). The team was tasked to secure the followi