Debate Essential To Arab-Israeli Peace By Amy Goodman "The word 'apartheid' is exactly accurate. This is an area that's occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated. Palestinians can't even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18381.htm

The Greatest Story Never Told By Stephen Lendman No issue is more sensitive in the US than daring to criticize Israel. It's the metaphorical "third rail" in American politics, academia and the major media. Anyone daring to touch it pays dearly as the few who tried learned. Those in elected office face an onslaught of attacks and efforts to replace them with more supportive officials.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18392.htm

An assassination that blows apart Bush's hopes of pacifying Iraq : Last week George Bush flew into Iraq to meet Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, leader of Anbar province. This week General David Petraeus told the US Congress how Anbar was a model for Iraq. Yesterday Abu Risha was assassinated by bombers in Anbar
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle...icle2961318.ece
Pepe Escobar : Mr Bush, your sheikh is dead : Some may call it divine providence, some may call it Allah's bidding; in the end it was up to real Iraq to intervene and shatter the "surge is a success" story sold to US and world public opinion by President George W Bush and his top man in Iraq, General David Petraeus.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II15Ak03.html

Juan Cole: Iraq Oil Bonanza for Hunt; Displacement, Hunger, Alcoholism, Addiction for Iraqis: Texas oil cronies readying to clean up.
http://www.alternet.org/story/62134/

Iran Gets China's Support on Nuclear Issue: - A senior Iranian government envoy is visiting China to bolster support for a long-time ally, amid a new U.S. push for Security Council sanctions over Tehran's controversial nuclear program.
http://www.crosswalk.com/news/11554117/

India strongly opposes any US military action against Iran: External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the row over Iran's nuclear program should be resolved through dialogue and the ongoing talks between Tehran and the UN atomic watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should be allowed to reach the logical conclusion.
http://snipurl.com/1qqlk

British academics warn US is preparing "shock and awe" attack on Iran: Full report: PDF file.
http://www.rawstory.com/images/other/IranStudy082807a.pdf

In which I argue that the ORB poll released in Britain (and reported
today in the Los Angeles Times) is consistent with Just Foreign
Policy's extrapolation of the Iraqi death toll estimated by the Lancet
study. Roughly speaking, the ORB confidence interval covers the
extrapolated Lancet estimate, and the extrapolated Lancet confidence
interval covers the ORB estimate.

In other words, the main difference between the ORB estimate and the
Lancet estimate is that a lot of people have been killed in Iraq since
the Lancet cluster survey in July 2006.

(The LAT report gave the impression that the ORB estimate was higher
than Lancet without noting that they covered a different period.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naima...-w_b_64475.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/14/15210/1864

--
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org

Just Foreign Policy's current estimate of Iraqi deaths due to violence
since the U.S. invasion - now more than a million:
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

The General Came to Washington
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Blend a war and a presidential campaign and you have a recipe for 200 per cent proof mendacity, as the Petraeus hearings at the start of the week triumphantly proved.

Take the war first. Into the witness chair in the Senate chamber marched General Petraeus, the blaze of ribbons on his chest suggesting actual combat experience somewhat longer than the modest four years his record discloses. He was once shot in he chest, it’s true, but that was in a military exercise in the U.S. when a soldier’s gun went off by accident. Many senior army and navy officers loathe the toadying Petraeus. According to an amusing column by Gareth Porter of IPS, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), “derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting. Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be ‘an ass-kissing little chickenshit’ and added, ‘I hate people like that’, the sources say.”

Mechanically, the general read through testimony freshly vetted and re-written by Vice President Cheney, a man well aware that despite the utter absence of any supportive evidence and owing much to his own untiring falsehoods on the matter, 33 percent of all Americans, including 40 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of Democrats, believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 al-Qaeda attacks.

Hence Petraeus’ testimony had a reference in almost every paragraph to al-Qaeda terror groups in Iraq, even though prudent estimates put total al-Qaeda membership in Iraq at 1,500 at most, thus furnishing some 5 per cent of the Sunni resistance.

The General spoke glowingly of his Surge. He marched the senators through graphs and flow charts, whose soaring curves and bars spelled out Order and Progress, just like the Brazilian national flag.

In fact it’s hard to demonstrate there’s ever really been a surge, (as the Pentagon military analyst cloaked under the pseudonym Herman Mindshaftgap concisely demonstrates on this website today). Right now the US is at a highpoint, with 162,000 troops in Iraq. But that’s not far above the 160,000 deployment level at the end of 2005. Moreover, there’s a steady decline in the Coalition of the Willing, which now stands at 11,500, falling at an average of 575 a month. Total Coalition troops in Iraq total 173,500, well below the peak of 183,000 at the end of 2005.

General Petraeus loosed off his volleys of bogus numbers and the senatorial candidates for presidential nomination returned fire in carefully prepared but equally meretricious salvoes. There were five such candidates on display – Clinton, Obama, Biden, Dodd,(all Democrats) and the Republican McCain.

This doesn’t count General Petraeus himself who, according to Patrick Cockburn’s story on Thursday’s CounterPunch site, disclosed his own presidential ambitions to an Iraqi official two years ago, though he apparently confided to the Iraqi that a 2008 run would be premature. He probably hopes he’ll be running against President Clinton in 2012. Candidate Clinton whacked presumptive candidate Petraeus with Coleridge’s definition of “dramatic truth”. To believe his report, she said, would require “the willing suspension of disbelief”, a line which duly made its way onto the front pages and news headlines, as did Candidate Obama’s theatrical question, “At what point do we say, Enough.”

Mrs Clinton’s problem is that she very willingly suspended disbelief in 2002. When it came time to deliver her Senate speech in support of the war, she reiterated some of the most outlandish claims made by Dick Cheney. In this speech she said Saddam Hussein had rebuilt his chemical and biological weapons program; that he had improved his long-range missile capability; that he was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program; and that he was giving aid and comfort to Al Qaeda. The only other Democratic senator to make all four of these claims in his floor speech was Joe Lieberman. But even he didn’t go as far as Senator Clinton. In Lieberman’s speech, there was conditionality about some of the claims. In Senator Clinton’s, there was none, though even the grotesque war hawk, Ken Pollack, advising Senator Clinton prior to her vote, had told her that the allegation about the Al Qaeda connection was “bullshit.”

Later, as the winds of opinion changed, Senator Clinton claimed – and continues to do so to this day – that hers was a vote not for war but for negotiation. In fact, the record shows that only hours after the war authorization vote Senator voted against the Democratic resolution that would have required Bush to seek a diplomatic solution before launching the war.

Barrack Obama, lagging in the polls behind Mrs Clinton rushed to Iowa on Wednesday to savage his prime rival for her war vote. "Despite -- or perhaps because of how much experience they had in Washington, too many politicians feared looking weak and failed to ask hard questions. I opposed this war from the beginning. I opposed the war in 2002, I opposed it in 2003, I opposed it in 2004, I opposed it in 2005," Obama declared, in Clinton, Iowa. All the Democrats flourish urgent schedules for withdrawal. General Petraeus says that 30,000 troops can go home next summer, owing to the Surge’s splendid success.

Realists in military circles reckon the overall situation in Iraq is worsening, from the point of view of the United States; that by next spring, as one puts it, “the active-duty Army and Marine Corps will start to break under the current load”. Forces will decline, unless Bush orders a real surge next year in involuntarily mobilized reservists. He won’t do that. The war is lost, but like many a lost war, it will last a very long time. Acting President Bush made that clear in his address to the nation (small portions thereof. Candidate Petraeus may well have the chance in 2012 to tax President Clinton about the “stalemate in Iraq”.

I doubt if anyone involved in the Iraq disaster will be well received by the voters, even years down the road.

What Really Happened on 9-11?
The events of 9-11 are seared into the collective psyche of this generation. We have all been affected by the catastrophes of that fateful day, but what really happened on 9-11?

Some people believe an outlandish conspiracy theory involving 19 Arab hijackers who allegedly: commandeered four commercial jets with nothing more than their cunning, wit, resolve, hatred of America, and some box cutters; then proceed to fly these aircraft around US airspace unfettered for a total lapsed time of over an hour; on three of the planes, pulled stunning flight maneuvers beyond the capability of even expert pilots; and, managed to cause damage to their targets — one of which just happens to have been the most heavily defended building in the world — so extreme as to be in clear violation of several well understood laws of Physics, Chemistry, and Thermodynamics. This amazing conspiracy theory is even more suspicious and bizarre in that it is the one proffered by the United States Government (USG) and the 9-11 Cover-Up Omission Commission. In the 9-11 Truth Movement we call it the Official Conspiracy Theory (OCT).

Thankfully, despite the best efforts of the corporate-controlled media and virtually the entire US Congress, there are literally millions of people in this country and millions more around the world who do not believe that these 19 Arabs, as clever as they purportedly were, could have somehow suspended the laws of Physics on 9-11.

Are There Competing Conspiracy Theories?
We just observed that the official story of 9-11 is in fact a “conspiracy theory”… and a wacky one at that, one that happens to be physically impossible!

There must be another explanation, one that doesn’t require us to rewrite most of Newtonian Physics. There is, in fact, another explanation that is supported by the empirical evidence, the observed events of the day. It is more than a “conspiracy theory” at this point. It has been sufficiently verified, tested, and refined to be rightly called a “conspiracy reality”.

True, there are competing conspiracy “theories”, but they only compete with the OCT not the conspiracy reality, as they all have anomalies, inconsistencies, improbabilities, and out right impossibilities that will keep them forever in the realm of “theory” unsupported by fact. These conspiracy “theories” that eschew the OCT only to embrace other utter nonsense (like: planes didn’t hit the WTC, holograms and “video trickery” were used instead; the three WTC skyscrapers demolished on 9-11 were destroyed by exotic, space-based, directed energy beam weapons; a commercial jet really did hit the Pentagon) are in reality all part of a concerted COINTELPRO-style USG disinformation campaign designed to splinter and marginalize those of us who have solved the Rubik’s Cube of 9-11. These “theories” don’t compete with what is known to be true by the vast majority of the 9-11 Truth Movement, they are deliberate and elaborate disinformation campaigns designed to make those of us who do know the truth look foolish by association.

What Is The Real Conspiracy?
Here is a synopsis of what the best and brightest researchers around the world have gleaned over the past five-plus years from the best evidence available:

Link to more:
(Be sure to click on 'coconspirators' to see list of SUSPECTS)

http://www.whodidit.org/index.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/20..._war/print.html





How Bush is trying to save face in Iraq
The president is now taking credit for turning Sunni tribes against al-Qaida in Iraq. But two years ago he rejected a Sunni offer to negotiate an end to the violence. By Sidney Blumenthal

Sep. 13, 2007 | Two years ago the Sunni sheiks leading the insurgency in Iraq's Anbar province approached the United States, offering to end the violence in exchange for a timetable establishing that U.S. forces would withdraw from the country, a senior official at the highest level of the British government told me. Without some sort of negotiated deal that the Sunni leaders could brandish, they explained, they would not have the essential political justification for quelling the conflict. The British believed that the Sunni offer was being made in good faith and urged that it be accepted. But according to the senior British source, President Bush rejected it out of hand, still certain that he could achieve a military victory. He saw any agreement with the Sunnis as tantamount to defeat, the British official said. And yet, even as the Sunnis were rebuffed, Bush continued to invest trust in the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government to forge a political conciliation.

Now, Thursday night, in a nationally televised address from the Oval Office, President Bush will announce the withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Iraq by July 2008, leaving the U.S. force at the level it was before the "surge," through the presidential election year. He will claim that he is able to withdraw these troops because of the success of his plan, as proved by the result of the turning of Sunni tribes in Anbar province against al-Qaida in Iraq.

As Gen. David Petraeus did in his congressional testimony, Bush will point to events in Anbar as the key evidence of the surge's triumph. What he will not be discussing is how he discarded the earlier Sunni offer to negotiate and dismissed the advice of the British government as he pursued the chimera of "victory." He will also carefully neglect to observe that the Sunni action against al-Qaida in Iraq began independently before the surge, that it was never foreseen as part of the surge, that the Sunnis politically are more estranged than ever from the Shiite-run government of Nouri al-Maliki, or that the U.S. arming of the Sunnis may be a perverse preparation for the next phase of the Iraqi sectarian civil war in the likely absence of political power sharing. Nor will Bush explain the contradiction between his withdrawal of these 30,000 troops and his doomsday scenarios that withdrawing U.S. forces will presage genocide on the scale of Cambodia.

The appearance of Gen. Petraeus was staged to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. Yet the emotional impact of the memorials has been overshadowed by the fresh casualty lists from Iraq. The day before this Sept. 11, two U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, who had joined five others in writing an Op-Ed article for the New York Times saying that the surge was not working, were killed in action. Yet Bush still sought to wring political gain out of the tragic memories of 9/11 as though his paradise lost -- the national unity after 9/11 -- could be regained.

Artillery barrages of TV commercials seeking to soften public opinion preceded Petraeus' report. A new front group, Freedom's Watch, founded at the instigation of the White House, funded by Bush's political financiers (including prominent members of the Scooter Libby Defense Fund) and directed by Dan Senor (former press secretary for the catastrophic Coalition Provisional Authority), launched a series of ads that were a pastiche of past Republican themes. Children in small-town America were depicted raising a flag, a scene plagiarized from Ronald Reagan's 1984 "Morning Again in America" commercial. Then fragments of Bush's 2004 campaign washed up like messages in bottles. Soldiers who had lost limbs in Iraq segued into pictures of the burning World Trade Center as words appeared on the screen: "They attacked us." A soldier said, "We're winning on the ground in Iraq. It's no time to quit." A bereaved woman whose uncle died as a fireman in the twin towers and whose husband was killed in Iraq spoke as words flashed on the screen: "More attacks." "Surrender is not an option." In another ad, a Marine in a wheelchair said, "To hear Congress talk about surrendering really makes me angry." After these poisons were injected into the atmosphere, Petraeus emerged from behind the curtain as the sober voice of reason.

Seated side by side, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker presented less a united front than the antipodes of Bush's strategy. Both men were great stone faces, droning and dull, their lack of affect serving as masks for their onerous tasks. Instead of complementing each other, the men's testimonies made plain the surge's strategic incoherence. Deploying the classic euphemisms and misdirections of diplomacy, Crocker demolished, intentionally or not, whatever Petraeus sought to achieve with his dazzling display of dubious statistics. Then, in response to a single pointed question, Petraeus conceded the emptiness of his performance. He aimed friendly fire at himself.

"War is the extension of politics by other means," wrote the great military strategist Karl von Clausewitz. As a military operation the surge was intended to produce political power sharing and reconciliation. But Crocker disclosed that the military had not achieved these ends. Not only are the political benchmarks that the Iraqi government and the Bush administration established unmet, but they may never be realized. Crocker could attach no period of time to these goals. He could only suggest that there should be no benchmarks. "Some of the more promising political developments at the national level," Crocker said, "are neither measured in benchmarks nor visible to those far from Baghdad." In other words, the evidence is anecdotal, scattered and uncertain. Asked when political reconciliation might occur, he replied, "I could not put a timeline on it or a target date ... How long that is going to take and, frankly, even ultimately whether it will succeed, I can't predict." Crocker's version of Bush's policy was "Waiting for Godot."

Petraeus, meanwhile, meticulously unveiled an array of metrics attempting to demonstrate that the surge had succeeded in lowering the level of sectarian violence and civilian casualties. But his effort to gain empirical ground was greeted with widespread skepticism because his statistics were in dispute. The National Intelligence Estimate released on Aug. 23 stated: "The level of overall violence, including attacks on and casualties among civilians, remains high." The Government Accountability Office report of Sept. 4 (PDF) stated that the aim of "reducing the level of sectarian violence in Iraq and eliminating militia control of local security" was "not met," and that "there was no clear and reliable evidence that the level of sectarian violence was reduced and that militia control of local security was eliminated." GAO comptroller general David Walker testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "there are several different sources within the administration on violence, and those sources do not agree" and that "part of the problem that we had in reaching a conclusion about sectarian violence is there are multiple sources showing different levels of violence with different trends." And the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq, chaired by retired Gen. James L. Jones and created by Congress, reported: "The Iraqi Police Service is incapable today of providing security at a level sufficient to protect Iraqi neighborhoods from insurgents and sectarian violence."

Petraeus' presentation relied on the power of PowerPoint, but it was less than overwhelming. He had to plead that his statistics were valid even as he refused to reveal his full methodology. As it was, the strangeness of his categories -- a bullet to the back of the head entitled the victim to be registered as a civilian casualty, but a bullet to the front of the head did not, putting the victim into an insurgent casualty category -- suggested arbitrary classification, political willfulness and subjectivity.

In any case, Crocker's description of the Iraqi political void made Petraeus' claim of progress appear absurd. Petraeus was left dangling, flourishing numbers about tactics unrelated to the strategy. The ambassador consigned the general to a Clausewitzian twilight zone.

The highly credentialed and qualified Petraeus has a doctorate from Princeton and has written a recent report on the history of counterinsurgency. But he has apparently not studied the case of Colin Powell, whose sterling reputation and military expertise were appropriated by Bush for political purposes and who, after his utility was exhausted, was abandoned on the side of the road. The real front line where Petraeus found himself was more political than military.

If the surge has no connection to political goals in Iraq, it still has strategic political goals, just not in Iraq. The surge is the military means to Bush's political ends at home. "So now I'm an October–November man," Bush told his authorized biographer, Robert Draper, in "Dead Certain." "I'm playing for October–November." The rollout of the Petraeus report is the last major political offensive of the Bush administration. Petraeus' reputation is the token for buying precious time for an unpopular president. The Democratic Congress lacks sufficient majorities to alter Bush's policy. Petraeus' show is staged to keep Republicans, on the edge of sheer panic, from defecting en masse. Through Petraeus, Bush is locking in the congressional leaders and the Republican presidential candidates behind his policy. The general has been wound up as a mechanism for Bush's endgame -- perpetuating the president's Iraq policy until the conclusion of his term and assigning responsibility for "victory" or "defeat" to his successor. In his analogizing to the Vietnam War, Bush has begun to lay the basis for a stab-in-the-back, who-lost-Iraq debate, a poisonous legacy.

Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who announced his retirement last week and who has called for disengaging from Iraq, asked Petraeus a simple and obvious question about Bush's policy, one that Bush likes to answer: "Do you feel that that [strategy] is making America safer?" Unexpectedly, Petraeus paused. "I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq," he finally replied, carefully sidestepping a direct response. So Warner repeated his question: "Does the [Iraq war] make America safer?" Again Petraeus paused before answering, "I don't know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted it out in my own mind."

In the end, Petraeus could not convince even himself. Petraeus has lost his battle. Crocker has revealed the strategy as hollow. But the policy goes on.



_______________________________________________
Salon mailing list
http://mailman.listserve.com/listmanager/listinfo/salon

Officials: Bush Setting Up Attack on Iran

Petraeus Tells Britain to Move Troops to Iran Border

Iran Strategy Divides Bush Administration

Was Israeli Raid a Dry Run for Attack on Iran?

Afghanistan: US Worried Iran Sending Chinese Weapons to Taliban

Moran Upsets Jewish Groups Again
U.S. House Democrat Said Pro-Israel Lobby Promoted War
By Amy Gardner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 15, 2007; B05


Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) has again come under fire from local Jewish organizations for remarking in a magazine interview that the "extraordinarily powerful" pro-Israel lobby played a strong role promoting the war in Iraq.

In an interview with Tikkun, a California-based Jewish magazine, Moran said the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is "the most powerful lobby and has pushed this war from the beginning. I don't think they represent the mainstream of American Jewish thinking at all, but because they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful -- most of them are quite wealthy -- they have been able to exert power."

Moran's remarks were criticized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the National Jewish Democratic Council. Ronald Halber, executive director of the first group, said Moran's remarks are anti-Semitic and draw on ugly stereotypes about Jewish wealth, power and influence.

"He uses several age-old canards that have been used throughout history that have brought violence upon Jews," Halber said this week. "He uses clearly anti-Semitic images such as Jewish control of the media and wealthy Jews using their wealth to control policy."

Ira N. Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council, said in a published statement that there is nothing wrong with criticizing the pro-Israel lobby but that Moran's statements go beyond that to defamation by making a "phony" connection between AIPAC and the Iraq war.

"Rep. Moran's comments are not only incorrect and irresponsible," Forman said. "They are downright dangerous."

In an interview last night, Moran said he was dismayed at the reaction to his remarks, which he stands by. The pro-Israel lobby has not represented mainstream U.S. Jewish opinion in recent years, he said -- most notably with its Middle East policies, which he characterized as directly aligned with those of the Bush administration.

"The problem with addressing the groups who have argued strongly in favor of a long-term American military presence in the Middle East is that they raise arguments that are not related to the point," Moran said. "I would like to have a reasonable, objective discussion about AIPAC's foreign policy agenda. But it's difficult to do that because any time you question their motives, you are accused of being anti-Semitic."

Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun also defended Moran's position in the article, which appear in the magazine's September-October issue http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0709/frontpage/israellobby.

"It's the kind of statement I would have made to any religious community, or to any labor movement audience, citing their own failures to act as a critical factor in why we had gotten involved," Lerner wrote in the article.

Halber said he welcomes criticism of AIPAC's policies, but he said Moran is wrong that the advocacy group supports the war in Iraq. Most American Jews oppose U.S. involvement in Iraq, he said, and AIPAC has remained neutral.

According to the organization's Web site, AIPEC supports U.S. military aid to Israel but does not openly support U.S. intervention in the Middle East.

"I think Mr. Halber's being disingenuous in suggesting that the AIPAC board has not been strongly supportive of military involvement in Iraq and now in Iran," Moran said yesterday.

Although hailed for forging ties with the region's Muslim community, Moran has gotten into trouble with the local Jewish community before. In 2001, he angered groups by saying in an appearance before the American Muslim Council that then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was coming to Washington "probably seeking a warrant from President Bush to kill at will with weapons we have paid for."

The next year, Moran returned $2,000 in political contributions from a Muslim activist with ties to the anti-Israeli groups Hamas and Hezbollah.

And in 2003, at an antiwar forum in Reston, Moran said: "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."

Said Halber this week: "There are only so many mistakes he can make before it's fair to call him an anti-Semite."

Impossible to evaluate this story, but here it is.


Bush setting America up for war with Iran
By Philip Sherwell in New York and Tim Shipman in Washington
September 16, 2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...16/wiran116.xml

Senior American intelligence and defence officials believe that President George W Bush and his inner circle are taking steps to place America on the path to war with Iran, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.

In a chilling scenario of how war might come, a senior intelligence officer warned that public denunciation of Iranian meddling in Iraq - arming and training militants - would lead to cross border raids on Iranian training camps and bomb factories.

A prime target would be the Fajr base run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force in southern Iran, where Western intelligence agencies say armour-piercing projectiles used against British and US troops are manufactured.

Under the theory - which is gaining credence in Washington security circles - US action would provoke a major Iranian response, perhaps in the form of moves to cut off Gulf oil supplies, providing a trigger for air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities and even its armed forces.

Senior officials believe Mr Bush's inner circle has decided he does not want to leave office without first ensuring that Iran is not capable of developing a nuclear weapon.

The intelligence source said: "No one outside that tight circle knows what is going to happen." But he said that within the CIA "many if not most officials believe that diplomacy is failing" and that "top Pentagon brass believes the same".

He said: "A strike will probably follow a gradual escalation. Over the next few weeks and months the US will build tensions and evidence around Iranian activities in Iraq."

Previously, accusations that Mr Bush was set on war with Iran have come almost entirely from his critics.

Many senior operatives within the CIA are highly critical of Mr Bush's handling of the Iraq war, though they themselves are considered ineffective and unreliable by hardliners close to Mr Cheney.

The vice president is said to advocate the use of bunker-busting tactical nuclear weapons against Iran's nuclear sites. His allies dispute this, but Mr Cheney is understood to be lobbying for air strikes if sites can be identified where Revolutionary Guard units are training Shia militias.

Recent developments over Iraq appear to fit with the pattern of escalation predicted by Pentagon officials.

Gen David Petraeus, Mr Bush's senior Iraq commander, denounced the Iranian "proxy war" in Iraq last week as he built support in Washington for the US military surge in Baghdad.

The US also announced the creation of a new base near the Iraqi border town of Badra, the first of what could be several locations to tackle the smuggling of weapons from Iran.

A State Department source familiar with White House discussions said that Miss Rice, under pressure from senior counter-proliferation officials to acknowledge that military action may be necessary, is now working with Mr Cheney to find a way to reconcile their positions and present a united front to the President.

The source said: "When you go down there and see the body language, you can see that Cheney is still The Man. Condi pushed for diplomacy but she is no dove. If it becomes necessary she will be on board.

"Both of them are very close to the president, and where they differ they are working together to find a way to present a position they can both live with."

The official contrasted the efforts of the secretary of state to work with the vice-president with the "open warfare between Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld before the Iraq war".

Miss Rice's bottom line is that if the administration is to go to war again it must build the case over a period of months and win sufficient support on Capitol Hill.

The Sunday Telegraph has been told that Mr Bush has privately promised her that he would consult "meaningfully" with Congressional leaders of both parties before any military action against Iran on the understanding that Miss Rice would resign if this did not happen.

The intelligence officer said that the US military has "two major contingency plans" for air strikes on Iran.

"One is to bomb only the nuclear facilities. The second option is for a much bigger strike that would - over two or three days - hit all of the significant military sites as well. This plan involves more than 2,000 targets."

For American Jews, Dissent Against Israel Has Become Mainstream

Tony Karon, Tomdispatch.com

The exceedingly narrow range of "correct opinion" on Israel for American Jews isn't holding together like it used to. Is a Jewish glasnost coming to America?

The Administration Is Coming at Iran from Every Which Way
Russ Wellen: Nuclear weapons is just one among many reasons the US seeks to attack Iran.

Marjorie Cohn
Erwin Chemerinsky and the Post-9/11 Attack on Academic Freedom

Paul Craig Roberts
Conservatism Isn't What It Used to Be

Alan Greenspan Claims Iraq War Was Really For 0il Lambasts Bush on economy By Graham Paterson

AMERICA's elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18397.htm
Greenspan Misses Cheney's Memo: Spills the Beans on Oil By Ray McGovern For those still wondering why President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney sent our young men and women into Iraq, the secret is now "largely" out. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18406.htm

The Nightmare Is Here By Bob Herbert These are just a few of the things you won't hear much about from the American officials in Washington who profess to care so deeply about the people of Iraq.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18393.htm
Iraq, Deep in Your Bones By Mark Morford It never mattered how many little American flags appeared on how many bloated Chevy Avalanches, how many right-wing radio shows found a new reason to pule, how many furiously blindered uber-patriots happily ignored all the harsh words from all those naysaying generals or even all the "turncoat" anti-war Republicans and insisted we're really over there to fight some sort of great Islamic demon no one can actually see or locate or define but that we must, somehow, attempt to destroy -- even though doing so only seems to make the situation far, far worse.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18402.htm

Will the Democrats Betray Us? By FRANK RICH General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker could grab an hour of prime television time only by slinking into the safe foxhole of Fox News, where Brit Hume chaperoned them on a gloomy, bunkerlike set before an audience of merely 1.5 million true believers. Their "Briefing for America," as Fox titled it, was all too fittingly interrupted early on for a commercial promising pharmaceutical relief from erectile dysfunction.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18395.htm
McCain To MoveOn: Get Out Of This Country

One Minute Video

Wearing the traditional fascist brown shirt, Arizona Senator John McCain has taken criticism of anti-war group MoveOn.org to a whole new level: He is suggesting that the organization "ought to be thrown out of this country.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18394.htm

Is Bush Planning an Attack on Iran? Real News Video Interview: Aijaz Ahmad analyzes America's threats toward Iran: "This administration is determined to attack Iran before it leaves office."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18403.htm

Sadr movement says won't challenge Maliki for now: Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's political movement has no immediate plan to bring down Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government despite pulling out of his ruling Shi'ite Alliance, a spokesman said on Sunday.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L16262121.htm
An Open Letter to the New Generation of U.S. Military Officers: "The Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order. It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were 'only carrying out their orders'..."
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=285

What Bush's invasion would look like in the United States
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a93/Miasm...raq_costs-2.gif
CIA analyst says West losing in Iraq, Afghanistan : The West is losing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because it does not understand the true motives of terrorists and is thus taking wrong strategies against them, a former analyst of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said Sunday.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/...ent_6736588.htm

Proxy war could soon turn to direct conflict, analysts warn: US strikes on Iran predicted as tension rises over arms smuggling and nuclear fears
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2169798,00.html

France says must prepare for possible war with Iran : "We must prepare for the worst," Kouchner said in an interview, adding: "The worst, sir, is war."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070916/wl_nm/iran_france_war_dc
Can the White House intimidate Iran?: Video interview: Pepe Escobar on U.S. strategy against Iran: "Persian society has been around for thousands of years and they don't scare easily"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18405.htm

World's banks hit for $30billion in credit crunch : THE world's investment banks are to reveal a $30 billion (£14.9 billion) hit from bad debts as they unveil results that give the first real insight into the impact of the debt crisis.
http://snipurl.com/1qso2
Economic Crisis: The U.S. Political Leadership Has Failed: As the 2007 economic collapse picks up speed, it's time to take a hard look at the performance of the U.S. national political leadership in meeting some of their most fundamental responsibilities. It's time to face the fact of serious failure over the last quarter century.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=6750

+ World should brace for possible war over Iran: France
Paris (AFP) Sept 16, 2007 - The world should brace for a possible war over the Iranian nuclear crisis but seeking a solution through talks should take priority, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Sunday. "We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," he said in an interview broadcast on French television and radio. "We must negotiate right to the end," with Iran, he said, but underlined ... more


+ US military likely to be in Iraq for years after drawdown
Washington (AFP) Sept 14, 2007 - The US military will be tied down in Iraq with 100,000 troops at least through the presidency of George W. Bush, and a modest size residual force will be there for years to come. And that is a best-case scenario, as articulated by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Friday after Bush announced plans for more modest troop cuts by mid-July. "One of the sad aspects of war is there is no ... more

+ Reports of NKorea-Syria nuclear links of major concern: Gates
Washington (AFP) Sept 16, 2007 - The United States would have a "real problem" if Syria and North Korea are collaborating on a nuclear program, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday. Gates refused to confirm the veracity of leaked intelligence reports suggesting that North Korea may be helping Syria build a nuclear weapons facility. "But all I will say is we are watching the North Koreans very carefully. We ... more

+ Analysis: Mideast turns to nukes for water
Washington (UPI) Sep 14, 2007 - The idea of using nuclear-powered desalination plants is becoming popular in the Middle East and North Africa, where tension over water rights has gone on for millennia, but it is controversial, and without significant foreign assistance it may turn out to be a mirage. During a visit to Libya by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in late July, the leaders signed a memorandum of ... more

Iran sees progress in Russia nuclear talks
Tehran (AFP) Sept 16, 2007 - Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said talks with Russia over the much delayed completion of Iran's first nuclear power station are making progress, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday. "The question of the Bushehr nuclear power station was raised and we see progress in the negotiations," said Mottaki, referring to his visit last week to Moscow for talks on the atomic plant ... more

The Hillarycare Mythology
Paul Starr
September 14, 2007 | web only


Did Hillary doom health reform in 1993? It's time to get the facts straight about the Clinton plan and why compromise failed. Here's the real story, from the Prospect co-editor who was a White House senior health policy advisor at the time.

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during a health care forum at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. on Thursday, Dec. 2, 1993. (AP Photo/Tony Talbot)

An ‘Enduring Relationship' – Or A Perpetual Burden?

by Justin Raimondo, 9/17/2007

Petraeus the Politician by Charley Reese, 9/17/2007

September 14, 2007: A True Parallel between Vietnam, Iraq: Vitriol, by Ted Galen Carpenter

Report: Muslim Brotherhood U.S. Front Groups a Threat

By Jeffrey Imm


On September 10, Douglas Farah posted a CTB Blog report on a DOD memorandum "Analysis of Muslim Brotherhood's General Strategic Goals for North American Memorandum".

The Washington Times is reporting on additional comments on the Muslim Brotherhood from a Pentagon Joint Staff analyst and this week's congressional hearings.

The Washington Times reports that Pentagon Joint Staff analyst Stephen Caughlin issues a memorandum on September 7 that stated that the Muslim Brotherhood has a number of U.S. front groups posing as moderate organizations. Stephen Caughlin is a lawyer and military intelligence specialist on the Joint Staff.

The Washington Times report states that documents from the Holy Land Foundation trial "reveal new security threats from a network of more than 29 U.S. Muslim groups", and quotes Mr. Caughlin as stating "[t]hese documents are beginning to define the structure and outline of domestic jihad threat entities, associated nongovernmental organizations and potential terrorist or insurgent support systems".

The Washington Times report quotes Mr. Caughlin as stating that a 1991 Muslim Brotherhood memorandum "describes aspects of the global jihad's strategic information warfare campaign and indications of its structure, reach and activities", and identifies unindicted HLF trial co-conspirator Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) as part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Per the Washington Times report, Muslim Brotherhood memo on organizing Muslims in North America said that all members "must understand their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within, and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions." The Washington Times quotes Mr. Caughlin's memorandum as stating that "consequently, outreach strategies must be adjusted in the face of credible information that seeming Islamic humanitarian or professional nongovernmental organizations may be part of the global jihad with potential for being part of the terrorist or insurgent support system."

The Washington Times also quotes Mr. Caughlin as stating that government efforts at outreach in the recent ISNA conference "can cause those responsible for its success to so narrowly focus on the outreach relationship that they miss the surrounding events and lose perspective. This could undermine unity of effort in homeland security, lead to potential for embarrassment for the [U.S. government] and legitimize threat organizations by providing them domestic sanctuary."

Regarding congressional hearings this week with top security officials, the Washington Times reports that Senator Joseph Lieberman asked about operational efforts to counter Islamic extremism, quoting Senator Lieberman as stating "ecause this is a war, but it is ultimately a war against, and with, an ideology that is inimical to our own values of freedom and tolerance and diversity,"

The Washington Times made the following report on FBI comments regarding this week's congressional hearings and the FBI views on countering Islamist ideologies:

"FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III revealed during the hearing that the FBI has no counterideology response other than its 'outreach' to Muslim-American communities so they 'understand the FBI' and address 'the radicalization issue,' he said. Asked whether the FBI has a responsibility to wage a battle of ideas within U.S. Muslim-American communities, Mr. Mueller said: 'You put that where I would say no, that it would not be our responsibility for any religion to engage in the war of ideas.' The FBI's responsibility, he said, is 'to explain that once one goes over the line and it becomes not a war of ideas but a criminal offense, this is what you can expect, and to elicit the support of those in whatever religious community to assist us in assuring that those who cross that line are appropriately investigated and convicted.' The comment shows that despite the creation of a dedicated FBI intelligence-gathering branch, the bureau remains limited to investigation and law enforcement."

The Washington Times also reported that:

"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff also said nothing is being done domestically to battle Islamist extremist ideas. The department's incident management team, he said, is focused on civil rights or civil liberties -- not fighting terrorists' ideology. "

[b]Sources and Related Documents:

September 14, 2007 - The Washington Times: "Jihadist Threat" - by Bill Gertz

September 10, 2007 - U.S. Muslim Brotherhood Groups Called "Threat Organization" in DOD Memo -- CTB Blog -- by Douglas Farah

September 14, 2007 - Holy Land Foundation...A Thought Before Final Arguments - CTB Blog - Dennis Lormel

August 14, 2007 - Muslim Brotherhood Phonebook Confirms that MAS is Brotherhood's Baby - The Investigative Project

August 8, 2007 - CAIR Identified by the FBI as part of the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee - The Investigative Project

August 2, 2007 - The Muslim Brotherhood’s "Military Work" in the US - The Investigative Project