Cheney to address top secret conservative policy group
Jason Rhyne
Published: Friday September 28, 2007

An ultra-secret conservative group -- so secret that members don't even use the group's name in communications -- will feature Vice President Dick Cheney as a speaker at a meeting in Utah today.

"Cheney will address the fall meeting of the Council for National Policy, a group whose self-described mission is to promote 'a free-enterprise system, a strong national defense and support for traditional Western values," according to the Salt Lake City Tribune.

Founded in 1981 by Tim LaHaye, the co-author of the popular post-apocalyptic Christian-themed Left Behind books, the group holds confidential meetings three times a year attended by a small but powerful cadre of top conservatives.

"The media should not know when or where we meet or who takes part in our programs, before of after a meeting," one of the group's rules reads, according to a New York Times profile of the organization in 2004.

"The membership list is 'strictly confidential," said the Times. "Guests may attend 'only with the unanimous approval of the executive committee."

"In e-mail messages to one another," the paper continued, "members are instructed not to refer to the organization by name, to protect against leaks."

"We do not lobby Congress, support candidates, or issue public policy statements on controversial issues," the group states on its website. Members "meet to share the best information available on national and world problems, know one another on a personal basis, and collaborate in achieving their shared goals."

"Czech Republic President Václav Klaus is also expected to address the Council for National Policy's meeting in downtown Salt Lake City," the Tribune reports, adding that GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney will also be in Utah, but did not respond to the paper about whether or not he would be attending the meeting.

"Many current and former members politely said they would prefer not to speak on the organization's behalf," ABC's Marc Ambinder said in an earlier behind-the-scenes piece focusing on the group. "Those who did respond to telephone and e-mail messages declined to talk about their interest in the organization. More than a dozen did not respond at all."

Cheney's speech and other events of his trip, which coincides with a fundraising swing through West, is closed to the public and the press, according to the Tribune.

See No Evil

The Teflon Alliance with Israel
By KATHLEEN and BILL CHRISTISON

Two recent offhand comments, both widely publicized, have seriously undermined whatever progress might have been made in exposing the fact that the Iraq war was initiated at least in large part to guarantee Israel's safety and regional dominance in the Middle East.

In late August, Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Colin Powell's chief of staff when he was secretary of state, told Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service that, when Israel first got wind of U.S. planning for a war against Iraq, a wide range of Israelis, including political and intelligence officials, began warning against such a war. "Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy -- Iran is the enemy," Wilkerson said. Israeli warnings against an attack on Iraq were "pervasive" in Israeli communications with the administration during early 2002, according to Wilkerson.

This story garnered a fair amount of publicity and in at least one instance was used by a radio talk show host to shut off discussion of the John Mearsheimer-Stephen Walt book on the influence of the Israel lobby, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Just a few days after the Wilkerson story came out and also only days after release of the Mearsheimer-Walt book, a caller to the Thom Hartmann radio program commended the book, urged Hartmann and his guest at the time, Senator Bernie Sanders, to read it, and asked Sanders to address the issue of Israel's and the lobby's support for the Iraq war. Hartmann shut the caller off with a comment that "we don't hype books on this program" (after having just allowed another caller to hype another book). Sanders then proceeded to denounce "conspiracy theories" such as the notion that Israel had anything to do with the war, and Hartmann finished off with a remark that, "besides," a report just came out --obviously meaning the Wilkerson story -- that demonstrates there was no Israeli link to the war.

In fact, the Wilkerson report does not refute the notion of an Israeli link; he addresses only Israeli-U.S. contacts in early 2002, whereas by later in 2002 and 2003 the evidence is overwhelming that Israel and particularly the Israel lobby were pushing hard for the war. But this is the way myths are born: Hartmann and Sanders were able to use perhaps 90 seconds on a nationally broadcast radio program to tout an incomplete report reinforcing their own misconceptions and to dismiss a thoroughly researched book disproving those misconceptions. Never again, mostly likely, will they or any of the choir they were broadcasting to, who do not want to have to deal with Israel anyway, even think about the issue.

The Wilkerson assertions were followed in mid-September by the highly publicized single-sentence statement by former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in his just-released memoir, The Age of Turbulence, that "it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." When the media pounced on this statement, which stands virtually alone and unelaborated in a 500-page book, Greenspan gave several interviews supposedly intended to clarify his statement. To AP he said -- in an obvious sop to the administration and the right, which clearly do not want to own up to such a crass motivation for the war as oil -- that he had not intended to imply that oil was "the administration's motive. I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential" for economic reasons. He had come to fear, he explained, that "Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits [sic] of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day" passing through. The war was not an oil grab, Greenspan said, but "taking Saddam out was essential" because it assured the continued smooth operation of the oil market.

A week later, on Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!," Greenspan, repeating that he had been watching Saddam Hussein for 30 years, said that he had feared that Saddam would acquire a nuclear weapon, that this would give him control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that he therefore had to be removed. Greenspan said he believed the "size of the threat" that Saddam posed "was scary" because "he could have essentially also shut down a significant part of economic activity throughout the world."

The logic here is really quite strange and indicates at least that whatever economic genius Greenspan possesses does not extend to military strategizing or political analysis. One wonders, for instance, how exactly Saddam could have controlled the Strait of Hormuz with a nuclear or any other type of weapon when Iraq does not border this key waterway at the opening of the Persian Gulf and has no navy of any significance. One also wonders why Saddam's future possession of a nuclear weapon was more worrisome than the likelihood that Iran, which does have a navy and does geographically control the strait, might close it. Greenspan's statements further raise the question of why, given his claimed knowledge of Saddam's "30-year history" and given the interest of earlier administrations in Iraq's nuclear ambitions, he began to feel Saddam's removal was "essential" only when the Bush administration began planning for war. And none of what Greenspan said explained why Iraq would have shut down its economy by blocking its own oil exports.

Greenspan's fumbling explanations seem at a minimum to be in the nature of meandering remarks by a man concentrated on economics with little political acumen, who went along with the war because of its presumed benefits in safeguarding oil markets but with no concern about the broader consequences of the war and little or no interest in its political motivations or its geostrategic implications beyond what he saw as its global economic goal.

It remains open to question whether Greenspan in addition intended to divert attention from the clear evidence that Israel and its U.S. supporters, both among Jewish American organizations and among neocon policymakers inside the administration, pushed hard for the war, among other reasons to guarantee Israel's security in the Middle East and its regional domination. But whatever his intent, this has been the effect of his concentration on oil. It reinforces the assumptions of those, primarily on the left, who have always contended that the war was "all about oil," and only about oil. The left's refusal to acknowledge that a desire to secure Israel in the region had anything to do with the Bush neocons' war planning is difficult to fathom, since many on the left are notable critics of Israeli policy. But, again, whatever their intent in quashing discussion of the Israeli link, the effect has been to contribute to silencing domestic debate on a critical U.S. policy issue.

Neither is it clear in Wilkerson's case whether he intended, by discussing Israeli representations against going after Iraq, to divert attention from Israel's actual interest in Iraq. But once again, diverting and silencing discussion has been the effect of his brief remarks.

Without closer examination, both Greenspan's and Wilkerson's statements seem to let Israel and its U.S. lobbyists off the hook, something that in differing ways serves the interests of Israel and the lobby, of the right in the U.S., and of the left. Israel's U.S. supporters -- fearful that Jews will be blamed for leading the U.S. into the debacle that Iraq has become and fearful of reviving old anti-Semitic canards about Jews exerting undue power -- roundly deny any Israeli connection to the war. Israel itself, although not as fearful as its American acolytes of anti-Semitism, has remained silent, obviously not affirming a role in instigating the war and letting its supporters do the denying. The U.S. political right does not, of course, want to acknowledge that the relationship with Israel has grown so close that the U.S. would actually go to war at the behest of or for the benefit of Israel. Nor does it want to own up to any of the other actual motivations for the war -- neither, as previously noted, to a motivation like oil nor to a baldly imperial motivation promising (and already providing) great profits for the joint U.S.-Israeli military-industrial complex.

The left, on the other hand, very much wants to believe that oil, and perhaps secondarily the imperial drive, constituted the only motivations, and that Israel played no role at all. The left is as skittish as anyone, and perhaps more so than anyone else, about being seen to criticize Israel except occasionally regarding the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It is much more comfortable for the left to believe that the U.S. is evil and Israel is at worst a hapless tool of Washington. The thought that the tail might wag the dog is rarely taken seriously.

So the weight of public discourse since before the Iraq war was launched has been that any Israeli role in inspiring or pushing for it is at best a silly invention and at worst a vile anti-Jewish lie, and both the Wilkerson and the Greenspan statements play into this impression. Until these statements, the knowledge of an Israeli connection had begun to gain some greater currency thanks to a few valiant souls who have dared raise the subject, including people like Chris Hedges, Scott Ritter and, most recently, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. In July, Hedges wrote a hard-hitting article for Truthdig, subsequently widely circulated, saying that the war "was strongly shaped by the notion that what is good for Israel is good for the United States," and Israel and its neocon supporters wanted Iraq neutralized. Hedges also acknowledged a "desire for American control of oil" as a major driver of the war, along with "the belief that Washington could build puppet states in the region."

Scott Ritter, who served as a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s, paints a somewhat more complex picture in his 2006 book Targeting Iran. He makes it clear, supporting Wilkerson's statement, that over the years of weapons inspections, Israel had come to regard Iraq as a diminishing threat (unlike Greenspan, apparently), whereas Iran was increasingly viewed as a new looming danger. By August 2002, according to Ritter, when the Israelis passed intelligence about the threat from Iran to the Bush administration, "there was barely a reaction in Washington" because "all eyes were on Baghdad, not Tehran." But Israel's Ariel Sharon was, in Ritter's words, "quick to catch on," and in those last several months of 2002 -- the critical months of war planning, coming well after the early 2002 period that Wilkerson was discussing -- Israel jumped on the Iraq war bandwagon, publicly and privately, and began to press for and justify a U.S. invasion. Sharon assigned a senior Israeli military intelligence official to give the U.S. Israeli intelligence assessments on Iraqi WMD activity, according to Ritter, and at the same time, with an eye to later broadening the conflict to Iran and beyond, Israeli intelligence "pressed home to [the U.S.] the notion that the upcoming U.S. invasion of Iraq must serve as a springboard for a larger transformation within the Middle East, one that swept away not only Saddam Hussein, but also anti-Israeli elements in Syria, Palestine, and, of course, Iran."

This dovetails precisely with the neocon agenda, which was ultimately the operative ingredient in determining whether there would be war or not. This agenda was laid out publicly in the mid-1990s in the now infamous "Clean Break" paper, written in Israel for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of Israelis and Americans, three of whom later entered the Bush administration and began planning for the attack on Iraq. The principal elements of the paper involved overturning the Palestinian-Israeli peace process to save Israel from having to make any territorial concessions and then sparking massive changes, through force if necessary, in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, leading to an era of peace in which Israel and the U.S. jointly dominated a transformed and intimidated Middle East.

In their book on the lobby, Mearsheimer and Walt provide overwhelming evidence for an Israeli link to the war that completely undermines the public myths revived by Wilkerson's and Greenspan's statements, and they build a convincing case against the notion that the war was "all about oil." They are the first who have done the extensive research necessary to bring the mountain of evidence together.

The two authors devote more than 30 pages and a remarkable 175 footnotes to constructing an irrefutable case for an Israeli role in helping plan, and a large lobby role in pressing for, the war. Although they do not claim that the effort to guarantee Israeli security was the sole reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, they demonstrate clearly -- citing public and privates statements by Israeli military and political officials, informed commentary in both Israel and the U.S., and analysis by foreign policy experts -- that "Israeli leaders, neoconservatives, and the Bush administration all saw war with Iraq as the first step in an ambitious campaign to remake the Middle East" in order to "make it a more friendly environment for America and Israel." Israel and the lobby "played crucial roles in making that war happen." Without the lobby and particularly the core of neocon policymakers inside government and neocon commentators and think-tank analysts on the sidelines, Mearsheimer and Walt conclude bluntly, "the war would almost certainly not have occurred" and "America would probably not be in Iraq today."

On the question of oil as a principal driver in the war, the authors demonstrate that in fact, although the oil industry was clearly happy to obtain lucrative concessions in post-Saddam Iraq, the argument that the industry pushed for the war in order to enhance profits is counter-intuitive. The disadvantages to the industry of turmoil in the region are evident. Energy companies, they make clear, do not like wars in oil-rich areas. Nor do they like such other recent "staples of U.S. Middle East policy" as sanctions and regime change, because each of these actions "threatens access to oil and gas reserves and thus [the oil companies'] ability to make money." Mearsheimer and Walt point out that Vice President Cheney opposed sanctions on Iran while he was president of Halliburton in the mid-1990s and complained about the "sanctions happy" policies of the U.S. Instability is rarely in the interests of the oil companies. In the end, the authors conclude, the "wealthy Arab governments and the oil lobby exert much less influence on U.S. foreign policy than the Israel lobby does, because oil interests have less need to skew foreign policy in the directions they favor and they do not have the same leverage."

It is fair to ask why it matters whether the U.S. went to war solely for oil, or solely for Israel, or out of an imperial drive -- or, as is much more likely the case, for some combination of these motivations. It matters, most fundamentally, because, if there is ever to be a course correction and a return to some kind of policy sanity that will prevent similar future disasters, it is necessary to understand how this disaster arose in the first place. All of these motivations, together and separately, are unacceptable reasons for launching an unprovoked aggression against another sovereign nation, for killing up to a million of its innocent citizens, and for fostering chaos throughout the region. Global sanity and global security demand that the U.S. not invade other countries to obtain control over their natural resources or gain huge corporate profits through oil concessions. Global sanity and security also demand that the U.S. cease trying to expand its imperial reach. And, perhaps most important, it is absolutely vital that the U.S. not so subordinate what should be its true interests to those of another nation that it can be led into wars anywhere, but particularly in the most sensitive area of the world, at the behest or for the benefit of Israel. If going to war to secure huge profits for oil companies is obscene, how much more obscene is going to war for the benefit of a foreign power because we are no longer able to distinguish our interests from theirs?

It has become almost trite to quote George Washington's farewell speech urging moderation in foreign attachments, but his injunctions 200 years ago have an eerie applicability to the U.S. relationship with Israel today. Warning against "a passionate attachment of one nation for another," Washington observed that this creates "a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."

The U.S. alliance with Israel has unquestionably led to a gross distortion of U.S. policy in exactly the way in which Washington predicted, creating the illusion of a common interest where none exists and injecting Israel's enmities into the U.S. with little or no justification. If the U.S. cannot distinguish its own interests from those of Israel and Israel's lobby, then it simply cannot act, as it should, purely in its own interest. Those who minimize the role of the Israel lobby in influencing U.S. policy choices, and who refuse or fail to recognize the part Israel and the lobby have played in leading the U.S. into disastrous foreign adventures, pose an incalculable danger to the U.S., for a failure to recognize the reason for a misguided policy will inevitably doom us to repeat it.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession. She can be reached at kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net.

Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.

They can be reached at kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net.

The Iran War is on the Front Burner
by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
Global Research, September 28, 2007 Note: Readers are welcome to cross-post this article with a view to spreading the word and warning people of the dangers of a broader Middle East war. Please indicate the source and copyright note.

The war that Dick Cheney has been planning against Iran, has moved from the back burner to the front, and those who do not see this are either blind or complicit.

Military deployments are in place, as laid out in detail in a Sept. 16 feature by Michel Chossudovsky in Global Research, while the statements of intent to wage war, issued by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, have been hyped in British and American news outlets.

The fact that war is high on the agenda, was denounced by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Dr. Mohammad ElBaradei, who made a dramatic exit from an ongoing meeting of the IAEA board of governors on Sept. 11, in protest against the manifest intent of the U.S. and U.K. delegations, as well as the rotating EU presidency representative, to proceed with military aggression.

ElBaradei, who was so furious that he initially refused to talk to the press, clearly stated, in his Sept. 10 report to the UN body, that the course chosen by the IAEA, to proceed with diplomacy and inspections, was succeeding in providing the necessary clarifications of outstanding questions about Iran's nuclear energy program.

The IAEA chief's report reflected a recent agreement struck between the agency and Iran, regarding a framework for resolving all remaining issues, and, step by step, closing the file. ElBaradei stressed, "This is the first time that Iran has agreed on a plan to address all outstanding issues, with a defined timeline.'' He called for a "double time-out,'' meaning the suspension of Iranian enrichment activity along with a suspension of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, on Sept. 12, welcomed ElBaradei's latest report as a "major step forward,'' and criticized certain states (meaning the U.S. and the U.K) for "questioning the merits of the Iran-IAEA modality agreement.'' That agreement had effectively pulled the rug out from under those warmongers who argued that since Iran's program was military, it had to be stopped by military means. Since the IAEA meeting, ElBaradei has gone to the press almost daily, to reassert his conviction that, there is no reason to attack Iran on the nuclear issue; At the same time ElBaradei underscored that, despite the Iran-IAEA agreement, the intention for a US sponsored attack is being envisaged. On Sept. 17, he told the press:

"We need always to remember that use of force could only be resorted to when ... every other option has been exhausted. I don't think we are at all there.... There is a UN charter and there are rules for the international use of force. I hope everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation when we see a drama unfolding every day.''

ElBaradei noted that thousands of "innocent civilians [in Iraq] have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country had nuclear weapons.'' He recalled that he had tried to continue inspections in Iraq, but had been prevented by the U.S. war. Now, he said, he was conducting negotiations with Iran, which were bearing fruit:

"I think what we need now to do is to encourage Iran to work with the agency to clarify the outstanding issues'' in the over four-year-old IAEA investigation. He gave a clear time frame for results to be produced: "by November-December we will be able to know whether Iran is acting in good faith or not, and if not, then obviously we will have a different situation.... But people need to bear with us. People need to understand we are dealing with an issue that has a lot to do with peace and security and regional instability in the Middle East, and I would ask everybody to hold their horses until we go through the process.''

ElBaradei also addressed the climate of hysteria being created by the warmongers, and the complicit role of the media, which deliberately ignores the reality on the ground. "I have made it very clear that I don't see today a clear and present danger in regard to the Iran nuclear program,'' he said.

Then he characterized the talk of war as "a lot of hype'' which reminded him of a statement by George Orwell to the effect that "in a time of hype, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.'' ElBaradei commented: "If that is the case, I will continue, I can promise you, to be a revolutionary by giving the truth in an objective and impartial manner.''

War Mongers of the World Unite

Due to the fact that the war party did not succeed in Vienna, to corral the IAEA members into endorsing punitive measures against Iran, the Bush-Cheney Administration announced that it would hold a meeting on Sept. 21, to discuss "broadening UN sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend nuclear activity,'' as State Department spokesman Sean McCormack put it. The meeting is to bring together the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, the so-called 5+1. At the same time, the drumbeat for war became louder. Over the Sept. 15-16 weekend, the British press worked overtime to promote the cause of war in Southwest Asia. From the {Sunday Observer}, to the {Telegraph} and Sunday {Times}, the message delivered was unequivocal: "Bush Setting Up for War With Iran,'' announced the {Telegraph}, while the {Observer} headlined, "Time Is Running Out To Avoid War With Iran.'' The {Telegraph} retailed the line that the Pentagon had a list of 2,000 targets in Iran, adding that Cheney was committed to deploying nuclear bunker-buster bombs against presumed Iranian nuclear sites. The press also referenced the provocative Israeli strikes over Syria, as part of the regional war process.

Then, on Sept. 16, a bombshell was dropped from Paris. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner (notorious for his endorsement of military interventions on ``humanitarian grounds''), issued a blunt statement that France must be prepared for a war with Iran. Although Prime Minister François Fillon later tried to water down the remarks, the message was clear. And no one could forget President Nicholas Sarkozy's recent visit with the Bushes at Kennebunkport. Following his return to Paris, Sarkozy, according to source reports, started sending notes to various European capitals, that the message he had received from Bush was that war with Iran was inevitable.

The French intelligence leak-sheet, {Le Canard enchainé), lent credence to Kouchner's remarks, reporting that the war against Iran is ready to go. It quotes a former CIA official who said that Israeli officers were lobbying the Pentagon and White House for a military intervention. In addition, {Le Canard} reported that Antonov jets had been leased in Ukraine and Belarus to transport US military hardware from military bases in Iraq, Central Asia, and Djibouti to the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. The same source also signaled the arrival of stealth bombers to Qatari bases, reinforcing the armada there.

Kouchner's remarks provoked a storm of justified criticism from those quarters seeking to avoid war, including Russia and China. As reported by AFP, as well as Russian wires on Sept. 18, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov lodged his protest in an interview with Vremya Novosti:

"The bombings of Iran would be a bad move that would end with catastrophic consequences... We are convinced that there is no military solution to the Iranian problem. It's impossible. Besides, it is quite clear that there is no military solution to the Iraq problem either. But in the case of Iran everything could be even more complicated.''

He concluded by characterizing any U.S. military action as "a big diplomatic and political error.'' Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also spoke out against all forms of military aggression, and the Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement saying the diplomatic course should be pursued. As reported by ITAR-TASS, Lavrov said that Moscow was alarmed by reports of possible military action. He made these remarks, pointedly, at a joint press conference with visiting French Foreign Minister Kouchner:

``The multiplying reports that some contemplate the introduction of military sanctions against Iran cause Russia's alarm. It is hard to imagine what this can be fraught with for the region... Russia remains committed to the agreement that the UN Security Council will not go beyond the bounds of supporting the IAEA... Not a single problem has a military solution, and the same applies to Iran's nuclear program.''

Regarding renewed talk of sanctions, he said, "Once we have agreed to take collective action, and this agreement materializes as consensus work within the UN Security Council, what objectives does the introduction of unilateral sanctions serve?" We should never forget, Lavrov added, that "part of the agreement, within the framework of the group of six international mediators, that provides for wider dialogue with Iran, including on issues of regional security.''

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Liu Jianchao lashed out at Kouchner's views the same day:

"We should avoid threatening others with military actions,... We are opposed to military actions in dealing with international affairs... We believe that negotiations would be the best option meeting the interests of international community.''

But, in cheerful disregard for such informed warnings, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, en route to the Middle East for a round of cosmetic peace diplomacy, aimed at pacifying Arabs in preparation for the Iran war, lashed out at those seeking a diplomatic solution. She targeted the IAEA and ElBaradei in no uncertain terms:.

"We believe the diplomatic track can work but it has to work both with a set of incentives and a set of teeth... The IAEA is not in the business of diplomacy. The IAEA is a technical agency that has a board of governors of which the United States is a member...It is not up to anybody to diminish or to begin to cut back on the obligations that the Iranians have been ordered to take.''

Although she carefully tiptoed around Kouchner's statements regarding the war with Iran option, Rice stated: "The key here is that we are committed to a diploma tic track but the President has not taken any of his options off the table.''

Back to the Drawing Board

The real script being prepared to justify a new war in the eyes of public opinion, however, is in the making, namely that Iran is responsible for rising casualties among U.S. troops in Iraq. According to this new Hollywood-style fiction, Iran has been sending in weapons, especially the deadly IEDs, to kill American GIs, and train Shi'ite militias to fight American forces in Iraq. Anyone with a brain in his head, or, a functioning Internet connection with access to international news wires from the region, knows that these are lies. of the same caliber as those churned out by Tony Blair in the months leading up to the war on Iraq that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had sophisticated WMD, which could strike down the West in 45 minutes. Dick Cheney (the man who organized the stove piping of disinformation before the Iraq fiasco) is foremost among those propagating this line. On Sept. 14, Cheney delivered a speech in Grand Rapids, Mich., reiterating his harangue against Islamic terrorists, who, he claimed, seek to "establish a radical empire covering a region from Spain ... to Indonesia.'' According to Cheney, this justifies which the war on terrorism anywhere, everywhere, and forever:

"Coalition forces [in Iraq] have ... conducted operations against extremists supported by Iran--a country whose paramilitary organization traffics in lethal material.''

The same day, the indefatigable VP addressed the Central Command, Special Operations Command and the 6th Air Mobility Wing at the MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Cheney, reading from the same prepared text, said, "Governments that support of harbor terrorists are complicit in the murder of the innocent, and must be held to account.'' Eager to clarify just whom he had in mind, Cheney again mentioned that it was Iran which was harboring the terrorists.

The "paramilitary organization'' in question, to which Cheney and Bush have referred to on several occasions, is the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, whose Al Quds (Jerusalem) unit they accuse of being involved of terrorist acts inside Iraq. Recent reports suggest that the Bush-Cheney Administration was about to officially designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, and that this decision would be followed by the imposition of sanctions including the freezing of IRCG assets in the US. Given that the IRCG probably does not have millions stashed away in accounts at JP Morgan Chase, or elsewhere in the U.S., such a designation would serve to justify moving militarily against its alleged positions, inside Iran or Iraq.

This, in fact, is the new scenario on the drawing boards. Gen. Kevin Bergner was sent by Cheney to Iraq, precisely to cook up some "evidence'' that the Iranians were providing weapons and training anti-U.S. forces inside Iraq. Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker both supported this charge, in their testimony before Congress on Sept. 11.

Dovetailing with this new scenario, is the notion that Iran has been supporting the Shi'ite militia leader Moqtadar al-Sadr, in an internecine Shi'ite battle with the mainstream group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is part of the ruling coalition in Baghdad. Although rivalries among Shi'ite groups do exist, the version presented by the Cheney crew is just short of preposterous. First, it must be stressed that the government of Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with SCIRI support, has been aggressively attacked by Washington as incompetent, and calls have been made for it to be replaced. Cheney's candidate to replace Maliki is Ayad Allawi, a man of dubious connections, to say the least, but who would toe Cheney's line.

Secondly, regarding inter-Shi'ite conflicts, it must be noted that al-Sadr announced a unilateral ceasefire--a cessation of {all} armed activities, including against the occupying forces--for six months. Iranian sources told me this was an explicit sign of support by Sadr for the beleaguered government of Maliki. Finally, and most important, Maliki has been consulting with the supreme religious authority of all Shi'ites, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, in an effort to stabilize his government. Maliki went to Najaf on Sept. 5 to meet with Sistani, and, following the talks, told the press: I discussed with him the case of the government. I asked his help in forming a government and nominating new ministers, or if there is the possibility to form a new government based on technocrats. He did not indicate what the cleric's response had been, Reuters reported.

Sistani's role is crucial. His principled stance on the Iraq crisis, from the beginning of the invasion, has been that he would support a democratically elected parliament and government, in hopes that such a government would proceed to end the occupation. On several occasions, Sistani has met with different Shi'ite, and other leaders, in an attempt to forge national reconciliation. For this, he has been rewarded with a series of assassinations of his top aides, the sixth such murder executed just weeks ago.

The talks between Sistani and Maliki were prompted also by a serious crisis that had ensued, following clashes in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala on Aug. 28, which had been characterized as fighting between rival Shi'ite groups. Maliki said he was considering giving these cities a special status.

"I am considering that holy shrines and sacred cities be peaceful places and disarmed of weapons and under the protection of the Iraqi army,''

Iranian sources told me that the clashes had been instigated by outside forces, not by any of the rival Shi'ite groups, as the press had claimed. Then, on Sept. 13, the Tehran Times came out with a report indicating that the force behind the massacres in Karbala was none other than the Mujaheddin el-Khalq (MKO/MEK), the Iranian terrorist organization which, after having been protected in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, is now protected by the U.S. occupying forces there.

The Tehran Times political desk reported that three months prior to the massacre, "closed-circuit cameras captured a 23-year-old woman and 13-year-old youth who were gathering information about the various entrances to the Imam Hussein (AS) shrine. After their arrest, it became clear that they had been sent by the Mujaheddin Khalq Organization (MKO) to locate ways to sneak into the shrine for terrorist operations.''

The paper described how the attack was planned. Members of Moqtada Sadr's al-Mahdi militia, trying to enter the shrine, were prevented by security forces. Then, clashes began which led to 52 dead and 300 injured. "At first glance, it seemed to be a clash between rival Shia groups seeking to monopolize power and another indication of the extreme insecurity in Iraq, especially in Shia areas,'' the paper commented. But, this is not the case. According to witnesses, large amounts of weapons were distributed to people near the Sadr group's position, giving the impression that that group had been handing out arms. Among the weapons were some made in Iran--to leave a clear lead. The Iraqi Interior Ministry has conducted investigations into the event, concluding that the MKO was behind the incident.

This incident, attributed by the Chenyacs to "Iranian-backed Shi'ite factions inside Iraq,'' is being pushed into the stove pipe of disinformation, to motivate a military attack against Iran.

Within the US military, preparations for confrontation with Iran are proceeding apace. In addition to the detailed information provided by Global Research, noted above, there is the news, released by the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 10, that the U.S. is preparing to build a military base near the Iraq-Iran border, allegedly to intercept the flow of weapons into the country. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, was quoted saying the base would include fortified checkpoints as well as X-ray machines and explosives-detecting sensors. The base is to be placed just four miles from the Iranian border--a blatant provocation. The {Sunday Telegraph} on Sept. 16 reported that Gen. David Petraeus was going to visit London to brief Prime Minister Gordon Brown and others of such plans. Petraeus was expected, according to this account, to press the British to cancel their plans to withdraw 5,000 troops from Iraq, and instead, to deploy them along the border with Iran.

Iran's Version of the Olive Branch

In response to these preparations for yet another war, the Iranian leadership has been seeking ways to avoid a conflict which it knows would be catastrophic. In addition to Iran's overtures to the IAEA, Tehran has dispatched its diplomats to meet with key countries, including Russia and China.

Inside Iran, on Sept. 7, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, now head of the Expediency Council, was elected head of the Assembly of Experts. Iranian sources have stressed that Rafsanjani, a moderate, has the full support of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Al Khamenei.

At the same time, there has been a leadership change in the IRGC. Ali Khamenei, who is also Chief Commander of the Armed Forces, named Brig. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari as the new commander. In his first press conference in his new position, Ali Jafari announced the military's readiness to face threats. "Relying on people's support that is organized within military framework, great intelligence superiority, and its missile capabilities, the IRGC is fully ready to defeat any possible aggressive move.''

Thus, as the political leadership closes ranks, the Military prepares for the worst.


Global Research Articles by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

Three Presidents and Only Two Balls On Monday’s news I watched a little of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia and too much of President Lee Bollinger’s introduction. Today I got around to reading the transcript, naturally not in search of enlightenment. To seek enlightenment in the speeches of presidents, whether of colleges or countries, is to go duck-hunting where no duck dwells.

Instead I wanted to be sure that the TV excerpts had fairly represented Lee Bollinger’s remarks, and they had. This was a disappointment, as the president of Columbia had earlier given hints of a certain testicular presence by approving Ahmadinejad’s appearance on his campus.

But of course this had stirred up a perfect storm of the squawking that, when Israel is on the agenda, greets the the most tentative deviation into sense. So now it was CYA time: after a nod in the direction of academic freedom Bollinger turned his introduction into an attack on his invited guest.

This was understandable but it was also unforgiveable. Sins against God, country, and the legal code are merely venial, while sins against good taste are mortal.

Once Bollinger was done with armoring his ass against further assault, Ahmadinejad took the mike and politely said:

At the outset, I want to complain a bit on the person who read this political statement against me. In Iran, tradition requires that when we demand a person to invite us as a — to be a speaker, we actually respect our students and the professors by allowing them to make their own judgment, and we don’t think it’s necessary before the speech is even given to come in — (applause) — with a series of claims and to attempt in a so-called manner to provide vaccination of some sort to our students and our faculty.

Another thing struck me while watching this small, slightly-built man take on a hostile crowd in a hostile city. Ahmadinejad — although every bit as despicable as such other enemies of the republic as King Abdullah, General Musharraf and Vice President Cheney — showed that he is at least no coward.

The Conqueror of Baghdad and the Lion of Guantánamo, by contrast, would have surrounded himself with a battalion of Blackwater mercenaries before running such a risk. Whenever G.I. George ventures out in public his aides even issue orders that he is to be protected from so much as a glimpse of an antiwar button on man, woman or child.

Any little thing from the reality-based world outside, they seem to fear, might pop their boss’s bubble.





Posted by Jerome Doolittle at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Snark

The Man Behind the Iran Curtain
by Khody Akhavi

He called for more "research" into the unequivocal facts of the Holocaust, said Iranian women were among the freest in the world, and declared that homosexuality did not exist in his country.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad courts controversy wherever he goes, and his visit to New York this week was no exception. Addressing the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Iran's president said he considered the dispute over his country's nuclear program"closed." Even before his arrival, he had asked – and was denied – permission to lay a wreath at the site of the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks in New York.

But it was Ahmadinejad's appearance Monday at Columbia University that generated the most press buzz and protests. In a chiding introduction that has since generated sharply divided reactions, university President Lee Bollinger described the Iranian leader as "exhibiting all the signs of a cruel and petty dictator" and condemned his denial of the Holocaust as "either brazenly provocative or astonishingly uneducated."

Ahmadinejad came out swinging, calling Bollinger's words "insults" and proceeded to deliver a speech to the university's faculty and students that meandered between a religious sermon and a treatise on science. He repeated provocative statements that at times bordered on the absurd. He remained evasive on questions that ranged from human rights abuses in Iran to his call for Israel to be "wiped from the pages of history", often responding to them with opaque rhetorical questions.

When asked for a one-word answer – "yes or no" – as to whether his government desired the "destruction of Israel as a Jewish state", Ahmadinejad responded: "And then you want the answer the way you want to hear it. Well, this isn't really a free flow of information... I'm asking you, is the Palestinian issue not an international issue of prominence or not? Please tell me, yes or no." His answer received laughter and applause.

Ahmadinejad's visit comes at a time of heightened tensions between the US and Iran, with the George W. Bush administration pushing the U.N. Security Council for a third round of economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic for its refusal to shut down its nuclear program Analysts suggest that the Iranian leader's meandering monologues and fiery rebuttals are all part of a contest of rhetorical muscle, a classic game of political theater.

"It's a last bid to divide the West," said Michael Hirsch, a senior editor at Newsweek magazine, during a forum Monday at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

He added: "I think it's generally a good idea when you're inviting people to your university not to tell them upon arrival that they're not welcome, because then you look crazier than Ahmadinejad."

Ahmadinejad has used the Khomeinist inspired rhetoric of the Islamic Revolution to his advantage, playing a widely despised villain in the Western media while pandering to his domestic base and projecting an air of defiance towards US power.

But experts say that the Iranian leader has also drawn heavy domestic criticism for his mismanagement of the Iranian economy, as well as his brash remarks about the Holocaust, comments which, in the long term, threaten to derail any possible improvement in US-Iranian relations.

"I was astonished when I was [in Iran]. I actually had more on-the-record conversations criticizing Ahmadinejad with Iranian politicians and businessmen than I have here in Washington criticizing Bush," said Hirsch.

In one interview with an Iranian newspaper editor, Hirsch said that the editor remarked, "You know, one of the things we say around here is that Bush is your Ahmadinejad."

"They're similar personalities, both sort of pandering to their conservative religious political base, crudely spoken, not especially masters of their native languages," said Hirsch.

The rhetoric portends an ominous future for the tense standoff between Israel and Iran, which analysts believe is a geo-strategic conflict that is largely being couched in ideological terms.

While it appears the Iranian government has made an explicit effort to bring Israel into the nuclear issue, Ahmadinejad's comments about the Holocaust have angered many inside Iranian elite foreign policy circles because they distract from the more pressing issues of the country's security.

"[Ahmadinejad] actually crossed an invisible red line that exists inside Iran's own internal politics," said Trita Parsi, an Iran specialist and head of the Washington-based National Iranian American Council.

"Criticizing Israel was never something the Iranians were sensitive about – they're quite thick-skinned about to be frank – but talking about the Holocaust was no longer about Israel, and this was something about the entire Jewish experience," he said. "[Ahmadinejad] caused a tremendous amount of anger."

It appears that Israeli politicians are also using the rhetoric to their advantage.

"Netanyahu, he has a metaphor. It's 1938, and Iran is Germany, and he goes on to imply that Ahmadinejad is Hitler," said Parsi, referring to the former Israeli prime minister and head of the right-wing Likud bloc in Israel's Knesset.

"If Iran is Germany and Ahmadinejad is Hitler, who in his or her right mind wants to play the part of Neville Chamberlain?"

It remains to be seen what impact Ahmadinejad's visit will have on the more crucial issues at hand. So far, Iran's attempts to foment division among the key members of the UN Security Council appear to be working.

Six nations – Russia, China, Britain, France, Germany and the United States – agreed Friday to delay until November a new resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran, waiting to see if Tehran cooperates with UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei and answers outstanding questions about its disputed nuclear program

To more discerning critics, Ahmadinejad's US visit only adds more smoke and mirrors to an already tangled political situation in the Middle East, one which the US cannot afford to exacerbate further by militarily confronting Iran.

"The overwhelming tide of opinion that Bush is hearing from the Pentagon is that this would be foolhardy and extreme, and result in many repercussions in Iraq," said Hirsch. "Bush knows that Iraq is his legacy, and that has sucked all the oxygen out of the room."

(Inter Press Service)

One of India 's top ranking generals assigned to liaise with the Iranian military recently returned to New Delhi from several days in Tehran - in a state of complete amazement. "Everyone in the government and military can only talk of one thing," he reports. "No matter who I talked to, all they could do was ask me, over and over again, 'Do you think the Americans will attack us?' 'When will the Americans attack us?' 'Will the Americans attack us in a joint operation with the Israelis?' How massive will the attack be?' on and on, endlessly. The Iranians are in a state of total panic." And that was before September 6. Since then, it's panic-squared in Tehran . The mullahs are freaking out in fear. Why? Because of the silence in Syria . On September 6, Israeli Air Force F-15 and F-16s conducted a devastating attack on targets deep inside Syria near the city of Dayr AZ-Zawr . Israel 's military censors have muzzled the Israeli media, enforcing an extraordinary silence about the identity of the targets. Massive speculation in the world press has followed, such as Brett Stephens' Osirak II? in yesterday's (9/18) Wall St. Journal. Stephens and most everyone else have missed the real story. It is not Israel 's silence that "speaks volumes" as he claims, but Syria 's. Why would the Syrian government be so tight-lipped about an act of war perpetrated on their soil? The first half of the answer lies in this story that appeared in the Israeli media last month (8/13): Syria 's Antiaircraft System Most Advanced In World. Syria has gone on a profligate buying spree, spending vast sums on Russian systems, "considered the cutting edge in air craft interception technology." Syria now "possesses the most crowded antiaircraft system in the world," with "more than 200 antiaircraft batteries of different types," some of which are so new that they have been installed in Syria "before being introduced into Russian operation service." While you're digesting that, take a look at the map of Syria : Notice how far away Dayr AZ-Zawr is from Israel . An F15/16 attack there is not a tiptoe across the border, but a deep, deep penetration of Syrian airspace. And guess what happened with the Russian super-hyper-sophisticated cutting edge antiaircraft missile batteries when that penetration took place on September 6th. Nothing. El blanko. Silence. The systems didn't even light up, gave no indication whatever of any detection of enemy aircraft invading Syrian airspace, zip, zero, nada. The Israelis (with a little techie assistance from us) blinded the Russkie antiaircraft systems so completely the Syrians didn't even know they were blinded. Now you see why the Syrians have been scared speechless. They thought they were protected - at enormous expense - only to discover they are defenseless. As in naked. Thus the Great Iranian Freak-Out - for this means Iran is just as nakedly defenseless as Syria . I can tell you that there are a lot of folks in the Kirya (IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv) and the Pentagon right now who are really enjoying the mullahs' predicament. Let's face it: scaring the terror masters in Tehran out of their wits is fun. It's so much fun, in fact, that an attack destroying Iran 's nuclear facilities and the Revolutionary Guard command/control centers has been delayed, so that France (under new management) can get in on the fun too. On Sunday (9/16), Sarkozy's foreign minister Bernard Kouchner announced that " France should prepare for the possibility of war over Iran 's nuclear prog ram." All of this has caused Tehran to respond with maniacal threats. On Monday (9/17), a government website proclaimed that "600 Shihab-3 missiles" will be fired at targets in Israel in response to an attack upon Iran by the US/Israel. This was followed by Iranian deputy air force chief Gen. Mohammad Alavi announcing today (9/19) that "we will attack their (Israeli) territory with our fighter bombers as a response to any attack." A sure sign of panic is to make a threat that everyone knows is a bluff. So our and Tel Aviv's response to Iranian bluster is a thank-you-for-sharing yawn and a laugh. Few things rattle the mullahs' cages more than a yawn and a laugh. Yet no matter how much fun this sport with the mullahs is, it is also deadly serious. The pressure build-up on Iran is getting enormous. Something is going to blow and soon. The hope is that the blow-up will be internal, that the regime will implode from within. Bu t make no mistake: an all-out full regime take-out air assault upon Iran is coming if that hope doesn't materialize within the next 60 to 90 days. The Sept. 6 attack on Syria was the shot across Iran 's bow. So - what was attacked near Dayr az-Zawr? It's possible it was North Korean "nuclear material" recently shipped to Syria , i.e., stuff to make radioactively "dirty" warheads, but nothing to make a real nuke with as the Norks don't have real nukes (see Why North Korea 's Nuke Test Is Such Good News, October 2006). Another possibility is it was to take out a stockpile of long-range Zilzal surface-to-surface missiles recently shipped from Iran for an attack on Israel . A third is it was a hit on the stockpile of Saddam's chemical/bio weapons snuck out of Iraq and into Syria for safekeeping before the US invasion of April 2003. But the identity of the target is not the story - for the primary point of the attack was not to de stroy that target. It was to shut down Syria 's Russian air defense system during the attack. Doing so made the attack an incredible success. Syria is shamed and silent. Iran is freaking out in panic. Defenseless enemies are fun. Nothing much has been said by the US media because it means Iran , as well as Syria are now so afraid, and that makes our administration and armed forces look good. I don't think it will be long before Iran gets hit. LK Clinton E. "Sandy" McNabb Col, USAF (expended)

The Senate agreed on Thursday to increase the federal debt limit by $850 billion -- from $8.965 trillion to $9.815 trillion -- and then proceeded to approve a stop-gap spending bill that gives the Bush White House at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq.

Additionally, the administration has been given emergency authority to tap further into a $70 billion "bridge fund" to provide new infusions of money for the occupation while the Congress works on appropriations bills for the Department of Defense and other agencies.

Translation: Under the guise of a stop-gap spending bill that is simply supposed to keep the government running until a long-delayed appropriations process is completed -- probably in November -- the Congress has just approved a massive increase in war funding.

The move was backed by every senator who cast a vote, save one.

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the maverick Democrat who has led the fight to end the war and bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, was on the losing end of the 94-1 vote. (The five senators who did not vote, all presidential candidates who are more involved in campaigning than governing, were Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Republicans John McCain and Sam Brownback.)

Said Feingold, "I am disappointed that we are about to begin the 2008 fiscal year without having enacted any of the appropriations bills for that year. I am even more disappointed that we voted on a continuing resolution that provides tens of billions of dollars to continue the misguided war in Iraq but does not include any language to bring that war to a close. We need to keep the federal government operating and make sure our brave troops get all the equipment and supplies they need, but we should not be giving the President a blank check to continue a war that is hurting our national security."

In the House, the continuing resolution passed by a vote of 404 to 14, with 14 other members not voting.

The "no" votes in the House, all cast by anti-war members, came from one Republican, Ron Paul of Texas, and 13 Democrats: Oregon's Earl Blumenauer, Missouri's William Clay, Minnesota's Keith Ellison, California's Bob Filner, Massachusetts' Barney Frank, New York's Maurice Hinchey, Ohio's Dennis Kucinich, Washington's Jim McDermott, New Jersey's Donald Payne, California's Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson and Lynn Woolsey.

That means that, of the 2008 presidential candidates, only Republican Paul and Democrat Kucinich voted against giving the Bush administration a dramatic -- if not particularly well publicized -- infusion of new money for the war.

"Each year this war is getting more and more costly --- both in the amount of money spent and in the number of lives lost. Now this Congress is providing more funds so the administration can continue down a path of destruction and chaos," said Kucinich, who noted the essential role of House and Senate Democratic leaders, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, in passing the continuing resolution. "The Democratic leadership in Congress needs to take a stand against this President and say they will not give him any more money. That is the only way to end this war and bring our troops home."

Article published Sep 28, 2007
Al Qaeda on the ropes?

September 28, 2007


Arnaud de Borchgrave - Osama bin Laden "is a man on the run, from a cave, who is virtually impotent other than the tapes" he releases from time to time. That was the mid-September assessment of Frances Fragos Townsend, top adviser to President Bush on Homeland Security, terrorism and counterterrorism.

Mrs. Townsend was a former Coast Guard assistant commandant for intelligence and a counsel to the attorney general for intelligence policy. The best and the brightest in the Bush White House, she was deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism before her rise to czar, or czarina, for transnational terrorism.

For a terrorist darting from cave to cave, the world's most wanted terrorist wasn't as impotent as he apparently appeared in top secret e-mails speeding into Mrs. Townsend's computers. The view from cyberspace told a different story about al Qaeda. For bin Laden, it is high noon on the electronic frontier.

As former Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid said, "Al Qaeda's organizing ability in cyberspace is unprecedented." Cyberpower has emerged as a complex ether power in which digital grass roots are truly global. Al Qaeda's 6,000-plus Web sites supply the ability to liberate and dominate at the same time. Al Qaeda now operates in virtual space with impunity in recruiting, proselytizing, plotting and planning.

In the ether (not the anesthetic), thought is a reality. For millions of Muslim surfers, the global caliphate and Shariah law exist. They have superseded the nation-state, whether the kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the Netherlands, where Muhammad is the second most popular name for baby boys.

The Muslim world's extremists are roughly estimated at 1 percent of Islam's 1.3 billion adherents (or 13 million who see suicide bombers and other acts of terrorism as legitimate weapons of war against the U.S.-Zionist crusaders). The fundamentalists who approve of bin Laden, though not necessarily his MO, number about 130 million.

Extremist ranks include many well-educated, middle-class youngsters with computer skills. Some of the cells under surveillance in the United Kingdom include computer scientists and engineers. They travel online, meeting like-minded spirits in the virtual caliphate. Plotting has morphed from the mosque to the virtual global caliphate.

In Pakistan, where al Qaeda and Taliban training camps again operate with impunity, almost half the 160 million population gives Osama bin Laden high marks.

Similar percentages show up in other moderate Muslim states — e.g., Bangladesh, Jordan, Egypt and Morocco. New arrests and revelations about Muslim terrorist sleeper cells in European countries occur almost daily. In Algeria, the underground Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which now includes deserters from the Algerian army, has sworn allegiance to al Qaeda.

Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda is not a hierarchical organization, but a network of like-minded Muslim fundamentalists with jihadi "spear carriers." Its expansion no longer depends on bin Laden and his deputy, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahri (whose group assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981). The Internet, with more than 1 billion people on line, and reckoned to double to 2 billion by 2010, does that job for them automatically.

Iraq, in al Qaeda's perspective, is a small subset of a broader campaign. For five years, Iraq has been a useful force multiplier for jihadi volunteers. Camp followers in cyberspace have busily posted videos of IED explosions that kill Americans in Iraq, along with beheadings of infidels.

Republican front-runner Rudolph Giuliani's foreign policy adviser Norman Podhoretz has a new book titled, "World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism." Last June, in an article in Commentary magazine (which he edited for almost four decades) Mr. Podhoretz "begged" President Bush to bomb Iran before Iran nukes Israel.

Daniel Pipes, also on Mr. Giuliani's team, agrees because the Islamists have "a potential access to weapons of mass destruction that could devastate Western life." That means Israel. Explains Newt Gingrich who is seriously considering a run for the presidency: "It makes no sense to have a Holocaust Museum in Washington and yet have no honest assessment of the threat of a 21st century Holocaust ... if the Iranians get nuclear weapons and use them against Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem."

Mr. Gingrich's alarm bell is the loudest: "The gap between where we are and where we should be is so large that it seems almost impossible to explain why the Petraeus Report, while important, will be a wholly inadequate explanation as to what is required to defeat our enemies and secure America and her allies."

America, says Mr. Gingrich, is "currently trapped between those who advocate 'staying the course' and those who would legislate surrender and defeat for America." The Petraeus Report is about a specific campaign, he explained, but Iraq is a campaign in a larger war just as Afghanistan is a campaign in a larger war. Context is missing. Like Gettysburg without the context of the larger Civil War still to be won; or Guadalcanal without the larger war still to be won, or President Reagan's Berlin Wall speech without any understanding about the Cold War and that the Soviet Union was a mortal threat to freedom.

Beyond Gen. Petraeus' testimony, says Mr. Gingrich, we need a report "on the larger war with the irreconcilable Wing of Islam. This enemy is irreconcilable with the modern civilized world... because it cannot tolerate other religions or other life styles... the Islamofascist approach to imposing its views on others and as such it is a mortal threat to our way of life, to freedom, and to the rule of law."

On Sept. 7, CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations: "Our analysts assess with high confidence that al Qaeda's central leadership is planning high-impact plots against the U.S. homeland... we who study the enemy see a danger more real than anything our citizens at home have confronted since our Civil War."

Without an understanding of the virtual reality of Islam's global ummah in cyberspace, and a thorough reading of the bin Laden-Zawahri Islamist catechism, the warnings are likely to go unheeded in the Democratic scramble to bug out of Iraq.

Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.

One silly move deserves another...

Iran''s Parliament Signs Resolution to Label CIA, Army as 'Terrorist Organizations'

Saturday, September 29, 2007

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution to label the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations."

The move is seen as diplomatic a tit-for-tat after the U.S. Senate voted in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

VIDEO: Bill Clinton Confronted by WeAreChange.org Published on Saturday, September 29, 2007.

addthis_url = location.href; addthis_title = document.title; addthis_pub = 'dirtydugie';

Luke Rudkowski of WeAreChange.org discusses their recent confrontation of former Bill Clinton during a book signing.

After Clinton refused to answer a question about extraditing Osama Bin Laden when he had the chance, the group let Clinton have it--

By way of a hidden speaker planted prior to the event, Matt Lepacek called Clinton out on many of his sins, calling him Bilderberg-New World Order scum and exposing his drug dealing activities at Mina, Arkansas, as well as other dealings on behalf of the globalists agenda.

Ahmadinejad Asks Bush to Speak at Iranian University
As part of a rather controversial trip to the U.N. in New York. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at the American University of Columbia facing a rather unfriendly crowd.

After these events unfolded the Iranian president opened an offer for Bush to do the same in Iran. "If their president plans to travel to Iran, we will allow him to make a speech" at a university, Ahmadinejad told state TV earlier this week.

Coalition of 25 organizations warns the US senate of 'disastrous consequences' of an anti-Iranian bill for the US and entire world

Key nations to delay new Iran sanctions

Ahmadinejad invites Bush to speak in Tehran

Secretary Rice blames Iranian government for giving bombs to Iraq militants: However, she says U.S. has no plans to retaliate

Dialogue With The Deaf: Reasons the Arabs admire Iranian President Ahmadinejad

Ahmadinejad walks away with a win:"Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia - His Columbia engagement gives him what he wants -- legitimacy -- and his hosts look rude to Islamic eyes

How to Make Iraq Look Like Whipped Cream

So What About Iran?
By URI AVNERY


A respected American paper posted a scoop this week: Vice-President Dick Cheney, the King of Hawks, has thought up a Machiavellian scheme for an attack on Iran. Its main point: Israel will start by bombing an Iranian nuclear installation, Iran will respond by launching missiles at Israel, and this will serve as a pretext for an American attack on Iran.

Far-fetched? Not really. It is rather like what happened in 1956. Then France, Israel and Britain secretly planned to attack Egypt in order to topple Gamal Abd-al-Nasser ("regime change" in today's lingo.) It was agreed that Israeli paratroops would be dropped near the Suez Canal, and that the resulting conflict would serve as a pretext for the French and British to occupy the canal area in order to "secure" the waterway. This plan was implemented (and failed miserably).

What would happen to us if we agreed to Cheney's plan? Our pilots would risk their lives to bomb the heavily defended Iranian installations. Then, Iranian missiles would rain down on our cities. Hundreds, perhaps thousands would be killed. All this in order to supply the Americans with a pretext to go to war.

Would the pretext have stood up? In other words, is the US obliged to enter a war on our side, even when that war is caused by us? In theory, the answer is yes. The current agreements between the US and Israel say that America has to come to Israel's aid in any war - whoever started it.

Is there any substance to this leak? Hard to know. But it strengthens the suspicion that an attack on Iran is more imminent than people imagine.

* * * Do Bush, Cheney & Co. indeed intend to attack Iran?

I don't know, but my suspicion that they might is getting stronger.

Why? Because George Bush is nearing the end of his term of office. If it ends the way things look now, he will be remembered as a very bad - if not the worst - president in the annals of the republic. His term started with the Twin Towers catastrophe, which reflected no great credit on the intelligence agencies, and would come to a close with the grievous Iraq fiasco.

There is only one year left to do something impressive and save his name in the history books. In such situations, leaders tend to look for military adventures. Taking into account the man's demonstrated character traits, the war option suddenly seems quite frightening.

True, the American army is pinned down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even people like Bush and Cheney could not dream, at this time, of invading a country four times larger than Iraq, with three times the population.

But, quite possibly the war-mongers are whispering in Bush's ear: What are you worrying about? No need for an invasion. Enough to bomb Iran, as we bombed Serbia and Afghanistan. We shall use the smartest bombs and the most sophisticated missiles against the two thousand or so targets, in order to destroy not only the Iranian nuclear sites but also their military installations and government offices. "We shall bomb them back into the stone age," as an American general once said about Vietnam, or "turn their clock back 20 years," as the Israeli Air Force general Dan Halutz said about Lebanon.

That's a tempting idea. The US will only use its mighty Air Force, missiles of all kinds and the powerful aircraft-carriers, which are already deployed in the Persian/Arabian Gulf. All these can be sent into action at any time on short notice. For a failed president approaching the end of his term, the idea of an easy, short war must have an immense attraction. And this president has already shown how hard it is for him to resist temptations of this kind.

* * * Would this indeed be such an easy operation, a "piece of cake" in American parlance?

I doubt it.

Even "smart" bombs kill people. The Iranians are a proud, resolute and highly motivated people. They point out that for two thousand years they have never attacked another country, but during the eight years of the Iran-Iraq war they have amply proved their determination to defend their own when attacked.

Their first reaction to an American attack would be to close the Straits of Hormuz, the entrance to the Gulf. That would choke off a large part of the world's oil supply and cause an unprecedented world-wide economic crisis. To open the straits (if this is at all possible), the US army would have to capture and hold large areas of Iranian territory.

The short and easy war would turn into a long and hard war. What does that mean for us in Israel?

There can be little doubt that if attacked, Iran will respond as it has promised: by bombarding us with the rockets it is preparing for this precise purpose. That will not endanger Israel's existence, but it will not be pleasant either.

If the American attack turns into a long war of attrition, and if the American public comes to see it as a disaster (as is happening right now with the Iraqi adventure), some will surely put the blame on Israel. It is no secret that the Pro-Israel lobby and its allies - the (mostly Jewish) neo-cons and the Christian Zionists - are pushing America into this war, just as they pushed it into Iraq. For Israeli policy, the hoped-for gains of this war may turn into giant losses - not only for Israel, but also for the American Jewish community.

* * * If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not exist, the Israeli government would have had to invent him.

He has got almost everything one could wish for in an enemy. He has a big mouth. He is a braggart. He enjoys causing scandals. He is a Holocaust denier. He prophesies that Israel will "vanish from the map" (though he did not say, as falsely reported, the he would wipe Israel off the map.)

This week, the pro-Israel lobby organized big demonstrations against his visit to New York. They were a huge success - for Ahmadinejad. He has realized his dream of becoming the center of world attention. He has been given the opportunity to voice his arguments against Israel -- some outrageous, some valid - before a world-wide audience.

But Ahmadinejad is not Iran. True, he has won popular elections, but Iran is like the orthodox parties in Israel: it is not their politicians who count, but their rabbis. The Shiite religious leadership makes the decisions and commands the armed forces, and this body is neither boastful nor vociferous not scandal-mongering. It exercises a lot of caution.

If Iran was really so eager to obtain a nuclear bomb, it would have acted in utmost silence and kept as low a profile as possible (as Israel did). The swaggering of Ahmadinejad would hurt this effort more than any enemy of Iran could.

It is highly unpleasant to think about a nuclear bomb in Iranian hands (and, indeed, in any hands.) I hope it can be avoided by offering inducements and/or imposing sanctions. But even if this does not succeed, it would not be the end of the world, nor the end of Israel. In this area, more than in any other, Israel's deterrent power is immense. Even Ahmadinejad will not risk an exchange of queens - the destruction of Iran for the destruction of Israel.

* * * Napoleon said that to understand a country's policy, one has only to look at the map.

If we do this, we shall see that there is no objective reason for war between Israel and Iran. On the contrary, for a long time it was believed in Jerusalem that the two countries were natural allies.

David Ben-Gurion advocated an "alliance of the periphery". He was convinced that the entire Arab world is the natural enemy of Israel, and that, therefore, allies should be sought on the fringes of the Arab world - Turkey, Iran, Ethiopia, Chad etc. (He also looked for allies inside the Arab world - communities that are not Sunni-Arab, such as the Maronites, the Copts, the Kurds, the Shiites and others.)

At the time of the Shah, very close connections existed between Iran and Israel, some positive, some negative, some outright sinister. The Shah helped to build a pipeline from Eilat to Askelon, in order to transport Iranian oil to the Mediterranean, bypassing the Suez Canal. The Israel internal secret service (Shabak) trained its notorious Iranian counterpart (Savak). Israelis and Iranians acted together in Iraqi Kurdistan, helping the Kurds against their Sunni-Arab oppressors.

The Khomeini revolution did not, in the beginning, put an end to this alliance, it only drove it underground. During the Iran-Iraq war, Israel supplied Iran with arms, on the assumption that anyone fighting Arabs is our friend. At the same time, the Americans supplied arms to Saddam Hussein - one of the rare instances of a clear divergence between Washington and Jerusalem. This was bridged in the Iran-Contra Affair, when the Americans helped Israel to sell arms to the Ayatollahs.

Today, an ideological struggle is raging between the two countries, but it is mainly fought out on the rhetorical and demagogical level. I dare to say that Ahmadinejad doesn't give a fig for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he only uses it to make friends in the Arab world. If I were a Palestinian, I would not rely on it. Sooner or later, geography will tell and Israeli-Iranian relations will return to what they were - hopefully on a far more positive basis.

* * * One thing I am ready to predict with confidence: whoever pushes for war against Iran will come to regret it.

Some adventures are easy to get into but hard to get out of.

The last one to find this out was Saddam Hussein. He thought that it would be a cakewalk - after all, Khomeini had killed off most of the officers, and especially the pilots, of the Shah's military. He believed that one quick Iraqi blow would be enough to bring about the collapse of Iran. He had eight long years of war to regret it.

Both the Americans and we may soon be feeling that the Iraqi mud is like whipped cream compared to the Iranian quagmire.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is o a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

Iraq's WMD Myth
By ANDREW COCKBURN

A former senior UN diplomat has revealed to me details of how, just over 10 years ago, the Clinton administration deliberately sabotaged UN weapons inspections in Iraq.

American officials were fearful that Iraq would be officially certified as weapons-free, a development that was seen as a political liability for Bill Clinton. Thus the stage was set for the manufacture of the Iraqi WMD myth as the excuse for George Bush's catastrophic invasion of Iraq.

It was March 1997. For six years the UN inspectors had been probing the secrets of Saddam's weapons programs, in the process destroying huge quantities of chemical munitions and other production facilities. To enforce Saddam's cooperation, Iraq was subject to crushing sanctions.

Now, Rolf Ekeus, the urbane Swedish diplomat who headed the inspection effort, was ready to announce that his work was almost done. "I was getting close to certifying that Iraq was in compliance with Resolution 687," he confirmed to me recently.

At the time, he declared that although there were some loose ends to be cleared up, "not much is unknown about Iraq's retained proscribed weapons capabilities."

For the Clinton administration, this was a crisis. If Ekeus was allowed to complete his mission, then the suspension of sanctions would follow almost automatically.

Saddam would be off the hook and, more importantly for the Clintonites, the neo-conservative republicans would be howling for the president's blood.

The only hope was somehow to prevent Ekeus completing his mission.

Enter Madeleine Albright, newly appointed Secretary of State. On March 26, 1997, she strode on to the stage at Georgetown University to deliver what was billed as a major policy address on Iraq. Many in the audience expected that she would extend some sort of olive branch toward the Iraqi regime, but that was far from her mind.

Instead, she was set on making sure that Saddam effectively ended his cooperation with the inspectors. "We do not agree with the nations who argue that if Iraq complies with its obligations concerning weapons of mass destruction, sanctions should be lifted," she declared. Sanctions, she stated without equivocation, would remain unless or until Saddam was driven from power.

Ekeus understood immediately what Albright intended. "I knew that Saddam would now feel that there was no point in his cooperating with us, and that was the intent of her speech."

Sure enough, the following day he got an angry call from Tariq Aziz, Saddam's deputy prime minister and emissary to the outside world. "He wanted to know why Iraq should work with us any more."

From then on, the inspectors found their lives increasingly difficult, as Iraqi officials, clearly acting under instructions from Saddam, blocked them at every turn.Ekeus resigned in July 1997, to be replaced by the Australian Richard Butler. Butler was soon embroiled in acrimonious confrontation with the Iraqis. Later the following year, all the inspectors were withdrawn from Iraq and the US mounted a series of bombing raids.

Clinton's strategy had been successful. Iraq remained under sanctions, while in Washington the neo-conservative faction spun the wildest conjectures as to what evil schemes Saddam, unmolested by inspectors, might be concocting with his weapons scientists.

In fact Saddam had long abandoned all his WMD programs, but as the CIA had no sources of intelligence inside Iraq, no one in the West could prove this.

Finally, following 9/11, the war party in George Bush Jr's administration was able to make the case for invasion on the grounds that Saddam had refused to comply with UN resolutions on disarmament by refusing to grant access to the weapons inspectors. The Iraq disaster has many fathers.

[Footnote: Ekeus knew from the mid-l990s on that Saddam Hussein had no such weapons of mass destruction. They had all been destroyed years earlier, after the first Gulf war.

Ekeus learned this on the night of August 22, l995, in Amman, from the lips of General Hussein Kamel, who had just defected from Iraq, along with some of his senior military aides. Kamel was Saddam's son-in-law and had been in overall charge of all programs for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and delivery systems.

That night, in three hours of detailed questioning from Ekeus and two technical experts, Kamel was categorical. The UN inspection teams had done a good job. When Saddam was finally persuaded that failure to dispose of the relevant weapons systems would have very serious consequences, he issued the order and Kamel carried it out. As he told Ekeus that night, "All weapons, biological, chemical, missile, nuclear, were destroyed." (The UNSCOM record of the session can ne viewed at http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf). In similar debriefings that August Kamel said the same thing to teams from the CIA and MI6. His military aides provided a wealth of corroborative details. Then, the following year, Kamel was lured back to Iraq and at once executed. Editors.]

Andrew Cockburn is the author of Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy.

Clinton Time: Do We Set Our Clocks Forward or Back?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

Just like the architect of the Tower of Babel bustling out of his studio with a fresh set of drawings, Hillary Clinton has produced a new health plan. Politicians don't care to admit they messed up, and Mrs Clinton is no exception to this rule. In fact she is entirely incapable of conceding error. The most she would concede during the rollout ceremonies earlier this month is that the last time she took on the health industry, she was too ambitious. This is a most forgiving posture towards one of the great political disasters of the 1990s.

In the dawn of the Clinton era, many Americans believed the new president might actually do something to fix the mess optimistically described as the health care system. Bill Clinton's pledge to do so was a prime reason why he got elected. In the first hours of his presidency, he announced he was handing the big assignment to his wife. The political conditions were favorable. In early 1993, nearly 70 per cent of all Americans wanted a system of national healthcare, a sound base on which to build a national coalition powerful enough to cow the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies--two of the most powerful forces on the American political scene.

Hilary Clinton is not a populist by temperament. She had been a powerful corporate lawyer in Little Rock, accustomed to covert deals behind closed doors. When health care reformers, Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein urged Mrs Clinton in early 1993 to use that small window of opportunity to take on the insurance industry and bring in a Canadian-style system and that the majority of all Americans would support her, she answered contemptuously to Himmelstein, "tell me something interesting". As she embarked on her mission, all the early headlines concerned her obsession with secrecy.