With Congress and the White House engaging in yet another round of debate on the Iraq War, a former Iraqi judge who was--and who still may be--the chief anti-corruption officer of the Iraqi government has a tough message for anyone concerned about Iraq: The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is so riddled with corruption it ought to be totally scrapped. Radhi al-Radhi, who since 2004 has headed the Commission on Public Integrity (CPI), an independent Iraqi institution that tries to investigate and prosecute corrupt Iraqi officials, offers this damning indictment of the Iraqi government at a time when Maliki and his allies are mounting a fierce attack against him and attempting to replace Radhi with a Maliki loyalist who himself has been arrested on corruption charges.

Last week I posted an article disclosing that a team of officials at the US embassy in Baghdad had drafted a secret report detailing rampant corruption and criminality throughout the Iraqi government. The embassy report notes that corruption is "the norm in many ministries" and that Maliki has consistently blocked the work of Radhi and the Commission on Public Integrity. Four days later, Maliki held a press conference in Baghdad and fiercely denounced Radhi. He accused Radhi of corruption--without offering any specifics. Maliki announced that Radhi would be prosecuted and that the Parliament was about to forcibly retire him. The prime minister also claimed that the CPI chief had fled the country. Three days after that, the Iraqi government named Moussa Faraj to replace Radhi.

While all this was happening, Radhi, who is depicted in the secret embassy report as a diligent and brave investigator, was in the United States, not fleeing but leading a delegation of CPI investigators attending a training session in Washington. I spoke with him yesterday about his own predicament and that of his nation. He laughs off Maliki's charges as a bogus and transparent attempt to end investigations probing Maliki's political allies, and he is quite blunt in his assessment of the Maliki government.

Radhi, a secular Shia, is a compact, 62-year-old man with a salt-and-pepper mustache and receding gray hair. It's easy to see the dent on his head where he was smashed by a rifle butt one of the two times he was imprisoned during the Saddam Hussein years. He rolls up a sleeve to show a long deep scar that he says he received during torture sessions and notes that his back is covered with similar marks.

The first point he wants to make--and he does so emphatically--is that he did not slip out of Iraq to escape prosecution, as Maliki has implied. Radhi explains that he came to the United States with ten CPI investigators who are being taught how to use a lie detector. (I've confirmed that such training is under way.) He takes out his passport. It contains an Iraqi stamp indicating he legally departed the country on August 22. "Maliki is making up stories to blame me for stuff," Radhi remarks. The prime minister's press conference, Radhi says, was a stunt designed to pressure Radhi not to return to Iraq: "They want to get rid of me because I have lots of important files that could be used to indict his ministers."

Radhi confirms that the secret embassy report's description of widespread corruption within the Maliki government is accurate: "This is what's going on. The government has failed in doing its job." He estimates that the various ministries, hampered by fraud and waste, are only meeting between 2 and 5 percent of their obligations. He says that $7 billion has been pocketed or wasted at the Ministry of Defense, that the same has happened to $4 billion at the Ministry of Electricity. "At other ministries," he adds, "it's half a billion dollars here, a quarter of a billion dollars there. You can imagine the whole number. It works like the Mafia."

Radhi's problem, he maintains, is that he wants to do something about all this--and that means trouble for the Shia-dominated government led by Maliki. "When I prosecuted Sunni ministers, they clapped for me," he remarks. "When I prosecuted Kurdish ministers, they clapped for me. But when I went after Shia ministers, they came after me and said I'm the corrupted one."

Maliki's campaign against Radhi is nothing new. Last year, Maliki sent Radhi a letter essentially accusing him of not accounting for hundreds of thousands of dollars spent by the Commission on Public Integrity. According to the secret embassy report, an initial audit of the CPI uncovered management problems (not criminal conduct) and a subsequent audit was "glowing."

Sabah al-Saidi, a Shia leader who heads the Parliament's anticorruption committee and who has joined Maliki in the latest campaign against Radhi, has also been trying for a year to undermine the CPI by charging Radhi with graft. Radhi maintains that he earned Saidi's wrath because the CPI was investigating oil smuggling in Basra and its investigators believed this criminal activity was linked to Saidi's Fadillah party. Radhi's CPI pursued about 90 cases involving oil smuggling and corruption in Basra, and these cases were blocked from reaching court. The secret embassy report corroborates this point, noting that investigating corruption in Basra has been nearly impossible. The report describes an occasion when Radhi asked Maliki to support probes in Basra targeting the Fadillah party and Shia militias and Maliki "just went quiet." (According to a Radhi associate who asked not to be identified, oil smugglers in Basra routinely pay militias to safeguard oil pipelines and some of this protection money ends up with anti-American insurgents.)

Radhi says he has never had a case that directly involved Maliki. But he maintains that he has initiated several investigations of officials close to Maliki--including a minister of oil and a Maliki relative who used to head the Ministry of Transportation--and Maliki's office and other ministries shut down these cases, citing a law known as Article 136B. This provision in Iraq's criminal code--a provision that Maliki revived-- allows the prime minister or a minister to order a court to end a prosecution.

And earlier this year, Radhi notes, Maliki's office issued a secret order that forced the criminal courts to close all ongoing cases against past and present ministers and deputy ministers. (I have a copy of that memo.) About three dozen investigations were shuttered. With another secret memo, Radhi says, Maliki's office ended the prosecution of a key Maliki adviser on oil policy. And as we talk, Radhi pulls out yet one more secret memo, dated June 18, 2007, in which the prime minister instructed Radhi to dismiss one of the CPI's best investigators. Radhi refused. A month later, Maliki's office sent Radhi another memo reiterating this order. "I kept him," Radhi says.

Radhi notes that last year he had a "big case" involving one of Maliki's top national security aides. The official was given a large amount of money to fund a weapons buyback program in Sadr City, a Baghdad neighborhood controlled by the militia of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. According to Radhi, the Maliki aide was suspected of having pocketed some of the money to buy a building for himself in London and of having passed weapons he had collected to militias. "When we looked into this," Radhi recalls, "the prime minister's office closed the case--using Rule 136. We had evidence in this case. And that's when they started to attack us."

Of Maliki, Radhi says, "he's not corrupt, but the group around him--all of them are corrupt. And he has to support them, because he's of their party."

Corruption within the Iraqi government, Radhi says, "is increasing day by day." The government's budget for 2007 (including funds left over from 2006) is $71 billion, he remarks, yet "you see no reconstruction, and we still don't have oil or electricity and no security from the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of the Interior, and they're each spending billions of dollars." Five million Iraqis have left the country, he says, yet the Ministry of Trade is still spending the same amount of funds for ration cards--apparently for people who no longer live in Iraq: "Where is the money going? No one knows." The Ministry of Health, he complains, has imported billions of dollars in medicine and medical equipment, "but we don't see medicine and equipment in hospitals. It's going to political parties or militias."

----------------------------------------
Please check out David Corn's personal blog at www.davidcorn.com for recent postings on Fred Thompson, Iraq, missing White House emails, Larry Craig, and other subjects.
----------------------------------------

Radhi still considers himself chief of the Commission on Public Integrity. His forcible retirement, he says, is illegal--and so is the appointment of his successor. (In a letter sent to Maliki two days ago, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Sunni speaker of the Parliament, declared Radhi's removal "illegal and unconstitutional.") Regardless of the legality of Radhi's ouster, Moussa Faraj, who has been named Radhi's replacement, is an odd pick for the job. He was once a deputy at the CPI--having been installed at the commission by the ruling Shia Alliance Party. According to the secret U.S. embassy report on corruption, Faraj regularly prosecuted and delayed cases on "sectarian bases." Worse, the report notes that Faraj, a political ally of Sabah al-Saidi (the Parliament leader who has assailed Radhi), once "allowed a Shia Alliance member [charged in a multi-million-dollar corruption case] to escape custody." And after Faraj was dismissed from the CPI, the report says, he stole "literally a car load of case files." An arrest warrant was issued for him.

Several weeks ago, according to Radhi and his investigators, Faraj was arrested, placed in prison, and subsequently released on bail. "How can he be in jail and then be head of the integrity commission?" Radhi asks. Putting the CPI in Faraj's hands, Radhi says, will allow Maliki's office and Saidi to control its actions and prevent the commission from conducting investigations that inconvenience them and their political confederates. It will mean, he claims, the end of any meaningful anticorruption effort in Iraq.

Radhi says he hopes to return to Iraq and the CPI: "I want to go back and work because Iraq needs and deserves a clean government. You cannot rebuild Iraq without fighting corruption. We cannot stop the insurgency without blocking its source of funding, and corruption produces funds for the insurgents." But he has no clear strategy for undoing his forcible removal or for countering Maliki's moves against him. Radhi concedes he does not have a lot of options: "I don't have a political party or a gang supporting me."

This summer, there were two rocket attacks on his home. And the Iraqi government has informed him that his retirement benefits (80 percent of his salary) will be based on the pay of low-level government functionary (about $700 a month) not the income of a government minister (about $8000 a month), even though the CPI chief is considered the equivalent of a minister. For the time being, he may be stranded in the United States. And it's unclear how much the US government will help him, if at all.

"The people now running Iraq are corrupted themselves," Radhi says. "The only solution left is a new government, with a secular government of technocrats, not a religious government politicized by certain groups. Iraqi society is a civil society. The people deserve a civil government." He hopes the Bush Administration will pressure the Maliki government to follow the law "so no new dictatorship will be born." But is it realistic to expect any of this? A wholesale change in the Iraqi government? The Bush administration leaning on Maliki and forcing an end to systemic corruption? After all, the secret corruption report--which the Bush administration has not yet acknowledged--notes that the US Embassy in Baghdad has done little to bolster anticorruption programs and that Defense Department officials have blocked investigations of certain Iraqi officials. "I know it's difficult," Radhi says with a deep and sad sigh. "I'm not a political guy."

******

OUT IN PAPERBACK: HUBRIS: THE INSIDE STORY OF SPIN, SCANDAL, AND THE SELLING OF THE IRAQ WAR by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. The paperback edition of this New York Times bestseller contains a new afterword on George W. Bush's so-called surge in Iraq and the Scooter Libby trial. The Washington Post said of Hubris: "Indispensable....This [book] pulls together with unusually shocking clarity the multiple failures of process and statecraft." The New York Times called it, "The most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations...fascinating reading." Tom Brokaw praised it as "a bold and provocative book." Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor of The New Yorker notes, "The selling of Bush's Iraq debacle is one of the most important--and appalling--stories of the last half-century, and Michael Isikoff and David Corn have reported the hell out of it." For highlights from Hubris, click here.

Comments (60)

1. Let's re-read that again--

   "The government's budget for 2007 (including funds left over from 2006) is $71 billion, he remarks, yet "you see no reconstruction, and we still don't have oil or electricity and no security from the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of the Interior, and they're each spending billions of dollars."

   SEVENTY-ONE BILLION dollars....and guess who foots most of that?

   I wish some of the folks around here who are so concerned about Hillary getting $100K from some Chinese felon...or the New Jersey "Tammany Hall"....cared a BIT for a figure 30,000X that... of OUR money.

   Posted by Mask at 09/07/2007 @ 12:30pm

2. Set your own house in order first! Talk about corruption?

   The press hypocrisy is worse. It is complicit in a crime of helping

   coverup the Crimes of the Bush administration !

   http://www.assassinationscience.com/When_is_Saddam_not_Saddam.pdf

   Judge for yourself.A Picture tells a thousand words, we are getting some very good pictures here of how TV is influencing America to believe the totalitarian lies of Big Brother, the New World Order! [assassinationscience.com]

   Scholars for 9/11 truth [911scholars.org]

   http://www.assassinationscience.com/When_is_Saddam_not_Saddam.pdf

   When is Saddam not Saddam?

   Jim Fetzer (READER WEEKLY 15 July 2004)

   The New York Times reports that the Senate Intelligence study of prewar intelligence about Iraq

   will not only confirm that dire warnings about illicit weapons were largely unfounded and that

   ties to al Qaeda were tenuous but that "Saddam Hussein's army posed little threat to regional

   stability and American interests". In spite of what we

   have been told by the administration, moreover, the resistance to our presence is not primarily

   from al Qaeda terrorists but from Sunni Iraqis who are angry about losing power in the wake of

   the fall of Saddam Hussein.

   According to The Associated Press, indigenous guerrillas "can call on loyalists to boost their

   forces to as high as 20,000 and have enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered by

   the presence of US troops that they cannot be militarily defeated". Although the administration

   actively denies parallels with Vietnam, the analogies are becoming stronger and stronger. We are

   bogged down in a distant land that posed no threat to our security where the population regards

   us as invaders, not as liberators, and where military victory appears to be impossible.

   The administration persists in proclaiming that we are safer, stronger, and better for

   having taken out a ruthless dictator. Yet the fellow we have selected to replace him,

   Iyad Allawi, appears to be a facsimile of the fallen leader. Precisely how he became

   Iraq's interim Prime Minister remains mysterious, but also he places a premium on

   security over democracy and has threatened to place Iraq under martial law, to shut down the

   media, and delay elections. He has been described as "brutal", "ruthless",

   and "tough", a suitable replacement for Saddam, perhaps, but not a fellow likely to become the

   George Washington of his country.

   Those who continue to resist the manifest failure of this administration's policies in the Middle

   East may want to consider the latest development, which has yet to make

   the national news. No doubt, our greatest success in this miserable intervention has been the

   capture of Saddam Hussein himself. But there is now evidence that the man whom we captured

   is not Saddam Hussein but one of his doubles. If this is the case--and the evidence is

   compelling--then this may be the biggest lie to come out of Iraq from an administration that

   specializes in falsehoods.

   On 18 June 2004, an independent Australian journalist, Joe Vialls, reported that the International

   Red Cross has been insisting that the captive Saddam Hussein should be turned over to Iraqi

   authorities. Oddly, American authorities decided that this man should be legally transferred to

   Iraq but kept under American military control. This

   peculiar arrangement appears to be motivated by the knowledge that the Saddam in

   custody is not Saddam Hussein but one of his doubles, a matter that would not escape Iraqis were

   they to be given access to his person.

   Indeed, under pressure from Russia, the US reluctantly allowed Saddam's wife, Sajida

   Heiralla Tuffah, access to her husband in Qatar. According to Vialls, "Sajida arrived from Syrian

   with her official escort, Sheikh Hamad Al-Tani, and then entered the

   prison, emerging only moments later pink with rage and shouting, 'This is not my husband but

   his double. Where is my husband? Take me to my husband." She was given the unconvincing

   explanation that he had changed a lot in custody, which she

   did not accept, insisting she would know her own husband. (The article is available

   on google under "Mrs Saddam says Saddam is not Saddam".)

   On 7 July 2004, Vialls presented evidence to substantiate his claim that the captured

   Saddam is not Saddam Hussein, which was based upon differences in their teeth and

   jaw. Photographs of the captured Saddam display rather ragged and unkempt lower

   front teeth, while photographs of Saddam Hussein display quite beautiful, uniform lower teeth.

   Moreover, the captured Saddam has an underbite (where his lower teeth extend beyond his upper

   teeth), while Saddam Hussein has an overbite (where his upper teeth extend beyond his lower

   teeth). (His article and photographs may be found under "Shaddam Shaddam's New Vaudeville

   Scam!")

   Here are two of the photographs presented in Vialls' report. The one on the left is the captured

   Saddam, the one on the right is Saddam Hussein. They are not the same.

   Curious as to whether he might be right, I performed my own search using google and

   NEWSWEEK (12 July 2004), which just happened to include a set of several photos of the

   captured Saddam, including some that display his ragged and unkempt lower teeth. What I

   needed in addition were photographs that the US government itself has offered as photographs of

   Saddam Hussein. I found what I was looking for in an on-line piece entitled, "Saddam Hussein

   al-Tikriti", which may be located at the following web site:

   http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/saddam.htm.

   What I liked about this source is that it not only includes a series of photographs of

   Saddam Hussein but a sequence in which his original appearance has been altered to

   reflect how it might have changed during the period he was attempting to evade his capture. This

   series was issued to Coalition troops in Iraq on 31 July 2003 in order to "better help them

   recognize the wanted former Iraqi leader" by CENTCOM, the Central Command. The beautiful

   lower teeth and slight overbite are clearly evident in these photographs from impeccable United

   States sources. Here is a comparison of one of NEWSWEEK's photos with one from

   CENTCOM:

   Some lies are bigger than others. The deceit and deception that motivated the United States

   Congress into supporting armed intervention in Iraq included phony reports about weapons of

   mass destruction, chemical and biological capabilities, and attempts to acquire the ingredients

   that are required to construct nuclear bombs. One might have thought at least that lying to the

   American people about the capture of Saddam Hussein would be beneath our government.

   Apparently not. "

   ______________________________________

   Jim Fetzer, a professor of philosophy at UMD, maintains a web site devoted to issues of public

   concern at www.assassinationscience.com.

   Mission Accomplished! Saddam Hussein 'May' Be Dead or Severely Injured, Bush Says 25 April 2003, American Forces Press Service, Kathleen T. Rhem http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/2003/iraq-030425-afp s01.htm

   Cheney says he believes Hussein is dead 8 May 2003, baltimoresun.com http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/iraq/bal-te.hussein08.0.439 1237.story?coll=bal-iraq-storyutil

   Capt. Wachter at the Crystal Cathedral, The Hour of Power 25 May 2003, recorded and broadcast on 6 July 2003 (video 1 , video 2 ) http://www.hourofpower.org/video/archive/various2003.html

   Mrs Saddam says Saddam is not Saddam 18 June 2004, prisonplanet.com, Joe Vialls http://prisonplanet.tv/articles/june2004/061804saddamnotsaddam.htm

   Shaddam Shaddam's New Vaudeville Scam! 3 July 2004, subliminalsuggestion, Joe Vialls http://www.vialls.com/subliminalsuggestion/saddamscam.html

   http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/05-16-05/discussion.cgi.50.html

   http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=104&contentid=4034

   When is Saddam not Saddam? 15 July 2004, Reader Weekly, Jim Fetzer http://www.assassinationscience.com/When_is_Saddam_not_Saddam.pdf

   Who's That Man? 20 October 2005, thetruthseeker.co.uk, Rixon Stewart http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3717

   D O compare the photos of Sadamn preinvasion and the man the Government tried, and hung. Bushie executed one of Sadamn's doubles. Even his wife said this is not my husband! Where is the real Sadamn then, probably in South America, like the rest of the Nazis, probably living well on the 17,000 acres Bush bought. [assassinationscience.com]

   Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 12:37pm

3. http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/261469.shtml

   9/11 The lie Bush used for endless war

   author: community effort Sep 01, 2007 07:33

   Much is made of Senator Craig's hypocrisy. What of the Press hypocrisy in not examining the facts of 9/11? What about the Congressional hypocrisy of acting to impeach these criminals?

   Hands up

   http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/allcomments?pid=228800#pid228927

   Consensual sex among adults is not criminal.

   No crime was committed. hypocrisy obvious though.

   The press hypocrisy is worse. It is complicit in a crime of helping

   cover-up the Crimes of the Bush administration !

   http://www.assassinationscience.com/When_is_Saddam_not_Saddam.pdf

   Judge for yourself.A Picture tells a thousand words, we are getting some very good pictures here of how TV is influencing America to believe the totalitarian lies of Big Brother, the New World Order! [assassinationscience.com]

   Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 12:47pm

4. SEVENTY-ONE BILLION dollars....and guess who foots most of that?

   Posted by MASK 09/07/2007 @ 12:30pm

   Math Time: Iraq's current estim. oil production is around 2 million bbl..... $70/bbl x 2 mbbl x 365 days = $51 BILLION!

   US surely funds much of Iraq's military spendings but let's NOT jump to the conclusion that MASK is trying to direct folks to...that we fund most of Iraq's normal Gov't expenditures (outside of military)!

   Posted by Happy at 09/07/2007 @ 12:47pm

5. Good `scoop' again, David! Much better piece on Iraq's corruption!

   IF the Coalition can `nudge' Maliki aside based IN PART on ELEVATING the corruption angle, I'm incline to `give a crap'!

   Posted by Happy at 09/07/2007 @ 12:50pm

6. "Radhi says he has never had a case that directly involved Maliki. But he maintains that he has initiated several investigations of officials close to Maliki--"

   Looks like Maliki's been taking some good notes from the Bush administration. Democracy is coming...

   Posted by MATTMAN at 09/07/2007 @ 12:50pm

7. http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/261469.shtml

   here [seattle.indymedia.org]

   Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 12:51pm

8. http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/90536.html

   September 07, 2007 01:39AM EDT [general.addtranslation] Download Article (PDF) [ insert language bar ] "The only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert."

   Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in North Dakota?

   By Larry Johnson

   "Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can't imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?"

   Keywords: Bronx, War & Peace, Resource Wars,

   Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in North Dakota?

   Staging Nukes for Iran?

   No Quarter |September 6, 2007 Larry Johnson

   Why the hubbub over a B-52 taking off from a B-52 base in Minot, North Dakota and subsequently landing at a B-52 base in Barksdale, Louisiana? That's like getting excited if you see a postal worker in uniform walking out of a post office. And how does someone watching a B-52 land identify the cruise missiles as nukes? It just does not make sense.

   So I called a old friend and retired B-52 pilot and asked him. What he told me offers one compelling case of circumstantial evidence. My buddy, let's call him Jack D. Ripper, reminded me that the only times you put weapons on a plane is when they are on alert or if you are tasked to move the weapons to a specific site.

   Then he told me something I had not heard before.

   Barksdale Air Force Base is being used as a jumping off point for Middle East operations. Gee, why would we want cruise missile nukes at Barksdale Air Force Base. Can't imagine we would need to use them in Iraq. Why would we want to preposition nuclear weapons at a base conducting Middle East operations?

   His final point was to observe that someone on the inside obviously leaked the info that the planes were carrying nukes. A B-52 landing at Barksdale is a non-event. A B-52 landing with nukes. That is something else.

   Now maybe there is an innocent explanation for this? I can't think of one. What is certain is that the pilots of this plane did not just make a last minute decision to strap on some nukes and take them for a joy ride. We need some tough questions and clear answers. What the hell is going on? Did someone at Barksdale try to indirectly warn the American people that the Bush Administration is staging nukes for Iran? I don't know, but it is a question worth asking.

   -----

   Please spread widely. jamie Download Article (PDF) Add to PDF Compilation Download PDF Compilation Email Article Add your comments

   The official story grows fishier by the minute

   Sep 07, 2007 04:38AM EDT

   m There's a hell of a lot more to this story than the corporate media are prepared to explore. Let's hope the alternative media follows up. Scary shit.

   As for Barksdale AFB's role in staging long range B-52 strikes against Iraq, ( and the possibility of replicating that role against Iran) consider the following historical tidbit, reposted from Global Secruity.org [ http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/agency/2bw.htm ]

   In response to Saddam Hussein's attacks against Kurds in northern Iraq, the US military -- spearheaded by B-52Hs from the 2nd Bomb Wing -- conducted a missile attack against military targets in southern Iraq on 03 September 1996.

   Operation Desert Strike opened on 31 August as a quick response to Iraqi military activity against Kurdish safe havens as four B-52Hs from Barksdale's 2nd Bomb Wing deployed on a 16-hour mission bound for Guam, half-way across the Pacific. Less than a day after their arrival in Guam, two B-52s, loaded with CALCMs [Conventional Air-launched Cruise Missile], launched for the Persian Gulf. The bombers from the 2nd Bomb Wing flew more than 14,300 miles across the United States and the Asia/Pacific region before launching 13 conventional air launched cruise missiles at Iraqi targets. The B-52s began their attack from Pacific Air Forces's Andersen AFB, Guam. The distance involved - more than 13,600 miles from Andersen to the launch point and back - made air refueling essential during the 34-hour operation. Air Mobility Command [AMC] KC-10s from Travis AFB, Calif., and McGuire AFB, N.J.; six AMC KC-135s from Fairchild AFB, Wash.; and eight PACAF KC-135s from Kadena Air Base, Japan, supported the aerial refueling.

   Two B-52s that supported Operation Desert Strike returned home 15 September 1996 with their aircrew and support personnel after a two-week deployment to Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. The aircraft arrived after a 15 hour flight with 12 members of the 2nd Bomb Wing on board. Four of the Barksdale B-52s and their support personnel remained at Diego Garcia supporting US Central Command for Operation Desert Strike. In June 1998 eight B-52 bombers and 200 2nd Bomb Wing people returned from Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory. The B-52s were deployed to Diego Garcia in November 1997 to join other forces in response to provocative actions and threats made by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

   huh?

   Sep 07, 2007 09:18AM EDT

   jorge jorge_610@hotmail.com At what point did you establish that these cruise missiles are nukes?

   To "Huh?"

   Sep 07, 2007 10:21AM EDT

   me dear huh? it is reported on hundreds of news sites in the mainstream media and if you were serious and searching you would see even CNN and FOX had to admit the nukes were flying maybe over you. the many minor and silly or skeptical comments are often deliberate.

   cops and fakes post here lots.

   thanks for posting the original, very serious issue!

   Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:12pm

9. Posted by HAPPY 09/07/2007 @ 12:47pm

   Technically, you're right. We don't give money directly to the Iraqi Gov't for their budget, it is from oil revenues. Sorry, if I gave that impression.

   But by footing the bill for their SECURITY, we're basically covering them to waste their domestic non-security budget to corruption.

   Whether weak quasi-democracy or a "new Saddam"...we pull out and the Maliki government no longer can stash away cash in Swiss bank accout...and have to pay some soldiers.

   Either way, it saves US money and GIs.

   Posted by Mask at 09/07/2007 @ 1:12pm

10. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- Phase III of Bush's war

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- Posted: September 4, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern

    Those who hoped that – with the victory of the antiwar party in 2006, the departure of Rumsfeld and the neocons from the Pentagon, the rise of Condi and the eclipse of Cheney – America was headed out of Iraq got a rude awakening. They are about to get another.

    Today, the United States has 30,000 more troops in Iraq than on the day America repudiated the Bush war policy and voted the GOP out of power. And President Bush, self-confidence surging, is now employing against Iran a bellicosity redolent of the days just prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

    What gives Bush his new cockiness? The total collapse of the antiwar coalition on Capitol Hill and the breaking of the Congress.

    Last spring, Bush vetoed the congressional deadlines for troop withdrawals, then rubbed Congress' nose in its defeat by demanding, and getting, $100 billion to support the surge and continue the war.

    Before the August recess, Democrats broke again and voted to give Bush the warrantless wiretap authority many among them had said was an unconstitutional and impeachable usurpation of power. They are a broken and frightened lot.

    Comes now evidence congressional Democrats have not only lost the pro-victory vote, but forfeited the peace vote, as well.

    According to a Zogby poll the last week in August, just two weeks before Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker report, Americans, by 45 percent to 20 percent, give this Democratic Congress lower grades on handling the war than the Republican Congress it replaced.

    Fifty-four percent of the nation believes, contra Harry Reid, the war is not lost. That is twice the support that Bush enjoys for his war leadership, a paltry 27 percent. But, by nine to one, Bush's leadership on the war is preferred to that of the Congress of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

    Incredibly, only 3 percent of the nation gives Congress a positive rating on its handling of the war. Congress has lost the hawks, and the owls, and the doves. No one trusts its leadership on the war.

    (Column continues below)

    And George W. smells it. He no longer fears the power of Congress, and his rhetoric suggests he is contemptuous of it. He is brimming with self-assurance that he can break any Democratic attempt to impose deadlines for troop withdrawal and force Congress to cough up all the funds he demands.

    Confident of victory this fall on the Hill, Bush is now moving into Phase III in his War on Terror: First, Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Iran.

    Do not take this writer's word for it. Hearken to the astonishing rhetoric Bush used at the American Legion Convention in Las Vegas against Tehran:

    "Iran ... is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. ... Iran funds terrorist groups like Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murder the innocent and target Israel. ... Iran is sending arms to the Taliban. ... Iran has arrested visiting American scholars who have committed no crimes. ... Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. ... We will confront this danger before it is too late."

    Bush has repeatedly warned Iran to cease supplying Iraqi insurgents with arms and enhanced IEDs for attacks on our troops in Iraq.

    How has Tehran responded to Bush's virtual ultimatums?

    "The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased in the last few months – despite pledges by Iran to help stabilize the security situation in Iraq. ... "Iran's leaders cannot escape responsibility for aiding attacks against coalition forces and the murder of innocent Iraqis."

    This is a case for war. Indeed, it's an assertion by President Bush that Iran is colluding in acts of war against the soldiers and Marines and allies of the United States. What does he intend to do?

    "I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities. ... We've conducted operations against Iranian agents supplying lethal munitions to extremist groups." This suggests that U.S. forces may already be engaged in combat operations against Iranians.

    Who or what can stop this drive to war?

    Last spring, Nancy Pelosi herself, after a call from the Israeli lobby, pulled an amendment that would have forced Bush to come to Congress for specific authorization before attacking Iran. Before the August recess, the Senate voted 97 to zero for a resolution sponsored by Joe Lieberman to censure Iran for complicity in the killing of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

    The resolution explicitly rejected authorization for immediate military action, but the gist of it declared that Iran is participating in acts of war against the United States, laying the foundation for a confrontation.

    What is to prevent Bush from attacking Iran and widening the war, at a time and place of his choosing, and sooner than we think?

    Nothing and no one.

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:13pm

11. Anyone wonder why the Fed Reserve made a practice run to Jackson hole ? Underground bunker in Wyoming?

    CHENEY's home Criminal site?

    Skip to content

    Search

    ADVANCED SEARCH

    About the Fed News and Events Monetary Policy Banking Information and Regulation Payment Systems Economic Research and Data Consumer Information Community Development Reporting Forms Publications and Education Resources Career Opportunities

    Items we expect to post to our web site over the next two months, including speeches, congressional testimony, Federal Open Market Committee material, and statistical releases issued less frequently than weekly. Meetings of the Federal Reserve Board and all statistical releases are shown elsewhere.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- September September 1 Paper Presentation - Governor Frederic S. Mishkin Housing and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Economic Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming 11:00 a.m. (9 a.m. MDT)

    http://www.federalreserve.gov/calendar.htm

    Private bankers make practice run to Underground bunkers.... http://z13.invisionfree.com/THE_UNHIVED_MIND/index.php?showtopic=31402&h l=

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:17pm

12. RECENT BOMBING IRAN ARTICLES

    Chris Hedges | The Next Quagmire http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/03/3587/

    Published on Monday, September 3, 2007 by TruthDig.com

    The Next Quagmire

    by Chris Hedges

    The most effective diplomats, like the most effective intelligence officers and foreign correspondents, possess empathy. They have the intellectual, cultural and linguistic literacy to get inside the heads of those they must analyze or cover. They know the vast array of historical, religious, economic and cultural antecedents that go into making up decisions and reactions. And because of this-endowed with the ability to communicate and more able to find ways of resolving conflicts through diplomacy-they are less prone to blunders.

    But we live in an age where dialogue is dismissed and empathy is suspect. We prefer the illusion that we can dictate events through force. It hasn't worked well in Iraq. It hasn't worked well in Afghanistan. And it won't work in Iran. But those who once tried to reach out and understand, who developed expertise to explain the world to us and ourselves to the world, no longer have a voice in the new imperial project. We are instead governed and informed by moral and intellectual trolls.

    To make rational decisions in international relations we must perceive how others see us. We must grasp how they think about us and be sensitive to their fears and insecurities. But this is becoming hard to accomplish. Our embassies are packed with analysts whose main attribute is long service in the armed forces and who frequently report to intelligence agencies rather than the State Department. Our area specialists in the State Department are ignored by the ideologues driving foreign policy. Their complex view of the world is an inconvenience. And foreign correspondents are an endangered species, along with foreign coverage.

    We speak to the rest of the globe in the language of violence. The proposed multibillion-dollar arms supply package for the Persian Gulf countries is the newest form of weapons-systems-as-message. U.S. Undersecretary of State

    R. Nicholas Burns was rather blunt about the deal. He told the International Herald Tribune that the arms package "says to the Iranians and Syrians that the United States is the major power in the Middle East and will continue to be and is not going away."

    The arrogant call for U.S. hegemony over the rest of the globe is making enemies of a lot of people who might be predisposed to support us, even in the Middle East. And it is terrifying those, such as the Iraqis, Iranians and Syrians, whom we have demonized. Empathy and knowledge, the qualities that make real communication possible, have been discarded. We use tough talk and big weapons deals to communicate. We spread fear, distrust and violence. And we expect missile systems to protect us.

    "Imagine an Iranian government that was powerful, radical, and in possession of nuclear weapons; imagine the threat that would pose to Israel and to the American-led balance of power, which has been so important in the Middle East since the close of the Second World War," Burns said in a speech at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston last April 11. "That is our first challenge."

    "Our second challenge is that Iran continues to be the central banker of Middle East terrorism," he went on. "It is the leading funder and director of Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine general command. Third, Iran is in our judgment a major violator of the human rights of its own people; it denies religious, political, and press rights to the people of a very great country representing a very great civilization. And so we see a problem that is going to be with us for a long time, and we are trying to fashion a strategy that will work for the long term."

    George W. Bush's latest salvo, on Aug. 28, was more of the same.

    "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust," he said. Bush warned that the United States and its allies would confront Iran "before it is too late."

    These kinds of words, pouring out of the administration, send a clear message to any Iranian: You are in trouble. Bend to our will or we destroy you. These were the same words, with a few minor changes, that the Bush administration delivered to Saddam Hussein, who, despite numerous compromises, including letting the U.N. inspectors back into his country, was overthrown and put to death during a U.S. occupation.

    And the Iranians know that without the bomb, which no intelligence agency thinks they can produce for a few years, they are now probably going to be attacked.

    The Pentagon has reportedly drawn up plans for a series of airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran. The air attacks are designed to cripple the Iranians' military capability in three days. The Bushehr nuclear power plant, along with targets in Saghand and Yazd, the uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, a heavy-water plant and radioisotope facility in Arak, the Ardekan Nuclear Fuel Unit, and the uranium conversion facility and nuclear technology center in Isfahan, will all probably be struck by the United States and perhaps even Israeli warplanes. The Tehran Nuclear Research Center, the Tehran molybdenum, iodine and xenon radioisotope production facility, the Tehran Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories, and the Kalaye Electric Co. in the Tehran suburbs will also most likely come under attack.

    But then what? We don't have the troops to invade. And we don't have anyone minding the helm who knows the slightest thing about Persian culture or the Middle East. There is no one in power in Washington with the empathy to get it. We will lurch blindly into a catastrophe of our own creation.

    It is not hard to imagine what will happen. Iranian Shabab-3 and Shabab-4 missiles, which cannot reach the United States, will be launched at Israel, as well as American military bases and the Green Zone in Baghdad. Expect massive American casualties, especially in Iraq, where Iranian agents and their Iraqi allies will be able to call in precise coordinates. The Strait of Hormuz, which is the corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, will be shut down. Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines and coastal artillery will target U.S. shipping, along with Saudi oil production and oil export centers. Oil prices will skyrocket to well over $4 a gallon. The dollar will tumble against the euro. Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon, interpreting the war as an attack on all Shiites, will fire rockets into northern Israel. Israel, already struck by missiles from Tehran, will begin retaliatory raids on Lebanon and Iran. Pakistan, with a huge Shiite minority, will reach greater levels of instability. The unrest could result in the overthrow of the weakened American ally President Pervez Musharraf and usher into power Islamic radicals. Pakistan could become the first radical Islamic state to possess a nuclear weapon. The neat little war with Iran, which few Democrats oppose, has the potential to ignite a regional inferno.

    We have rendered the nation deaf and dumb. We no longer have the capacity for empathy. We prefer to amuse ourselves with trivia and gossip that pass for news rather than understand. We are blinded by our military prowess. We believe that huge explosions and death are an effective form of communication. And the rest of the world is learning to speak our language.

    Chris Hedges, who graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, is the author of "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America."

    ©2007 TruthDig.com

    -------------------------------------------------------

    Friends Committee On National Legislation FCNL

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:35pm

13. Issues: Iran

    http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=2805&issue_id=123

    Iran: US Policy Has Failed, So Why Are We Still Pursuing that Policy?

    Updated: 8/21/2007 Posted: 8/21/2007

    By Joe Volk

    The U.S. campaign to force Iran to halt uranium enrichment through threats and sanctions has produced no results and, arguably, has made things worse.

    After months of attempts to intimidate Iran into complying with U.S. demands, the United States is no closer to easing tensions and ending the stalemate with Iran over that country's nuclear program; U.S. allies in Europe have become more resistant to the U.S. approach; and Iranian leaders are backing away from earlier offers to agree to unconditional talks with the United States.

    The U.S. took some important, if modest steps in the right direction this spring when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice agreed to hold talks with Iranian leaders on Iraq, but those talks have been followed by several giant steps backwards, including Vice President Cheney's fist-shaking, Congressional initiatives for more sanctions and divestment, and the administration's talk of slapping the "terrorist enemy" label on Iran's Revolutionary Guard.

    Now, we at FCNL are increasingly worried that the confrontation between our two countries could get out of control and erupt into deadly violence, even if the worst the administration intends is more coercion.

    A Focus on Sticks, with No Carrots

    The administration continues to focus on efforts to compel Iran to agree to all U.S. demands, before negotiations, by threatening more punitive, unilateral sanctions. At the same time, administration officials undermine the possibility of negotiated agreements by continuing to call for regime change in Iran. What government wants to make agreements with another government bent on overthrowing it?

    The continuing administration chorus about the possibility of U.S. military action through what seem to be weekly off-the-record briefings or public comments suggesting that "no option is off the table," including military action, increase Iran's threat perception -- not its inclination to talk. These recent U.S. statements have aggravated tensions with Iran and, predictably, isolated the U.S. from its allies in the Middle East and Europe. The attitude inside the beltway may be "who cares about Old Europe," but those so-called whimps of Old Europe know the region and the players better than does this administration and they have a better record – the Iraq war would be a case in point – than our Washington know-it-alls.

    Adding fuel to this fire, administration officials in late August told major newspapers that the U.S. is planning to characterize Iran's Revolutionary Guard, an elite wing of the Iranian military, as a terrorist organization. The U.S. says the Revolutionary Guard is arming militias in Iraq and Afghanistan. This would be the first time a unit in the military of a sovereign nation has been placed on the list of terrorist organizations, and it would send a clear message to Iran that the U.S. is seriously considering military action to halt the Iranian nuclear program. And one more thing, both President Karzai of Afghanistan and Prime Minister Malaki of Iraq assert that Iran has been helpful in the effort to stabilize each of their countries. Apparently, they didn't read the war propaganda memo from the administration.

    Congress Talks of Sanctions, Not Diplomacy

    Congress has recently stepped up efforts to pressure Iran into compliance. Legislation imposing new, unilateral sanctions on Iran already is cosponsored by 324 representatives and 68 senators.

    Iran in the Presidential Campaign

    Maybe U.S. sanctions legislation on Iran demands conformity – rather than wisdom – of those running for elected office in 2008, but, in the absence of a UN-endorsed multilateral sanctions regime, they will only hurt U.S. business and push Iran into the arms of China, two strategic blunders about which the voters will later howl.

    Election politics have led candidates from both parties to promote additional sanctions and articulate direct threats of military action. Presidential candidates who have said they would meet with the Iranians without setting preconditions for talks have been ridiculed by their opponents, just as some were ridiculed in 2002 and 2003 for cautioning against the "coercive diplomacy" that led to the Iraq war.

    International Community is Making Progress

    This hard-line approach is foolish, not only because it brings to a halt any diplomatic momentum gained through the recent Baghdad talks between the U.S. and Iran, but also because it undermines progress that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and European governments have made in discussions with Iran. Iran recently offered to make more transparent both past nuclear energy research and current efforts to develop nuclear technology, and the UN Security Council has resisted U.S. pressure to enact new sanctions against Iran until after the IAEA releases its report on the Iranian nuclear program in September.

    Middle Eastern leaders have also avoided adopting a combative relationship with Iran. Afghan President Hamid Karzai met in August with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad despite U.S. claims that Iran has been arming the Taliban and promoting instability in Afghanistan. Karzai has played down U.S. accusations against Iran and expressed hope that the Iranians will help with reconstruction.

    The consensus among U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East is in favor of direct, face-to-face diplomatic talks with Iran. But the U.S. administration continues to rely on threats and coercion to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue despite the clear failure of that approach to end the current stalemate between our two governments. Like the decades long failed U.S. embargo on Cuba, the administration's strategy on Iran will actually unify Iran's national body politic and close its political space to opposition movements for political change.

    The most wisdom on this matter that we've seen in months came at the end of last week's August 9, Washington Post article (p A9): "Michael McFaul of Stanford University also urged more carrots. ‘If you want democratic regime change and to destabilize the regime, the best thing you could do is to make an offer about massive negotiations about everything -- human rights and state sponsorship in terrorism, as well as lifting [U.S.] sanctions and opening an embassy,' he said. ‘Politically, this step [naming the Revolutionary Guard terrorist] doesn't help the administration undermine the regime -- it helps to consolidate the regime.'"

    The time has long passed for the U.S. to abandon all preconditions for open dialogue. Insistence on obtaining its own objectives before negotiations even start is just one version of the full spectrum domination strategy that has so damaged U.S. security and world image. The time has come to sit down with the Iranians to reach an agreement that is acceptable to both parties.

    In May 2003 Tehran made a secret offer, facilitated by the Swiss, for a comprehensive deal that could answer all U.S. demands but one, the demand for the Islamic Republic of Iran to be replaced by another government. That U.S. demand is imperialist and unreasonable, but, worse, it actually props up the current regime in Iran. The U.S. did not just reject that proposal. This administration ignored it, and chastised the Swiss for even bringing the secret proposal to its attention. We cannot expect Iran to take that initiative again. The ball is in the U.S. court. Our government should show good will toward Iran by publicly backing off its call for regime change and by reciprocating Iran's 2003 offer. Even though four years have passed, that framework for a new U.S.-Iran relationship is still viable, if the U.S. wants a deal. The problem is that this administration –as in the case of Iraq – is in bed with expatriate Iranians who want a return to the monarchy. They don't want a deal with this regime; they want an end to this regime, and they want to use the powers of the U.S. to depose the current government of Iran. The president, the vice president, and many members of Congress have failed to learn one of the lessons of the Iraq war, namely, it's a pipe dream and won't work.

    Congress can move the U.S. in the direction of open diplomacy with Iran with no strings attached. Instead of imposing additional unilateral sanctions, Congress should insist that the U.S. sit down with the Iranians and work with the international community to resolve the dispute. Congress could also send a message of good will to the Iranian government by passing legislation introduced by Sen. James Webb (S. 759) and Rep. Walter Jones (H.J. Res. 14) that would require the administration to seek congressional approval before attacking Iran.

    War is not the answer to the U.S.-Iran Conflict, but peace between our two countries is possible through peaceful, non-military means. The Iranians do not need to be forced to the negotiating table by sanctions or threat of force. Since 2003, they've been begging to sit at the table with the U.S. to make a new deal. Four years is a long time to be snubbed, but Congress could resurrect that Iranian dead letter by breathing new life into U.S. diplomacy. Congress could save a lot of lives and national treasure by doing so. If they don't, and instead open the door for "Unspeakable Horror in the Middle East, Part II," the voters should know what to do. The voters should, in the words of Harry Truman, "give'em hell" if they don't take this opportunity now.

    Joe Volk is Executive Secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:36pm

14. why would anyone be shocked to learn that the "government" of Iraq is corrupt and weak. of course it is. it is a misguided sham that was predestined to failure because of the nature of iraqi and muslim history and because iraq was a colonial entity hanging by a thread all along. ethnic and sectarian groups that have hated each other for a thousand years don't participate in a stable democratic regime. and of course in the middle of a military occupation and bloody anarchy, any "government" is going to be completely corrupt.

    the only real question is how much longer the US troops will be in iraq. the only reason that "government" exists today is because the US is entrenched in the Green Zone, which is about the geographic extent of the control of the "government" anyway.

    Posted by Zero at 09/07/2007 @ 1:37pm

15. THE HUFFINGTON POST

    Howard A. Rodman|

    How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bombing Iran Posted September 2, 2007 | 02:09 PM (EST)

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    Read More: Breaking Politics News, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Robert Baer, Central Intelligence Agency, The Pentagon

    For long time now, perhaps a year, I've been hearing (we've all been hearing) that the White House is planning to bomb Iran. As the neo-cons say, "Boys go to Baghdad; real men go to Tehran." It's a strategy so seductive that John McCain set it to music.

    I've been dismissive of these rumors, as have you. Why? Because one would have to be a madman (or Dick Cheney) to start a second war when the first one is going so fucking well.

    Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account the way decisions about these things are made; and it neglects to take into account, as well, this particular president's view of himself in history.

    As Bush this weekend was disclosed to have said to his biographer, "I made a decision to lead... One, it makes you unpopular; two, it makes people accuse you of unilateral arrogance, and that may be true. But the fundamental question is, is the world better off as a result of your leadership?" [The biography, by the way, is called Dead Certain. How reassuring to the rest of us.]

    In the eyes of our president, an Iran with a different government is a world better off. The people of Iran, or what's left of the people of Iran after a 1,200-target bombing campaign, will greet us as liberators. History and Joe Lieberman will judge him brave for having turned the tide in the Grand Battle Against Islamo-fascism -- a battle which, as we now know, had its origins in the Vietnam war.

    Still, I was inclined (you were inclined) to dismiss all this bluster as sabre-rattling. Alas, in the past week it has become apparent (see below) that those sabres are Tomahawk missiles -- and that they're locked, aimed, loaded.

    Here are the indications that a large bombing campaign against Iran is not only on the table, but is in fact the main dish -- the turkey, if you will, of Thanksgiving 2007. I list them in order of ascending terrifyingness.

    First: Robert Baer, the former middle-East CIA operative and a man who is not unconnected in the intelligence world (c.f., Syriana), says his peeps tell him we're planning to "hit" Iran.

    Second: Barnett Rubin, a scholar and one of the Serious people in the academic foreign policy establishment, says we're already committed to an attack on Iran, and that the marketing for this attack will be ramped up after the long weekend. [In this light, Bush's speech to the American Legion and various Cheney remarks of the last month can be seen as test-marketings. As Bush said in that speech, "We will confront this danger before it is too late." Meaning, I suspect: "before I no longer have my finger on the button."]

    Third: the foreign press, which during the run-up to Iraq was far less blinkered than, say, the Gray Lady, has been over this weekend treating an attack on Iran as a fait accompli. See this from the Telegraph (UK) . The Times (UK) ran today a headline with the flat declaration, Pentagon 'three-day blitz' plan for Iran. They quote Alex Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same." It was, he added, a "very legitimate strategic calculus." [One can't help but recall the strategic calculus of General Buck Turgidson: "Mr. President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks."]

    Fourth: I doubt that David Addington believes that Bush, under the AUMF, really needs the permission of congress, or of anyone. As a courtesy, of course, he'd likely, as the planes are on their way, inform a bipartisan leadership group (several Republicans plus an independent from Connecticut). But what's sadder is that this Congress, whose Democratic leadership is talking about opposing the war but not mentioning the words "withdrawal" or "timetable"; which cowed before the FISA revisions; whose Senate this year blithely passed, 97 to zip, a resolution condemning Iran for attacking U.S. forces in Iraq -- When push comes to shove, will Reid and Pelosi (and Clinton, and Obama) put their political capital where their mouth is? As the magic eight ball says, "Signs point to no." (See Glen Greenwald's astute assessment of the political situation.)

    Fifth: Regardless of the politics, in the Gulf of Hormuz the ships are in position, the targets are targeted, the planes are rehearsing even as we speak. In the words of one Navy officer on scene: ""I don't think it's limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens."

    I've written to my Congressman, and to both Senators. Call me quixotic, for writing; call me naive, for encouraging you to do the same; and, at day's end, call me cynical, for believing that public opinion here makes not one whit of difference.

    For this long, hot weekend in Los Angeles, the last weekend before the full roll-out of the Iran Strike Ramp-Up [can't you just see the CNN logo?], we've gone to Video Hut and rented Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. We have a 14-year-old in the house, and we thought it would be nice to provide him with some context. As we pray, against all indications, for cooler weather and a peaceful fall.

    -------------------------------------------------------

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:37pm

16. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2369001.ece

    From the Sunday Times - Times on Line

    September 2, 2007

    Pentagon ‘three-day blitz' plan for Iran Sarah Baxter, Washington

    THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

    Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclear facilities. "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military," he said.

    Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same." It was, he added, a "very legitimate strategic calculus".

    President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust". He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran "before it is too late".

    Related Links Hardliner takes over Revolutionary Guards

    One Washington source said the "temperature was rising" inside the administration. Bush was "sending a message to a number of audiences", he said � to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported "significant" cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.

    Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.

    Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

    Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. "A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA," he said. "They're giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception."

    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a "power vacuum" in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.

    The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term "proxy war" and claims that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq "increasingly under control", Iranian intervention is the "next major problem the coalition must tackle".

    Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months � "despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq".

    It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon's plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:37pm

17. Politics News The U.S. To Bomb Iran http://www.nowpublic.com/u-s-bomb-iran

    NowPublic contributor phrolen is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Joint Taskforce Katrina. His commentary is based on actual experience.

    September 2, 2007 at 08:57 pm

    UPDATE: Israeli intelligence website debka.com is reporting that there has been a major shakeup in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and it appears that Iran's Theocratic government is preparing for an "Attack from a foreign enemy."

    Iranian President Ahmadinejad claims historic breakthrough on Irans nuclear program; 3000 operational centrifuges

    The recent rhetorical surge from both the United States and Iran is anything but business as usual. With American policy experts now using terms like proxy war in Iraq war, Iranian activity reports, and with the usual suspects in Russia and China stonewalling the European led Iranian diplomatic process, critical mass now seems to be only just over of the horizon. In recent weeks the U.S. government has conducted massive war games depicting a colossal aerial bombardment of Iran. Indications are that the Washington based think tank, Heritage Foundation, delivered its war-game findings to the Bush Administration this week.

    Sources say the report contains a list of policy proposals that will, in effect, offset the economic ramifications of such a strike. Among the policies entailed in the report are said to be the lifting of tariffs on ethanol imports, the opening of strategic U.S. fuel reserves to keep hyperinflation of oil prices at a minimum, and the subsidization of fuel costs for millions of low income Americans. The feeling is in Washington, that some sort of unseen boundary has been breached and the U.S. government now seems to be shifting away from what they perceive as failed diplomatic endeavors and toward more forceful alternatives.

    The UK based Times Online is also now reporting that pentagon planners have delivered an aerial bombardment plan to President Bush. The plan, which original thought dictated would focus mainly on Iran's nuclear capabilities, is now said to contain a much larger air assault. They are not just preparing for "Pinprick strikes" said Alex Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center. "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military." Intelligence sources have already indicated that the U.S. has reached out with funding and support to anti-Iranian dissident groups based in Iraq's Kurdish north. Recently Iran began cross border artillery shelling of what it deemed as terrorist bases in Kurdish Iraq; indicating that there may indeed be a flurry of activity taking place there. The U.S. has also drastically stepped up intelligence gathering incursions into Iran with Special Forces troops said to be operating on a daily basis within Iranian territory. With tensions increasing and both sides ratcheting up the rhetoric everyone is waiting to see who will blink first. If no one blinks, well, the outlook looks bleak indeed.

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:38pm

18. http://rawstory.com//news/2007/Study_US_preparing_massive_military_attac k_0828.html

    Study: US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran

    Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane Published: Tuesday August 28, 2007

    The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.

    The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East" – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and

    Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.

    "We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States," wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday.

    Plesch and Butcher examine "what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action" and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a "massive" attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

    The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran's WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran's actions.

    • Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little force and leave the regime intact. • US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours. • US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice. • Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005. • Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by the US, the UK and Israel. The human, political and environmental effects would be devastating, while their military value is limited. • Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons yet has the conventional military capability only to wound Iran's WMD programmes. • The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown government and public opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, were Brown to support an attack he would probably carry a vote in Parliament. The UK is adamant that Iran must not acquire the bomb. • The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping Iran's actions. When asked why the paper seems to indicate a certainty of Iranian WMD, Plesch made clear that "our paper is not, repeat not, about what Iran actually has or not." Yet, he added that "Iran certainly has missiles and probably some chemical capability." Most significantly, Plesch and Butcher dispute conventional wisdom that any US attack on Iran would be confined to its nuclear sites. Instead, they foresee a "full-spectrum approach," designed to either instigate an overthrow of the government or reduce Iran to the status of "a weak or failed state." Although they acknowledge potential risks and impediments that might deter the Bush administration from carrying out such a massive attack, they also emphasize that the administration's National Security Strategy includes as a major goal the elimination of Iran as a regional power. They suggest, therefore, that: This wider form of air attack would be the most likely to delay the Iranian nuclear program for a sufficiently long period of time to meet the administration's current counterproliferation goals. It would also be consistent with the possible goal of employing military action is to overthrow the current Iranian government, since it would severely degrade the capability of the Iranian military (in particular revolutionary guards units and other ultra-loyalists) to keep armed opposition and separatist movements under control. It would also achieve the US objective of neutralizing Iran as a power in the region for many years to come.

    However, it is the option that contains the greatest risk of increased global tension and hatred of the United States. The US would have few, if any allies for such a mission beyond Israel (and possibly the UK). Once undertaken, the imperatives for success would be enormous. Butcher says he does not believe the US would use nuclear weapons, with some exceptions. "My opinion is that [nuclear weapons] wouldn't be used unless there was definite evidence that Iran has them too or is about to acquire them in a matter of days/weeks," notes Butcher. "However, the Natanz facility has been so hardened that to destroy it MAY require nuclear weapons, and once an attack had started it may simply be a matter of following military logic and doctrine to full extent, which would call for the use of nukes if all other means failed." Military Strategy The bulk of the paper is devoted to a detailed analysis of specific military strategies for such an attack, of ongoing attempts to destabilize Iran by inciting its ethnic minorities, and of the considerations surrounding the possible employment of nuclear weapons. In particular, Plesch and Butcher examine what is known as Global Strike – the capability to project military power from the United States to anywhere in the world, which was announced by STRATCOM as having initial operational capability in December 2005. It is the that capacity that could provide strategic bombers and missiles to devastate Iran on just a few hours notice. Iran has a weak air force and anti aircraft capability, almost all of it is 20-30 years old and it lacks modern integrated communications. Not only will these forces be rapidly destroyed by US air power, but Iranian ground and air forces will have to fight without protection from air attack.

    British military sources stated on condition of anonymity, that "the US military switched its whole focus to Iran" from March 2003. It continued this focus even though it had infantry bogged down in fighting the insurgency in Iraq. Global Strike could be combined with already-existing "regional operational plans for limited war with Iran, such as Oplan 1002-04, for an attack on the western province of Kuzhestan, or Oplan 1019 which deals with preventing Iran from closing the Straits of Hormuz, and therefore keeping open oil lanes vital to the US economy." The Marines are not all tied down fighting in Iraq. Several Marine forces are assembling in the Gulf, each with its own aircraft carrier. These carrier forces can each conduct a version of the D-Day landings. They come with landing craft, tanks, jump-jets, thousands of troops and hundreds more cruise missiles. Their task is to destroy Iranian forces able to attack oil tankers and to secure oilfields and installations. They have trained for this mission since the Iranian revolution of 1979 as is indicated in this battle map of Hormuz illustrating an advert for combat training software. Special Forces units – which are believed to already be operating within Iran – would be available to carry out search-and-destroy missions and incite internal uprisings, while US Army units in both Iraq and Afghanistan could mount air and missile attacks on Iranian forces, which are heavily concentrated along the Iran-Iraq border, as well as protecting their own supply lines within Iraq: A key assessment in any war with Iran concerns Basra province and the Kuwait border. It is likely that Iran and its sympathizers could take control of population centres and interrupt oil supplies, if it was in their interest to do so. However it is unlikely that they could make any sustained effort against Kuwait or interrupt supply lines north from Kuwait to central Iraq. US firepower is simply too great for any Iranian conventional force. Experts question the report's conclusions Former CIA analyst and Deputy Director for Transportation Security, Antiterrorism Assistance Training, and Special Operations in the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, Larry Johnson, does not agree with the report's findings. "The report seems to accept without question that US air force and navy bombers could effectively destroy Iran and they seem to ignore the fact that US use of air power in Iraq has failed to destroy all major military, political, economic and transport capabilities," said Johnson late Monday after the embargo on the study had been lifted. "But at least in their conclusions they still acknowledge that Iran, if attacked, would be able to retaliate. Yet they are vague in terms of detailing the extent of the damage that the Iran is capable of inflicting on the US and fairly assessing what those risks are." There is also the situation of US soldiers in Iraq and the supply routes that would have to be protected to ensure that US forces had what they needed. Plesch explains that ""firepower is an effective means of securing supply routes during conventional war and in conventional war a higher loss rate is expected." "However as we say do not assume that the Iraqi Shiia will rally to Tehran – the quietist Shiia tradition favoured by Sistani may regard itself as justified if imploding Iranian power can be argued to reduce US problems in Iraq, not increase them." John Pike, Director of Global Security, a Washington-based military, intelligence, and security clearinghouse, says that the question of Iraq is the one issue at the center of any questions regarding Iran. "The situation in Iraq is a wild card, though it may be presumed that Iran would mount attacks on the US at some remove, rather than upsetting the apple-cart in its own front yard," wrote Pike in an email. Political Considerations Plesch and Butcher write with concern about the political context within the United States: This debate is bleeding over into the 2008 Presidential election, with evidence mounting that despite the public unpopularity of the war in Iraq, Iran is emerging as an issue over which Presidential candidates in both major American parties can show their strong national security bona fides. ...

    The debate on how to deal with Iran is thus occurring in a political context in the US that is hard for those in Europe or the Middle East to understand. A context that may seem to some to be divorced from reality, but with the US ability to project military power across the globe, the reality of Washington DC is one that matters perhaps above all else. ...

    We should not underestimate the Bush administration's ability to convince itself that an "Iran of the regions" will emerge from a post-rubble Iran. So, do not be in the least surprised if the United States attacks Iran. Timing is an open question, but it is hard to find convincing arguments that war will be avoided, or at least ones that are convincing in Washington. Plesch and Butcher are also interested in the attitudes of the current UK government, which has carefully avoided revealing what its position might be in the case of an attack. They point out, however, "One key caution is that regardless of the realities of Iran's programme, the British public and elite may simply refuse to participate – almost out of bloody minded revenge for the Iraq deceit." And they conclude that even "if the attack is 'successful' and the US reasserts its global military dominance and reduces Iran to the status of an oil-rich failed state, then the risks to humanity in general and to the states of the Middle East are grave indeed." Larisa Alexandrovna is managing editor of investigative news for Raw Story and regularly reports on intelligence and national security stories. Contact: larisa@rawstory.com Muriel Kane is research director for Raw Story.

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:39pm

19. http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090207A.shtml

    Pentagon "Three-Day Blitz" Plan for Iran By Sarah Baxter The Sunday Times UK

    Sunday 02 September 2007

    The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

    Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for "pinprick strikes" against Iran's nuclear facilities. "They're about taking out the entire Iranian military," he said.

    Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: "Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same." It was, he added, a "very legitimate strategic calculus".

    President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust". He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran "before it is too late".

    One Washington source said the "temperature was rising" inside the administration. Bush was "sending a message to a number of audiences", he said ? to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported "significant" cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.

    Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.

    Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.

    Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. "A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA," he said. "They're giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception."

    Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a "power vacuum" in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.

    The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term "proxy war" and claims that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq "increasingly under control", Iranian intervention is the "next major problem the coalition must tackle".

    Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months ? "despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq".

    It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon's plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    ----------------------------------------------------------

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:39pm

20. Yeah sure we're there to fight terrorir:

    "To describe AQI's presence, intelligence experts cite a spectrum of estimates, ranging from 8 percent to 15 percent. The fact that such "a big window" exists, says Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, indicates that "[those experts] really don't have a very good perception of what is going on."

    It's notable that military intelligence reports have opted to cite a figure at the very top of that range. But even the low estimate of 8 percent may be an overstatement, if you consider some of the government's own statistics.

    The first instructive set of data comes from the U.S.-sponsored Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In March, the organization analyzed the online postings of eleven prominent Sunni insurgent groups, including AQI, tallying how many attacks each group claimed. AQI took credit for 10 percent of attacks on Iraqi security forces and Shiite militias (forty-three out of 439 attacks), and less than 4 percent of attacks on U.S. troops (seventeen out of 357). Although these Internet postings should not be taken as proof positive of the culprits, it's instructive to remember that PR-conscious al- Qaeda operatives are far more likely to overstate than understate their role.

    When turning to the question of manpower, military officials told the New York Times in August that of the roughly 24,500 prisoners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq (nearly all of whom are Sunni), just 1,800--about 7 percent--claim allegiance to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Moreover, the composition of inmates does not support the assumption that large numbers of foreign terrorists, long believed to be the leaders and most hard-core elements of AQI, are operating inside Iraq. In August, American forces held in custody 280 foreign nationals--slightly more than 1 percent of total inmates.

    The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency--between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters--this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency--200,000 fighters--INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."

    How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."

    http://tinyurl.com/yrps6n

    Posted by hsuBfools at 09/07/2007 @ 1:40pm

21. http://www.rense.com/general78/we.htm

    'We Are Going To

    Hit Iran...Bigtime'

    Maccabee

    9-2-7

    I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth.

    I asked her why she is telling me this.

    Her answer was really amazing...

    She started in the Marines and after 8 years her term was up. She had served on a smaller Marine carrier, and found out through a friend knew there was an opening for a junior grade LSO in a training position on a supercarrier. She used the reference and the information and applied for a transfer to the United States Navy. Since she had experience landing F-18Cs and Cobra Gunships, and an unblemished combat record, she was ratcheted into the job, successfully changing from the Marines to the Navy. Her role is still aligned with the Marines since she generally is assigned to liason with the Marine units deploying off her carrier group.

    Like most Marines and former Marines, she is largely apolitical. The fact is, most Marines are trigger pullers and most trigger pullers could care less who the President is. They simply want to be the tip of the sword when it comes to defending the country. She voted once in her life and otherwise was always in some forward post on the water during election season.

    Something is wrong with the Navy and the Marines in her view. Always ready to go in harms way, Marines rarely ever question unless it's a matter of tactics or honor. But something seems awry. Junior and senior officers are starting to grumble, roll their eyes in the hallways. The strain of deployments is beginning to hit every jot and tittle of the Marines and it's beginning to seep into the daily conversation of Marines and Naval officers in command decision.

    "I know this will sound crazy coming from a Naval officer", she said. "But we're all just waiting for this administration to end. Things that happen at the senior officer level seem more and more to happen outside of the purview of XOs and other officers who typically have a say-so in daily combat and flight operations. Today, orders just come down from the mountaintop and there's no questioning. In fact, there is no discussing it. I have seen more than one senior commander disappear and then three weeks later we find out that he has been replaced. That's really weird. It's also really weird because everyone who has disappeared has questioned whether or not we should be staging a massive attack on Iran."

    "We're not stupid. Most of the members of the fleet read well enough to know what is going on world-wise. We also realize that anyone who has any doubts is in danger of having a long military career yanked out from under them. Keep in mind that most of the people I serve with are happy to be a part of the global war on terror. It's just that the touch points are what we see since we are the ones out here who are supposedly implementing this grand strategy. But when you liason with administration officials who don't know that Iranians don't speak Arabic and have no idea what Iranians live like, then you start having second thoughts about whether these Administration officials are even competent."

    I asked her about the attack, how limited and so forth.

    "I don't think it's limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens. And the consequences...whatever the consequences...they will have to be lived with. I am sure if my father knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason. But something inside me tells me to tell it anyway."

    I asked her why she was suddenly so cynical.

    "I have become cynical only recently. I also don't believe anyone will be able to stop this. Bush has become something of an Emperor. He will give the command, and cruise missiles will fly and aircraft will fly and people will die, and yet few of us here are really able to cobble together a great explanation of why this is a good idea. Of course many of us can give you the 4H Club lecture on democracy in the Mid East. But if you asked any of the flight officers whether they have a clear idea of what the goal of this strike is, your answer would sound like something out of a think tank policy paper. But it's not like Kosovo or when we relieved the tsunami victims. There everyone could tell you in a sentence what we were here doing."

    "That's what's missing. A real sense of purpose. What's missing is the answer to what the hell are we doing out here threatening this country with all this power? Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we have to tell a sovereign nation that they can't build a nuke. I mean the table got EF Hutton quiet. Not so much because the man was asking a question that was off culture. But that he was asking a good question. In fact, the discussion actually followed afterwards topside where someone in our group had to smoke a cigarette. The discussion was intelligent but also in lowered voices. It's like we aren't allowed to ask the questions that we always ask before combat. It's almost as if the average seaman or soldier is doing all the policy work."

    She had to hang up. She left by telling me that she believes the attack is a done deal. "It's only a matter of time before their orders come and they will be sent to station and told to go to Red Alert. She said they were already practicing traps, FARP and FAST." (Trapping is the act of catching the tension wires when landing on the carrier, FARP is Fleet Air Combat Maneuvering Readiness Program- practice dogfighting- and FAST is Fleet Air Superiority Training).

    She seemed lost. The first time in my life I have ever heard her sound off rhythm, or unsure of why she is doing something. She knows that there is something rotten in the Naval Command and she, like many of her associates are just hoping that the election brings in someone new, some new situation, or something.

    "Yes. We're gong to hit Iran, bigtime. Whatever political discussions that are going on is window dressing and perhaps even a red herring. I see what's going on below deck here in the hangars and weapons bays. And I have a sick feeling about how it's all going to turn out."

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:40pm

22. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/9/1/183018/1527

    ----------------------------------------------------

    THE HUFFINGTON POST

    Gareth Porter| Cheney, Lieberman and Iran War Conspiracy Posted August 16, 2007 | 11:59 AM (EST)

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    Read More: Breaking Politics News, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, National Security Council, Joe Lieberman, Condoleezza Rice

    I was never one of those who believed the Bush administration was getting ready to attack Iran in 2006 or early 2007. But it is now clear that at least Vice President Dick Cheney is conspiring to push through a specific plan for war with Iran. And Senator Joe Lieberman is an active part of that conspiracy.

    Email

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    We have known for a long time that Cheney wants a major air attack on Iranian nuclear sites and other military and economic targets. But an August 9 story published by McClatchy newspapers reveals that, instead of waiting for a decision to go ahead with such a strategic attack against Iran, Cheney now hopes to get Bush to approve an attack on camps in Iran where Iraqi Shiite militiamen have allegedly been trained in recent years.

    The McClatchy story says Cheney proposed such a strike within the administration "several weeks ago," citing "two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy." The official sources say Cheney "argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq." An example of such "hard new evidence," according to one of the official sources of the report, would be "catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran."

    The story also indicates that the same officials say Condoleezza Rice "opposes this idea" and suggest that Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates agrees with her position.

    The Cheney proposal for an airstrike against three bases in Iran can have only one purpose -- to provoke an Iranian retaliation that would then make it possible to unleash a full-fledged strategic air attack against Iran. The provocation strategy would be an obvious way around the political obstacles in the way of an unprovoked attack.

    This is not the first time that such a provocation strategy has been attributed to the Bush administration. In February 2007, Hillary Mann, the National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs until 2004, told CNN that the Bush administration was "pushing a series of increasing provocations against the Iranians in, I think, anticipation that Iran will eventually retaliate, and that will give the United States the ability to launch limited strikes against Iran, to take out targets in Iran that we consider to be important."

    The revelation of the Cheney attack proposal throws a new light on a series of developments relating to Iraq since early June. The first event that takes on new meaning is Joe Lieberman's public call on June 11 for exactly the same kind of attack on the alleged training bases in Iran as Cheney was advocating inside the administration.

    Lieberman, appearing on CBS's Face the Nation, said, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

    Was that just a coincidence? Not a chance, says one Washington insider who is very familiar with Lieberman and the inner workings of the whole neoconservative demi-monde. "Lieberman is not the kind of guy who goes off on his own to make a proposal like this," says the observer. "He's very disciplined. He's a foot soldier, an integral part of the neoconservative movement.

    In other words, Lieberman was acting as a stalking horse for Cheney's proposal, softening up public opinion for later war propaganda.

    Then on July 2, the new spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, presented a briefing for the press that dovetailed perfectly with Cheney's strategy. One of his main themes was the suggestion of an Iranian role in planning a January Shiite militia attack in Karbala in which five Americans were killed. The other major point that Bergner pushed was that Iran was using what he called "Special Groups" of "rogue" Shiite militiamen to destabilize Iraq, in part by training them in camps in Iran.

    I have debunked these arguments here and here. And in another analysis this week, I show that the rate of U.S. deaths in fighting with the Mahdi Army is largely a function of the U.S. military's targeting of those units and their leadership for military operations -- not of Iranian policy.

    But the Bergner briefing appears to have been a key move in the war conspiracy, aimed at providing just the kind of "evidence" that could be used to push Cheney's proposal both within the administration and outside .

    To translate the media impact of the Bergner briefing into political support for the Cheney proposal, Senator Lieberman was ready with a press release issued the same day as the briefing which cited it as evidence that Iran was training Shiites in Iran who were killing Americans. Lieberman used the occasion to repeat his call for a U.S. attack on the camps in Iran. Lieberman then introduced an amendment which stated, "The murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."

    That sounded like a declaration of war, even though language supporting military force against Iran was deleted from the amendment, which passed 97-0.

    It is not clear whether Bush has explicitly authorized Cheney to prepare the ground for Cheney's new strategy of provocation. In the spring, Rice succeeded in getting Bush to go along with direct diplomatic contacts with Iran. Cheney then let it be known in Washington right-wing circles that he was concerned that Bush would fail to support the military option against Iran and that he, Cheney, was planning an "end-run strategy" to ensure that it would not prevail. But at a White House meeting of key policymakers on Iran in June, according to an article last month in the Guardian, Bush sided with Cheney in an argument over whether these diplomatic talks should be allowed to continue to January 2009.

    Whether the Cheney's conspiring with Lieberman and the U.S. command is part of an "end-run strategy" or are sanctioned by Bush, Cheney's ability to manipulate Bush poses the chilling possibility that a hapless president will commit the ultimate blunder of war with Iran.

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:41pm

23. commondreams@mail.democracyinaction.org

    September 2, 2007

    Views...

    Robert Naiman | Slam Dunk: The Bush Administration Is Trying to Provoke Iran http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/01/3559/

    Common Dreams NewsCenter A non-profit news service providing breaking news & views for the progressive community.

    Published on Saturday, September 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

    Slam Dunk: The Bush Administration Is Trying to Provoke Iran

    by Robert Naiman

    The Bush Administration is once again escalating its confrontation with Iran. Clearly they have multiple motivations for doing so. They're trying to "change the channel" from the failure of the "surge," ahead of the September Congressional debate on Iraq. They would dearly love to split off from the Democratic opposition on Iraq Members of Congress who share the AIPAC goal of confronting Iran. And they want to undermine negotiations taking place between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency over Iran's nuclear program.

    But details have emerged from the recent escalation that strongly indicate what many have long suspected: the Bush Administration's fundamental conflict with Iran is not about its nuclear program or alleged weapons smuggling - so far unproven - into Iraq.

    It's simply a great-power struggle for influence. And while there's nothing too shocking about that, people in the United States should ask themselves - and be asked by others - what sacrifices we are really willing to bear so that the Bush Administration can try to keep Iran from having the influence in Iraq that they would normally have - and almost certainly will have - if there is a democratic government in Iraq, given that 60% of the Iraqi population is Shiite and has strong cultural and religious ties to their co-religionists in Iran. How many U.S. soldiers' lives is that goal worth? How many billions of U.S. tax dollars?

    On Wednesday, the New York Times reported:

    Members of an Iranian Energy Ministry delegation were arrested and held overnight by American troops in Baghdad for having unauthorized weapons, before being released this morning, American and Iraqi officials said in Baghdad. Iranian officials protested the detentions today. The group had been invited to Baghdad to help resolve Iraq's electricity crisis, Iraqi and Iranian officials said.

    A media adviser to the Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq told Reuters news agency that the group was in Baghdad at the invitation of Iraq's Ministry of Electricity to help build a power station in the Shiite city of Najaf.Why were these Iranians arrested by U.S. troops if, according to Iraqi officials, they were part of an Energy Ministry delegation invited to Baghdad to "help resolve Iraq's electricity crisis"? That Iraq has a serious electricity crisis is well known. Surely such assistance should be welcomed. There must have been some mistake.

    Not so, apparently, The Times reports. A manager at the hotel where the Iranians were staying said:

    "I told [the US soldiers] that the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity had invited them, that they were guests of the ministry and that we had a letter from the ministry confirming this."

    So, prior to the Iranians' arrest, U.S. soldiers were aware that the hotel where the Iranians were staying had proof that the Iranians were in Iraq at the invitation of Iraq's Energy Ministry.

    What was the point of arresting these officials? Surely the U.S. forces could have anticipated that they would be compelled politically to quickly release them, since, as they knew, these officials were in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government. There is a strong whiff of harassment and provocation about this.

    Here is something very simple Congress could do to indicate that they are serious about preventing the Bush Administration from provoking a war with Iran. They could mandate that U.S. forces in Iraq cannot arrest Iranian government officials who can prove that they are in Iraq at the invitation of the Iraqi government, unless they have explicit authorization from the "sovereign" Iraqi government to do so.

    Robert Naiman is Senior Policy Analyst and National Coordinator at Just Foreign Policy.

    These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------

    Posted by Rese at 09/07/2007 @ 1:42pm

24. Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

    URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/01/3559/

    Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis | 'Occupy, Resist, Produce' http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/02/3578/

    Published on Saturday, September 1, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

    Slam Dunk: The Bush Administration Is Trying to Provoke Iran

    by Robert Naiman

    The Bush Administration is once again escalating its confrontation with Iran. Clearly they have multiple motivations for doing so. They're trying to "change the channel" from the failure of the "surge," ahead of the September Congressional debate on Iraq. They would dearly love to split off from the Democratic opposition on Iraq Members of Congress who share the AIPAC goal of confronting Iran. And they want to undermine negotiations taking place between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency over Iran's nuclear program.

    But details have emerged from the recent escalation that strongly indicate what many have long suspected: the Bush Administration's fundamental conflict with Iran is not about its nuclear program or alleged weapons smuggling - so far unproven - into Iraq.

    It's simply a great-power struggle for influence. And while there's nothing too shocking about that, people in the United States should ask themselves - and be asked by others - what sacrifices we are really willing to bear so that the Bush Administration can try to keep Iran from having the influence in Iraq that they would normally have - and almost certainly will have - if there is a democratic government in Iraq, given that 60% of the Iraqi population is Shiite and has strong cultural and religious ties to their co-religionists in Iran. How many U.S. soldiers' lives is that goal worth? How many billions of U.S. tax dollars?

    On Wednesday, the New York Times reported:

    Me