Note: Is there a possibility that military weapons such as the A.D.S. radiation device and L.R.A.D. sound cannon were used on the Honduran president at the Brazilian embassy?
Honduran President Victim of U.S. Coup: I’ve Been Gassed And They’re Torturing Me
It’s been 89 days since Manuel Zelaya was booted from power. He’s sleeping on chairs, and he claims his throat is sore from toxic gases and “Israeli mercenaries” are torturing him with high-frequency radiation.
“We are being threatened with death,” he said in an interview with The Miami Herald, adding that mercenaries were likely to storm the embassy where he has been holed up since Monday and assassinate him.
“I prefer to march on my feet than to live on my knees before a military dictatorship,” Zelaya said in a series of back-to-back interviews.
Zelaya was overthrown by the U.S. military at gunpoint on June 28 and slipped back into his country on Monday, just two days before he was scheduled to speak before the United Nations. He sought refuge at the Brazilian Embassy, where Zelaya said he is being subjected to toxic gases and radiation that alter his physical and mental state.
Witnesses said that for a short time Tuesday morning, soldiers used a device that looked like a large satellite dish to emit a loud shrill noise.
Honduran police spokesman Orlin Cerrato said he knew nothing of any radiation devices being used against the former president.
“He says there are mercenaries against him? Using some kind of apparatus?” Cerrato said. “No, no, no, no. Sincerely: no. The only elements surrounding that embassy are police and military, and they have no such apparatus.”
Police responded to reports of looting throughout the city Tuesday night. Civil disturbances subsided Wednesday afternoon, when a crush of people rushed grocery stores and gas stations in the capital.
Israeli government sources in Miami said they could not confirm the presence of any “Israelis mercenaries” in Honduras.
Zelaya, 56, is at the embassy with his family and other supporters, without a change of clothes or toothpaste. The power and water were turned back on, and the U.N. brought in some food. Photos showed Zelaya, his trademark cowboy hat across his face, napping on a few chairs he had pushed together.
“Look at the shape he’s in — sleeping on chairs,” de facto President Roberto Micheletti told a local TV news station.
Micheletti took Zelaya’s place after the military, executing a Supreme Court arrest warrant, burst into Zelaya’s house and forced him into exile. The country’s military, congress, Supreme Court and economic leaders have backed the ouster, arguing that Zelaya was bent on conducting an illegal plebiscite that they feared would ultimately lead to his reelection.
Micheletti said he was prepared to meet with Zelaya and a delegation from the Organization of American States, but only to discuss one topic: November elections.
On Wednesday, the U.N. cut off all technical aid that would have supported and given credibility to that presidential race. Conditions do not exist for credible elections, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.
“I proposed dialogue, and they answered with bullets, bombs, a state of siege and by closing the airport,” Zelaya said.
Zelaya told The Herald that Washington should be taking a stronger stance against the elite economic interests that “financed and benefited” from the coup that ousted him three months ago.
If President Barack Obama hit Honduras with commercial sanctions or suspended free-trade agreements, the coup “would last just five minutes.”
The Obama administration suspended economic aid to Honduras and withdrew the visas of members of the current administration.
About 75 percent of Honduras’ commerce depends on the United States, Zelaya said. And because powerful economic forces were behind Zelaya’s ouster, Obama should hit those forces where it hurts most, Zelaya said.
“I have told this to Obama, to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to the U.S. Embassy here and anyone else who will listen,” Zelaya said. “They know how to act. Until now, they have been very prudent.”
With Micheletti showing a new willingness to talk with the OAS, and the U.N. Security Council set to meet to discuss the embassy situation soon, it isn’t the moment for more penalties, the U.S. State Department said.
“Right now, when there are openings for dialogue, is not the time to announce new sanctions,” a State Department official said.
Dates for the OAS visit, which could include emissaries from 10 countries, are being worked out, the official said.
Spokesman Ian Kelly said the U.N. Security Council meeting came at the request of the Brazilian government. No date has been set for the meeting.
“In general, we continue to work with our partners in the U.N. and the OAS to come up with means to promote a dialogue and defuse the tensions, of course with the ultimate goal of resolving the crisis,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said at a media briefing in Washington. “And we’re continuing our consultations with our partners in the region, and enlisting wherever we can their assistance in this process.”
The U.S. Embassy here spent the day denying rumors that Zelaya planned to move to American grounds. The rumor may have started because U.S. Embassy vehicles were used to evacuate Zelaya supporters who left the Brazilian Embassy willingly Tuesday.
“The embassy has been turned into a bunker for Zelaya,” Assistant Foreign Minister Martha Lorena Alvarado de Casco told The Herald. “He’s turned it into his headquarters, and he is using it to call for insurrection.”
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim told CNN en Español that his government asked Zelaya to tone down his rhetoric while he remains an embassy guest.
“The word `death’ should not even be mentioned,” he said.
Rioting broke out in various parts of the capital Tuesday night, and lines hundreds deep formed at supermarkets when desperate shoppers scrambled to buy food after a round-the-clock curfew was briefly lifted.
“I have no food in my house,” said Patti Vásquez, a housewife who, after two hours, still had not reached the front doors of a supermarket in an upscale shopping mall. “I need to get milk and juice and eggs.”
Zelaya says he has no plans to leave the embassy anytime soon.
. “I am the president the people of Honduras chose,” Zelaya said. “A country can’t have two presidents — just one.”
Pakistan briefed Cheney [about the plans for the terrorist attacks ahead of time] …nations also got wind of this and warned the CIA. We also had two walk-ins to the FBI, one in Orlando, one in Newark, that were dismissed by the FBI because the names were all virgins and not in the FBI data base—the arrogance of stupid bureaucracy.
Cheney saw an opportunity for what Bush called his trifecta, and gave it to him by giving the go-ahead to ISI and Al Qaeda, and ordering up a terrorism exercise that allowed him to send all relevant close-in air defense strip alert craft away from the target areas, and to disable the NORTHCOM normal response to flight path diversion.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has revealed that Honduran President Manuel Zelaya told him that the military who kidnapped him transferred him by plane to a U.S. military base, in Honduran territory.
According to Chavez: “They put Zelaya in the plane and landed at Palmerola with the president a prisoner and the Yankee officials appeared and knew that the president was there, they had a discussion with the Honduran officials.
“Then the Yankee military took the decision there to send him to Costa Rica.
“That is a very serious matter, the the president of Honduras was in a Yankee military base…
“The Yankees overthrew Zelaya…
“From the Yankee base, which is at a place called Palmerola, they carried out all of the operations and the dirty war and the terrorism against Sandinista Nicaragua, against El Salvador.
“It wasn’t long ago that the Yankees turned Honduras into a platform to attack its neighbors.”
“What we are asking is that he (Obama) withdraw the Palmerola base, that he withdraw the Guantanamo base where they torture…”
Chavez also said that Venezuela rejects Obama’s policy of setting up U.S. military bases in Colombia.
I recently visited Central America. Everyone I talked with there was convinced that the military coup that had overthrown the democratically-elected president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, had been engineered by two US companies, with CIA support. And that the US and its new president were not standing up for democracy.
Earlier in the year Chiquita Brands International Inc. (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Co had severely criticized Zelaya for advocating an increase of 60% in Honduras’s minimum wage, claiming that the policy would cut into corporate profits. They were joined by a coalition of textile manufacturers and exporters, companies that rely on cheap labor to work in their sweatshops.
Democracy Now! covers the Honduran coup.
Memories are short in the US, but not in Central America. I kept hearing people who claimed that it was a matter of record that Chiquita (United Fruit) and the CIA had toppled Guatemala’s democratically-elected president Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 and that International Telephone & Telegraph (ITT), Henry Kissinger, and the CIA had brought down Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973. These people were certain that Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide had been ousted by the CIA in 2004 because he proposed a minimum wage increase, like Zelaya’s.
I was told by a Panamanian bank vice president, “Every multinational knows that if Honduras raises its hourly rate, the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean will have to follow. Haiti and Honduras have always set the bottom line for minimum wages. The big companies are determined to stop what they call a ‘leftist revolt’ in this hemisphere. In throwing out Zelaya they are sending frightening messages to all the other presidents who are trying to raise the living standards of their people.”
It did not take much imagination to envision the turmoil sweeping through every Latin American capital. There had been a collective sign of relief at Barack Obama’s election in the U.S., a sense of hope that the empire in the North would finally exhibit compassion toward its southern neighbors, that the unfair trade agreements, privatizations, draconian IMF Structural Adjustment Programs, and threats of military intervention would slow down and perhaps even fade away. Now, that optimism was turning sour.
The cozy relationship between Honduras’s military coup leaders and the corporatocracy were confirmed a couple of days after my arrival in Panama. England’s The Guardian ran an article announcing that “two of the Honduran coup government’s top advisers have close ties to the US secretary of state. One is Lanny Davis, an influential lobbyist who was a personal lawyer for President Bill Clinton and also campaigned for Hillary. . . The other hired gun for the coup government that has deep Clinton ties is (lobbyist) Bennett Ratcliff.” (1)
DemocracyNow! broke the news that Chiquita was represented by a powerful Washington law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and its consultant, McLarty Associates (2). President Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder had been a Covington partner and a defender of Chiquita when the company was accused of hiring “assassination squads” in Colombia (Chiquita was found guilty, admitting that it had paid organizations listed by the US government as terrorist groups “for protection” and agreeing in 2004 to a $25 million fine). (3) George W. Bush’s UN Ambassador, John Bolton, a former Covington lawyer, had fiercely opposed Latin American leaders who fought for their peoples’ rights to larger shares of the profits derived from their resources; after leaving the government in 2006, Bolton became involved with the Project for the New American Century, the Council for National Policy, and a number of other programs that promote corporate hegemony in Honduras and elsewhere.
McLarty Vice Chairman John Negroponte was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, former Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, and U.S. Representative to the United Nations; he played a major role in the U.S.-backed Contra’s secret war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government and has consistently opposed the policies of the democratically-elected pro-reform Latin American presidents. (4) These three men symbolize the insidious power of the corporatocracy, its bipartisan composition, and the fact that the Obama Administration has been sucked in.
The Los Angeles Times went to the heart of this matter when it concluded:
What happened in Honduras is a classic Latin American coup in another sense: Gen. Romeo Vasquez, who led it, is an alumnus of the United States’ School of the Americas (renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). The school is best known for producing Latin American officers who have committed major human rights abuses, including military coups. (5)
All of this leads us once again to the inevitable conclusion: you and I must change the system. The president – whether Democrat or Republican – needs us to speak out.
Chiquita, Dole and all your representatives need to hear from you. Zelaya must be reinstated.
The first swine flu death in the United States has been confirmed, but the victim is a Mexican toddler who caught the illness in Mexico before traveling to Texas. Serious questions must now be asked about why a virus that has spread across at least 10 countries and is suspected in many others has only killed hispanics, and whether a race-specific bio-weapon is being beta-tested.
Scientists are still baffled as to the contrast between the lethality of the virus in Mexico compared to the rest of the world. Despite the virus being confirmed in the United States, Canada, the UK, Spain, New Zealand, Germany, Costa Rica, and Austria, with probable cases also occurring in France, South Korea and Slovakia, the virus has killed only Mexicans.
We are also told that the virus which sickened students at a school in Queens is the same strain as the one found in Mexico.
How can it be that the only fatalities are Mexican hispanics nearly a week into the outbreak?
Race-specific viruses can occur naturally, but this is a rare phenomenon. Is the swine flu virus a synthetically manufactured race-specific bio-weapon being beta-tested in preparation for more deadly pandemics in the future?
The U.S. military-industrial complex’s interest in race-specific bio-weapons as a tool of warfare is not a paranoid conspiracy theory – it’s outlined in their own public documents.
“Advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool,” stated the September 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses report released by the Project For A New American Century – the ideological framework of the Bush administration.
In 2006, Armed Forces Journal, a mouthpiece for the military-industrial complex, carried a military strategy plan written by retired Major Ralph Peters which called for “ethnic cleansing” to be instituted in the Middle East so that the region could easily be dominated by the joint interests of Israel and the United States.
As far back as 1998, Wired Magazine, citing the London Times, carried a report detailing the fact that Israel was already readying race-specific weapons for this very purpose.
“Israel is reportedly developing a biological weapon that would harm Arabs while leaving Jews unaffected, according to a report in London’s Sunday Times,” stated the article.
“The report, citing Israeli military and western intelligence sources, says that scientists are trying to identify distinctive genes carried by Arabs to create a genetically modified bacterium or virus.”
Wikipedia – that bastion of credibility – claims that the story was debunked but fails to provide conclusive evidence.
A 1999 UK Sunday Herald piece highlighted a report by the British Medical Association which concluded that race-specific bio-weapons would be ready within 5 years, “enabling governments to target victims solely on their genetic make-up.”
“Genetic weapons capable of wiping out specific ethnic groups are no longer the stuff of science fiction, military and scientific advisers with the British and American governments have admitted,” states the report.
“Professor Vivienne Nathanson, head of the BMA’s health policy research, said: “Biological weapons had limited use due to the shortcoming of being unspecific in targeting. “However, genetic targeting is now possible. Probably in the next five to 10 years we will see the manufacture of relatively specific biological weapons which are lethal in small volumes.”
The article explains how FBI crime labs have stumbled across genetic markers specific to blacks, whites, hispanics and native Americans during routine work. The same markers have been discovered in Palestinians, setting them apart from Israelis.
“If you add together a number of different markers for different populations you can start to be specific to a target population,” states Nathanson.
Lest we forget the innumerable instances where pioneering eugenicists and members of the global elite have publicly called for the earth’s population to be reduced to “sustainable” levels.
Perhaps the most infamous example of this is Prince Philip, the husband of the Queen of England, who has repeatedly expressed his desire to return to earth as a “particularly deadly virus” to “cull” the surplus human population.
As Alex Jones documents in his seminal documentary End Game, this mind set is endemic amongst the elite.
So having established the fact that race-specific bio-weapons have already been produced and are ready for use, and having confirmed that the elite have repeatedly expressed a desire to use them, it’s necessary to ask whether or not hispanics are being targeted by the swine flu outbreak as a beta-test of these weapons.
Since the common flu virus does kill people every year, a handful of non-hispanic deaths attributed to swine flu will not disprove this hypothesis, which will remain a possibility unless we see a significant number of fatalities of non-hispanics.
Cheney considered idea to dress-up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats and have other Seals shoot at them to trigger “World War 4”.
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.
“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”
Transcript:
HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…
There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.
And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected — uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.
But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.
…What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January, the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.
Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.
On yesterday’s edition of The 700 Club, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson sharply criticized the “moderate tone” the Bush administration has allegedly taken toward Iran and its nuclear weapons program. Robertson advocated that Israel look out for the “survival of its nation” and “make some kind of a strike” against Iranian nuclear facilities. He also predicted that it will likely happen before the 2008 elections:
But nevertheless, I think we can look in the next few months for Israel to make a strike — possibly before the next election — because I think George Bush — to use the term an “amber light” — he’s given the amber, the yellow light, saying, “Caution, but go ahead.”
Robertson’s predictions often turn out to be wrong. In 2004, Robertson claimed that the Lord told him it would “be like a blowout” re-election for President Bush. (Bush ended up receiving just 51 percent of the vote.) In 2006, he incorrectly predicted that “the outcome of the war and the success of the economy will leave the Republicans in charge.”
He does, however, have an inside track into the Bush administration. Last year, Robertson’s Regent University estimated that one in six of its graduates were employed in government work. Approximately 150 served in the Bush administration.
The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.
Other members of the right wing have also been unifying around the idea of striking Iran before Bush leaves. Both John Bolton and Bill Kristol have made the same argument.
Kagan: ‘The only way’ to ‘force’ Iran to halt its nuclear program is an ‘attack.’
Appearing on MSNBC this afternoon, Iraq surge architect Fred Kagan criticized direct talks with Iran and made his case for attacking Iran, claiming it is the only means to “force” the country to halt its nuclear program:
Well, there’s nothing we can do short of an attack to force Iran to give up its nuclear program. … At the end of the day, the only way that you can make for sure that [a nuclear arm’s race] doesn’t happen is with an attack. There are a variety of things you can do short of an attack and hope that they will work, but hope is not a method here.
This assessment was reported by Israeli national radio Saturday overnight quoting a high-placed “security-political” official.
The source predicted that President George W. Bush would order Iran attacked between the November 4 presidential election and his exit from the White House in January. The quote was aired shortly after the six-power talks with Iran in Geneva – with US official participation for the first time – failed, and just before Israel chief of staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi set out for Washington. He is to spend a week there as guest of Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
DEBKAfile’s political sources describe the disclosure as a step aimed at slowing down the collapse of Israel’s stated policy of relying on international diplomatic pressure to thwart Iran’s acquisition of nuclear arms. It is expected to raise a furious outcry from the powers spearheading the diplomatic effort and prompt extreme reactions from Tehran.
Christie Todd Whitman Confronted on 9/11 Air Quality On September 11, 2001 former NJ governor Christie Todd Whitman was the Environmental Protection Agency Director. The agency issued false statements and declared the air safe to breathe. Here is the former EPA Director’s response to critical questions nearly seven years later.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief warned in comments aired Saturday that any military strike on Iran could turn the Mideast to a “ball of fire” and lead Iran to a more aggressive stance on its controversial nuclear program.
Mohamed ElBaradei made the remarks in an interview aired on Saturday by Al Arabiya TV. The interview comes a day after reports emerged that Israel conducted an large-scale military exercise that the United States believes is in part a message to Iran that Israel has the capability to attack its nuclear program.
“In my opinion, a military strike will be the worst. … It will turn the Middle East to a ball of fire,” ElBaradei said on Al-Arabiya television. It also could prompt Iran to press even harder to seek a nuclear program and force him to resign, he said.
Iran also criticized the Israeli exercises Saturday. The official IRNA news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying the exercises demonstrate that Israel “jeopardizes global peace and security.”
Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the eastern Mediterranean this month, U.S. military officials said Friday.
Israel’s military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran, saying only that it regularly trains for various missions to counter threats to the country.
But the exercise the first week of June may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record on the matter.
Iran said on Monday Israel could not threaten it, a few days after a U.S. newspaper reported that Israel’s air force had apparently rehearsed a potential bombing raid of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Iran and Israel have engaged in a sharp exchange of words this month over suspicions Tehran is looking to develop nuclear weapons, helping to push global oil prices higher.
“They do not have the capacity to threaten the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a news conference.
He was asked about a New York Times report on Friday that quoted U.S. officials as saying Israeli jets conducted a long-range Mediterranean exercise this month that appeared to be a practice for a mission against Iran.
“They (Israel) have a number of domestic crises and they want to extrapolate it to cover others. Sometimes they come up with these empty slogans,” Hosseini said in comments translated by Iran’s English-language Press TV satellite station.
Iran’s defense minister on Sunday accused Israel of “psychological warfare”, but said Tehran would give a “devastating” response to any attack.
On Friday, the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Mohamed ElBaradei, said a military strike on Iran would turn the Middle East into a fireball and prompt Tehran to launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons.
Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’
Bolton predicts “likely period” for Israel strike on Iran is between November 4, 2008 and January 20, 2009
This morning on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton continued his drumbeat for war against Iran. Adopting Bill Kristol’s argument, Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:
I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.
Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil, 2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.
Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:
I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.
Bolton: Israel Would Be “Delighted” If U.S. Strikes Iranian Training Camps
In a Fox News interview this afternoon, former UN Ambassador John Bolton discussed his desire to bomb camps inside Iran that are reportedly training and arming Shiite insurgents who fight in Iraq. Fox host Martha McCallum asked, “Can you imagine a scenario where President Bush would do that before the end of his term?” Bolton responded, “I think so, definitely.” He added later, “This is entirely responsible on our part.”
Asked by McCallum whether Israel would be supportive of the strikes given the possibility of Iranian retaliation, Bolton responded, “I think they’d be delighted.”
Fox News claims Iranian missile could ‘hit some military installations’ in the U.S.
The L.A. Times’ Babylon & Beyond blog reports on “a serious recommendation made by two neoconservatives in case sanctions fail to persuade Iran to abandon its enrichment of uranium, a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons or fuel for peaceful energy production.” Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, described as two “scholars” working for the Washington Institute for Near East Studies, have suggested taking out Iran’s oil infrastructure.
Because the ultimate goal of prevention is to influence Tehran to change course, effective strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure may play an important role in affecting Iran’s decision calculus. Strikes that flatten its nuclear infrastructure could have a demoralizing effect, and could influence Tehran’s assessment of the cost of rebuilding. But the most effective strikes may not necessarily be against nuclear facilities. Iran is extraordinarily vulnerable to attacks on its oil export infrastructure…. The political shock of losing the oil income could cause Iran to rethink its nuclear stance — in ways that attacks on its nuclear infrastructure might not.
Or it may move Iran’s “decision calculus” in a different direction — deadly missile salvos against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and smoldering oil tankers clogging up passage of the Persian Gulf. If these two criminal minds have their way, you will be paying $10 a gallon or more at the pump for gasoline. No problem for the WINEP “scholars,” who write:
To be sure, in a tight world oil market, attacking Iran’s oil infrastructure carries an obvious risk of causing world oil prices to soar and hurting consumers in the United States and other oil-importing countries…. If the choice is between higher oil prices and a Middle East with several nuclear powers, higher oil prices and reduced economic growth are not clearly the greater evil.
Talk about hubris. But then neocons are more than comfortable with imposing economic hardship on you, considered a lowly commoner and easily distracted chump by the neocons and their globalist associates. It should be remembered that the neocons consider themselves “philosopher-kings,” a self-appointed elite, and advocate benevolent dictatorship – a process well underway — although it remains to be seen how benevolent it would be to freeze to death thousands of people unable to heat their homes or starve them to death because the cannot afford to drive to work.
The presumptive Republican nominee for president and the leading contender for the Democratic nomination are exaggerating what’s known about Iran’s nuclear program as they duel over how best to deal with Tehran.
Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., say that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
The U.S. intelligence community, however, thinks that Iran halted an effort to build a nuclear warhead in mid-2003, and the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, which is investigating the program, has found no evidence to date of an active Iranian nuclear-weapons project.
The candidates’ comments raise questions about how carefully the two have studied the public record on what’s become a major campaign issue and is one of the most difficult foreign-policy challenges likely to confront the next president.
McCain to AIPAC: I’m committed to making certain Israel maintains military edge
‘When we join in saying never again, that is not a wish, a request or a plea to the enemies of Israel, but a promise that the United States and Israel will honor against any enemy,’ Arizona senator tells pro-Israel lobby.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain told a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Monday that the US would not accept a nuclear Iran under his leadership.
“Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons poses an unacceptable risk, a danger we cannot allow,” the Arizona senator told the annual conference of the pro-Israel lobby group in Washington. “Emboldened by nuclear weapons, Iran would feel free to sponsor terrorist attacks against any perceived enemy. Its flouting of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty would render that agreement obsolete and could induce Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and others to join a nuclear arms race.
“The world would have to live indefinitely with the possibility that Tehran might pass nuclear materials or weapons to one of its allied terrorist networks. Armed as well with its ballistic missile arsenal, an Iranian nuclear bomb would pose an existential threat to the people of Israel,” he said.
Yesterday it was Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s turn to patronise the Israel Lobby conference in Washington when she addressed AIPAC delegates calling for “Our partners in Europe and beyond… to exploit Iran’s vulnerabilities more vigorously and impose greater costs on the regime, economically, financially, politically and diplomatically”.
What went almost unnoticed was the hint that the time for talk was over – assuming there ever was a time that the US and Israel sat down and talked with Iran; if there was then I must have blinked and missed it. “Diplomacy is not a synonym for talking,” Rice told the conference, pushing back against those who are calling for such engagement. “True diplomacy means structuring a set of incentives and disincentives to produce change in behaviour.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped by “all possible means” and Tehran must be made to see it would suffer devastating repercussions if it pursued atomic weapons.
“The Iranian threat must be stopped by all possible means,” Olmert said in a speech during a visit to Washington. “The international community has a duty and responsibility to clarify to Iran, through drastic measures, that the repercussions of their continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will be devastating.”
They’re all here – and they’re all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates – John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.
Such star power wattage, a Washington version of the Oscars, is the stock in trade of AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the crucial player in what is generally known as the Israel lobby and which holds its annual Policy Conference this week in Washington at which most of the heavyweights will deliver lectures.
Spooks Promise Terror Attack For New President Both Clinton and Bush exploited bombings within first year of taking office, Obama or McCain likely to enjoy the same opportunity
National intelligence spooks are all but promising that history will be repeated for a third time running, and the new President of the United States – likely Barack Obama or John McCain – will be welcomed into office by a terror attack that will occur within the first year of his tenure.
“When the next president takes office in January, he or she will likely receive an intelligence brief warning that Islamic terrorists will attempt to exploit the transition in power by planning an attack on America, intelligence experts say,”
“Islamic terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, in Mr. Clinton’s second month as president. Al Qaeda’s Sept. 11 attacks came in the Bush presidency’s first year….The pattern is clear to some national security experts. Terrorists pay particular attention to a government in transition as the most opportune window to launch an attack.”
Naturally, the Washington Times article makes out as if a terror attack within the early stages of a new presidency is a bad thing, but both Clinton and Bush exploited terror in America to realize preconceived domestic and geopolitical agenda
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was an inside job from start to finish – it did not come as a “surprise” to the U.S. government since they ran the entire operation, having cooked the bomb for the “Islamic terrorists” that they had groomed for the attack.
In 1993 the FBI planted their informant, Emad A. Salem, within a radical Arab group in New York led by Ramzi Yousef. Salem was ordered to encourage the group to carry out a bombing targeting the World Trade Center’s twin towers. Under the illusion that the project was a sting operation, Salem asked the FBI for harmless dummy explosives which he would use to assemble the bomb and then pass on to the group. At this point the FBI cut Salem out of the loop and provided the group with real explosives, leading to the attack on February 26 that killed six and injured over a thousand people. The FBI’s failure to prevent the bombing was reported on by the New York Times in October 1993.
The attack, coupled with the Oklahoma City bombing less than two years later, enabled Bill Clinton to whip up support for the passage of a plethora of unconstitutional legislation, including the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Brady Bill, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, and a $100 million dollar grant to Israel for “counter-terrorism” purposes.
By the time Clinton left office, the Patriot movement – which before the OKC bombing had grown in leaps and bounds, spurred on by the atrocities committed by the federal government at Waco – was effectively dead.
Few need reminding of George W. Bush’s agenda before he took office. The ideological framework that would shape his presidency – encapsulated by the goals of the Neo-Con Project For a New American Century – required a “new Pearl Harbor” to get things started, which is exactly what they received on September 11, 2001.
“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade—if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency,” Bush told Herskowitz.
That “chance to invade” arrived on the morning of 9/11, within hours of which Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “Was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.”
A Congressional Research Service report last month stated, “Whether an incident of national security significance occurs just before or soon after the presidential transition, the actions or inactions of the outgoing administration may have a long-lasting effect on the new president’s ability to effectively safeguard U.S. interests and may affect the legacy of the outgoing president.”
The government seems pretty certain that McCain or Obama will be presented with a terror attack early on in their presidency and is giving them ample time to prepare the best method of exploiting it, but only to “safeguard U.S. interests,” naturally.
The pattern is clear – each time a new President takes office they have a mandate to act as a torch bearer for the same agenda – domestic repression and foreign invasion. A terror attack provides the perfect pretext to realize those goals.
Whether it be Barack Obama or John McCain, we can expect a new crisis to conveniently arrive shortly after they take office, enabling them to pursue the same tyrannical blueprint followed by their predecessors.
Pakistani Newspaper: “Another Twin Towers like drama is being planned”
From an article out of Pakistan’s The Nation newspaper.
“…the situation in Afghanistan looks precarious. Some NATO countries are already slithering over sending more troops and some are being frugal with financial support. President Karzai, who faces the election next year, is quarrelling with UK over the deals it has been making with the former Taliban leaders to get them to change sides. Recent think-tank reports warn of the possible collapse of the whole government leaving a vacuum that Taliban would fill. And to cover up their failure in Afghanistan, the US-allied forces are once again making Pakistan as a nexus of the so-called Islamist terror.
Once again fabricating lies, as was done in Iraq, Pakistani tribesmen are accused of working on a plan in concert with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to launch another attack on the US and its western allies. To convince the allies of the looming Taliban attack, another Twin Towers like drama is being planned in which Pakistan is the villain apparent while the US-installed Afghan president is ruling the roost. He has 40,000 highly equipped US and NATO forces in addition to the US-trained Afghan army against scattered Taliban militants whose strength hardly exceeds ten thousand. Instead of fighting with them fair and square in Afghanistan, he conveniently shifts the blame onto Pakistan.”
White House Speech Writer Turns Violent After 9/11 Questions ’Axis of Evil’ author David Frum Responds to Questions With Physical Assault and Obscene Language
Frum– a neo-con policy maker who is often credited with coining the phrase ’Axis of Evil’– allegedly lost his temper when he recognized Stewart Howe, of We Are Change L.A., from a previous book signing. Howe approached Frum to ask a question when Frum became angry, and then violent, reports indicate.
Frum told Howe, “The one thing I regret from our last conversation is that I didn’t say to you what my friend Christopher Hitchens said… which is, you should fuckoff.” [expletive is reportedly a direct quote]
According to Howe, David Frum then got up from behind the book signing table and swung at Stewart and his camera while he was phrasing a question about the unraveling 9/11 cover-up and potential criminal charges.
Howe replied “I will not go away. I will not turn off the camera. We are in public. Are you worried, perhaps, about the criminal liability of being a partner to mass murder after the fact? You know that is a real concern because the truth is coming out.”
Reportedly, David Frum swung repeatedly at the camera during this statement before members of event security separated him from Howe and sent him back to his seat. Moments later, Frum got up from his seat to assault Howe for a second time after over-hearing a discussion with the security guard regarding ’the neo-con agenda laid out in PNAC documents.’
David Frum allegedly tried to break the camera while Howe announced to the recording that “he’s assaulting me, and I have it on film.”
Frum then said, “I don’t want to be on your camera.” Stewart Howe responded, “We’re in public. I’ve just been assaulted by David Frum on film.”
Security escorted the We Are Change L.A. reporter from the event on grounds that he was obstructing the book signing, though the guard agreed that Howe had a right to free speech and that Frum had assaulted him.
Members of the book signing staff objected that he was holding up the line. Howe objected that no one was in-line and that he had asked the question in a civil and polite manner.
Members of We Are Change L.A. tried to clarify the incident with David Frum during an event the following day (April 27th) where reporters say Frum again became upset and battered their cameras.
U.S. media organizations like CNN, NBC, FOX and others recently reported that the death total of U.S. combatants in Iraq War had just reached 4,000. The problem is that this data seems to be an intentional distortion. Indeed, official U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs data indicates that the death total from the attrition of Iraq Wars had already reached 73,846, as of May 2007. In comparison Sky News reports that during the Vietnam War, 58,000 soldiers were killed between 1964 and 1973, an average of 26 a day. LINK
It is indeed, a well known fact that in a so-called free society, the U.S. President George W. Bush administration has banned media organizations from photographing most of the coffins, along with the maimed military personnel returning into the U.S. from Iraq. And, if you think that the U.S. President Bush administration has followed “freedom of the press” in Iraq, you have made a sudden mistake.
Journalists in Iraq, who have not prostituted themselves into disseminating the Bush administration’s public relations on the “overall success” of the Iraq War, are being subjected to oppressive persecution.
Journalists have complained of fascist-style harassment.
Is this the action of a U.S. President, who is fighting for democracy, that fundamentally relies on transparency toward supporting a critically informed public?
Indeed, award-winning independent Journalist Dahr Jamail reports that “when the United States handed over power to a ’sovereign’ Iraqi interim government, [Paul] Bremer [former U.S. administrator in Iraq] simply passed on the authority to Ayad Allawi.” LINK
Mr. Dahmail further documents that, Mr. Allawi is the “U.S.-installed interim Prime Minister, who has had longstanding ties with the British intelligence service MI6 and the CIA.” LINK
Investigative Journalist Dahr Jamail, also reports that Allawi’s “media commission had sent out an official ’order’ for news organisations to “stick to the government line on the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah, or face legal action.” The warning was sent on the letterhead of Mr. Allawi.
The result is that Iraq has become under the Bush administration, a far worse “modern Stalinist” police state, than Iraq had ever been under Saddam Hussein. Over 1 million people in Iraq have been reportedly killed, as the direct result of the Bush regime’s pre-emptive War in Iraq. This is in addition to the over 73,000 U.S. military personnel already killed, as documented by U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.
Mr. Bush has coordinated an effort to limit the American public’s understanding of the current Iraq War, based upon the myth-making presentation of the War. That myth-making” has sought to convince Americans, in part, that the war is taking a far less toll of American lives.
Indeed, it is apparent that the U.S. Bush administration, is anxious to “declare progress” and “victory” in Iraq, so that it can pursue its further military expansionist agenda against Iran. Seymour M. Hersh has sounded alarm bells about the Bush regime’s nuclear war ambitions against Iran. LINK
But, “The Bush administration has rejected comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, which traumatized Americans a generation ago, with a sad procession of military body bags and television footage of grim wartime cruelty,” observed China Daily.LINK
The intellectual inspiration for the U.S. Bush administration’s public relations management of the Iraq War, is Leo Strauss.Wikipedia notes that “Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play, in uniting and guiding the polis.” LINK
In 2003, the magazine Foreign Policy In Focus, noted that thanks to the “Week in Review” section of the 4 May 2003 edition of the New York Times and another investigative article in a recent New Yorker magazine, “The cognoscenti have suddenly been made aware that key neoconservative strategists behind the Bush administration’s aggressive foreign and military policy, consider themselves to be followers of Strauss. LINK
Two other very influential Straussians, noted by Foreign Policy in Focus in May 2003, “include Weekly Standard Chief Editor William Kristol and Gary Schmitt, founder, chairman, and director of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). This is a six-year-old neoconservative group whose alumni include Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon [then] chief Donald Rumsfeld, as well as a number of other senior foreign policy officials.” LINK
“PNAC’s early prescriptions and subsequent open letters to President George W. Bush on how to fight the war on terrorism, have anticipated to an uncanny extent precisely what the administration has done.” LINK
The Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), notes that a leading “Straussian” advisor to the Bush Administration has been “Paul Wolfowitz, who was trained by Strauss’ alter-ego and fellow University of Chicago professor Allan Bloom. EIR specifically noted that Wolfowitz has helped champion the “war party” within the civilian bureaucracy at the Pentagon. LINK
Strauss emphasized that ’myths’ are “vitally needed” to “give people meaning and purpose and to ensure a stable society”; and even though he was Jewish, he praised Nazi Germany for embracing the power of myth to control the development of “liberal tendencies” in society. In the view of Strauss, presenting the truth harms society, by liberating “the governed” as “free thinkers” from the “necessary” social control of “elites”.
The Bush administration is inspired by the neo-fascist ideology of Leo Strauss, and has sought to dupe the American public into ignorance about the human suffering of U.S. military personnel in Iraq, by using Straussian techniques of political manipulation.
Shadia Drury, in Leo Strauss and the American Right (1999), argues that Strauss taught different things to different students and inculcated an elitist strain in American political leaders, that is linked to imperialist militarism and to Christian fundamentalism.
Drury accuses Strauss of teaching that “perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical, because they need to be led and because they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them.”
Nicholas Xenos in “Leo Strauss and the Rhetoric of the War on Terror,” Logosjournal.com similarly argues that Strauss “was not an anti-liberal in the sense in which we commonly mean ’anti-liberal’ today, but an anti-democrat in a fundamental sense; a true reactionary. Strauss, was somebody who wanted to go back to a previous, pre-liberal, pre-bourgeois era of blood and guts; of imperial domination, of authoritarian rule, and of pure fascism.”
The U.S. President Bush administration’s stated goal of staying in Iraq, to guide Iraq into democracy, and also to combat “terrorists” who threaten American and international security interests, is an apparent clever Straussian ruse. The Bush administration seeks an apparent agenda in Iraq which is far from being the affirmation of democracy and peace.
The lives of Americans have been lost not in the defence of democracy and toward global peace, but as apparent “ritual sacrifices” to the messianic Eugenic ideology of America’s ruling elites. The War on Terrorism appears to being used as a pseudonym for a Eugenics War, that seeks to use the pre-text of terrorists, to execute genocide against Iraqis, through the exploitation of and the “sacrifice” of more than 73,000 U.S. military personnel.
Get the full U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs report: PDF LINK
Massive federal deficits, not enough money for social programs. Where have all our tax dollars gone? The charts below (click for full page versions) show how our income tax dollars were spent in FY2007, which ended last September 30 (data from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2009, Table 8.7). As you can see, 52.7% of these discretionary funds went to the military.
These charts exclude expenditures for Social Security, Medicare, and federal highways since these programs are paid from dedicated taxes maintained in separate trust funds. They also exclude interest paid on the national debt since that spending is “mandatory”, not “discretionary”. These charts show the part of the federal budget that Congress and the President directly allocate each year (with the funds derived from our income taxes, corporation taxes, excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, and other miscellaneous taxes).
An article co-written by a former Congressman and carried by the San Francisco Chronicle has gained much attention recently as it shines light on a coordinated federal government program to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States.
“Since 9/11, and seemingly without the notice of most Americans, the federal government has assumed the authority to institute martial law, arrest a wide swath of dissidents (citizen and noncitizen alike), and detain people without legal or constitutional recourse in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants in the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs.” write Lewis Seiler and former Congressman Dan Hamburg of the watchdog groupVoice of the Environment, Inc.
Voice of the Environment’s mission is to educate the public regarding the transfer of public trust assets into private, mostly corporate, hands.
The article continues:
Beginning in 1999, the government has entered into a series of single-bid contracts with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) to build detention camps at undisclosed locations within the United States. The government has also contracted with several companies to build thousands of railcars, some reportedly equipped with shackles, ostensibly to transport detainees.
According to diplomat and author Peter Dale Scott, the KBR contract is part of a Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of “all removable aliens” and “potential terrorists.”
Seiler and Hamburg also warn of the alarming and numerous freedom killing pieces of legislation that have been passed recently, dovetailing with the build up of infrastructure of tyranny inside the US.
We have previously highlighted the shocking details behind this shining example of modern day corporate fascism.
The issue gained national attention two years ago when it was announced that Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.
The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps will also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”
Following the story, first given wide attention by Prisonplanet.com, the Alternet website put together an alarming report that collated all the latest information on plans to initiate internment of political subversives and Muslims after the next major terror attack in the US.
The article highlighted the disturbing comments of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who encouraged torture supporting then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to target, “Fifth Columnists” Americans who show disloyalty and sympathize with “the enemy,” whoever that enemy may be.
It is important to stress that the historical precedent mirrors exactly what the Halliburton camp deal outlines. Oliver North’s Reagan era Rex 84 plan proposed rounding up 400,000 refugees, under FEMA, in the event of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States.
The real agenda, just as it is with Halliburton’s gulags, was to use the cover of rounding up immigrants and illegal aliens as a smokescreen for targeting political dissidents. From 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the “ADEX” list.
According to author Naomi Wolf, the National Counterterrorism Center today holds the names of roughly 775,000 “terror suspects” with the number increasing by 20,000 per month.
Discussions of federal concentration camps are no longer the rhetoric of paranoid Internet conspiracy theorists, they are mainstream news.
Halliburton, through their KBR subsidiary, is the same company that built most of the major new detention camps in Iraq and Afghanistan. KBR have been embroiled in a human sex slave trade that their representatives have lobbied to continue.
We have a company that has been handed a contract to build prison camps in America that is engaged in trafficking young girls and women. Can this horror movie get any more frightening? Sadly, yes.
A much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon’s Civilian Inmate Labor Program, has recently been updated and the revision details a “template for developing agreements” between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.”
The plan is clearly to swallow up disenfranchised groups like prisoners, immigrants and Muslims at first and then extend the policy to include ‘Fifth Columnists,’ otherwise known as anyone who disagrees with the government or exercises their Constitutional rights.
Respected author Peter Dale Scott speculated that the “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.”
Daniel Ellsberg, former Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary of Defense, called the plan, “preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
Ex-Congressman: U.S. Government Created Al-Qaeda, Involved In 9/11 Author of San Francisco Chronicle piece warning of internment camps says government bombed its own citizens
A former Congressman says that the U.S. government created Al-Qaeda and was involved in bombing its own citizens on 9/11, telling a national radio show that elements of the Bush administration assisted the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.
Daniel Hamburg is a former Democratic Congressman who was elected to the 1st Congressional District of California in 1992 and also subsequently ran for Governor of California, finishing in 3rd place.
Appearing today on the Alex Jones Show, Hamburg said he was working on an article about missing nuclear bombs in relation to the Minot nuclear warheads mishap and agreed that it was possible the story could be used as a cover for the staged detonation of a nuke to be blamed on Al-Qaeda.
“Any government that could bomb its own citizens in the major city of the country could do anything….you can’t put anything past them,” said Hamburg, clarifying that he was referring to 9/11.
“I’m in the assisted it to happen camp – I think there was a lot of help from the inside, this whole thing was not engineered from a cave in Afghanistan,” he added.
“The evidence that Al-Qaeda is actually an arm of the U.S. government is voluminous….I know that’s true,” concluded Hamburg, citing the PNAC group’s call for a new Pearl Harbor shortly before the 2001 terror attacks.
“it’s hard for people to believe that their government could be as insidious as this one is but the evidence is there,” concluded Hamburg.
Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Monday that Israel may have to take military action to prevent its archfoe Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb. Bolton also said that further UN sanctions against the Islamic republic will be ineffective in stopping Iran’s controversial nuclear programme which Israel and the US believe is aimed at developing a bomb — a claim denied by Tehran. “One can say with some assurance that in the next year the use of force by the United States is highly unlikely,” Bolton told AFP on the sidelines of the Herzliya conference on the balance of Israel’s national security. “That increases the pressure on Israel in that period of time… if it feels Iran is on the verge of acquiring that capability, it brings the decision point home to use force,” he said.
The hawkish former diplomat said that after a US intelligence report published late last year that claimed Iran had suspended a nuclear weapons programme in 2003, the US was unlikely to take military action against it.
“The pressure is on Israel now after the National Intelligence Estimate because, I think, the likelihood of American use of force has been dramatically reduced,” he said.
Widely considered the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel considers Iran its number one enemy following repeated statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
Bolton said that military action against Iran should be taken before Tehran acquires a bomb.
“The calculus in the region changes dramatically once Iran has nuclear capability, meaning the preemptive use of force or the overthrow of the Iranian regime has to come before they get the weapon,” Bolton said.
“If you are worried about an Iran with nuclear weapons and an extreme theological regime in power, the time to take the plan of action is before Iran acquires the weapons.
“Once it acquires the weapons there is a risk of retaliation with nuclear capability and that’s why Israel is in danger — it is a very small country and two or three nuclear weapons (and) there is no more country. The pressure to act is intensive and the window of time available is narrow.”
Bolton also said that despite Iranian threats to hit hard if it is attacked, “their response will be a lot more measured than people think.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week said that all options were on the table to prevent an Iranian bomb. The Israeli military last week also successfully test-fired a ballistic missile said to be able to carry a non-conventional warhead.
Bolton said that a new round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran was “unlikely” and that Tehran would not be deterred by further diplomatic sanctions.
“Maybe there will be another resolution but it will be even more toothless than the previous two sanction resolutions… International pressure through diplomacy of sanction has no chance of shifting Iran’s policies over the next year.”
A senior Israeli security official said in reaction that “one should listen very closely to what Bolton has to say.”
noworldsystem.com note: The man who predicted “Bush is going to hit“ Iran before presidential term is up tells audience member to ‘shut up’ after asking tough questions about the possibility of a War with Iran.
Neo-Con Podhoretz Tells Audience To ‘Shut Up’ After Tough Questions
Giuliani’s foreign policy advisor Implies Iran should be bombed because it carried out 9/11
Arch-Neo Con Norman Podhoretz’s book reading at a recent Barnes and Noble appearance in New York turned into a hostile affair after he told the audience that Iran should be bombed because “We were attacked by Islamofascists on 9/11,” before being bombarded with accusatory questions and eventually telling the crowd to “shut up”.
Rudy Giuliani’s foreign policy advisor was subject to walkouts by individuals disgusted at the fact that Podhoretz openly called for air strikes on Iran, labeling Podhoretz a “fascist” who would have blood on his hands.
Asked whether there should be a fresh investigation into 9/11, Podhoretz simply dismissed the suggestion as “paranoia” and refused to answer the question.
He later defended the fact that he signed the infamous Project For a New American Century documents, a Neo-Con manifesto for world domination that includes advocating the use of race-specific bio-weapons, and claimed that the PNAC had been “misrepresented”.Podhoretz then admitted that the CIA had overthrown the U.S.-friendly Iranian government of Mohammad Mossadegh in the 50’s, but called it “ancient history.”
He then went on to make a case that Iran was behind the violence in Iraq and had formed an alliance with Al-Qaeda, despite the fact that the two are Shia and Sunni respectively and as such are arch-enemies. He was then educated about how in fact it was the U.S. government that is funding Al-Qaeda affiliated groups to attack Iran. This mattered little to Podhoretz, who was then asked why we should “fight back” against Iran by bombing them when they had never attacked us?
Podhoretz’s answer was to state that, “We were attacked by Islamofascists on 9/11,” clearly implying that Iran attacked the U.S. on 9/11. Such unmitigated and bellicose propaganda might fly on Fox News, but many members of the audience were having none of it, asking why they should trust Bush and the Neo-Cons after being lied to for six years.
“Why don’t you shut up,” barked Podhoretz, seemingly having abandoned his ceaseless regurgitation of warmongering rhetoric and finally losing his temper.
Several members of the audience were kicked out of the store by cops but as Podhoretz left he was heckled again as protesters chanted “No Iran war,” before ducking into a vehicle and scurrying away.
The incident was another example of the sterling efforts of We Are Change NYC, who have made headlines this year for their prolific confrontations of numerous public figures from Hillary Clinton, to David Rockefeller, to Alan Greenspan.
Giuliani enlisted Podhoretz as his foreign policy advisor back in July. In September, Podhoretz met secretly with President Bush and Karl Rove and encouraged them to bomb Iran. Podhoretz is widely considered to be one of the few remaining hardcore Neo-Con loyalists, while a sizeable majority of the rest begin to flee the sinking ship as public opinion turns ferociously against the Neo-Con’s anti-American agenda and incessant warmongering.
Today, on Fox News Sunday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol declared that the U.S. was close to victory in the Iraq war, arguing that the “only” concern left for the U.S is dealing with alleged Iranian involvement in Iraq:
We’re winning in Iraq. That is the absolute crucial precondition to having success in the broader fight against Islamic jihadism. … And I think we are going to have to be serious about dealing with both their intervention in Iraq — which is now the only real threat, I think, incidentally, to relative success in Iraq — and their nuclear program.
While Iran may be causing some violence in Iraq, there are more pressing “threats” to “success.” A National Intelligence Estimate released in February concluded that Iranian involvement was “not likely” to be a major driver of violence. An August McClatchy analysis found that the majority of suicide bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia, not Iran.
In reality, “Iraq’s complex and overlapping sectarian, political and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation continue to hinder progress in promoting economic development, the rule of law and political reconciliation,” according to Special Inspector General For Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen.
Kristol used his allegations of Iranian involvement in Iraq to push for more war in the Middle East, claiming, “There has to be the credible threat of force” with Iran. He was quickly rebuked by Juan Williams:
Do you think there’s any question about this — whether or not we have credible military force? We are the superpower in the world. … The thing is we have our military stretched beyond all bounds, and you seem to want to engage in other wars. I don’t know why you feel this way.
Bill Kristol will readily lower his standards for the Iraq war in order to implement his hawkish, neoconservative agenda.
Transcript:
KRISTOL: We’re winning in Iraq. That is the absolute crucial precondition to having success in the broader fight against Islamic jihadism. So Senator Obama was wrong about that.
And he’s wrong about Iran. Senator Obama’s professed position –he’s given speeches on this — is that Iran should not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. He’s not comfortable with an Iranian nuclear weapon.
And yet we’ve been pursuing diplomacy for four years, with our European friends — just two days ago, Ali Larijani, the Iranian negotiator who — when you go to the Europeans, they say, Well, Ahmadinejad is crazy, but he doesn’t matter. Khamenei, who knows? But Larijani — he’s a reasonable man. We can work with him. He resigned.
He was forced out. It looks like the Iranian government is going for the full hard line on their nuclear program. And I think we are going to have to be serious about dealing with both their intervention in Iraq — which is now the only real threat, I think, incidentally, to relative success in Iraq — and their nuclear program.
WALLACE: When you say getting serious, I think a lot of our viewers are going to say, Kristol thinks there’s going to be a war.
WILLIAMS: Yes.
KRISTOL: I think there could be a use of force. September 6th, 2007, when Israel used force against Syria to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons with North Korean aid, is going to go down in history, I think, as the date where we got a glimpse of the kind of future we’re dealing with.
If diplomacy works, that’s great. There has to be the credible threat of force both on the nuclear issue and, I think much more short-term, though — I agree with Brit on this. I think the short-term question is does Petraeus think he needs a little help across the border to secure our successes in Iraq.
And if so, I think the president will give it to him. We can’t let them just build IEDs and train Iraqis with impunity across the border.
WILLIAMS: Look. Do you think there’s any question about this –whether or not we have credible military force? We are the superpower in the world.
The thing is we have our military stretched beyond all bounds, and you seem to want to engage in other wars. I don’t know why you feel this way.
KRISTOL: I want to win the war. I want to support the military who are fighting over there who are being killed…
WILLIAMS: Oh, wait a second.
KRISTOL: … who are being killed by Iranian weapons.
WILLIAMS: Just a minute. You mean when it came to the surge, you wanted to defend the surge. Why don’t we defend the fact that for five years we’ve been involved in a war that’s cost us life and limb, and we have — we’re totally out of control?
On Fox News Sunday, right-wing pundit Bill Kristol continued to beat the war drums for a strike against Iran. “I hope the administration is willing to do what it takes to back Iran off,” he said, adding that “we may need to do stuff across the border.”
NPR’s Mara Liasson claimed that the Bush administration could politically “withstand” an attack against Iran, and that a bombing raid inside Iran would not count as “an all-out war.”
NPR’s Juan Williams noted that Liasson and Kristol were in effect condoning “the next world war”:
WILLIAMS: I think what Bill Kristol is saying is he wants some action against Iran in a way that Israel apparently took action against Syria. And I think what you’re looking at then is the next world war. […]
And if we now say the U.S. is going to take action against Iran, and it’s not as a result of some specific provocative action, then you’re talking about spreading war.
Kristol responded by citing the recent Israeli airstrike on Syria as evidence for his claim that a strike on Iran would not have deeper consequences. “Has the Israeli action against Syria spread war? Has that destabilized the region?” Kristol asked. Watch it:
Last year, Williams told Kristol: “You just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. “
Neither Liasson nor Kristol should fool themselves about the consequences of striking Iran. Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski recently said “that Iran would likely react to an American attack ‘by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.'”
Transcript:
KRISTOL: And Dave Petraeus and Ryan Crocker understand exactly that, and they are pursuing a very sophisticated political-military strategy of classic counterinsurgency. But Charles is absolutely right. It requires security.
You cannot get people to invest politically until they feel that we’re not going to betray them and they’re not going to be left in the mercies of Al Qaida on the one hand or Iranian-backed militias on the other.
That’s why the one thing — the only thing I now think that stands in the way of success is Iran, and I’m worried — General Petraeus is clearly alarmed by the degree of Iranian support, training, weapons providing, to the extreme Shia militias, to the extreme elements, the special elements, Jaish al Mahdi.
I hope the administration is willing to do what it takes to back Iran off. I think if the Bush administration does that, we’ll be…
HUME: Well, that’s the question. What will that take?
KRISTOL: Well, I think we’ve warned them. We’re being very aggressive against them in the country.
We have not done anything across the — we have not succeeded in getting them, apparently, to slow down the flow of advanced arms or the training of Iraqis in Iran, which is doing real damage to U.S. forces and which makes it harder for the Shia to do exactly what Charles is talking about…
HUME: What would happen…
KRISTOL: … to flip over to our side. We may need to do stuff across the border.
HUME: What would happen, Mara, in your judgment politically if the administration took action against Iran inside Iran?
LIASSON: I think it would depend on what kind of action. I mean, I think it would…
HUME: Well, sent a bombing raid on a training camp.
LIASSON: A bombing raid on a training camp?
HUME: Or a series of them.
LIASSON: I think it could withstand that. I think the that the Democrats — there would be some calls that this is war and you needed congressional approval. There would certainly be that.
But I think that if it was limited, if it wasn’t kind of an all- out war with Iran…
HUME: So you don’t think all hell would break loose.
LIASSON: No. I think there would be…
HUME: What do you think, Juan?
LIASSON: There would be criticisms, but, no, I think that…
WILLIAMS: I think what Bill Kristol is saying is he wants some action against Iran in a way that Israel apparently took action against Syria. And I think what you’re looking at then is the next world war.
LIASSON: That’s kind of different. Oh, striking nuclear facilities? I thought we’re talking about just training camps…
WILLIAMS: Well, no, but that’s what happened with Israel and Syria. And if we now say the U.S. is going to take action against Iran, and it’s not as a result of some specific provocative action, then you’re talking about spreading war.
KRISTOL: Has the Israeli action against Syria spread war? Has that destabilized the region?