Filed under: Afghanistan, bin laden, bush, CIA, Coup, gulf war, Iraq, nation building, north korea, Nuke, occupation, osama, Pakistan, Saddam Hussein, State Sponsored Terrorism, War On Terror, WMD | Tags: Abdul Qadeer Khan, Khan Research Laboratories
Saddam’s Nuke Salesman Was Protected By U.S. Government
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
March 10, 2010
The Washington Post has completely whitewashed new revelations concerning how close Saddam Hussein came to obtaining a nuclear bomb by failing to mention the fact that the provider, Khan Research Laboratories, was shielded from investigation by the U.S. government for decades.
“As troops massed on his border near the start of the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein weighed the purchase of a $150 million nuclear “package” deal that included not only weapons designs but also production plants and foreign experts to supervise the building of a nuclear bomb, according to documents uncovered by a former U.N. weapons inspector,” reports the Post today.
“The offer, made in 1990 by an agent linked to disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, guaranteed Iraq a weapons-assembly line capable of producing nuclear warheads in as little as three years.”
However, the report completely fails to even mention the fact that Khan Research Laboratories, the source from which Saddam would have procured a nuclear bomb, was protected from investigation by the U.S. government since at least the mid-1970’s, as investigative journalist Greg Palast exposed in a 2001 BBC report.
In 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb program, admitted sharing nuclear technology via a worldwide smuggling network that included facilities in Malaysia that manufactured key parts for centrifuges.
Khan’s collaborator B.S.A. Tahir ran a front company out of Dubai that shipped centrifuge components to North Korea.
Despite Dutch authorities being deeply suspicious of Khan’s activities as far back as 1975, the CIA prevented them from arresting him on two occasions.
“The man was followed for almost ten years and obviously he was a serious problem. But again I was told that the secret services could handle it more effectively,” former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers said. “The Hague did not have the final say in the matter. Washington did.”
Lubbers stated that Khan was allowed to slip in and out of the Netherlands with the blessing of the CIA, eventually allowing him to become the “primary salesman of an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how,” according to George W. Bush himself, and sell nuclear secrets that allowed North Korea to build nuclear bombs.
“Lubbers suspects that Washington allowed Khan’s activities because Pakistan was a key ally in the fight against the Soviets,” reports CFP. “At the time, the US government funded and armed mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden. They were trained by Pakistani intelligence to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Anwar Iqbal, Washington correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told ISN Security Watch that Lubbers’ assertions may be correct. “This was part of a long-term foolish strategy. The US knew Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but couldn’t care less because it was not going to be used against them. It was a deterrent against India and possibly the Soviets.”
In September 2005 it emerged that the Amsterdam court which sentenced Khan to four years imprisonment in 1983 had lost the legal files pertaining to the case. The court’s vice-president, Judge Anita Leeser, accused the CIA of stealing the files. “Something is not right, we just don’t lose things like that,” she told Dutch news show NOVA. “I find it bewildering that people lose files with a political goal, especially if it is on request of the CIA. It is unheard of.”
In 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged that Khan had provided centrifuges and their designs to North Korea.
Having armed once branch of the “axis of evil,” it’s no surprise that Khan was also used in an attempt to arm Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons, opening up another perfect justification for Iraq to subsequently be invaded and occupied by U.S. forces.
Although the 2003 invasion was sold on the lie that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction which proved to be non-existent, it wasn’t for the want of trying, since efforts to arm Saddam with nuclear weapons via the Khan network were a mere continuation of the U.S. government’s program to provide Saddam with chemical and biological weapons, tools used to commit atrocities that were later cited by the U.S. as one of the primary reasons for the attack.
Of course, since the Washington Post is a mouthpiece for the new world order and the Bilderberg Group that owns it, in covering the Khan-Saddam connection writer Joby Warrick knows that his bosses wouldn’t be pleased if he actually gave you more than half the story, which is why his article amounts to nothing more than a misleading whitewash.
Filed under: bush, Bush Sr., chemical ali, civilian casualties, corruption, Dictatorship, Empire, George Bush, Iran, Iraq, iraq casualties, kangaroo court, Milosevic, nation building, occupation, reagan, rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein, scandal, War On Terror | Tags: Ali Hassan al-Majid, ICC, international criminal court, Iran-Iraq War
Chemical Ali Could Have Exposed Iraq-Gate
consortiumnews.com
January 26, 2010
Editor’s Note: The hanging of Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali” for his role in using chemical weapons in Iraqi wars of the 1980s and early 1990s, silenced yet one more witness who otherwise could have filled in the blanks of the Reagan-Bush-I roles in secretly assisting Saddam Hussein’s armies, the so-called Iraq-gate scandal.
If Majid had been turned over to the International Criminal Court – rather than prosecuted by kangaroo tribunals set up in Iraq by George W. Bush’s administration – he could have been systematically debriefed about what U.S. officials, including George H.W. Bush, did to facilitate Iraq’s acquisition of dangerous chemical weapons.
Instead, Majid – wearing a red jump suit, his head covered by a black sack and a noose around his neck – was dropped through the trap door of a scaffold on Monday. His potential to embarrass the Bush Family was eliminated, just as was done to Saddam Hussein three years ago, as this Dec. 30, 2006, article (slightly modified) recounts:
The hanging of Saddam Hussein was supposed to be – as the New York Times observed – the “triumphal bookend” to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. If all had gone as planned, Bush might have staged another celebration as he did after the end of “major combat,” posing under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on May 1, 2003.
But by the end of 2006, with nearly 3,000 American soldiers already killed and the Iraqi death toll exceeding 600,000 by some estimates, Bush was forced to savor the image of Hussein dangling at the end of a rope a little more privately.
Still, Bush had done his family’s legacy a great service, while also protecting secrets that could have embarrassed other senior U.S. government officials, both past and present.
By arranging Saddam Hussein’s execution, Bush had silenced a unique witness to crucial chapters of the secret history that stretched from Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979 to the alleged American-Saudi “green light” for Hussein to attack Iran in 1980, through the eight years of the Iran-Iraq War during which high-ranking U.S. intermediaries, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates, allegedly helped broker supplies of war materiel for Hussein.
Hussein now won’t be around to give troublesome testimony about how he obtained the chemical and biological agents that his scientists used for producing the unconventional weapons that were deployed against Iranian forces and Iraqi civilians. He can’t give his perspective on who got the money and who facilitated the deals.
Nor will Hussein be available to give his account of the mixed messages delivered by George H.W. Bush’s ambassador April Glaspie before Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Was there another American “green light” or did Hussein just hear what he wanted to hear?
Like the climactic scene from the Mafia movie “Casino” in which nervous Mob bosses eliminate everyone who knows too much, George W. Bush guaranteed that there would be no public tribunal where Hussein could give testimony on these potentially devastating historical scandals and thus threaten the Bush Family legacy.
That could have happened if Hussein had been turned over to an international tribunal at The Hague as was done with other tyrants, such as Yugoslavia’s late dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Instead Bush insisted that Hussein be tried in Iraq despite the obvious fact that the deposed Iraqi dictator would receive nothing close to a fair trial before being put to death.
Hussein’s hanging followed his trial for executing 148 men and boys from the town of Dujail in 1982 after a foiled assassination attempt on Hussein and his entourage. Hussein’s death effectively mooted other cases that were supposed to deal with his alleged use of chemical weapons to kill Iraqi civilians and other crimes that might have exposed the U.S. role.
Filed under: Afghanistan, Baluchistan, big pharma, Blackwater, CIA, colombia, corruption, death squads, drug cartel, drug smuggling, drug trafficking, drugs, Extraordinary Rendition, FATA, gangsters, Hamid Karzai', heroin, India, Iran, Iran Contra, Iraq, islamibad, Israel, karachi, karzai, mafia, medical industrial complex, mercenaries, Military, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, Nicaragua, obama, occupation, Oliver North, Opium, Pakistan, quetta, Saddam Hussein, scandal, Taliban, Troops, Venezuela, war on drugs, War On Terror, Waziristan, Weinberger, Zardani | Tags: government drug smuggling
Are America’s Mercenary Armies Really Drug Cartels?
Gordon Duff
December 29, 2009
News out of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India reports massive corruption at the highest levels of government, corruption that could only be financed with drug money. In Afghanistan, the president’s brother is known to be one of the biggest drug runners in the world.
In Pakistan, President Zardani is found with 60 million in a Swiss Bank and his Interior Minister is suspected of ties to American groups involved in paramilitary operations, totally illegal that could involve nothing but drugs, there is no other possibility.
Testimony in the US that our government has used “rendition” flights to transport massive amounts of narcotics to Western Europe and the United States has been taken in sworn deposition.
American mercenaries in Pakistan are hundreds of miles away from areas believed to be hiding terrorists, involved in “operations” that can’t have anything whatsoever to do with any CIA contract. These mercenaries aren’t in Quetta, Waziristan or FATA supporting our troops, they are in Karachi and Islamabad playing with police and government officials and living the life of the fatted calf.
The accusations made are that Americans in partnership with corrupt officials, perhaps in all 3 countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, are involved in assassinations, “unknown” criminal activities and are functioning like criminal gangs.
There is no oil. There is nothing to draw people into the area other than one product, one that nobody is talking about. Drugs.
The US got involved in massive drug operations, importation, processing and distribution during the Reagan years, supposedly to finance covert CIA operations involving death squads tasked with murdering Sandinista “infrastructure” in Nicaragua.
The deal involved Israel, Iran and the Colombian cartel. Saddam was even involved. In the end, President Reagan was put on the stand only to remember little or nothing of his tenure in office. Lt. Col. Oliver North was convicted as was Secretary of Defense Weinberger and many others. Pardons and “other methods” were used to keep the guilty out of jail.
Now we find what was supposed to be a CIA operation with one company only, Xe, operations that were meant to hunt a couple of terrorist/Taliban leaders in and around Quetta, a city of 1 million in remote Baluchistan has turned into a honeycomb of operations involving millions of dollars and personnel of all kinds, perhaps even ranking diplomats and high government officials, the highest.
The cover of hunting terrorists in remote areas with hundreds of armed men in cities on the other side of the country, cities filled with 5 star hotels, country clubs, polo, cricket and fine restaurants is not really cover, even by CIA standards.
The reports, bribes, actions that look and smell like drug gangs at work, tell a story that nobody wants to talk about.
With 50 billion dollars of opium from Afghanistan alone and crops in Pakistan and India also, managing the world’s heroin supply is, by my estimation, how all of this “muscle” is staying busy. When you see a black van full of armed men, is there a sign somewhere saying:
“We are counter terrorists working for the Central Intelligence Agency and we are only in town here, hundreds of miles from the nearest terrorist because we need a hot shower and to get a noise in the transmission checked out.”
Everyone can choose to believe what they want. It’s time we stopped lying. Its about drugs, always has been, always will, drugs and money. It buys men, it buys guns and it can buy governments and has, as anyone with eyes can see.
Filed under: 2-party system, 4th reich, Afghanistan, airstrikes, Bill Clinton, bin laden, blackops, Britian, bush, Chile, CIA, civilian casualties, Congress, Coup, Dictatorship, economic sanctions, El Salvador, Empire, Eugenics, False Flag, Fascism, gaza, Genocide, George Bush, Globalism, guatemala, Hitler, inside job, Iran, Iran Contra, Iraq, kuwait, Lebanon, Mi6, Military, military coup, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, Mohammed Mossadeq, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, morales, Nazi, New World Order, Nicaragua, NWO, occupation, Oil, operation ajax, osama bin laden, pahlavi, panama, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, proxy war, Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Sanctions, shah dictatorship, shah of iran, Shock and Awe, Soviet Union, State Sponsored Terrorism, sudan, Taliban, terrorist funding, UN, united nations, Vietnam, war casualties, war on drugs, War On Terror, White House, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Lebanon, salvador allendem, u.s. history
U.S. History They Won’t Teach In Schools
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, al-qaeda, bin laden, blackops, bosnia, Britain, Chechnya, CIA, double agent, fake terrorists, False Flag, George Bush, global terrorism, Hoax, IEDS, inside job, Iran, Iraq, ISI, Israel, Jundullah, khalid sheikh mohammed, kosovo, Media, Media Fear, Military Industrial Complex, military strikes, MKO, Mujahedin Khalq Organization, mujahideen, Muqtada al-Sadr, nation building, NATO, neocons, osama bin laden, Pakistan, Pentagon, Propaganda, proxy war, Saddam Hussein, SAS, serbia, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, Troops, Turkey, u.s. soldiers, u.s. troops, UN, united nations, War On Terror, Wayne Madsen, World Trade Center, yugoslavia
Western Governments Funding Taliban & Al-Qaeda To Kill U.S. Troops, Destabilize Countries
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
July 2, 2009
Recent revelations concerning the U.S. importing Taliban members into Iraq to foster false flag terrorism is merely the tip of the iceberg when compared to the U.S. intelligence complex’s multi-decade history in sponsoring Sunni Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist groups around the world.
Wayne Madsen recently revealed how Taliban fighters were being imported from Afghanistan into Iraq to attack civilians and U.S. soldiers, as well as how Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi Army was being allowed to import materials to make IEDs.
However, this is just one aspect of how the U.S. has used terrorist groups as pawns on the global chessboard, moving them around the globe in line with their geopolitical objectives.
As is voluminously documented, the U.S. first worked covertly with Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan from 1979-1989.
Following this, the Al-Qaeda pawns were moved on to Bosnia shortly after the outbreak of war in 1992 to fight against Bosnian Serbs who were subsequently the target of NATO air strikes.
Following the end of the war, “hundreds of Bosnian passports were provided to the mujahedeen by the Muslim-controlled government in Sarajevo,” according to Lenard Cohen, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University. This all happened with the approval of the United Nations and the United States, who had brokered the peace deal to end the war.
“They also set up secret terrorist training camps in Bosnia — activities financed by the sale of opium produced in Afghanistan and secretly shipped through Turkey and Kosovo into central Europe,” reports the National Post.
Shortly before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the Sunni terrorist groups moved into Kosovo, Serbia’s southern province, to aid the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian terrorist faction that was being supported by the U.S. and NATO in its terror campaign against Serbs in the region.
“The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo,” reports the Post.
With the help of Bin Laden’s terror network, backed up by the U.S. and NATO, no less than 90% of Serbians were “ethnically cleansed” and forced to leave the region, while the international media played its role dutifully in portraying the Albanians as the “victims” of Serbian aggression.
As Professor Michel Chossudovsky writes, “The fact of the matter is that the Atlantic Alliance had been supporting a terrorist organization. The KLA was not supporting the rights of ethnic Albanians. Quite the opposite. The activities of this terrorist organization on the ground, in Kosovo, provided NATO and the US with the pretext to intervene on humanitarian grounds, claiming that the Serb authorities had committed human rights violations against ethnic Albanians, when in fact the NATO sponsored KLA was involved in terrorist acts on behalf of NATO, which triggered a response from the Serb police and military.”
Barely weeks before 9/11, former members of Al-Qaeda who had subsequently joined the Kosovo Liberation Army were airlifted out of Macedonia by U.S. paratroopers.
As German sources reported, “Samedin Xhezairi, also known as Commander Hoxha, joined the Kosovo Liberation Army when armed conflict in Kosovo began, fighting in three operation zones. He was a fighter in Chechnya, trained in Afghanistan and acted as the commander of the Mujahideen 112th Brigade operating in the summer of 2001 in the region of Tetovo [Macedonia]. In August of the same year 80 members of the 3/502 battalion of U.S. paratroopers evacuated him from Aracinovo [Macedonia], together with his Albanian extremists and 17 instructors of the U.S. private military company MPRI which was training the Albanian paramilitary formations.”
“In other words, the US military was collaborating with Al Qaeda, which according to the Bush administration was involved in the attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon. Yet, the US military was working hand in glove with “enemy number one” barely a few weeks before 9/11, and we are led to believe that the Bush administration is committed to waging a battle against Al Qaeda,” wrote Chossudovsky.
Following the invasion of Afghanistan, MSNBC reported that in November 2001, hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters were rescued from Kunduz and flown out on Pakistani air force cargo planes. This could not have possibly happened without the approval of U.S. forces who had secured the region.
With the U.S. now attacking targets in Pakistan under the pretext of going after the Taliban, the lineage of how this situation developed, with the U.S. moving their pawns around the globe at the most opportune times, can be clearly traced.
All the more revealing therefore were the comments of Qari Zainuddin, a former Taliban leader who defected to the Pakistani government, alleging that the Taliban were senselessly attacking civilian targets and that they were working with U.S. and Israeli intelligence. A few days after he dropped this bombshell, Zainuddin was shot dead.
Meanwhile, in Iran, A senior member of the Jundullah terrorist group confessed in an Iranian court case to being trained and financed by the U.S. and Israel.
Jundullah is a Sunni Al-Qaeda offshoot organization that was formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Under the 2007 program aimed at destabilizing Iran and fomenting regime change, the U.S. government is arming and bankrolling Jundullah to carry out terrorist attacks in Iran, such as the May bombing of a mosque in Sistan-Baluchestan which killed 25 people.
In addition, the fingerprints of another U.S. sponsored terror group, Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), which was formerly allied with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, have been found in the recent election unrest in Iran. In addition to supporting terror groups from Iraq, the Anglo-American establishment has also staged terror attacks, such as the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing.
And if there aren’t enough terrorists in supply, why not just dress up and pretend to be them? That’s what two British SAS members did when they were caught dressed in Arab garb with fake beards, driving a car full of explosives while shooting at Iraqi police officers in Basra in September 2005.
After the SAS men were caught in the act and taken to jail, U.S. and British forces launched a rescue operation, blowing up half the prison and allowing 150 inmates to escape.
All over the Middle East and the Balkans, from Afghanistan, to Bosnia, to Serbia, to Pakistan, to Iraq and to Iran, the United States, through black budget programs, has funded and armed Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist groups to destabilize and topple regimes targeted by the Anglo-American establishment.
This documented fact debunks the “war on terror” as a cruel hoax and exposes how current events in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran are being carefully orchestrated while the media sells the public on the belief that manufactured sock-puppet enemies, and not geopolitical domination and control of resources and the global drug trade, are why these wars are being fought, when in reality groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban are firmly in the pocket of the U.S. military-industrial complex.
Filed under: 9/11, Ahmed Chalabi, army, bin laden, blockade, Bush Sr., civil liberties, civil rights, civil war, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Coup, David Petraeus, Dick Cheney, Disinformation, Donald Rumsfeld, fallen soldiers, False Flag, false information, federal crime, George Bush, george h. w. bush, human rights, Iran, Iraq, iraq deaths, Iraqnam, Jordan, Martial Law, Military Industrial Complex, nation building, neocons, occupation, Oppression, paul bremer, paul wolfowitz, presidential directive, Propaganda, Richard Armitage, Saddam Hussein, Shiite, Shock and Awe, sunni, UN, veterans, War Crimes, WMD | Tags: CPA, iraq antiques, iraq culture, iraq heritage, looting, ORHA, soldiers, u.s. soldiers
No End in Sight – (Iraq war movie)
Petraeus Says He Will Never Declare Iraq Victory
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 hijackers, 9/11 patsies, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, afghanistan deaths, al-qaeda, Big Brother, CIA, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Disinformation, Empire, false information, federal crime, George Bush, George Tenet, Impeach, Media, mohammed atta, nation building, neocons, occupation, Saddam Hussein, scandal, scooter libby, Surveillance, uav, Uncategorized, War Crimes, War On Terror, White House, WMD | Tags: mike allen, robert richer, Ron Suskind, The Way of The World
CIA Official: Cheney Likely Ordered Fake Letter Linking Iraq to 9/11
Raw Story
August 9, 2008
In damning transcript, ex-CIA official says Cheney likely ordered letter linking Hussein to 9/11 attacks
A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.
The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer’s behalf. In it, Richer declared, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document … as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.”
The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer’s own remarks in the transcript.
“Now this is from the Vice President’s Office is how you remembered it–not from the president?” Suskind asked.
“No, no, no,” Richer replied, according to the transcript. “What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, ’we got this from’–basically, from what George said was ’downtown.’”
“Which is the White House?” Suskind asked.
“Yes,” Richer said. “But he did not–in my memory–never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now–he may have hinted–just by the way he said it, it would have–cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president.”
“But he didn’t say that specifically,” Richer added. “I would naturally–I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president.”
“But there wasn’t anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president,” Suskind continued.
http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/200..wl-u-s-plans-surveillance-buildup-in-ir_1.html
US-led soldiers kill 5 Afghan civilians
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=65965§ionid=351020403
Fierce clashes near Afghan border
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7548744.stm
Kucinich: We did it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUuhKJYFUfg
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 hijackers, 9/11 patsies, 9/11 Truth, al-qaeda, CIA, Condoleezza Rice, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Disinformation, Empire, false information, federal crime, George Bush, George Tenet, Impeach, Iraq, Media, mohammed atta, muslims, neocons, Propaganda, Psyops, Saddam Hussein, scandal, War Crimes, War On Terror, WMD, World Trade Center | Tags: david gregory, Paul O’Neill, Ron Suskind, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, Tony Fratto
Bush Ordered Fake Letter Linking Iraq To 9/11
Raw Story
August 5, 2008
A blockbuster new book from investigative journalist Ron Suskind adds another revelation to the growing canon demonstrating the lengths to which President Bush and members of his administration lied, misled and deceived the American people to pursue its invasion of Iraq.
Bush allegedly ordered the CIA to forge a handwritten letter from the head of Iraq’s intelligence service to Saddam Hussein that purported to link the Iraqi dictator to the ringleader of the hijackers who toppled the Twin Towers on 9/11, according to news accounts of Suskind’s new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Such use of an intelligence service to influence domestic political debate could be an impeachable offense, Suskind writes.
Politico’s Mike Allen reports:
According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein’s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.
“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.” […]
The author claims that such an operation, part of “false pretenses” for war, would apparently constitute illegal White House use of the CIA to influence a domestic audience, an arguably impeachable offense.
The faked letter was first reported as genuine by the conservative London Sunday Telegraph in December 2003. Right-wing commentators and Bush defenders harped on that disclosure as evidence of Saddam Hussein’s involvement in the 9/11 attacks. According to Suskind’s book, the CIA had been protecting Habbush in the early months of the invasion; the agency persuaded the Iraqi intelligence chief to write the letter in his own handwriting and paid him $5 million.
CBS White House correspondent Bill Plante reported Tuesday that Suskind’s sources had seen a draft of the letter written on White House stationary.
The Way of the World is Suskind’s third book on the inner workings of the Bush administration, joining The One Percent Doctrine, which outlined the often extreme anti-terror policies advanced by the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney, and The Price of Loyalty, which painted a picture of the early day’s of Bush’s presidency with the help of ousted former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill.
Predictably, the White House is unhappy with Suskind’s latest offering and the Bush administration is relying on its trademark push-back of insulting the messenger. White House spokesman Tony Fratto insulted Suskind, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work with the Wall Street Journal, as a practitioner of “gutter journalism,” and called the allegations “absurd.”
Suskind appeared Tuesday on NBC’s Today Show for interviews about the latest book.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/2008080..Aht9ABZiuDR5rD.iWNyG9KMGw_IE
Filed under: 2012 election, 9/11, 9/11 Truth, al-qaeda, Al-Qaeda Tapes, Anti-War, Bill Clinton, bin laden, Bin Laden Tapes, Bush Sr., Communism, Controlled Demolition, Coup, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, False Flag, Fascism, Founding Fathers, George Bush, George H.W. Bush, Goering, Gulf of Tonkin, howard stern, inside job, Iraq, Iraqnam, jeb bush, middle east, nation building, navy, navy seals, Nazi, neocons, occupation, Oil, PNAC, Protest, Saddam Hussein, Sanctions, Saudi Arabia, State Sponsored Terrorism, thomas jefferson, Vietnam, war on drugs, World Trade Center, wtc-7
Jesse Ventura Talks 9/11 Truth On Howard Stern
http://www.nypost.com/seven/07312008/ne..to_us_122366.htm
Man Charged With Placing 9/11 Stickers On A Plane
http://infowars.net/articles/july2008/300708Utah.htm
Filed under: 2008 Election, 2012 election, 9/11, 9/11 Truth, al franken, Dictatorship, Empire, False Flag, Fascism, foreign aid, Founding Fathers, Fox News, George Bush, Goering, Hitler, inside job, Iraq, jesse ventura, Media, nation building, Nazi, neocons, occupation, Saddam Hussein, Sean Hannity, WMD
Jesse Ventura Bodyslams Hannity.. (Again.)
Filed under: 2-party system, 2008 Election, Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, Barack Obama, Britain, China, Coup, Dictatorship, diplomacy, Empire, Europe, european union, False Flag, flip flip, flip flopping, Fox News, France, gas prices, gaza, George Bush, Globalism, hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Israel, John McCain, Lebanon, left right paradigm, Media, middle east, Military, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, nation building, neocons, Neolibs, Nuke, obama, occupation, Oil, palestine, Petrol, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Pullout, Russia, Saber Rattling, Saddam Hussein, Sanctions, Shock and Awe, sudan, Syria, Tehran, UN, United Kingdom, War On Terror, White House, WW3, ww4
Obama: No Option Off The Table On Iran
Reuters
July 23, 2008
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Wednesday a nuclear Iran would pose a “grave threat” and that the world must stop Tehran from obtaining an atomic weapon.
Obama told reporters during a visit to Israel that if elected, he would take “no options off the table” in dealing with the Iran issue and said tougher sanctions could be imposed.
“A nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” Obama told reporters after visiting the Israeli town of Sderot, which lies close to the border with the Hamas-run Gaza Strip.
He said the international community should immediately offer “big sticks and big carrots” to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear program. The West suspects Iran wants to build atom bombs but the Islamic Republic says its aims are peaceful.
“Iranians need to understand that whether it’s the Bush administration or the Obama administration, this is a paramount concern to the United States,” he said in Sderot, which has been hit by cross-border rockets fired by Gaza-based militants.
McCain, Obama agree: U.S. must dominate Middle East
PSL Web
July 26, 2008
Senators John McCain and Barack Obama differ in their proposals for when and how the United States should begin a major troop withdrawal from Iraq, and under what conditions they would enter into negotiations with the government of Iran.
On just about every other issue related to U.S policy in the Middle East, the presumptive presidential candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties are in near total agreement. And when it comes to the goal, the word “near” can be deleted. Both share—as must all ruling class-approved candidates for the position of CEO of the empire—an unquestioning dedication to U.S. domination of that key strategic region. Seventy percent of known global oil reserves are located in the Middle East.
Both Obama and McCain have expressed a limitless devotion to the state of Israel. Both have emerged as leading voices in the chorus of demonization against the governments of Iran, Syria and Sudan, and popular movements such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and other Palestinian resistance organizations.
Obama: air strike on Iran useless
Press TV
July 24, 2008
The White House hopeful Barack Obama says an air strike on Iran will not halt its nuclear program, calling for tougher Iran sanctions.
“Iran is a big country. They have dispersed their nuclear capabilities in a way that you are not going to see smooth, surgical strikes solving the problem entirely the way that Israel was able to deal with Iraq’s nuclear threat,” he told ABC News.
The Illinois senator called for “tough sanctions” coupled with “tough diplomacy that makes the calculus for the Iranians different.”
While insisting that “war is not a good option,” Obama maintained that he “would not take military options off the table when it comes to Iran and dealing with their nuclear capacity.”
The US has set a two-week deadline for Tehran to halt its nuclear program, after their talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
Envoys from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council–China, Russia, the US, Britain and France–plus Germany held a meeting in Geneva on Saturday to discuss Iran’s nuclear program.
In Israel—Obama Flip-Flops on Iran (…Again)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jul2008/obam-j23.shtml
Obama ’virtually indistinguishable from any U.S. politician’
http://www.bloomberg.co..d=amiQZ8aYhNMM&refer=us
Filed under: 4th amendment, 9/11, Abu Ghraib, airstrikes, al-qaeda, C-Span, CIA, Cindy Sheehan, Congress, Coup, DEBT, Dennis Kucinich, despotism, Detainee, Dick Cheney, Dictatorship, Economy, Empire, Extraordinary Rendition, fallen soldiers, False Flag, false information, Fascism, federal crime, FISA, Founding Fathers, George Bush, Guantanamo, House, House Subcommittee, Impeach, Iran, Iraq, iraq deaths, john ashcroft, John Bolton, judiciary committee, Karl Rove, Martial Law, Media, military strike, nation building, Nazi, neocons, Neolibs, occupation, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Protest, republic, Robert Wexler, Saddam Hussein, scooter libby, secret prisons, Shock and Awe, Tehran, Torture, Troops, US Constitution, US Economy, vincent bugliosi, War Crimes, war games, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, WMD, WW3, ww4 | Tags: doug fife, fallujah, harriet myers, House Judiciary Committee, impeachment hearing, jonathan turley, judiciary hearing, kucinich, steve king, vincent bugliosi
Dam Breaks as Media Covers Bush Impeachment Hearing
Prisonplanet.com
July 25, 2008
The House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Bush Administration’s use of executive power has finally been covered by the corporate media:
LA Times: Is hearing to impeach Bush merely ‘anger management’?
FOX News: Rep. Kucinich Gets His Day to Air Impeachment Article
The Hill: Kucinich raises Bush impeachment at hearing
CBS: Big Crowd Gathers For House Judiciary Hearing On Bush “impeachment”
AP: Bush critics get an unimpeachable forum
Videos from the hearing:
Rep. Wexler recommends impeachment hearings
Rep. Steve King of Iowa argued there was no evidence that the Bush administration had committed any high crimes and misdeameanors.
Conyers: These Are Not Impeachment Hearings
George Washington’s Blog
July 23, 2008
John Conyers is now taking the position that no one at Friday’s impeachment hearing can accuse Bush or Cheney of any crime, or any impeachable offense, or dishonorable conduct, or even lying.
Moreover, Conyers is now saying that he will shut the hearing down if anyone does accuse the boys of crimes, impeachable offenses, or otherwise being naughty.
As David Swanson summarizes it:
“Apparently the rules of Congress are designed to allow impeachable offenses to be discussed only in impeachment hearings. Apparently this didn’t occur to Chairman Conyers when he decided to hold a non-impeachment impeachment hearing. As a result, his hearing may be quickly shut down, and he will have a choice of holding a real impeachment hearing, resigning, or dropping the pretense that he intends to resist Cheney and Bush in any way whatsoever.”
Please watch this must-see 10 minute video.
And read this.
Takes Phone Calls On Impeachment
http://www.cbsnews.com/storie../thecrypt/main4292489.shtml
Cindy Sheehan Kicked-Out of Judiciary Hearing
http://rawstory.com//news/20..eehan_exits_Judiciary_hearing_0725.html
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep John Conyers Plans Bush Impeachment Substitute
http://www.daily.pk/world/world..eachment-substitute.html
Fallujah Braces For Another Assault
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43248
Iraq Official: U.S. Troops May Leave By 2010
http://ap.google.com/articl..YeFwuWKCusr2jrojs98w8wD9228UM00
Turley fears Dems will let alleged ‘Bush crimes’ stay buried forever
http://rawstory.com//news/2008/.._pardons_prevent_0723.html
’Imperial presidency’ hearing to feature 13 witnesses
http://rawstory.com//news/2008..earing_to_feature_13_0724.html
Filed under: 1st amendment, 9/11 Truth, Ahmadinejad, bill of rights, CFR, Cindy McCain, Dictatorship, Empire, Fascism, flip flip, flip flopping, free speech, Hillary Clinton, Iran, Iraq, Israel, John McCain, Keith Olbermann, Media, minnesota, MSNBC, nation building, Nazi, neocons, occupation, Pakistan, Police State, Protest, rape, Saddam Hussein, scandal, Sex Scandal, Tehran, Troops, US Constitution, veterans, War On Terror, We Are Change, WMD, WW3, ww4 | Tags: janet reno, St. Paul Town Hall Meeting
John McCain Jokes About Women Enjoying Rape
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBALqvp08Vk
McCain Suggests Rationing Vets Health Care
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/07/military_mccain_healthcare_072208/
McCain Thought Iraq Bordered Pakistan
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=64464§ionid=351020101
Bush pushing for McCain presidency to ’cover over’ the misdeeds of his presidency
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thVvJajZAuc
McCain says US will never allow a ’second Holocaust’ as a potshot against Iran
http://www.spacewar.com/2006/080721180258.rdyx8bq6.html
Filed under: 9/11, Africa, Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, al-qaeda, army, Bill Clinton, bin laden, Colin Powell, Coup, Dictatorship, Empire, False Flag, George Bush, Impeach, Iran, Iraq, JCS, Lebanon, Libya, middle east, Military, military strike, nation building, navy, neocons, Nuke, occupation, paul wolfowitz, Pentagon, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe, Somalia, sudan, Syria, Tehran, Troops, War Crimes, War On Terror, wesley clark, WMD, WW3, ww4
U.S. Will Invade 7 Countries in 5 Years – Wesley Clark
Filed under: 1984, 2-party system, 2008 Election, 4th amendment, Afghanistan, Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, amnesty, army, Barack Obama, bill of rights, CIA, civil liberties, civil rights, Congress, Coup, Dictatorship, Empire, enemy combatant, False Flag, federal crime, FISA, flip flop, flip flopping, George Bush, Guantanamo, Habeas Corpus, Hillary Clinton, Iran, John McCain, left right paradigm, Military, military base, Military Industrial Complex, military strike, neocons, Neolibs, Nuke, obama, Pentagon, Police State, poll, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe, Surveillance, Syria, Tehran, telco pac, telecoms, Torture, War On Terror, warrantless search, warrantless wiretap, WW3, ww4
The Lesson from Obama’s Cowardly Flip-Flop
Jacob G. Hornberger
FFF
July 10, 2008
Those who think that the election of Barack Obama will save the nation from its many foreign-policy/civil-liberties woes got smashed and dashed with a cold dose of reality. Flip-flopping in the finest political tradition, Obama voted in favor of President Bush’s wiretap/immunity bill, after promising to filibuster it before he secured the Democratic Party nomination.
Presumably, Obama’s thinking goes like this: “Now that I’ve secured the nomination of my party, liberals will vote for me regardless because they won’t want John McCain in power. So, I can now flip flop and taken different positions on foreign policy and civil liberties so that John McCain won’t be able to tell people that I’m soft on terrorism.”
Reminding people of what happened in 2002, when the Democrats unconstitutionally and cowardly delegated the power to declare war on Iraq to President Bush because of fear that the president would accuse them of being soft on Saddam Hussein, congressional Democrats voted to give Bush everything he wanted plus more in the wiretap/immunity bill, including civil immunity to private telecom companies for apparent felony offenses committed against their customers.
For an excellent analysis of the cowardly and craven cave-in by Obama and his fellow Democrats, see Glenn Greenwald’s blog and Jonathan Turley’s television interview, which is included in Greenwald’s June 9 blog. (Both Greenwald and Turley delivered terrific speeches at our recent conference “Restoring the Republic 2008: Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties.”)
Meanwhile, the president and his associates continue to threaten Iran with a military attack without even pretending that they’re going to first ask for a declaration of war from Congress, which the Constitution requires. Keep in mind that the Constitution is the law that we the people impose on the president and the Congress. That’s the law that the president feels that he can violate with impunity.
The fact is that Americans are living under a lawless regime, one in which the president feels that constitutional constraints are illegitimate during his “war on terrorism,” which he says will last indefinitely given that there are still so many terrorists and potential terrorists in the world. Never mind that the U.S. government’s own policies generate the terrorist threat against the United States, which is then used as the excuse for the president to operate in an omnipotent and extra-constitutional manner.
That’s what his signing statements, illegal wiretaps and other searches, enemy-combatant designations, torture and sex abuse camps, cancelation of habeas corpus, wars of aggression, indefinite detentions, and kangaroo military tribunals are all about — the power to ignore constitutional restraints — omnipotent power.
The battle over the wiretap/immunity bill demonstrates a critically important point, one that every lover of liberty must ultimately confront: It is not sufficient to fight every assault on civil liberties that comes down the pike. The infringements are endless. Even if one civil-liberties battle is won, there are always three more battles to wage.
Suppose, for example, that civil libertarians succeed in getting the Pentagon’s torture and sex abuse camp at Guantanamo Bay closed down. Would that end the torture and sex abuse? Of course not. They’ll simply start sending detainees to torture and sex abuse camps in Afghanistan or to friendly terrorist regimes, such as Syria (which they still claim they don’t talk to despite the fact that the CIA somehow or another made the arrangements with Syrian torturers to torture an innocent man on its behalf).
Thus, what every American who thirsts for the restoration of a normal, free society must recognize is that there is one — and only one — solution: the dismantling of America’s standing army, especially the military-industrial complex and the CIA, which are the center of the rot of the U.S. Empire. This is what should have been done when the Berlin Wall fell and it’s what should be done today.
That’s the root of the weed. That’s what needs to be pulled out of the ground. It’s not sufficient to simply continue trimming its branches.
That would mean the closing of every U.S. military base around the world — Europe, Asia, South America, and everywhere else. It would entail bringing all those troops home and discharging them into the private sector. It would entail closing the multitude of military bases all across the United States. It would entail the abolition of the CIA. It would include the repeal of the deadly and destructive war on drugs. It would entail the end of all foreign aid. It would mean the end of the U.S. government’s meddling in the affairs of other nations. It would entail the repeal of all the taxes that fund these people and their deadly, destructive, and nefarious operations.
Barack Obama’s cowardly flip flop should remind every American that the key to our future lies not in electing different people to public office. Instead, the key to our future lies in a shift in paradigms — from one of big government in foreign (and domestic) affairs to one of limited government in foreign (and domestic) affairs.
The time has come for the American people to do what Americans in 1787 were doing: reflecting upon the principles of liberty and limited government on which this nation should be based. The time has come to end the U.S. government’s role as the world’s policeman, intervener, interloper, aggressor, welfare provider, and sole remaining empire. The time has come for the American people to restore the principles of liberty and limited government that our ancestors bequeathed to us.
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Obama’s poll numbers plummet: Apparently betraying Americans does not pay
Newsweek
July 11, 2008
A month after emerging victorious from the bruising Democratic nominating contest, some of Barack Obama’s glow may be fading. In the latest NEWSWEEK Poll, the Illinois senator leads Republican nominee John McCain by just 3 percentage points, 44 percent to 41 percent. The statistical dead heat is a marked change from last month’s NEWSWEEK Poll, where Obama led McCain by 15 points, 51 percent to 36 percent.
Obama’s rapid drop comes at a strategically challenging moment for the Democratic candidate. Having vanquished Hillary Clinton in early June, Obama quickly went about repositioning himself for a general-election audience–an unpleasant task for any nominee emerging from the pander-heavy primary contests and particularly for a candidate who’d slogged through a vigorous primary challenge in most every contest from January until June. Obama’s reversal on FISA legislation, his support of faith-based initiatives and his decision to opt out of the campaign public-financing system left him open to charges he was a flip-flopper. In the new poll, 53 percent of voters (and 50 percent of former Hillary Clinton supporters) believe that Obama has changed his position on key issues in order to gain political advantage.
More seriously, some Obama supporters worry that the spectacle of their candidate eagerly embracing his old rival, Hillary Clinton, and traveling the country courting big donors at lavish fund-raisers, may have done lasting damage to his image as an arbiter of a new kind of politics. This is a major concern since Obama’s outsider credentials, have, in the past, played a large part in his appeal to moderate, swing voters. In the new poll, McCain leads Obama among independents 41 percent to 34 percent, with 25 percent favoring neither candidate. In June’s NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama bested McCain among independent voters, 48 percent to 36 percent.
http://hotair.com/archives/2008/07/14/thi..ager-begs-for-money/
Obama sees three straight months of declining donations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/../2008/07/10/AR2008071002813_pf.html
Filed under: Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, catastrophic event, Congress, Coup, EMP, EMP bombs, False Flag, Fox News, gps, Hegelian Dialectic, IAEA, Iran, Iraq, Military, military strike, nation building, neocons, Nuke, occupation, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Problem Reaction Solution, Propaganda, Psyops, Saber Rattling, Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe, State Sponsored Terrorism, super weapons, Tehran, uav, War On Terror, WMD, WW3, ww4 | Tags: House Armed Services Committee, William R. Graham
Neo-Cons Recycle Iran “EMP Attack” Fraud
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
July 8, 2008
Neo-Con news outlets are busy recycling a debunked 2005 report that stated Iran could be planning to detonate deadly EMP bombs above American cities, presumably in the belief that the public will now believe the same snake oil salesmen that pushed non-existent weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s mythical biological drone armies as reasons to invade Iraq in 2003.
“More than four years after a stunning report about America’s vulnerability to a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack was released to Congress, the House Armed Services Committee will hear testimony from the scientist who issued the warning and who believes Iran is pursuing such an option,” reports World Net Daily.
William R. Graham, chairman of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, will present an updated brief to the House Armed Services Committee on Thursday, during which he will push the notion that Iran, in addition to its non-existent nuclear weapons program which last year’s NIE clearly stated had ended in 2003, is still pursuing the production of an EMP weapon
“Briefly, a single nuclear weapon exploded at high altitude above the United States will interact with the Earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field to produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) radiation down to the Earth and additionally create electrical currents in the Earth,” states the 2005 report.
“Few if any people would die right away. But the loss of power would have a cascading effect on all aspects of U.S. society. Communication would be largely impossible. Lack of refrigeration would leave food rotting in warehouses, exacerbated by a lack of transportation as those vehicles still working simply ran out of gas (which is pumped with electricity). The inability to sanitize and distribute water would quickly threaten public health, not to mention the safety of anyone in the path of the inevitable fires, which would rage unchecked. And as we have seen in areas of natural and other disasters, such circumstances often result in a fairly rapid breakdown of social order.”
If anything of this nature were to happen then the very Neo-Cons that are yearning to stage a false flag event in order to justify a military attack on Iran would be the primary suspects.
Despite the fact that every independent observer agrees that Iran is not involved in nuclear weapons production, including the IAEA and the National Intelligence Estimate, which stated that Iran halted any effort towards nuclear weapons production in 2003, the same liars that sold a war based on non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” are hoping we are going to buy their bullshit one more time.
The EMP fraud is merely the updated version of Saddam’s deadly biological UAV drones that we were warned would disperse terror over American cities during the propaganda build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
At the time, Fox News told us that, “Iraq could be planning a chemical or biological attack on American cities through the use of remote-controlled “drone” planes equipped with GPS tracking maps, according to U.S. intelligence.”
Filed under: Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, Baghdad, Bahrain, Black-Ops, blackops, Britain, Congress, Coup, Europe, european union, False Flag, gas prices, George Bush, gulf, Gulf of Tonkin, h.con.res.362, Iran, Iran war resolution, Iraq, Israel, Kurdish, kuwait, MEK, Military, military strike, mujahedin, nation building, navy, Nuke, occupation, Oil, Pentagon, Petrol, PJAK, PKK, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Psyops, red cross, Revolutionary Guards, Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe, State Sponsored Terrorism, Strait of Hormuz, Tehran, Troops, Turkish, United Kingdom, war games, War On Terror, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Exercise Stake Net, kevin cosgriff, Mahmoud Othman
U.S. holds Navy exercise in the Gulf
Reuters
July 7, 2008
The U.S. Navy said on Monday it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf, days after vowing that Iran will not be allowed to block the waterway which carries crude from the world’s largest oil-exporting region.
“The aim of Exercise Stake Net is to practise the tactics and procedures of protecting maritime infrastructure such as gas and oil installations,” Commodore Peter Hudson said in a U.S. Fifth Fleet statement.
The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in remarks published late last month that Tehran would impose controls on shipping in the Gulf and the strategic Strait of Hormuz if it was attacked.
Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its nuclear programme has risen since a report last month said Israel had practised such a strike.
Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, said last week the United States would not allow Iran to block the Gulf.
Fear of an escalation in the standoff between the West and Iran, the world’s fourth largest oil producer, has helped propel oil prices over $140 a barrel.
Two U.S. vessels were taking part in the exercise alongside a British warship and one from Bahrain, a Gulf Arab ally which hosts the Fifth Fleet. “Stake Net seeks to help ensure a lawful maritime order as well as improve relationships between regional partners,” the fleet’s statement said.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Hold War Games
Reuters
June 7, 2008
Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards began military maneuvers on Monday, news agencies said, the same day the U.S. Navy said it was carrying out an exercise in the Gulf.
The war games were conducted by missile units of the Guards’ naval and air forces, the Fars and Mehr news agencies said. They said the exercises, which began a few hours ago, were aimed at improving combat readiness and capability.
The reports did not give details of where the exercise was taking place. The Guards often conduct maneuvers in the Gulf.
Speculation about a possible attack on Iran because of its disputed nuclear program has risen since the New York Times newspaper reported last month that Israel’s armed forces had practiced such a strike.
Military action ‘would destabilise Iraq’
The Independent
July 6, 2008
Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq, said Dr Mahmoud Othman, the influential Iraqi MP.
The Iraqi government’s main allies are the US and Iran, whose governments openly detest each other. The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran. Iraqi leaders have to continually perform a balancing act in which they seek to avoid alienating either country.
The balancing act has become more difficult for Iraq since George Bush successfully requested $400m (£200m) from Congress last year to fund covert operations aimed at destabilising the Iranian leadership. Some of these operations are likely to be launched from Iraqi territory with the help of Iranian militants opposed to Tehran. The most effective of these opponent groups is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which enraged the Iraqi government by staging a conference last month at Camp Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad. It demanded the closure of the Iranian embassy and the expulsion of all Iranian agents in Iraq. “It was a huge meeting” said Dr Othman. “All the tribes and political leaders who are against Iran, but are also against the Iraqi government, were there.” He said the anti-Iranian meeting could not have taken place without US permission.
The Americans disarmed the 3,700 MEK militants, who had long been allied to Saddam Hussein, at Camp Ashraf in 2003, but they remain well-organised and well-financed. The extent of their support within Iran remains unknown, but they are extremely effective as an intelligence and propaganda organisation.
Though the MEK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, the Pentagon and other US institutions have been periodically friendly to it. The US task force charged by Mr Bush with destabilising the Iranian government is likely to co-operate with it.
In reaction to the conference, the Iraqi government, the US and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have started secret talks on the future of the MEK with the Iraqi government pressing for their expulsion from Iraq. Dr Othman, who speaks to the MEK frequently by phone, said: “I pressed them to get out of Iraq voluntarily because they are a card in the hands of the Americans.”
An embarrassing aspect of the American pin-prick war against Iran is that many of its instruments were previously on the payroll of Saddam Hussein. The MEK even played a role in 1991 in helping to crush the uprising against the Baathist regime at the end of the Gulf war. The dissidents from Arab districts in southern Iran around Ahwaz were funded by Saddam Hussein’s intelligence organisations, which orchestrated the seizure of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 which was supposedly carried out by Arab nationalists from Iran.
The one community in Iran most likely to oppose the Tehran government is the Iranian Kurds. There have been an increasing number of attacks by PJAK, the Iranian wing of the Turkish PKK, which claims to be a separate party. Based in the Kandil mountains in Iraqi Kurdistan, PJAK has carried out frequent raids into Iran and has reportedly been able to win local support. But it would be extremely dangerous for the US to be seen as a supporter of PJAK as this would offend the Turks who have a military co-operation agreement with Iran against terrorism
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/06/content_8499511.htm
Israel: US leaders divided on Iran war
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=62854§ionid=351020104
Iran warns US against new adventurism
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=62745§ionid=351020101
Kuwait: Iran strike reports exaggerated
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx..id=351020104
Ahmadinejad: Israel and U.S. won’t dare attack Iran
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999720.html
US Pentagon doubts Israeli intelligence over Iran’s nuclear programme
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ne..an%27s-nuclear-programme.html
Iran: Oil unlikely to surge to $250
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=172456
Iran says offers talks without nuclear freeze
http://www.spacewar.com/2006/080705081755.6y5ym674.html
Filed under: 9/11, 9/11 Truth, Afghanistan, Ahmadinejad, Air Force, airstrikes, al-qaeda, Alex Jones, axis of evil, Black-Ops, Brian Kilmeade, Britain, bush senior, CIA, Condoleezza Rice, Congress, Coup, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Europe, european union, False Flag, flight 655, Fox News, George Bush, gulf, IAEA, Iran, Iraq, Israel, JSOC, Jundullah, Media, Media Fear, Mi6, Military, military strike, Mossad, mujahideen, mullahs, nation building, neocons, north korea, Nuke, occupation, Oil, operation ajax, Pakistan, PKK, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Psyops, Saddam Hussein, scott ritter, Seymour Hersh, Shiite, Shock and Awe, State Sponsored Terrorism, Strait of Hormuz, sunni, Tehran, United Kingdom, USS Vincennes, War On Terror, White House, William Fallon, World Trade Center, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Fred Burton, John Pike, khalid sheikh mohammed, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Operation Praying Mantis, Ramzi Yousef, Ryan Crocker, sam gardiner
Reporter Details Congressionally Approved Covert Funding Of Terrorists In Iran
Military, intelligence, and congressional sources say secret war is vamped to bring down Iranian leadership
Infowars.net
June 30, 2008
Award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has detailed a move by the Bush administration, with Congressional backing, which represents a “major escalation” in covert military operations aimed at destabilizing the Iranian leadership.
Hersh also details how The CIA and the United States Special Operations Forces have long-standing ties to the PEJAK, the outlawed breakaway faction of the PKK terrorist group in Iran, as well as other Sunni fundamentalists that former intelligence officials say “can also be described as Al Qaeda.”
Hersh describes how the neocon White House has vamped up secret efforts to work with the same terrorist groups that were once populated with figures such as Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was fingered as one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks.
“The Finding was focused on undermining Iran’s nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change,” and involved “working with opposition groups and passing money,”Hersh reveals, quoting an unnamed “person familiar with its contents.”
Congress, under Democratic leadership, approved a $400 million request for funding late last year, according to Hersh’s sources, military, intelligence, and congressional officials with direct knowledge of the top secret Presidential Finding, which by law must be issued when covert intelligence operations get underway.
The corporate media has somewhat downplayed the revelations, which essentially highlight once again how the so called “war on terror” is a complete fiction, as US elites are funding Sunni extremists intent on destroying the Shiite Iranian leadership.
Hersh spoke about the article in an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley:
“Well, one of the basic points is no matter what we say about diplomacy, you know, carrot and stick, the stick is working pretty hard and the stick is working overtime. This president did escalate the secret war inside Iran. We’ve been doing stuff inside Iran since ‘05 pretty heavily, Looking at the nuclear facilities, collecting intelligence and trying to undermine the regime, et cetera, et cetera but there was a significant escalation this year.” Hersh said.
“They got a great deal of authorization to spend up to $400 million. That doesn’t mean he’s spent it all yet but he’s got that kind of authorization. The secret committees — anyone who saw “Charlie Wilson’s war,” — Charlie Wilson was able to generate a lot of money secretly. That’s what happens in Congress and the other major thing is we’ve sent in a special task force that operates out of Afghanistan into Iran.”
“I did notice what Ambassador Crocker said about ‘not cross-border’ and I have a lot of respect for him and I don’t want to challenge him. But the fact is were inside but not necessarily cross-border. We have teams inside Iran. These include joint special operations forces (JSOC), the most elite commando units and basically they’re guys go after high-value targets around the world. They capture them or kill them so it’s a significant increase in American potential for damage inside Iran.”
Hersh went on to state that one of the reasons former Commander of the U.S. Central Command Admiral Fallen was forced out and purged by the Bush administration was that he was unable to find out the full scope of clandestine operations inside Iran. Hersh also stated that the endgame for Bush and Cheney is to ensure that they do not leave office without first having eliminated Iran’s nuclear program, whether that be by attacking the country or forcing regime change inside the country.
Watch the full interview:
We have previously carried reports of how the US and Britain are already at war with Iran, have been at war with Iran for a number of years now and are funding anti-Iranian terrorist groups inside Iran in preparation for the fallout that will occur after overt military action is commenced.
High ranking CIA officials, Defense department officials, former UN officials and retired US air force Colonels have gone on record with the specific details.
In an article entitled The US war with Iran has already begun, written back in June 2005, former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter described how intelligence gathering, direct action and the mobilizing of indigenous opposition is all being carried out already by CIA backed US special forces.
Ritter stated:
As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah’s to an “axis of evil” (together with the newly “liberated” Iraq and North Korea), and speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of “democracy” to the Iranian people.
But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.
As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool’s dream.
The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.
The violation of a sovereign nation’s airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.
President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.
Ritter goes on to describe how Iranian opposition groups, including the well known right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), once run by Saddam Hussein’s dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, are carrying out remote bombings in Iran of the sort that the Bush administration condemns on a daily basis inside Iraq.
He also describes how to the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.
Ritter is not alone in his assertions.
During an interview on CNN in 2006, retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner claimed that U.S. military operations were already ’underway’ inside Iran.
“I would say — and this may shock some — I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way,” Col. Gardiner told CNN International anchor Jim Clancy.
“The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year,” Gardiner said. “I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, ’Hey, I hear you’re accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units.’ He said, quite frankly, ’Yes, we know they are. We’ve captured some of the units, and they’ve confessed to working with the Americans,’” said the retired Air Force colonel.
The full seven minute CNN segment can be viewed below:
Around the same time that Gardiner revealed this, RAW story ran an exclusive, which also revealed that, according to counterintelligence officials, covert operations were underway that included CIA co-option and use of right wing terror groups:
“We disarmed [the MEK] of major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,” said the intelligence official. According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization.
“These guys are nuts,” this intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.”
The MEK were notorious in Iraq, indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.
MEK has been linked with numerous bombings inside Iran over the course of the last few years. The organization has also killed U.S. troops and civilians since the 70’s, yet the Bush cabal continues to fund them.
According to Global Security.org, “In the early 1970s, angered by U.S. support for the pro-Western shah, MEK members killed several U.S. soldiers and civilians working on defense projects in Iran. MEK members also supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.”
After a bombing inside Iran in February 2007, the London Telegraph also reported on how a high ranking CIA official blew the whistle on the fact that America is secretly funding terrorist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear program.
The claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agent, who said: “The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran’s ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime.”
John Pike, the head of the influential Global Security think tank in Washington, said: “The activities of the ethnic groups have hotted up over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity.”
More recently, this May, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry busted a CIA-backed terror group that was planning to bomb scientific, educational, and religious centers, and carry out assassinations, according to a report in the Tehran Times. The arrests came weeks after Ret. Gen. Thomas McInerney urged the U.S. to carry out terror bombings in Iran.
McInerney publicly called for the U.S. government to support groups like MEK and carry out deadly bombings in Iran:
Here’s what I would suggest to you. Number one, we take the National Council for Resistance to Iran off the terrorist list that the Clinton Administration put them on as well as the Mujahedin-e Khalq at the Camp Ashraf in Iraq,” said McInerney.
“Then I would start a tit-for-tat strategy which I wrote up in the Wall Street Journal a year ago: For every EFP that goes off and kills Americans, two go off in Iran. No questions asked. People don’t have to know how it was done. It’s a covert action. They become the most unlucky country in the world,” he added.
Top Neo-Cons have been calling for the US to back terror groups in Iran and other reports clearly indicate that this program has already been in place for years.
Last November, Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade openly called for US support for acts of terrorism, such as car bombings, in Tehran. Colonel David Hunt, who has over 29 years of military experience including extensive operational experience in Special Operations, Counter Terrorism and Intelligence Operations, agreed with Kilmeade, stating “absolutely” in response to Kilmead’s question about whether cars should start blowing up in Tehran.
Another Iranian-based terror group that the Bush administration is already funding as a means of regime change in Iran is Jundullah – a Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist group formerly headed by the alleged mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
“The CIA is giving arms-length support, supplying money and weapons, to an Iranian militant group, Jundullah, which has conducted raids into Iran from bases in Pakistan,” the London Telegraph reported last year.
The group has been blamed for a number of bombings inside Iran aimed at destabilizing Ahmadinejad’s government and is also active in Pakistan, having been fingered for its involvement in attacks on police stations and car bombings at the Pakistan-US Cultural Center in 2004.
As Seymour Hersh himself also reported back in 2004, U.S. intelligence and Israel’s Mossad are busy at work stirring up trouble in Iran in preparation for an attack on that country. In early 2005, the Guardian reported that “American special forces have been on the ground inside Iran scouting for US air strike targets for suspected nuclear weapons sites.”
If this all sounds a little familiar, it’s because it is. The fact is that the US has a long history of provocation and covert action inside Iran.
The In 1953 the CIA and MI6 carried out Operation Ajax (officially TP-AJAX), a covert operation by the United Kingdom and the United States to remove the democratically elected nationalist cabinet of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power, to support the Pahlavi dynasty and consolidate the power of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in order to preserve the Western control of Iran’s hugely lucrative oil infrastructure.
In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force incase the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of the chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly “Top Secret” documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.
The conspiracy centered around having the increasingly impotent Shah dismiss the powerful Prime Minister Mossadegh and replace him with General Fazlollah Zahedi, a choice agreed on by the British and Americans after careful examination for his likeliness to be pro-British.
Zahedi was installed to succeed Prime Minister Mossadegh. The deposed Mossadegh was arrested, given a show trial, and condemned to death. The Shah commuted this sentence to solitary confinement for three years in a military prison, followed by house arrest for life.
“If there had not been a military coup, there would not have been 25 years of the Shah’s brutal regime, there would not have been a revolution in 1979 and a government of clerics,” Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister and leading member of a political party that traces its origins to Mossadegh’s National Front, told the Christian Science Monitor on the 50th anniversary of the coup and installation of the Shah. “Now it seems that the Americans are pushing towards the same direction again. That shows they have not learned anything from history.”
“For many Iranians, the coup was a tragedy from which their country has never recovered. Perhaps because Mossadegh represents a future denied, his memory has approached myth,” Dan De Luce writes for the Guardian. “Beyond Iran, America remains deeply resented for siding with authoritarian rule in the region.”
Alex Jones’s latest film Terrorstorm covers the ousting of Mossadegh in depth.
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the US again found itself sparring with Iran. Again we find a history of provocation and aggression. In particular, a fierce assault known as Operation Praying Mantis, is renowned. The operation began after a US warship had entered mined Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
From Wikipedia:
On April 14 1988, the guided missile frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine while sailing in the Persian Gulf as part of Operation Earnest Will, the 1987-88 convoy missions in which U.S. warships escorted reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers to protect them from Iranian attacks. The explosion put a 25-foot hole in the Roberts’ hull and nearly sank it. But the crew saved their ship with no loss of life, and Roberts was towed to Dubai on April 16.
After the mining, U.S. Navy divers recovered other mines in the area. When the serial numbers were found to match those of mines seized along with the Iran Ajr the previous September, U.S. military officials planned a retaliatory operation against Iranian targets in the Gulf.
The battle, the largest for American surface forces since World War II,[1] sank two Iranian warships and as many as six armed speedboats. It also marked the first surface-to-surface missile engagement in U.S. Navy history.
The US also attacked and destroyed several Iranian oil platforms in a full out military assault. At the time the Chicago Sun Times reported:
U.S. naval forces on Monday attacked Iranian targets in the Persian Gulf to show the Iranians that “if they threaten us, they’ll pay a price,” President Reagan said.
In fighting conducted over nine hours, the U.S. forces knocked out two Iranian oil platforms, and then sank or disabled a fast-attack missile patrol boat, two frigates, and three speedboats when Iran attempted to fight back.
Note Reagan’s comments. Hence the name ’Operation Praying Mantis’ was a reference to the fanning of the wings used to make the mantis seem larger and to scare the opponent.
On November 6, 2003 the International Court of Justice dismissed Iran’s claim for reparation against the United States for breach of the 1955 Treaty of Amity between the two countries. The court also dismissed a counter-claim by the United States, also for reparation for breach of the same treaty. As part of its finding the court did note that “the actions of the United States of America against Iranian oil platforms on 19 October 1987 (Operation Nimble Archer) and 18 April 1988 (Operation Praying Mantis) cannot be justified as measures necessary to protect the essential security interests of the United States of America.”
The fallout of Praying Mantis also resulted in the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes shooting down an Iranian civilian commercial airliner, Iran air flight 655, between Bandar Abbas and Dubai, killing all 290 passengers and crew aboard, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. The Vincennes was inside Iranian territorial waters at the time of the shoot-down.
The On the morning of July 3, the Vincennes crossed into Iranian territorial waters during clashes with Iranian gunboats. Earlier in the day, the Vincennes – along with Iranian gunboats – had similarly violated Omani waters until challenged by an Omani warship.
According to the U.S. government, the Iranian aircraft was mistakenly identified as an attacking military fighter. The Iranian government, however, maintains that the Vincennes knowingly shot down a civilian aircraft.
According to the Iranian government, the shooting down of IR 655 by the Vincennes was an intentionally performed and unlawful act. Even if there was a mistaken identification, which Iran has not accepted, it argues that this constituted gross negligence and recklessness amounting to an international crime, not an accident.
Newsweek reporters John Barry and Roger Charles wrote that Rogers acted recklessly and without due care. Their report accused the U.S. government of a cover-up. An analysis of the events by the International Strategic Studies Association described the deployment of an Aegis cruiser in the zone as irresponsible and felt that the expense of the ship had played a major part in the setting of a low threshold for opening fire.
George H.W. Bush, at the time Vice President said “I will never apologize for the United States of America — I don’t care what the facts are” in reference to the incident.
The BBC later reported:
It took four years for the US administration to admit officially that the USS Vincennes was in Iranian waters when the skirmish took place with the Iranian gunboats. Subsequent investigations have accused the US military of waging a covert war against Iran in support of Iraq. In February 1996 the US agreed to pay Iran $61.8 million in compensation for the 248 Iranians killed, plus the cost of the aircraft and legal expenses.
So we see that Britain and the US have a long history of covert action against and provocation of Iran in their bid to aggressively control the region. Nothing has changed.
US ’escalates covert Iran missions’
Morning Joe: Andrew Card on the Sy Hersh Leak
Hersh: U.S. Funds Being Funneled To Violent Al Qaeda
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
US gives ’major’ boost to covert ops in Iran: report
http://www.spacewar.com/2006/080629061113.bfvpwct9.html
Filed under: Ahmadinejad, airstrikes, Alan Greenspan, Big Banks, Britain, California, central bank, Coup, Credit Crisis, DEBT, Dictatorship, Dollar, Economic Collapse, economic depression, Economy, Empire, energy, Euro, Europe, european union, euros, False Flag, Federal Reserve, florida, gas prices, Great Depression, Greenback, imf, Inflation, Iran, Iraq, kuwait, LA, london, Los Angeles, Media, Media Fear, military strike, nation building, national debt, New York, Nuke, occupation, Oil, OPEC, Petrol, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Saddam Hussein, Saudi Arabia, Senate, Shock and Awe, Stock Market, Tehran, United Kingdom, US Economy, War Crimes, War On Terror, Washington D.C., White House, WMD, World Bank, WW3, ww4
OPEC dumping the dollar could be the real reason for a war with Iran
Recent News:
http://uk.reuters.com/article/motorin..NOA62976920080626
Federal Reserve leaves key interest rate at 2%
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld..un26,0,7851841.story
Kuwait Buying Up U.S. Infrastructure
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080624/kuwait_fund_us_banks.html?.v=1
U.S. Senate To Pass Bank Bailout Bill
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080625/D91H2TT80.html
Bad economy cancels central Florida city’s 4th of July fireworks display
http://www.local6.com/money/16709180/detail.html
Utilities Cutting Off More Customers
http://www.usatoday.com/money/indu..ff-disconnect_N.htm
Suburbia Life Tougher Because Of Gas Prices
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/24/business/exurbs.php
Oil prices ’will not come down’ says OPEC boss
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/mone..06/24/bcnoil124.xml
LA Seeing More People Living In Cars
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D91FV1E80&show_article=1
Economy on brink of recession, Greenspan says
http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNew..s&rpc=23&sp=true
OPEC talks: Saudi Arabia to boost oil output
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/m..oost-oil-output.html
IMF sees zero US growth in 2008
http://www.gulf-news.com/business/Economy/10222823.html
Few people are conscious of how the United States can use food as a political weapon
Big Shots Jump at Bilderberg’s Oil Orders
Paulson & Co. Says Writedowns May Reach $1.3 Trillion
Japan Offers Helping Hand To World Banks
Bush administration wants to give Federal Reserve more power
Filed under: airstrikes, Australia, Baghdad, Coup, ehud olmert, f-16, False Flag, gaza, greece, H. Con. Res 362, hamas, IAEA, Iran, Iran war resolution, Iraq, Israel, kevin rudd, Kyl-Lieberman amendment, Military, military strike, NIE, north korea, Nuke, Olmert, palestine, Pentagon, Preemptive Strike, preemptive war, Propaganda, Robert Wexler, Russia, Saber Rattling, Saddam Hussein, Sergey Lavrov, shaul mofaz, Shock and Awe, Syria, Tehran, Troops, War On Terror, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Mike McConnell, Yediot Aharonot
U.S. Says Israel Military Exercise Directed At Iran
IHT
June 19, 2008
Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.
More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.
The exercise also included Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots. The helicopters and refueling tankers flew more than 900 miles, which is about the same distance between Israel and Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, American officials said.
Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise. A spokesman for the Israeli military would say only that the country’s air force “regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel.”
But the scope of the Israeli exercise virtually guaranteed that it would be noticed by American and other foreign intelligence agencies. A senior Pentagon official who has been briefed on the exercise, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the matter, said the exercise appeared to serve multiple purposes.
One Israeli goal, the Pentagon official said, was to practice flight tactics, aerial refueling and all other details of a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear installations and its long-range conventional missiles.
A second, the official said, was to send a clear message to the United States and other countries that Israel was prepared to act militarily if diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium continued to falter.
“They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know,” the Pentagon official said. “There’s a lot of signaling going on at different levels.”
Several American officials said they did not believe that the Israeli government had concluded that it must attack Iran and did not think that such a strike was imminent.
Shaul Mofaz, a former Israeli defense minister who is now a deputy prime minister, warned in a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that Israel might have no choice but to attack. “If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack,” Mofaz said in the interview published on June 6, the day after the unpublicized exercise ended. “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.”
But Mofaz was criticized by other Israeli politicians as seeking to enhance his own standing as questions mount about whether the embattled Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, can hang on to power.
Israeli officials have told their American counterparts that Mofaz’s statement does not represent official policy. But American officials were also told that Israel had prepared plans for striking nuclear targets in Iran and could carry them out if needed.
Iran has shown signs that it is taking the Israeli warnings seriously, by beefing up its air defenses in recent weeks, including increasing air patrols. In one instance, Iran scrambled F-4 jets to double-check an Iraqi civilian flight from Baghdad to Tehran.
“They are clearly nervous about this and have their air defense on guard,” a Bush administration official said of the Iranians.
Any Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities would confront a number of challenges. Many American experts say they believe that such an attack could delay but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Much of the program’s infrastructure is buried under earth and concrete and installed in long tunnels or hallways, making precise targeting difficult. There is also concern that not all of the facilities have been detected. To inflict maximum damage, multiple attacks might be necessary, which many analysts say is beyond Israel’s ability at this time.
But waiting also entails risks for the Israelis. Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed fears that Iran will soon master the technology it needs to produce substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
Iran is also taking steps to better defend its nuclear facilities. Two sets of advance Russian-made radar systems were recently delivered to Iran. The radar will enhance Iran’s ability to detect planes flying at low altitude.
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in February that Iran was close to acquiring Russian-produced SA-20 surface-to-air missiles. American military officials said that the deployment of such systems would hamper Israel’s attack planning, putting pressure on Israel to act before the missiles are fielded.
For both the United States and Israel, Iran’s nuclear program has been a persistent worry. A National Intelligence Estimate that was issued in December by American intelligence agencies asserted that Iran had suspended work on weapons design in late 2003. The report stated that it was unclear if that work had resumed. It also noted that Iran’s work on uranium enrichment and on missiles, two steps that Iran would need to take to field a nuclear weapon, had continued.
In late May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran’s suspected work on nuclear matters was a “matter of serious concern” and that the Iranians owed the agency “substantial explanations.”
Over the past three decades, Israel has carried out two unilateral attacks against suspected nuclear sites in the Middle East. In 1981, Israeli jets conducted a raid against Iraq’s nuclear plant at Osirak after concluding that it was part of Saddam Hussein’s program to develop nuclear weapons. In September, Israeli aircraft bombed a structure in Syria that American officials said housed a nuclear reactor built with the aid of North Korea.
The United States protested the Israeli strike against Iraq in 1981, but its comments in recent months have amounted to an implicit endorsement of the Israeli strike in Syria.
Pentagon officials said that Israel’s air forces usually conducted a major early summer training exercise, often flying over the Mediterranean or training ranges in Turkey where they practice bombing runs and aerial refueling. But the exercise this month involved a larger number of aircraft than had been previously observed, and included a lengthy combat rescue mission.
Much of the planning appears to reflect a commitment by Israel’s military leaders to ensure that its armed forces are adequately equipped and trained, an imperative driven home by the difficulties the Israeli military encountered in its Lebanon operation against Hezbollah.
“They rehearse it, rehearse it and rehearse it, so if they actually have to do it, they’re ready,” the Pentagon official said. “They’re not taking any options off the table.”
Your last chance: Israel’s warning
Sydney Morning Herald
June 19, 2008
ISRAEL’S Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has warned the radical Islamic movement Hamas that the truce due to take effect today is the last chance to avoid a massive military incursion into the Gaza Strip.
In an exclusive interview with the Herald – his first interview with the Australian media in four years – Mr Olmert said the people of Gaza were “pissed off with Hamas” and sick and tired of the years of violence.
Since Israel withdrew from Gaza three years ago, the 250,000 residents who surround Gaza have been subjected to almost daily rocket attacks from Palestinian militants.
“You think the people of Adelaide would put up with this?” demanded Mr Olmert. “Or the people of Brisbane?
“I think the strategy of Hamas, which does not want to recognise Israel’s right to exist in the first place, and the extremism, and the fanaticism, and the religious dogmatism is the enemy of peace. We are at the end of our tolerance with regard to terror in Gaza.”
Dismissing an escalating corruption investigation which looks certain to force either his resignation or fresh elections by November, Mr Olmert said he was “going nowhere” and did not rule out running again for the leadership of his Kadima party.
So certain is Mr Olmert of his political survival that he has already sent an invitation for Kevin Rudd to visit Israel later this year.
“I don’t know yet personally enough the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, but I am very impressed with his friendship and his commitment to the well-being of the state of Israel,” Mr Olmert said.
Greeks help Israel prepare for Iran war?
Press TV
June 20, 2008
The Greek Air Force says it partook in an Israeli military exercise which is regarded as a rehearsal for a potential attack on Iran.
Greek sources speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed a New York Times report that Israel’s military maneuvers which were carried out earlier this month off the southern Mediterranean island of Crete, were preparations for a future war with the Islamic Republic.
The Greek source, however, assured that no terrestrial targets were involved as the operation was mainly aimed at personnel training.
According to a New York Times report, more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the military drills which involved simulated aerial combat, attacks on terrestrial targets, aerial refueling, and search and rescue missions.
http://www.bloomberg.com/..jLlSBbx5E&refer=home
Israeli attack on Iran: “not a matter of if, but when”
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/iran-j20.shtml
Tehran pledges to deal ’powerful blow’ against attack
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080620/111496436.html
Uh-Oh…Wexler Backs Naval Blockade of Iran
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert..n-steroids_b_108122.html
How Iran would retaliate if it comes to war
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0620/p07s04-wome.html
Russia’s Lavrov warns against attack on Iran
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080620/ap_on_re_eu/russia_iran
Bomb Iran? What’s to Stop Us?
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/061908c.html
Filed under: 2-party system, 2008 Election, 9/11, 9/11 Truth, 93 bombing, Afghanistan, al-qaeda, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Coup, Donald Rumsfeld, False Flag, FBI, George Bush, Hamid Karzai', Iraq, John McCain, left right paradigm, NATO, neocons, Neolibs, OKC, OKC bombing, Pakistan, PNAC, Saddam Hussein, State Sponsored Terrorism, Taliban, Waco, War On Terror, White House, World Trade Center, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Emad A. Salem, Mickey Herskowitz, Ramzi Yousef
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
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
May 27, 2008
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,”
according to a report in the Washington Times.
“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.
Furthermore, the attacks enabled Bush to pursue an invasion of Iraq that he had dreamed of achieving as early as 1999, according to the ghostwriter of Bush’s autobiography Mickey Herskowitz.
“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”
9/11 Blogger
May 22, 2008
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.”
http://washingtontimes.com/apps/p../541243918/1001&template=printart
White House announces Bush won’t run in ’08 (not satire)
http://mparent7777-1.livejournal.com/273555.html
Filed under: Baghdad, Child Abuse, child sex slavery, Dick Cheney, Dyncorp, gold, Iraq, KBR, military troops, nation building, occupation, Saddam Hussein, scandal, Senate, Sex Scandal, War On Terror, whistleblower
DynCorp Used Amored Car To Transport Hookers
Muckracked
April 29, 2008
Some explosive testimony this afternoon from a panel of whistleblowers testifying
before the Senate’s Democratic Policy Committee on contractor abuse in Iraq.
A contractor died when a DynCorp manager used an employee’s armored car to transport prostitutes, according to Barry Halley, a Worldwide Network Services employee working under a DynCorp subcontract.
“DynCorp’s site manager was involved in bringing prostitutes into hotels operated by DynCorp. A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was travelling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission. I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by the contractor’s manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad.“
Other revelations:
– Kellogg Brown & Root contractors used to destroy countless quantities of still-usable equipment that was difficult to transport in “massive burn pits” that were “burning 24 hours a day.”
– KBR’s ice foreman “was cheating the troops out of ice at the same time that he was trading the ice for DVDs, CDs, food and other items at the Iraqi shops across the street.”
– When KBR whistleblower Frank Cassaday reported weapons looting, he was placed in a jail tent by KBR security.
– KBR employees looted Iraqi palaces for treasure to sell on eBay.
Mass Corruption By KBR In Iraq
Houston Chronicle
April 29, 2008
KBR employees working in Iraq stole weapons, artwork and even gold to make spurs for cowboy boots, two former company workers told Senate Democrats on Monday.
Appearing before a Democrats-only panel looking into allegations of contracting abuses in Iraq, the witnesses accused their former co-workers of widespread improper activity.
KBR spokeswoman Heather Browne said the company would not comment at length because the claims are part of ongoing lawsuits.
“The witnesses who testified today raised claims that KBR has previously addressed. The government has reviewed the claims and refused to join lawsuits asserting them,” Browne said.
Linda Warren, a 50-year-old Abilene woman who worked as a laundry foreman and recreation director for the Houston-based contracting giant in Iraq, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Monday that some of her American colleagues doing construction work in Iraqi palaces and municipal buildings took woodcarvings, tapestries and crystal “and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots.”
Her allegations could not be independently verified.
Warren leveled her allegations in early 2004 after being reprimanded by a supervisor for giving water to Iraqi workers laboring in a sweltering laundry building when their own water supply was undrinkable.
Warren said the supervisor reminded her she had signed a confidentiality agreement and then threatened her by suggesting an American woman “wouldn’t last very long on the streets of Baghdad.”
That evening, with company managers present, she called KBR’s ethics hot line in Houston to report her allegations. She eventually was escorted out of Baghdad by company security after KBR officials intercepted a threatening e-mail, Warren said.
Frank Cassaday, a former KBR ice plant operator, told lawmakers that a KBR foreman tried to take military equipment, including two rocket launchers, detonators and ammunition.
When he confronted the foreman, Cassaday said, “he told me to mind my own business.”
Cassaday then told the camp manager. A military investigation confirmed his allegations, Cassaday said, but he did not elaborate on how the matter was resolved.
A third worker, Barry Halley, a former security manager for CAPE Environmental Management, alleged that after raising complaints with CAPE management, he was held in a room for several days by private security guards.
Les Flynn, Atlanta-based CAPE’s chief operating officer, said that while some of Halley’s allegations Monday were new, the company’s insurance company had investigated his allegations.
“It appears they were found to be untrue,” Flynn said.
The witnesses appeared at the Democratic Policy Committee’s 13th hearing on contracting activities in Iraq. While Congress has had some bipartisan hearings regarding KBR, many of the allegations have come from this series of Democrats-only sessions.
Congressional investigations of KBR’s activities in Iraq are almost invariably colored by politics, in no small part because Vice President Dick Cheney once headed KBR’s former parent company, Halliburton Co.
Two weeks ago, the U.S. Army Sustainment Command reaffirmed its selection of KBR to participate in the 10-year logistical support contract valued at up to $150 billion.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/ar..0106sexslavescandal.htm
Filed under: airstrikes, al-qaeda, CIA, Colin Powell, Coup, False Flag, IAEA, Iran, Iraq, Israel, michael hayden, Military, military strike, nation building, north korea, Nuke, occupation, Propaganda, Raid, Saber Rattling, Saddam Hussein, Shock and Awe, Syria, Tehran, UN, Uncategorized, War On Terror, WMD, WW3, ww4
Syria says US reactor charges as fake as Iraq WMD claims
AFP
April 28, 2008
Syria said on Monday that US accusations it had been building a nuclear reactor until its destruction in an Israeli air raid last September were as bogus as American claims that Saddam Hussein’s regime had weapons of mass destruction in 2003.
The ruling Baath party’s mouthpiece daily compared the photographs of the bombed site shown to US congressmen last week to the images Washington presented to the UN Security Council as alleged evidence of Iraq’s non-conventional arsenal in the run-up to the US-led invasion.
“When you look at these pictures… a single image comes to mind — that of US Secretary of State Colin Powell accusing Iraq of hiding weapons of mass destruction and presenting as proof a dossier of photographs,” Al-Baath said.
“Of course Mr Powell later acknowledged that he had been fooled by the US intelligence services and by conservatives within the administration.
“The new US campaign of lies should surprise nobody — it’s a continuation of the same policy of US pressure against Syria that’s been going on” for the past five years, the paper added.
“Syria again rejects the US allegations and reaffirms that it has nothing to hide concerning its legitimate national defences. Syria wants to see peace in the region, unlike the current US administration which has been behind all its wars and crises.”
Assad denies building nuclear reactor
AFP
April 27, 2008
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied in remarks published on Sunday that a site raided by Israel last year was a nuclear reactor under construction as charged by the United States.
Last September’s Israeli air strike “hit a military site under construction, not a nuclear site as Israel and America claimed,” Assad told the Qatari daily Al-Watan in an interview.
“Does it make sense that we would build a nuclear facility in the desert and not protect it with anti-aircraft defences?” he asked.
“A nuclear site exposed to (spy) satellites, in the heart of Syria and in an open space?
“We don’t want a nuclear bomb even if Iran acquires one,” added Assad, whose country is a close ally of Tehran, itself embroiled in a standoff with Washington over its nuclear activities.
“Where would we use it?… War in the region will effectively remain conventional,” he said.
Assad underlined that he believed Iran “does not think differently” on this score.
Iran has repeatedly rejected Western suspicions that its nuclear programme is cover for a drive to develop an atomic bomb.
It says nuclear weapons are un-Islamic and insists the programme is aimed solely at generating power for a growing population once fossil fuels run out.
The United States has accused Syria of building a secret atomic reactor with North Korean help.
On Thursday, US national security officials briefed US congressmen, presenting intelligence they said showed Syria had been building a secret nuclear reactor for military ends.
They said the plant was being built with the help of North Korea, until its destruction by Israel in an air raid on September 6.
The International Atomic Energy Agency launched an investigation into the US accusations on Friday but chided both Israel and the United States for their handling of the affair.
Syria promised its full cooperation.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/04/syria-more-ques.html
General Hayden: Syrian site could have produced fuel for 2 weapons
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080428/ap_on_go_ot/nuclear_syria
Syrian envoy says CIA fabricated evidence
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h9koW8sbYaxGGzOuU1O6cntXva1AD9095UJ80
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