It dosent take a rocket scientist to figure out this was a very well orchastrated move on the mollahs part to divert attention from there nucelar program.
A new report out this evening from McClatchy on the Bush Administration's Iran machinations: The article also reports that former defense officials have been told airstrike plans for Iran are being updated and that the leader of a Persian Gulf country failed to get the assurances he was seeking, during a recent visit to Washington, that the military option was off the table. There was also this nugget: You may recall that after Republican gains in the 2002 mid-term elections, Vice President Cheney declared privately that more tax cuts were "our due." If the GOP retains control of Congress in November, will military action in Iran be their due? -- TPM Reader DK http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/ The full McClatchy story In a replay of Iraq, a battle is brewing over intelligence on Iran http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwas...rce=rss&channel=krwashington_warren_p_strobel
I guess it's time to 'cook up' the books on Iran... U.S. Report on Iran Is 'Dishonest,' Letter Says From the Associated Press September 15, 2006 http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-iran15sep15,1,93432.story VIENNA — A recent U.S. House of Representatives report on Iran's nuclear capability is "outrageous and dishonest" in trying to make a case that Tehran's program is geared toward making weapons, a senior official of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency said. A letter from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press on Thursday, said the report was wrong to say that Iran was making weapons-grade uranium. Iran has produced only small quantities of enriched material, at levels far below that used for nuclear weapons, said the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. The letter, first disclosed by the Washington Post, also said the report erroneously claimed IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei had removed a senior nuclear inspector from the investigative team "for concluding that the purpose of Iran's nuclear program is to construct weapons." The inspector was sidelined at Tehran's request, as allowed under agreements that govern all nations' relationships with the agency, the letter said. "In addition," the letter notes, "the report contains an outrageous and dishonest suggestion that such removal might have been for not having adhered to an unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear program." An IAEA official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the letter, said it was written "to set the record straight." Jamal Ware, a spokesman for the House committee that wrote the report, confirmed the panel had received the letter, and said its chairman had referred it to Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) for review and a possible response. "If you read the report, it's very clear that what it is saying is that Iran is working to develop the capability to enrich uranium to weapons grade, not that they have done so," Ware said.
Is anyone surprised? Come on, we know such reports are jokes. Do you believe this republican congress is capable of making an honest report?
I don't believe any government is capable....all their reports will be skewed by their political beliefs and ideaologies. DD
But we are talking about fabricating lies and leading a country into unjust wars. This goes beyond typical manipulation.
An October surprise? What War With Iran Would Look Like A conflict is no longer quite so unthinkable. Here's how the U.S. would fight such a war - and the huge price it would have to pay to win it http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1535316,00.html
The Persian Gulf would become a 'death trap' if we attack Iran. They are more than capable of inflicting massive damage against our assets in the Persian Gulf, the Russians made sure of it. In all honesty, I am not sure that a military action is a 'feasible' option against Iran anymore, the cost is way too high for the American people to absorb/accept short of a 'clear and present threat' from the Iranians. I just don't see the 'military option' being much of a realistic one in the foreseeable future. I am confident that the Israelis would have already done it if they believed it would work, but they themselves either 1) have decided that the attack may be ineffective due to the nature of the Iranian nuclear program; or 2) Aren't willing to deal with the Iranian counterattack, which would explain why they're desperately trying to get us to do the job for them.
Stop listening to Iranian exiles! They are all damn liers wanting to get themselves back in power! Haven't we learned a lesson from these damn Iraqi exiles?
From Bush's speech tonight... Carrier strike groups and Patriot missle systems aren't that useful in dealing with insurgents in Sadr City. Onward to Iran and Destiny!
5 Iranians Detained at Consular Office in Iraq, Officials Say By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: January 11, 2007 Filed at 6:08 a.m. ET BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraqi officials said Thursday that the U.S.-led multinational forces detained five Iranians in an overnight raid on Tehran's diplomatic mission in the northern city of Irbil. The forces stormed the building at about 3 a.m., detaining the five staffers and confiscating computers and documents, two senior local Kurdish officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information. Irbil is a city in the Kurdish-controlled north, 220 miles from Baghdad. A resident living near the mission said troops used stun bombs in the raid and brought down an Iranian flag that was on the roof of the two-story yellow house. As the operation went on, two helicopters flew overhead, said the resident on condition of anonymity because he feared retribution. ''They took five Iranians with them and at about seven in the morning they handed over the house to Kurdish peshmergas,'' he said. In the early afternoon, a number of Kurdish guerrillas could be seen around the building preventing people from getting close to the house and not allowing cameramen and photographers to take pictures. The report, which first appeared on Iraq state television, also was confirmed by a Shiite official in the capital, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the information. The U.S. military issued a statement saying it had taken six people into custody in the Irbil region but made no mention of a raid on the Iranian consulate. It declined further comment on the raid. The motive for the raid was not known, but it came as tensions are high between Iran and the United States. The Bush administration has accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons and of helping fuel violence in Iraq. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, is trying to expand Iran's role in Iraq as a counter to U.S. influence in the Gulf region. Late last month, U.S. troops elsewhere in Iraq detained at least two Iranians and released two others who had diplomatic immunity. ------ Associated Press writer Yahya Barzanji in Kirkuk contributed to this report. nyt
More from Bloomberg... http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a90DLQrWr.YY&refer=us coincidence? I think not...
Greenwald is pessimistic.... _______________________ Thursday, January 11, 2007 The President's intentions towards Iran need much more attention (updated below) Iraq continues to receive the overwhelming bulk of attention in the media and among political analysts. But the fate of Iraq, tragically, is all but sealed -- the President will send more troops and order them to be increasingly brutal and indiscriminate, and they will stay through at least the end of his presidency. That is just a fact. The far more attention-demanding issue now is what the President's intentions are with regard to Iran. As Think Progress notes, the White House took multiple steps yesterday to elevate dramatically the threat rhetoric against Iran. Bush included what The New York Times described as “some of his sharpest words of warning to Iran” yet. But those words could really be described more accurately not as “threats” but as a declaration of war. He accused the Iranian government of “providing material support for attacks on American troops” and vowed to “seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies.” But those networks are located in Iran, which means that search and destroy missions on such networks would necessarily include some incursion into Iranian territory, whether by air or ground. Hours before the speech, the White House released a Powerpoint presentation with details about the president’s new policy. “Increase operations against Iranian actors” was listed in the “Key Tactical Shifts” section. As The New York Times reported: “One senior administration official said this evening that the omission of the usual wording about seeking a diplomatic solution [to the Iranian nuclear stand-off] ‘was not accidental.’” But these were merely the latest in a series of plainly significant events over the last several weeks that, taken alone, are each noteworthy themselves, but when viewed as a whole unmistakably signal a deliberate escalation of tensions with Iran by both the U.S. and Israel: * Israel's Prime Minister "accidentally" ending decades of nuclear ambiguity by unambiguously acknowledging Israel's nuclear arsenal; * New Defense Secretary Robert Gates's extraordinary departure -- the very same week -- from long-standing protocol by explicitly describing Israel as a nuclear power; * The arrest by the U.S. military of senior Iranian military officials in Iraq; * The announced build-up of forces in the Persian Gulf back in December, the purpose of which -- according to Bush officials -- "is to make clear that the focus on ground troops in Iraq has not made it impossible for the United States and its allies to maintain a military watch on Iran" (UPDATE: As well as this incident revealing the placement of a nuclear-powered submarine in the Straits of Hormuz); * The leaking by the Israeli military that Israel was developing plans for an attack on Iran using small-grade, limited tactical nuclear weapons. Though the leak was done in such a way as to create plausible deniability as to its significance -- the leak was to a discredited newspaper and leaks that a country has "planned" for a certain type of attack are commonplace and do not mean they are actually going to attack -- the leak was nonetheless deliberate and caused the phrases "Israeli nuclear attack" and "Iran" to be placed into the public dialogue, at exactly the time that tensions have been deliberately heightened between the U.S./Israel and Iran -- the purpose of which is almost certainly not a planned nuclear attack by Israel on Iran, but a ratchering up of the war rhetoric; * Increasingly explicit advocacy by neoconservatives in the U.S. for a war with Iran, as reflected by the recent Washington Post Op-Ed by Joe Lieberman in which he really did declare that the U.S. is already at war with Iran ("While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran"); * in the later stages of 2006, the President's most prominent neoconservative supporters becoming increasingly explicit about their advocacy of war with Iran; * The transparent and deliberate use by the President throughout the last several months of 2006 of highly threatening and accusatory language towards Iran that is identical in content and tone to the language he used towards Iraq in the months immediately preceding the U.S. invasion -- often verbatim identical. I think there is a tendency to dismiss the possibility of some type of war with Iran because it is so transparently destructive and detached from reality that it seems unfathomable. But if there is one lesson that everyone should have learned over the last six years, it is that there is no action too extreme or detached from reality to be placed off limits to this administration. The President is a True Believer and the moral imperative of his crusade trumps the constraints of reality. The AEI/Weekly Standard/National Review/Fox News neonconservative warmongers are mocked because of how extremist and deranged their endless war desires are, but the President is, more or less, one of them. He thinks the way they think. The war in Iraq has collapsed and the last election made unmistakably clear that Americans have turned against the war, and the President's response, like their response, was to escalate. How much more proof do we need of how extremist and unconstrained by public opinion and basic reality he is? For anyone with ongoing doubts, here is how the President thinks, as expressed in an October, 2006 interview with his with his ideological soulmate, Fox's Sean Hannity: Hannity: Is this a struggle literally between good and evil? Bush: I think it is. Hannity: This is what it is? Do you think most people understand that? I mean, when you see the vacillating poll numbers, does it discourage you in that sense? Bush: Well, first of all, you can't make decisions on polls, Sean. You've got to do what you think is right. The reason I say it's good versus evil is that evil people kill innocent life to achieve political objectives. And that's what Al Qaeda and people like Al Qaeda do. Bush means all of that. That's really what he believes. And he isn't constrained by the things that constrain rational people because his mission, in his mind, transcends all of those mundane limitations. Is there anyone who still doubts that? More importantly, a war with Iran can happen in many ways other than by some grand announcement by the President that he wants to start a war, followed by a debate in Congress as to whether such a war should be authorized. That is the least likely way for such a confrontation to occur. We have 140,000 troops (soon to be 20,000 more) sitting in a country that borders Iran and where Iran is operating, with an announced military build-up in the Persian Gulf imminent, increased war rhetoric from all sides, the beginning of actual skirmishes already, a reduction (if not elimination) on the existing constraints with which our military operates in Iraq, and a declaration by the President that Iran is our enemy in the current war. That makes unplanned -- or seemingly unplanned -- confrontations highly likely, whether through miscalculation, miscommunication, misperception, or affirmative deceit. Whatever else is true, given the stakes involved -- the unimaginable, impossible-to-overstate stakes -- and the fact that we are unquestionably moving forward on this confrontational path quite deliberately, this issue is receiving nowhere near the attention in our political discussions and media reports that it so urgently demands. For all the pious talk about the need to be "seriously concerned" and give "thoughtful consideration" to what will happen if we leave Iraq, there is a very compelling -- and neglected -- need to ponder what will happen if we stay and if we escalate. And the need for "serious concern" and "thoughtful consideration" extends to consequences not just in Iraq but beyond. UPDATE: For those who think that the threat of military confrontation with Iran isn't a serious one, here is a BBC report from this morning: US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized six members of staff. The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials. The US military would only confirm the detention of six people around Irbil. The raid comes amid high Iran-US tension. The US accuses Iran of helping to fuel violence in Iraq and seeking nuclear arms. Iran denies both charges. Tehran counters that US military involvement in the Middle East endangers the whole region. . . . One Iranian news agency with a correspondent in Irbil says five US helicopters were used to land troops on the roof of the Iranian consulate. It reports that a number of vehicles cordoned off the streets around the building, while US soldiers warned the occupants in three different languages that they should surrender or be killed. This is the most serious action yet. Isn't it a definitive act of war for one country to storm the consulate of another, threaten to kill them if they do not surrender, and then detain six consulate officers? http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/
Matt Louer ask Rice three times this morning on the Today show if Jr's threat to Iran last night included ground forces in Iran or attacks within Iran's boarders. She ducked the question every time.
We are doomed. _________________ Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran. The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country. --http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001869.php
If true, then it is the obligation of congress to begin impeachment proceedings without delay. [edit]From yesterday's Condi testimony ...
