Is US Trying To Force Nuke Standoff?
U.S. claims that North Korea may have assisted in developing a covert nuclear reactor in Syria could be a bid by White House hardliners to derail talks with Pyongyang and force confrontation, says CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
The network’s chief international correspondent, who spoke with Pyongyang’s top nuclear negotiator in a recent trip to the secretive Stalinist country, said the timing of the claims could be significant as U.S.-North Korea relations reach a key stage.
“The question now amongst the community watching these negotiations, is why has this Syria-Israel situation been made public by elements in the United States right now?” Amanpour says.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials said the Syria reactor was months away from functioning for “non-peaceful purposes” when it was destroyed in an Israeli bombing raid last year. The White House on Thursday released video and graphics of the site, accusing North Korea of involvement.
“We have long been seriously concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its proliferation activities,” a White House statement said. “North Korea’s clandestine nuclear cooperation with Syria is a dangerous manifestation of those activities.”
Amanpour says the new claims could just be an attempt by the United States to ratchet up pressure on North Korea amid international efforts to disable the country’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor and account for its plutonium stockpile.
Pyongyang has always insisted Yongbyon is being used for peaceful purposes, refuting Western claims it is pursuing a nuclear weapons program. It says it is willing to cooperate with a denuclearization program in return for Western aid.
However Amanpour says the latest U.S. claims could be an attempt at exacerbating relations with North Korea and reviving tensions that have previously triggered threats of possible military action from both sides.
“The kindest description of why they have said this is to strengthen the United States’ bargaining hand as it tries to nail down and conclude its negotiation with North Korea,” she says.
“The more pointed description is that hardliners in and around the U.S. administration want to scuttle these negotiations, don’t believe in negotiations and want to have a pretext to allow these to fail and pursue a harder line against North Korea.”
Amanpour said that North Korean nuclear proliferation — spreading its atomic knowledge beyond its borders — is a key element in the negotiations with the West.
She said during her recent meeting with North Korea’s top nuclear negotiator Kim Gye Gwan, the official denied any nuclear cooperation with Syria, but confirmed military cooperation with the Middle Eastern country.
Amanpour said all eyes would now be on Pyongyang as the latest claims could potentially bring a halt to years of delicate and faltering discussions involving North and South Korea, the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
“The key right now is to watch what North Korea does and what its reaction is to the publication of this video and these computer-generated graphics in the United States,” she said.
“If North Korea gets anxious about them and decides to pull back from negotiations, that would be a setback, if however it holds tight and continues with negotiations, that is obviously something U.S. negotiators will be very pleased about.”
© 2008 CNN
My money is down that the USA will deliver a massive aerial attack at Iran before the Presidential election. This Syrian-North Korea episode is simply part of the psychological preparation of the sleeping American public to accept the Dumbya-Dickhead reasoning that the attacks were justified by the imminent nuclear threat from Iran and North Korea. After all, Dumbya has to finish off the “axis of evil” before next January to live up to his reputation that he never quits until he gets what he wants. Just ask his old fraternity brothers about this trait.
I also wonder how they will include Pakistan in this scenario?
It doesn’t seem that the US accusation has Nth Korea itself so much in mind. As the CD article “Is an Attack on Iran Imminent?” by Dan Hamburg, points out the ultimate object is more likely Iran. And today’s shooting at an Iranian speedboat by a US “cargoship”. One has to apply Ockham’s Razor to get at the sense of the strange logic behind it all. For the messianic cult now running US politics ordinary rational analysis is a thing of the past.
My wife is predicting Aug 17 as the ’strike’ day.
Vacations will have cleared Washington D.C. and other world capitals.
Again, no proof is offered!
see:
Washington Post Headline
“Joint Chiefs Chairman Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/25/AR2008042501480.html
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 25, 2008; 1:51 PM
“The nation’s top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq……..etcetra, etcetera, etcetera”
They have been trying to start something anyway and everyway they can…if that fails….just launch and lie….kind of like Iraq.
They have reasons to go after Syria….from way back when…in Israel’s oil interests…..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/apr/20/israelandthepalestinians.oil
The week before Gen. Petreaus spoke to Congress, Gen. Odem spoke to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He once again presents a very well informed assessment of the situation in Iraq with a clear imperative for the US to get out asap. There are few people better qualified to do this. His other articles are well worth reading : “Victory is not an Option” and “Cut and Run? - You Bet! Why American Must Get Out of Iraq Now”. (I love the way he cuts to the chase. Gen. Fallon is even more blunt. He called Gen. Petreaus “an ass-kissing little chicken shit”.
William Odom is a retired US Army three-star general, and former Director of the National Security Agency, under President Ronald Reagan. He testified on April 2, 2008, before Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq. His statements are devastating to Bush’s failed war policy and the arguments for prolonging the war.
Here is the full text of his testimony
http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2341971921/m/3640008771001
*****************
TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE ON IRAQ
By William E. Odom, LT General, USA, Ret.
2 April 2008
“Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is an honor to appear before you again. The last occasion was in January 2007, when the topic was the troop surge. Today you are asking if it has worked. Last year I rejected the claim that it was a new strategy. Rather, I said, it is a new tactic used to achieve the same old strategic aim, political stability. And I foresaw no serious prospects for success.
I see no reason to change my judgment now. The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
Last year, General Petraeus wisely declined to promise a military solution to this political problem, saying that he could lower the level of violence, allowing a limited time for the Iraqi leaders to strike a political deal. Violence has been temporarily reduced but today there is credible evidence that the political situation is far more fragmented. And currently we see violence surge in Baghdad and Basra. In fact, it has also remained sporadic and significant in several other parts of Iraq over the past year, notwithstanding the notable drop in Baghdad and Anbar Province.
More disturbing, Prime Minister Maliki has initiated military action and then dragged in US forces to help his own troops destroy his Shiite competitors. This is a political setback, not a political solution. Such is the result of the surge tactic.
No less disturbing has been the steady violence in the Mosul area, and the tensions in Kirkuk between Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. A showdown over control of the oil fields there surely awaits us. And the idea that some kind of a federal solution can cut this Gordian knot strikes me as a wild fantasy, wholly out of touch with Kurdish realities.
Also disturbing is Turkey’s military incursion to destroy Kurdish PKK groups in the border region. That confronted the US government with a choice: either to support its NATO ally, or to make good on its commitment to Kurdish leaders to insure their security. It chose the former, and that makes it clear to the Kurds that the United States will sacrifice their security to its larger interests in Turkey.
Cont.
Turning to the apparent success in Anbar province and a few other Sunni areas, this is not the positive situation it is purported to be. Certainly violence has declined as local Sunni sheiks have begun to cooperate with US forces. But the surge tactic cannot be given full credit. The decline started earlier on Sunni initiative. What are their motives? First, anger at al Qaeda operatives and second, their financial plight.
Their break with al Qaeda should give us little comfort. The Sunnis welcomed anyone who would help them kill Americans, including al Qaeda. The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al Qaeda if we withdraw is utter nonsense. The Sunnis will soon destroy al Qaeda if we leave Iraq. The Kurds do not allow them in their region, and the Shiites, like the Iranians, detest al Qaeda. To understand why, one need only take note of the al Qaeda public diplomacy campaign over the past year or so on internet blogs. They implore the United States to bomb and invade Iran and destroy this apostate Shiite regime. As an aside, it gives me pause to learn that our vice president and some members of the Senate are aligned with al Qaeda on spreading the war to Iran.
Let me emphasize that our new Sunni friends insist on being paid for their loyalty. I have heard, for example, a rough estimate that the cost in one area of about 100 square kilometers is $250,000 per day. And periodically they threaten to defect unless their fees are increased. You might want to find out the total costs for these deals forecasted for the next several years, because they are not small and they do not promise to end. Remember, we do not own these people. We merely rent them. And they can break the lease at any moment. At the same time, this deal protects them to some degree from the government’s troops and police, hardly a sign of political reconciliation.
Now let us consider the implications of the proliferating deals with the Sunni strongmen. They are far from unified among themselves. Some remain with al Qaeda. Many who break and join our forces are beholden to no one. Thus the decline in violence reflects a dispersion of power to dozens of local strong men who distrust the government and occasionally fight among themselves. Thus the basic military situation is far worse because of the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.
This can hardly be called greater military stability, much less progress toward political consolidation, and to call it fragility that needs more time to become success is to ignore its implications. At the same time, Prime Minister Maliki’s military actions in Basra and Baghdad, indicate even wider political and military fragmentation. We are witnessing is more accurately described as the road to the Balkanization of Iraq, that is, political fragmentation. We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration’s witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator. That is the history of feudal Europe’s transformation to the age of absolute monarchy. It is the story of the American colonization of the west and our Civil War. It took England 800 years to subdue clan rule on what is now the English-Scottish border. And it is the source of violence in Bosnia and Kosovo.
How can our leaders celebrate this diffusion of power as effective state building? More accurately described, it has placed the United States astride several civil wars. And it allows all sides to consolidate, rearm, and refill their financial coffers at the US expense.
To sum up, we face a deteriorating political situation with an over extended army. When the administration’s witnesses appear before you, you should make them clarify how long the army and marines can sustain this band-aid strategy.
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran.
If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran’s policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
No quick reconciliation between the US and Iran is likely, but US steps to make Iran feel more secure make it far more conceivable than a policy calculated to increase its insecurity. The president’s policy has reinforced Iran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons, the very thing he purports to be trying to prevent.
Withdrawal from Iraq does not mean withdrawal from the region. It must include a realignment and reassertion of US forces and diplomacy that give us a better chance to achieve our aim.
A number of reasons are given for not withdrawing soon and completely. I have refuted them repeatedly before but they have more lives than a cat. Let try again me explain why they don’t make sense.
First, it is insisted that we must leave behind military training element with no combat forces to secure them. This makes no sense at all. The idea that US military trainers left alone in Iraq can be safe and effective is flatly rejected by several NCOs and junior officers I have heard describe their personal experiences. Moreover, training foreign forces before they have a consolidated political authority to command their loyalty is a windmill tilt. Finally, Iraq is not short on military skills.
Second, it is insisted that chaos will follow our withdrawal. We heard that argument as the “domino theory” in Vietnam. Even so, the path to political stability will be bloody regardless of whether we withdraw or not. The idea that the United States has a moral responsibility to prevent this ignores that reality.
We are certainly to blame for it, but we do not have the physical means to prevent it. American leaders who insist that it is in our power to do so are misleading both the public and themselves if they believe it. The real moral question is whether to risk the lives of more Americans. Unlike preventing chaos, we have the physical means to stop sending more troops where many will be killed or wounded. That is the moral responsibility to our country which no American leaders seems willing to assume.
Third, nay sayers insist that our withdrawal will create regional instability. This confuses cause with effect. Our forces in Iraq and our threat to change Iran’s regime are making the region unstable. Those who link instability with a US withdrawal have it exactly backwards. Our ostrich strategy of keeping our heads buried in the sands of Iraq has done nothing but advance our enemies’ interest.
I implore you to reject these fallacious excuses for prolonging the commitment of US forces to war in Iraq.
Thanks for this opportunity to testify today.”
And here is a PDF of the General’s testimony.
[URL=http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony /2008/OdomTestimony080402a.pdf]http://www.senate.gov/~foreign/testimony /2008/OdomTestimony080402a.pdf[/URL]
ALL EYES should be on Iran and Israel’s underground WMD Program in the Negev where International Inspectors Have NEVER Been Allowed In, nor has Israel signed the NPT-but all the Arab states have.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Says U.S. Preparing Military Options Against Iran:
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 25, 2008; 1:51 PM
The nation’s top military officer said today that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against Iran, criticizing what he called the Tehran government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.
Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said a conflict with Iran would be “extremely stressing” but not impossible for U.S. forces, pointing specifically to reserve capabilities in the Navy and Air Force.
“It would be a mistake to think that we are out of combat capability,” he said at a Pentagon news conference.
Still, Mullen made clear that he prefers a diplomatic solution to the tensions with Iran and does not foresee any imminent military action. “I have no expectations that we’re going to get into a conflict with Iran in the immediate future,” he said.
Mullen’s statements and others by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates recently signal a new rhetorical onslaught by the Bush administration against Iran, amid what officials say is increased Iranian provision of weapons, training and financing to Iraqi groups that are attacking and killing Americans.
In a speech Monday at West Point, Gates said Iran “is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.” He said a war with Iran would be “disastrous on a number of levels. But the military option must be kept on the table given the destabilizing policies of the regime and the risks inherent in a future Iranian nuclear threat.”
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who was nominated this week to head all U.S. forces in the Middle East, is preparing a briefing soon to lay out detailed evidence of increased Iranian involvement in Iraq, Mullen said. The briefing will detail, for example, the discovery in Iraq of weapons that were very recently manufactured in Iran, he said.
“The Iranian government pledged to halt such activities some months ago. It’s plainly obvious they have not. Indeed, they seem to have gone the other way,” Mullen said.
He said recent unrest in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had highlighted a “level of involvement” by Iran that had not been understood by the U.S. military previously. “It became very, very visible in ways that we hadn’t seen before,” he said.
But while Mullen and Gates have recently stated that Tehran must know of Iranian actions in Iraq, which they say are led by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Mullen said he has “no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved in this.”
In an incident early local time yesterday, a cargo ship contracted by the U.S. military fired “several bursts” of warning shots at two fast boats that approached in international waters off the Iranian coast, defense officials said today.
The unidentified small boats approached the Westward Venture, a ship carrying U.S. military hardware, as it headed north through the central Persian Gulf at about 8 a.m. local time, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain.
The U.S. ship initiated bridge-to-bridge communications, and, after receiving no response, it fired a flare. The speed boats continued to approach, so the ship fired warning shots with a .50-caliber machine gun and M16 rifle. The boats then left the area, she said.
“They fired several bursts, it went pretty quickly,” Robertson said.
Soon afterwards, an Iranian coast guard boat queried the Western Venture, Robertson said. It was unclear whether that was one of the small boats.
“There have been some Iranian boats that have operated this way, and some unidentified boats,” said Robertson, adding that the crew had no voice communication with the small boats.
In January, five Iranian patrol boats sped toward a U.S. warship and dropped small, boxlike objects in the water, an incident that alarmed military officials and that President Bush called “a provocative act.” The objects turned out to pose no threat to the USS Port Royal or two other U.S. vessels accompanying it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/25/AR2008042501480_pf.html
_______________________________________________________
SEBASTIAN ABBOT, Associated Press Writer
CAIRO, Egypt - A civilian ship contracted by the U.S. military fired warning shots at two small boats that approached it in the Persian Gulf, the U.S. Navy said Friday, the latest in a string of similar incidents to trigger concern in Washington.
The U.S. military has been wary of small boats operating near its ships since an explosive-laden vessel rammed the USS Cole as it refueled off Yemen in 2000, killing 17 sailors.
Those fears were heightened in recent months by several incidents in the Gulf’s narrow Strait of Hormuz, where small Iranian boats have approached American warships despite warnings to alter course. Senior U.S. military officials have warned Iran about the risk of triggering an unintended conflict if its boats continue to confront American ships.
The Navy said it does not know whether the two boats that approached the Western Venture cargo ship on Thursday were from Iran. Iranian officials have denied their vessels were involved.
Last month, a U.S. Navy-contracted ship fired warning shots at approaching motor boats in the Suez Canal, accidentally killing an Egyptian citizen.
The Western Venture was headed north in international waters in the central Gulf when it was approached by two small boats of unknown origin, said Cmdr. Lydia Robertson, spokeswoman for the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain.
“Following proper procedures, Western Venture issued standard queries to the small boats via bridge-to-bridge radio but received no response,” said Robertson. “Western Venture then activated a flare but again did not receive a response.”
The boats continued toward the ship, and the ship’s security team fired warning shots with .50-caliber machine guns and M-16s into the water in front of the small vessels, causing them to leave the area, said Robertson.
A unit that identified itself as an Iranian coast guard vessel radioed the Western Venture a short time after the incident to determine its identity, said Robertson.
“It is not clear if this was one of the small boats or a separate boat,” she said.
The Western Venture is owned by U.S.-based Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc. and was carrying military cargo to Kuwait when the incident occurred, said Robertson.
Oil prices rose sharply on news reports that the boats fired upon were from Iran. But an unidentified Iranian navy official on Friday denied that the small boats were Iranian, according to Iran’s official Al-Alam television.
An unidentified senior official from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said Friday that Iran would have retaliated if the U.S. had fired at its boats.
“If the U.K. or U.S. had fired at Iranian boats, based on previous experience, they would have faced the harshest reaction by Iranian forces,” he told Iran’s official English-language Press TV.
Five small Iranian boats swarmed three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz in January. The U.S. commanders did not fire warning shots despite hearing a strange radio call saying the boats would explode, and the Iranians eventually retreated.
In December, a U.S. ship fired a warning shot at a small Iranian boat that came too close in the Strait of Hormuz, causing the Iranians to pull back.
The British also tangled with the Iranians in the Gulf last year when Iran seized 15 sailors and marines in March while they were searching a merchant ship off the coast of Iraq. Iran freed the Britons nearly two weeks later.
Tension has been high between Iran and the West in recent years over accusations that Tehran is supporting Shiite militias in Iraq and using its nuclear program as cover for weapons development. Iran has denied both claims.
_______________________________________________________________
PS-Beware this election year of the neo-con base and members of the cult of Christian Zionism as espoused by John Hagee and his minions who lust for a Middle East nuclear holocaust. They are well organized and driven by an erroneous belief in fundamentalist escapist heretical theology that was successfully marketed to the masses in the putrid “Left Behind” series.
Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor WAWA:
http://www.wearewideawake.org/
Author “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
Producer “30 Minutes With Vanunu” and “13 Minutes with Vanunu”
Fear-mongering.
So the ‘hero’ who can ’stand up to the bad guys’ can ride his white horse to victory in the White House.
Expect lots more in the months to come.
Keep in mind that our current defense strategy is to not allow any other power to be a threat to the USA. That means, in essence, cold war against everybody else in the world.
Rice and the Cold Warriors go up against Russia, Pelosi badgers China, Cheney and Clinton threaten Iran. There’s an enemy for anybody who wants one.
After all, how can one be a hero if one doesn’t go up against the ‘bad guys’?
‘Senior U.S. intelligence officials said the Syria reactor was months away from functioning for “non-peaceful purposes” when it was destroyed in an Israeli bombing raid last year.’
Where are the cooling towers? Does not show where the towers are going to be even. New cooling technology maybe?
A few nagging questions:
1) Do you think the Israeli strike might’ve been a test run, as some suggest, for a couple reasons, such as turning on the Russian-made radar air defense tracking systems, so counter-measures could be applied when they hit Iran?
2) Could the knuckleheads who run this circus called the administration actually think that going after Iran would take what little focus the general public, which some refer to as “sheeple”, has away from Iraq, similar to how they went from Afghanistan to Irag?
3) Does anyone on this site, where we’re all preaching to fellow choir members, ever talk to a seriously conservative fellow human beasty? And, if you do, don’t you pick up on the wave of support that’s already out there, because we gotta take care of this problem before . . . well you know?
4) Doesn’t the concept of Armageddon - 1. the place where the final battle will be fought between the forces of good and evil; 2. the last and completely destructive battle (according to my dictionary) - and the ensuing rapture sort of send ice cold shivers up your spine? Especially when we know the deck Dub’s playin’ with?
5) Has anyone actually contacted their congressional delegation, about pretty much anything remotely resembling protest over these idiots, i.e. impeachment, only to have the silky smooth line of bunk provided as a response?
6) Am I the only wondering who gets to ride the wave into Tehran - the U.S. or Iraeli cowpokes? Or will it be a joint “exercise”?
7) And, not to put to fine a point on things, does anyone wonder how the rest of the world, such as China and Russia, India, et al, will react when the balloon goes up in their back yard?
Okay, I done.
When are we going to invade Pakistan? Didn’t they leave the top off one of the bottles holding the jinni?
And why haven’t we turned ourselves into the International Court in the Hague?
And here I thought Samuel Colt made everyone, with the purchase price, equal.
What ever happened to Free Trade?
The Pentagon, with the CIA want to realise the dream held by every empire throughout history - to rule the World. Start there.
Photoshop
The moronity of another Middle Eastern war is somehow transformed into patriotism with enough public relations propaganda. The Morons are convincing the American People to become morons too. The marching morons are on the move again with the greatest war machine in human history at their disposal and a media that is providing the marching music. Is this parade of fools unstoppable? It seems so.
Wait this it written by CNN part of the Corpmedia that was in bed with the white house. Why the hell is this crap on here.
Even more bizarre, greo, it’s the reporter, Christiane Amanpour, quoting herself. You think she’d be able to find some NGO to ask the questions she’s posing. Definitely wierd.
Well the pipeline from IRAQ has to go through some country to get to ISRAEL. That is the whole reason for the illegal ivasion isn’t it? Best place to keep a nuke plant in a cardboard building, what a crock of crap folks.
COMPUTER GUYS
Some of you posters are good with computers why not have a few laughs and post a few nice pix of Bush doing the dirty with something other than his wife. Just add a disclaimer at the end. Photo may have been altered
You have to know when something is real and when it is not. Before the invasion of Iraq, I knew Iraq had no active WMD programs based on publicly available evidence. Today Iran has a program to develop the capability for producing weapons-grade uranium and plutonium as well as uranium fuel for power reactors. The Iranians apparently suspended efforts to develop a bomb itself, as reported in the NIE, but that effort could be resumed later and it is the smaller part of developing a bomb capability.
The photo evidence presented to Congress proves that the Syrian site was a reactor similar to a North Korean plutonium production reactor at Yongbyon. The photos do not prove that the reactor was was about to become operational and some evidence suggests it was far from that point. There is also no evidence of a Syrian nuclear bomb program other than the reactor (whose existence has no other plausible purpose than to make plutonium for weapons).
To answer Razrbac: the reactor primary cooling was to be gas and secondary cooling of the gas was to be by water taken from and discharged into the nearby Euphrates river; hence no cooling towers.
The neocons themselves are the weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were the three AXIS of evil.
After the catastrophe disaster in Iraq, plans are ready for Iran, with the exception of a deceitful provocation. Surely the astute leaders in DC doesn’t want real negociations with NK. Same with Iran, as was with Iraq, they want to invade and liberate and spread democracy…Oop, spread pipe lines.
Perhaps the reasoning, and I use that word loosely, is that in order to justify permanent, er, enduring, bases in Iraq, bombing of Iran must go forward so that Shiites who want a theocracy in Iraq (Sadr’s people) will go into full-fledged warfare. That should keep it going. Of course, that would also likely bring about the uprising of Taliban Shiites supporting theocracy in Pakistan with civil war and takeover quite possible. Pakistan is a nuclear power. They would certainly come in on the side of Iran. Where would India come in with its nuclear arsenal? No wonder the Bush administration is so anxious to give them nuclear technolgy that could be used for improved nuclear bombs. They may think that balance of power might be needed. The problem with that entire house of cards is that religious zealots don’t always think about such consequences. Or do they? There are Americans who are quite anxious to get to The Rapture. It is not clear at all that some key leadership positions in our government are not filled with those crazies. This might, indeed, be a throwback to the unfinished Crusades where theocrats could care less about preventing mutual destruction. There’s not much difference between anticipating Rapturing up to Heaven or getting there to have a field day with a bunch of virgins.
Since most of what this administration has said in the last 8 years has turned out to be lies, how can anyone in this country or the world believe anything they say? Don’t believe the president who cried wolfowitz.
Just as you can expect: a holocaust in the Middle East because our INSANE govenment and military thrive on murder, violence and death. And after just how destructive Bush and Cheney have been these past 8 years, can anyone believe they won’t go down quietly. They just can’t leave the Middle East alone and I expect between Israel and Bush et.al we will have a real war that will kill and maim millions. That’s what we get for allowing these jackals to ever taken control of America. Now we are a nation of sheep stupid and blinded by the right and the whole world will suffer for our irresponsibility. Pelosi, it’s not too late to impeach but if you wait another month it will all be lost.