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Iranian Scientist Would Not Play Curveball
Useful insights often must be seen through a glass darkly. But some can be pulled through the smoke and mirrors shrouding the wanderings of Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri, who is now back home in Iran after 14 months in the U.S. as guest of the CIA.
The confusing/amusing spin applied by both countries to L' Affaire Amiri can detract from the real issues. The facts beneath the competing narratives permit a key conclusion; namely, that U.S. intelligence has learned nothing to change its assessment that Iran halted work on the nuclear-weapons related part of its nuclear development program in the fall of 2003 and has not restarted that work.
That twin judgment leaped out of a formal National Intelligence Estimate, "Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities," approved unanimously by all 16 U.S intelligence agencies in November 2007.
That NIE substituted a rigorous evidence-based approach for the knee-jerk premise of earlier estimates that Iran had already decided to develop nuclear weapons and the question was just when, not if, it would eventually acquire them.
The NIE began with these words:
"We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also assess with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons...
"We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons...
"Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005."
That is not what President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had been telling the world, preferring to hyperbolize the danger from Iran's nuclear "weapons" program. Indeed, visiting Israel in January 2008, Bush said he did not believe the NIE's key judgments, and actually apologized to the Israelis for the unfortunate Estimate.
But the word was out and it put the kibosh on White House/neocon plans to manufacture/embellish an imminent nuclear threat from Iran, to look the other way as the Israelis attacked, and to then spring to the aid of our Israeli "ally," even though there is no bilateral defense treaty requiring that.
The timely publication of the NIE's key judgments played a key role in scuttling plans of those in Washington and Tel Aviv to prevent/pre-empt the ostensibly urgent, but actually bogus, threat from Iran.
U.S. Military Prevented War
Keenly aware of the disaster that would ensue if Israel and fellow travelers in Washington persuaded President Bush to attack Iran or encourage Israel to do so, senior U.S. military leaders joined with those in Congress who had originally requested the NIE and pressed successfully for releasing the key judgments to the public.
The key judgments were declassified - without the kind of dishonest editing featured in the declassified summary of the infamous NIE five years earlier, exaggerating the threat from Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" by eliminating the doubts expressed by some of the intelligence agencies.
This time around, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen has been expressing increasing nervousness that Israel might attack Iran and draw U.S. forces into a war that could make Iraq and Afghanistan seem like volleyball games.
Like
former CENTCOM commander Adm. William "we're-not-going-to-do-Iran-
Mullen and Fallon got then-Director of National Intelligence, retired Adm. Mike McConnell to reverse his openly expressed opposition to making the November 2007 NIE judgments public. In sum, those honest judgments, and their publication, helped thwart the plans of Cheney and Bush to attack Iran in 2008.
Later, Cheney admitted publicly that he was pressing at the time for military action against Iran, but was overruled by Bush. The President then dispatched Adm. Mullen to Israel to tell the Israelis: Don't Even Think of It. Which Mullen was happy to do.
The cast of characters on the intelligence side - and in the military hierarchy - is different now. For instance, CENTCOM commander Fallon was cashiered in March 2008 for his outspokenness against going to war with Iran.
Also, during the exhaustive, bottom-up assessment in 2007 of Iran's nuclear plans, Tom Fingar of the State Department was Director of the National Intelligence Council and led the effort. In the process, he was able to demonstrate that the U.S. intelligence community was still capable of delivering honest, professional analysis and that it could summon the courage to face down the most intense political pressure and insist on telling it like it is.
By pulling together hard fact and experienced analysis, that NIE put an iron bar into the wheel spokes of the juggernaut that had begun rolling toward a disastrous war with Iran. Though himself a man of faith, Fingar had nothing but contempt for the kind of "faith-based intelligence" that helped grease the skids for the disaster in Iraq.
As for the intelligence on Iraq, recall that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, announcing the bipartisan findings of an exhaustive, five-year Senate Intelligence Committee study of the use of intelligence leading up to attack on Iraq, added this remark:
"In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."
Rockefeller was, of course, right. In the Estimate on Iran, in contrast, Fingar and his analysts had too much integrity to succumb to the political pressures to which their predecessors bent.
Updated Estimate on Iran
NIEs like the controversial one on Iran are periodically updated. The Fingar-led bottom-up assessment of 2007 does not need to be replicated. Rather, an Estimate now under way is adopting the intelligence analysis art form of a "Memorandum to Holders" of the previous NIE, updating it, as necessary. Drafting began many months ago, but the deadline has been slipping - as is always the case with NIEs on Iran. According to press reports three months ago, the latest target date for completion is August.
The press is also saying that this time the Obama administration will not make public the key judgments.
Why the delay-and the secrecy? I believe the answer is straightforward. Reading the signs, I think it a safe assumption that an honest Memorandum to Holders could fit on one page, the thrust of which would be: We have received no evidence that requires revision of the key judgments of the November 2007 NIE on Iran.
Indeed, in congressional testimony earlier this year, then-Director of National Intelligence Adm. Dennis Blair, to his credit, said essentially that, amid mainstream press reporting alleging a need to make the Estimate more ominous.
It seems a safe bet that one reason Blair was given his walking papers two months ago is that, in the opinion of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and his neocon friends, the retired admiral was not sufficiently malleable. The nominee to replace Blair, retired Gen. James Clapper, and his current boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates each hold well earned PhDs in malleability.
If integrity holds in the ranks of intelligence analysts, a Memorandum to Holders update could turn out to be just as controversial - and just as disappointing to those wishing to attack Iran - as the NIE of 2007, which contradicted what Bush and Cheney had been saying in exaggerating the threat from Iran.
From
the perspective of the hawks, therefore, it's better to delay. Better to take
more time to seek out managers and analysts with more flexible consciences than
those of the now-retired Tom Fingar, the now-cashiered Adm. Blair, and the
just-one-day-on-the-job-as-
Better to take more time to seek additional "evidence" that may be uncorroborated, contradicted, or even non-existent, but nonetheless good enough for use with the Fawning Corporate Media and other fans of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Looking for a Curveball
A brief refresher for those who have put out of mind the lead-up to the attack on Iraq: Curveball was the name assigned to a defector who provided detailed reporting on those "mobile chemical warfare laboratories," which were rendered by CIA graphic artists into visuals to accompany Secretary of State Colin Powell's bogus presentation to the UN Security Council on February 5, 2003.
The biological weapons labs did not exist, but the images helped to get a war started the following month. Smoke and mirrors can be consequential.
It is likely that Obama administration hawks directed CIA operatives to see Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri in this context. Would he be willing to adduce what Sen. Rockefeller called "non-existent" intelligence about an urgent nuclear threat from Iran?
From the looks of it, some officials inside U.S. intelligence tried to persuade Amiri to play that kind of role - apparently in vain. Looking for a Curveball, the CIA got a change-up slider - one that slid away without agreeing to provide the "evidence" that might "justify" attacking Iran.
The Fawning Corporate Media has apparently been pre-briefed to expect the Memorandum to Holders to be much scarier than the NIE of almost three years ago. For example, the New York Times on Friday reported that the intelligence community "is likely to back away from some of the conclusions in the earlier document."
So hold onto your hats. I'm waiting for arch-neoconservative Ken Adelman, erstwhile clone of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, to arise from - and dust off - the ashes of Iraq to reassure us that attacking Iran, too, will be a "cake walk."
Pressure Building
What is abundantly clear is that Israel and the neocons are determined to ratchet up the conclusions of the 2007 NIE and make them sound far more ominous in the Memorandum to Holders.
And if no one better than Amiri shows up, they can always make him into Curveball #2 anyway, and then order the excellent CIA graphics shoppe to create artists renderings of the kind they did for Curveball's imaginary mobile chemical weapons labs. (The danger here is that this ruse would be all too reminiscent of Powell's bravura performance in February 2003.)
If the White House decides that a Curveball #2 approach might be so obvious as to backfire and perhaps even raise doubts even among the stenographers of the FCM, administration's hawks would probably opt for further delay in drafting the Memorandum to Holders, allowing more time to bring on board more malleable managers, to twist the arms of intelligence analysts, and to leak to the FCM how the updated estimate is sure to abandon the findings of the NIE from 2007.
If I am right in surmising that there has been no reliable intelligence requiring change in the NIE's key judgments, publication (or, more likely) leaking of an honest Memorandum to Holders could again thwart the Israelis and those who are encouraging an attack on Iran.
There's also the risk to the hawks that a Memorandum that included "uncorroborated, contradicted, and non-existent" intelligence could become an object of ridicule before it provoked another Middle East conflict. Honest analysts pressured to manufacture such evidence might well decide to share their experience with honest journalists (as a few tried to do in 2002-2003 although the warnings were mostly drowned out by the exciting stampede to war). And, given the current dearth of honest journalists in the FCM, analysts might choose to share their chagrin with websites like Wikileaks to expose the latest charade.
As for the role of intelligence, we are likely to learn in the coming weeks whether the senior officials in charge of NIEs and Memoranda to Holders are in the mold of Tom Fingar or, conversely, of George Tenet and his top lieutenants - hangers-on like John Brennan who is now President Barack Obama's right-hand man for intelligence, now working at the National Security Council.
Tenet and his merry men and women were able to persuade themselves that once the President decided to go to war, their job was to create "intelligence" to "justify" it, so the case made to the American people would be a "slam-dunk."
The next war hangs largely on whether U.S. intelligence analysts with integrity are allowed to ply their trade without fear or favor; or, failing that, whether they will decide to give priority to the supervening value of preventing another unnecessary war, as opposed to keeping a promise not to divulge classified information. Most of them are well aware that all too often such information is stamped "SECRET" simply to keep the truth from the American people.
A shorter, early version of this article first appeared on Consortiumnews.com.
38 Comments so far
Show AllAnd so with an open purse for greed and not a shread of conscience or a brain they dig and dig the hole to disaster and hell for all. Tony
Ray, you know the old military enlisted man adage, Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see! As with Bush, it would seem that this is sage advice when dealing with the Obama administration also!
Shall we start a pool again on the date of the pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike on Iran?
October 2010, or perhaps 2012. Depends on whether or not O can find a smaller and weaker Islamic country to invade.
And what the polls look like in September.
Mr. McGovern, a brilliant article as usual, and I do hope that you are doing well, especially after what you have been through.
So the (contrived) intelligence is already baked into the preverbal (yellow) cake? Interesting.
The American people are simply going to sit idly by and allow the despots to wage yet another illegal war of aggression and hegemony upon the innocent people of Iran? More death and destruction sounds like real change.
If "We the People" have no say in this abhorrent and wretched matter, then how do we call ourselves united?
Remember:
"The Constitution was not adopted by “we, the people.” It was adopted by 55 rich white men who met in Philadelphia in 1787." - Howard Zinn
Bring America Back !!!!
**Hillary Clinton admitted to never even reading The Estimate when she voted for "W" Bush' Iraq war authority !
It indicated NO evidence of Iraq WMDs ! She admitted lying about coming under gunfire in her visit to Baghdad ! Her wisdom on Iran was quoted as: "We'll just obliterate them" !
==What a wonderful choice as Sec/State she is==Choke !
**Then Joint Chief of Staff General Wesley Clarke stated "W" Bush only wanted to hear info and data which linked Saddam Hussein or Iraq to 9/11, al Qaeda or otherwise could be used to justify his Invasion of his Daddy's old nemesis, Iraq.
**The important thing for Ray McGovern to realize is that Obama's Drone Crusade on Tora Bora is part and parcel of "W"s Third Term; that trying waterboarded detainees for "masterminding" 9/11 is sheer Insanity; and that Obama lied his way into the White House with false promises.
**Otherwise, McGovern becomes part of the mental illness of the US military industrial complex, and it's lackey puppets, the mainstream media. Mc Govern, at some point , must cope with the reality that neither the Neocons , nor the Demmies are deserving of managing our Nation. He must join in the hunt to find a viable Progressive , or Independent candidate who will serve us with dignity and Respect for Law.
Mr. McGovern,
You are always a voice of reason. I have appreciated and welcomed your writing for quite some time. I think egos have gotten too large for reason, as we always see with ego. Take a look at Netanyahu. Listen to him. He thinks he is God. He will do what he wants. As will the inflated neocon Zionists. You're familiar with spy agencies and the dark side. Aren't there more effective ways of getting rid of these dregs of the earth? Your budget is nothing compared to AIPAC. We need effectiveness here, sir.
War with Iran has been our aim since we first invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. We can slowly build our bogus case for invasion, but until we have a secure military situation in Afghanistan we do not have the land bases from which to launch our attacks. It is no coincidence that we are trying to secure friendly governments and military bases on Iran's eastern and western borders, from which we can launch our spectacular "shock and awe" land, sea and air assaults (it used to be called blitzkrieg, but the genuinely apt reference smacks too much of of a past we do not want to be associated with). Let's see what pretext we use as a casus belli as we march our way to being the greatest war criminals of all time.
For confirmation:
Thursday, Jul. 15, 2010
An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table
By Joe Klein
In late 2006, George W. Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and asked if military action against Iran's nuclear program was feasible. The unanimous answer was no. Air strikes could take out some of Iran's nuclear facilities, but there was no way to eliminate all of them. Some of the nuclear labs were located in heavily populated areas; others were deep underground. And Iran's ability to strike back by unconventional means, especially through its Hizballah terrorist network, was formidable. The military option was never officially taken off the table. At least, that's what U.S. officials always said. But the emphasis was on the implausibility of a military strike. "Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need," Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in 2008. It would be "disastrous on a number of levels." (See pictures of President Bush in the Middle East.)
Gates is sounding more belligerent these days. "I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran," he told Fox News on June 20. "We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons." In fact, Gates was reflecting a new reality in the military and intelligence communities. Diplomacy and economic pressure remain the preferred means to force Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal, but there isn't much hope that's going to happen. "Will [sanctions] deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability?" CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News on June 27. "Probably not." So the military option is very much back on the table.
What has changed? "I started to rethink this last November," a recently retired U.S. official with extensive knowledge of the issue told me. "We offered the Iranians a really generous deal, which their negotiators accepted," he went on, referring to the offer to exchange Iran's 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (3.5% pure) for higher-enriched (20%) uranium for medical research and use. "When the leadership shot that down, I began to think, Well, we made the good-faith effort to engage. What do we do now?" (See pictures of terror in Tehran.)
Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army's Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region. "There really wasn't a military option a year ago," an Israeli military source told me. "But they've gotten serious about the planning, and the option is real now." Israel has been brought into the planning process, I'm told, because U.S. officials are frightened by the possibility that the right-wing Netanyahu government might go rogue and try to whack the Iranians on its own. (Comment on this story.)
One other factor has brought the military option to a low boil: Iran's Sunni neighbors really want the U.S. to do it. When United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said on July 6 that he favored a military strike against Iran despite the economic and military consequences to his country, he was reflecting an increasingly adamant attitude in the region. Senior American officials who travel to the Gulf frequently say the Saudis, in particular, raise the issue with surprising ardor. Everyone from the Turks to the Egyptians to the Jordanians are threatening to go nuclear if Iran does. That is seen as a real problem in the most volatile region in the world: What happens, for example, if Saudi Arabia gets a bomb, and the deathless monarchy there is overthrown by Islamist radicals?
For the moment, the White House remains as skeptical as ever about a military strike. Most senior military leaders also believe Gates got it right the first time — even a targeted attack on Iran would be "disastrous on a number of levels." It would unify the Iranian people against the latest in a long series of foreign interventions. It would also unify much of the world — including countries like Russia and China that we've worked hard to cultivate — against a recowboyfied U.S. There would certainly be an Iranian reaction — in Iraq, in Afghanistan, by Lebanese Hizballah against Israel and by the Hizballah network against the U.S. and Saudi homelands. A catastrophic regional war is not impossible. (See who's who in Barack Obama's White House.)
Of course, it is also possible that this low-key saber-rattling is simply a message the U.S. is trying to send the Iranians: it's time to deal. There have been rumblings from Tehran about resuming negotiations, although the regime has very little credibility right now. The assumption — shared even by some of Iran's former friends, like the Russians — is that any Iranian offer to talk is really an offer to stall. A specific, plausible Iranian concession may be needed to get the process back on track. But it is also possible that the saber-rattling is not a bluff, that the U.S. really won't tolerate a nuclear Iran and is prepared to do something awful to stop it.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2003921,00.html
Ray, I hope that you are wrong.
It would be madness for a faltering economy with a peace/war polarized populace and much-despised Congress to mount another front. Adding another $150B+/y deficit to a faltering economy together with the international condemnation of our leaders with possible economic sanctions would surely soon bring on total collapse of the US from within via, perhaps, civil war.
I hope he is right.
It should be clear by now that the only way the US will ever abandon its endless aggression is to stumble into a bloodbath. The American public loves war because they get away with it and they put no value on the lives of other peoples. We'll want peace when we kiss our soldier sons and daughters goodbye as they go off to war and know that we we never see them again. Until it is OUR blood that is spilled, the only thing that will change is the name of the current victim.
What we need is something on a greater scale than our predecessor received at Stalingrad. We need an army to march into Iran and never come out.
You have a death wish. Should the US ever face certain defeat with corresponding losses, the President, the Congress and a bare majority of Americans would support a nuclear strike.
Quite right. Unfortunately there are people who think that such a thing is not only possible, but desirable. After all how can Christ return if the Earth is not radioactive and devoid of human life?
The problem with that analysis is that our "predecessor" did not have nuclear weapons. If that state had nuclear weapons, they would have been used, just as the current rogue regime in Washington would not hesitate to use such weapons on facing similar circumstances of defeat, as the other commenters have indicated.
I have to wonder: Where are we going? And why are we in this handbasket?
Beautiful.
The White House does not need malleable intelligence analysts to come up with what it wants. It just needs to do what the Bush administration did. Cheney went to CIA headquarters several times to browbeat low-level analysts into giving him what he wanted to hear. I cannot see Biden doing that but Rahm Emannual could do it this time.
There have been a spate of bombings inside Iran wat Mosques and other buildings over the past few days where dozens have been killed and many more injured.
These are all attributed to US backed groups such as Jundallah. It seems some group hard at work to destabilze Iran.
This can be either in preparation of an attack, or it can be an attempt to have Iran retaliate in some manner. Be very wary of ANY retaliation as there a better then even chance (if not an overwhelming one) that such an attack will be another "false flag" that will "Justify" the US war machine seeking "justice".
Iran , Iraq , and Saudi Arabia, have two thirds of whats left of the worlds oil reserves.
The only way the neocon elite, not just the USA eliete, could get total control of the middle east was to go to war, and the only way the world or Americans could support a war of this nature was if we were provoked.
9/11 TERRORIST ATTACK, TRADE TOWERS HIT BY AIRLINERS FLOWN BY CRACKER JACK PILOTS TRAINED BY AMERICANS IN THE USA,PAID FOR BY WHO??????????
AMERICA HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY TRAITORS, AND THEY ARE LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO THE BANK.
According to Thom Hartmann, Thomas Jefferson fought mightily to have slavery outlawed in the Constitution, even though he himself had slaves and would have to free them. Unfortunately, he was overridden by a majority of the Continental Congress and we marched forward to the Civil War.
Bornfreemen, now “that's!” succinct.
So who attacked “us” on September Eleventh, Two Thousand and One? “The Mother of all Catalysts” and the reason for our now being in these illegal and deadly Middle East wars of aggression and hegemony, which are draining this country dry. Oh! I forgot, it was Osama, in a cave, on his Blackberry.
Brought to you by, and by the makers of
I remember thinking, "They're going to go into Iraq regardless of evidence, of public opinion or of international laws," and hoping I was wrong. Once again, I hope I am wrong. The big difference--no one is waving blood for oil signs anymore. Guess we've all accepted the deal, just as long as we don't have to change our lifestyles.
I wrote this during the last war prep for Iran. I believe it is still true. Perhaps at least worth the read.
Nuclear Bunker Buster Bombs against Iran: This Way Lies Madness
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=2093
Another point. Iraq had been starved for a decade. It had no spare parts for its aging armor, no planes, no antimissile batteries left. So, they were a pushover, and we are still fighting there, seven years later.
Iran has a first class military, plenty of armor, a state of the art air force, modern missile batteries, both anti-ship and antiaircraft. Iran has not initiated a war for about two or three centuries, but they are VERY good at defending themselves. For evidence of this, look at what happened when we encouraged (and supplied) our dear ally Saddam Hussein to attack Iran. We, or Israel, are going to find ourselves in a blood bath. Sure, we can destroy Iran. We can destroy anybody. But the cost will be high and we will be destroying yet another ancient civilization. We are good at that, aren't we.
C'mon Wikileaks, get this stuff out to We the People! maybe we can still turn it around.
Ah yes, "Change We Can Believe In !"
General James Jones, Obama's National Security adviser opened a speech, February 8,2009, with "I take my daily orders from Dr. Kissinger filtered down through General Brent Scowcroft and Sandy Berger." ("Trillion Dollar Conspiracy" by Jim Marrs.......Barack Obama takes his orders from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger. (Why Sandy Berger, a man who stole classified documents from the National Archives after 9/11 and no one knows what was in those documents, is still on board as a National Security adviser is beyond my belief!)
So, Hank and ZB have dictated foreign policy in the United States for the past FIVE decades. They have planned assassinations, overthrows of governments, wars, and the deaths of over 5 million people (Yes, 3.8 million Vietnamese died, 1.5 million Iraqis, and who knows how many hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis. Oh, and they are responsible for the deaths of more than 70,000 American soldiers and the early deaths of well over 200,000 American Veterans.
So why do they want to attack Iran? The United States has over 1,000 military bases all over the world and they all need OIL and its by products to function. OIL is an American Vital Interest and ZB wrote the Carter Doctrine in 1980, "Whenever America's Vital Interests are threatened, America has the right to use military force!"
Sorry, troop movement has already been accomplished....10 American Warships, including an aircraft carrier, passed through the Suez Canal, June, 6, 2010. The Egyptian Army sent 4,000 soldiers to protect those ships. (Great Co-operation!)
The ships then practiced bombing missions off the coast of Israel for two weeks and then proceeded to the Persian Gulf.....
The Rockefeller/Kissinger directed group, The Bilderberg Club, decided at their meeting this past June in Sitges, Spain, that Iran should be attacked. (American Free Press reported)
According to Dr. Rauni Kilde, a former minister from Finland, NATO is going to have its member nations send warships to an area north of Norway in September 2010. She believes that the naval forces will be there to prevent Russian interferance when Iran is attacked.
Whatever the NIE Report says in August will be what ZB and Hank want or else they will blow up one of the ships in the Persian Gulf and claim an attack by Iranian subs......."The Iran War" will happen!
Just a little addition to your post. The Cheney/Bush White House asked the military to come up with worst case scenario war plans for Iran and someone added the nuclear bunker busters to the option. The WH was downright gleeful about that option until General Peter Pace objected and threatened to resign if the option wasn't taken out. The WH then tried to create a story about Iran shipping large amounts of guns and ammo to the Taliban and Pace messed up that story by stating he had heard nothing about such happenings. The WH then refused to endorse Pace to continue as the head of the Joint Chiefs of staff of the Armed Forces and he was essentially forced into retirement. The Nation owes both Admiral Fallon and General Pace a great thanks for preventing the crazies in the WH from lying us into a war with Iran.
http://www.counterpunch.org/porter07162010.html
Interesting article that appeared on counterpunch about the strong possibility u.s. Intel was duped as Amiri was most likely a double agent.
We have to rely on the media. The media lies. But the media does also tell the truth.
How to Tell?
Well, there is something else.
The lies Smell.
This Ray McGovern article does not smell. There are many reasons why and I feel it is unnecessary to enumerate them. Uncanny is it is, when faced with the big lie the truth is almost invariably clear.
Common Dreams is great. No emphasis is necessary.
My concern lies in the surrounds. What on earth is wrong with the USA that these duplicitous bastards are still in positions of authority?
My guess is that the US citizen thinks he is above his surroundings. US exceptionalism goes that deep.
My message to all US citizens is that this belief is the sign of adolescence and when such a sign is printed on the forehead of an adult it is a crime. No emphasis is necessary.
So grow up. The Chinese say you have lost face. I have examined what they mean by face and it is clearly deeper than soul. As a group or collective, you are in a mess.
A recent poll found that 81% of the people polled believe that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. It shows that the neo-cons and the Israelis are doing a good job with their propaganda. Read "the New Pentagon Papers" by Lt. Col Karen Kwiatkowski. It explains how Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith created the "Office of Special Plans" in the Pentagon before the Iraq war and staffed it with neo-cons and Zionists from neo-con think tanks. They created many of the lies that were sent off to Cheney in the WH without any corraboration by the real intelligence people. They were then funneled by Scooter Libby to Judith Miller at the New York Times who blissfully printed each and every lie. Dick Cheney then made all those "doom is near" speeches all over the country and referred to the phony stories in the NYT as proof.
We don't have Cheney waving flags and screeching about the evil Iranians but we certainly have the same type of Judith Millers at too many of our media outlets nationwide, all willing to parrot the talking points handed to them by the neo-cons.
We now have two full carrier battle groups and a smaller Marine battle group stationed off the coast of Iran. One of the other posters gave some details. "Debkafile" is an Israeli source that may not be reliable. It states that all three of our battle groups are not in the Persian Gulf but stationed off the southern coast of Iran. This is the same type of psychological warfare that was played during Bush's period and it is very dangerous. Luckily, we don't have Cheney trying to instigate an attack against Iran, but when our last naval group went through the Suez Canal they allowed an Israeli ship to tag along. What were they thinking?? I have not seen enough wild accusations by the US against Iran that make me think that an attack is emminent.
We have to understand that the political sections of the Government (WH,Congress, and State Dep't) take their orders from the Israelis. Hopefully the military will have a pushback against the crazies. The tip-off that action is impending is if the insiders start bidding up the price of petroleum and the final step will be the e-mail system is shut off on the naval ships. Remember the big price jumps of gas in 2008 and then it took a while for them to drop after Bush told all the top Israelis that we wouldn't attack or assist them in an attack against Iran.**** [As of a couple days ago the Eisenhower naval group was no longer off the Iran coast, but headed back to the US and had stopped in Italy for a few days] My correction July 19.
I don't know why my post didn't get in, but hey what the hell?
Ray McGovern has an outstanding article here, and the manipulation of intelligence is the key to much of what will happen as is so often the case on foreign policy.
AD
Unfortunately, with "Blowing in the Wind" Obama in charge, he may authorize an attack on Iran as some kind of attempt at bipartisanship with the Zionazis.
A war economy needs more war... nobody has to think about it because all the levers and switches for war are programed and are functioning normally.
I am amazed to have to admit, We were lucky to have a few brave generals who knew the unacceptable consequences of letting the war machine have its way totally a few years back but so far it looks like we were also lucky to have Bush listen to them instead of Kissinger, the ultimate main stooge for the financial war machine.
If Obama attacks Iran, He will be the worst of the worse.
The blowback of a new Iran all out war will be so bad and unacceptable that the politicians will soon wish they had voted to give Iran the bomb instead.
As long as Rahm Emanuel, Israel's man-in-the-White House, remains as Chief of Staff, a U.S. or Israeli attack on Iran is only a matter of timing.
I bet Rahm will be back in Chicago before that time has come if it ever does.
It Will Go On
The red, setting sun, casts long shadows of the rocks and hills.
When the guns are silent and the napalm has burned out,
The desert still exists, silent save for the susurration of the sand
Blown by the winds, slowly covering the wounds of war.
Forgotten monuments again becoming homes and shelter.
Small creatures creep out in the gathering stillness
To carry on their own lives, eating and being eaten
In the long dance that predates man and will continue long after.
As the climates change, volcanoes and tsunamis rend the land and shore,
With the melting of the ice the seas rise; temperate zones become steppes
Encased in permafrost. Man's vaunted civilization may crumble away.
Man, himself, may run crying into the limbo that holds the dinosaurs.
The desert, silent save for the susurration of the sand, will still exist.
The red, setting sun, will cast long shadows of the rocks and hills.
Small creatures will creep out in the gathering stillness
To carry on their own lives, eating and being eaten as they always have...
Steve Osborn
21 November 2005
"We have received no evidence that requires revision of the key judgments of the November 2007 NIE on Iran."
Fixed:
"We have received no evidence that requires revision of our plan to use military strikes against Oilran in the near future."