Senator Specter Responds to Death of Benazir Bhutto

Islamabad, Pakistan - Today, U.S. Senator Arlen Specter responded to the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Senator Specter is traveling in Pakistan and was scheduled to meet with Bhutto the night of her assasination. He spoke via phone with MSNBC.

Kennedy and Specter In Pakistan On the Night of Bhutto's Death

I'm not sure whether it's ironic or coincidental and one certainly would not want to misoverspeculate about whether it may be contrived or meant to appear coincidental to influence public perception regarding the war, but the very person who investigated the Kennedy assassination and became famous for it, Arlen Specter(R-PA) is with Patrick Kennedy ( D-RI ), both of whom were on their way to have dinner with Benazir Bhutto at her home the night she was killed in Pakistan ?

Benazir Bhutto claimed that bin Laden had been murdered

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Pakistan: Fractured skull killed Bhutto

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Benazir Bhutto died from a fractured skull caused by hitting her head on part of her car's sunroof as a bomb ripped through a crowd of her supporters, a spokesman for Pakistan's Interior Ministry said Friday.

The Benazir Bhutto I knew

Her death need not be the beginning of Pakistan's end.
By Mansoor Ijaz

from the December 28, 2007 edition

Benazir Bhutto was a beautiful and idealistic woman when she came to Pakistan's rescue in 1988. Growing up as the scion of one of its most powerful political families imposed enormous responsibilities on her and created perhaps unrealistic expectations of what she could deliver to save her chaotic country from disintegration. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, reportedly encouraged her as an up-and-coming politician to study the lives of history's great women leaders, from Joan of Arc to Indira Ghandi, so she could prepare to lead Pakistan.

Countries condemn Bhutto killing

ANDREW O. SELSKY, Associated Press Writer
Thu Dec 27, 4:35 PM ET

From Moscow to Washington to New Delhi and points in between, dismay and condemnation poured forth Thursday over the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, along with concern for the stability of the volatile region. World leaders lauded her bravery and commitment to democratic reform.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to condemn the killing.

Analysis: Bhutto death deals blow to US

By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
19 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has dealt a severe blow to U.S. efforts to restore stability and democracy in a turbulent, nuclear-armed Islamic nation that has been a critical ally in the war on terror.

Pakistan's Bhutto killed in attack

By SADAQAT JAN and ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writers
7 minutes ago

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Enraged crowds rioted across Pakistan and hopes for democracy hung by a thread after Benazir Bhutto was gunned down Thursday as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her armored vehicle. The death of President Pervez Musharraf's most powerful opponent threw the nation into chaos just 12 days before elections, and threatened its already unsteady role as a key fighter against Islamic terror.

Putin, the Kremlin power struggle and the $40bn fortune

POSTED: Friday, December 21, 2007

FROM BLOG: NoisyRoom.net - NoisyRoom.net is a counterterrorism, anti-illegal immigration, conservative blog specializing in current events and commentary.

The following blog post is from an independent writer and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com.

From the Guardian Unlimited:

Luke Harding in Moscow

An unprecedented battle is taking place inside the Kremlin in advance of Vladimir Putin’s departure from office, the Guardian has learned, with claims that the president presides over a secret multibillion-dollar fortune.

Turkish planes bomb Kurds in N.Iraq

The Turkish military said its ground forces fired on the same PKK targets two hours after the aerial bombardment.
Senior military sources in southeast Turkey told Reuters at least 10 warplanes participated in the air offensive, targeting approximately five areas where the PKK are believed to take refuge during the winter months.

The Hard Choices

And isn't it sad that just as peace, permitted by a surge in US troop levels, is breaking out, the Democrats are selfishly calling for massive withdrawals? The Neo-Con mistakes of not enough troops initially, being compounded by the Neo-liberals' reluctance to make the hard choices.
Krishna, Chennai, India


In response to Krishna's comment above, the " hard choices " to which you refer, with Kissinger, Laird and Macfarlane calling for U.S. policy to " stay the course " would entail those that engender the greatest risk - choices regarding how to de-occupy Iraq.

What risk might be involved ? The risk of collapse into full-scale civil war in Iraq that could become a broader regional conflict. The obvious response to the surge, by definition is going to be a more potent, resilient insurgency. Is that the purpose of the surge - to foment a more potent insurgency that provides convenient pretext to " stay the course, " a convenient excuse to continue to occupy ?

Perhaps, or perhaps the occupation's underlying objective is Iran which can be attained by weakening the Kurds with Turkish forces and weakening al-Maliki, who has support throughout the region even though as a result of a Washington lobbying firm that represents Ayad Allawi, has lost his main political blocs in Iraq.

But certainly Maliki is a powerful argument against the theory of regional collapse as a function of U.S.-NATO de-occupation.

Millions of us knew exactly what was going to happen

This is a good reminder of what arrogance and ignorance can do when combined in high places. But there is an even more tragic side to this. Andrew says "No-one ever thought most things were going to happen." There we have to agree to differ. Millions of us knew exactly what was going to happen - and to those of us who shouted, demonstrated, marched and tried in vain to make ourselves heard, the expression "hate to say I told you so" has never been so painful.
Joel Teague, Beaconsfield, Bucks

Russia's deep suspicion of the West

Rupert Wingfield Hayes reports on Russia's view of the outside world after its foreign minister accuses Britain of deliberately sabotaging relations with Moscow.

Iraqi Shiite cautions on armed groups

By HAMID AHMED, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD - The leader of the largest Shiite political party in Iraq told about 5,000 faithful who gathered Friday for Eid al-Adha prayers that U.S.-backed anti-al-Qaida armed groups — mostly comprised of Sunnis — should be on the side of government forces and not try to replace them.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, told worshippers gathered near his office in southwest Baghdad that the so-called "awakening" groups, many of whom once fought against U.S. forces but have since turned their guns on extremists, that the fighters must side with the government.

Kissinger's Infamous Relationship With The Kurds

This, among Kissinger's numerous endeavors, was revealed during the Watergate investigations of 1976, in what became known as the Pike Report. The testimony said that Kissinger had armed and financed the Kurds to dissuade Iraq from "adventurism", such as coming to the aid of Syria. The report adds, "Our clients, who were encouraged to fight, were not told of this policy." The Kurds were never meant to win, only to weaken Iraq and materialize US interests in the Middle East. The Kurds - Barzani in particular - should know better and re-read the history of their people's friendship with the United States.

Watch debate on whether Bush has right to target Iran

debate

What would happen if the U.S. strikes Iran?

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What’s the answer to bin Laden? According to Feith, it was an attack on an unrelated dictator.

The Dream Is Dead
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 12, 2007
WASHINGTON

Sketchy Iraq Intelligence

Based on everything we've heard in the news media about Washington's apparent disenchantment with Nouri al-Maliki, and in as much as I am personally disillusioned by Time failing to name him Man of the Year in light of his having been able to hold a fragile, volatile Iraqi state in the midst of a civil war, together, with rapidly dwindling support, credit Time with alerting us to the fact that al-Qaeda-in-Iraq was yet another Washington myth, perhaps intended to perpetuate the unending Holy War that a former Time Man of the Year, Ayatollah Khomeini, once so seemingly desired.

Here's the sketchy intelligence:

Built in the 1980s on the Tigris River near Mosul, the dam made headlines in June after a report by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said potential erosion of its foundation could cause it to buckle under the water pressure, flooding Mosul and parts of Baghdad, 225 miles to the south.

"We have some intelligence that says it was part of a bigger plot. There is some intelligence that they may have wanted to cut off that side of the river to make safe havens," Hertling said. "There are some indications that they wanted to close that route because it is used by coalition forces."

In other words, after the Army Corps reports that a dam might be susceptible to failure, it suddenly becomes a target of al-Qaeda-In-Iraq, an organization that arguably, does not even exist and at a time when we know Washington is lobbying to oust Maliki ?

Hertling added: "I personally think it is an additional indicator that these people who are trying to disrupt the people of Iraq will do anything to screw up the people of Iraq."

Why would al-Qaeda-in-Iraq attempt to destabilize parts of the Kurdish region at a time when the Turks are attacking parts of that region ? Is al-Qaeda supporting the Turks ?

House approves $70 billion more for war

By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
24 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Ending dual spending battles with President Bush, the Democratic-controlled Congress passed a $555 billion bill Wednesday that funds the Iraq war well into next year and government agencies through September.

Apparently, the US had "depicted" Kurdish militias in northern Iraq and reported its findings to the Turks

They are combating - at once - the Mahdi Army of Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, former Ba'athists loyal to ex-president Saddam Hussein, and al-Qaeda. And to say the least, the US is winning none of these wars. It simply cannot open another front in the relatively stable district of northern Iraq. That is why it has turned a blind eye to PKK activity in Iraqi Kurdistan, enabling the military group to set up bases, recruit people and purchase arms for cross-border operations into Turkey.

Fred Barnes On Washington-led Maliki Assassination Plot

On the other hand, you know, we went through this in Vietnam, when they - when the U. S. conspired to get President [Ngo Dinh] Diem murdered actually and then that's a - a sequence of people after that who could not lead.

NIE report postulated that the al-Maliki government had six to twelve months before it would collapse

Undaunted, Birnbaum forged ahead, stating that the NIE report postulated that the al-Maliki government had six to twelve months before it would collapse.

Charles Krauthammer took up the verbal cudgel, saying "Look, despite how the Maliki issue is being used here politically, he has to go. He's a disaster, not just because he's weak but because he may not be our friend. He said earlier in the week, when he was in Syria when he heard about what Senator Levin had said about ousting him, 'Well, we have our friends in the region.' He means Syria and Iran. We should have been working to undermine him for at least all of this year. ... And it isn't undemocratic. Iraq has a parliamentary system. In every parliamentary system in Canada or Britain or elsewhere if you lose the confidence of the Parliament, you go."

Comment: So, let me get this straight. Al-Maliki is a bad leader because he doesn't dance to the tune played by the United States and instead tries to forge alliances of mutual benefit with his neighbors, one Shi'a (Iran), one with a Shi'a government ruling over a Sunni population(Syria)? *

My Person of the Year: Nuri al-Maliki

PM Nuri al-Maliki responded to Senator Carl Levin's (D-Michigan) call for him to be unseated, and Bush's failure to support him on Tuesday by unwisely getting hot under the collar and saying he can find other friends in the world to support his endeavor. I predicted that Levin's unwise and inappropriate comment (in a conference call with Tel Aviv!-- Americans have no clue about Middle Eastern politics) would elicit an angry response. Levin managed to make it look as though he were ordered by the Israeli government to see al-Maliki gotten rid of because he was making economic deals with Syria (thus strengthening the latter). I underline that such an interpretation is unfounded, but that is how many in the region see it. Levin is usually sure-footed and careful on Middle East issues, including especially Iraq, so I can't understand why he wants to appoint himself secretary of state all of a sudden. (Source: Informed Comment)

Consider the situation in Iraq. Turkey, a nation with which Iraq is not at war, is in the process of bombing the Kurds in the northern region where Iran, Iraq and Turkey share a border; the Green Zone is deathly violent, volatile and unstable, arguably in the midst of a veritable civil war; the Pentagon, along with its warmongering Congressional mouthpieces and Washington lobbyists, appears to be attempting to precipitate a war with Iran, yet another a country with which the Iraqi government is not at war, with a federal court ruling that Iran had supported Hezbollah in the 1980s; the British are easing out of Basra; Nuri al-Maliki has lost the support of his Sunni bloc in parliament and of the Mahdi Army, his most powerful bloc and the most potent counterweight to the Iraqi Sunni Insurgency. Moreover, not only is Washington in the form of a lobbying firm supporting Ayad Allawi, trying to oust Maliki politically by compromising his parliamentary support, it's even worse.

Leading a nation like Iraq, now, would not be an enviable task, let alone, considering the almost arbitrary lethality of Blackwater, a safe one, if you were Iraqi. Now consider that in lieu of all of this, Washington has suddenly turned against you, supporting your political opposition, possibly even according to either media reports or NIE projections, planning to assassinate you, as they did Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam.

No, your name is not Saddam Hussein. It's Nuri al-Maliki. You are courageous amid the ship of fools and cowards that invaded your country, refuse to depart and are now attemtping to start wars with other countries. No they are not members of Hezbollah or al-Qaeda or Fatah. They are " Washington elites."

You are the only thing that keeps Iraq from going Titanic or Volganeft.

You are my man of 2007.

================================================================================

Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin were two of several US politicians who called for him to be removed from office but he hit back and said the Democrat senators saying that they were acting as if Iraq was "their property" and that they should "come to their senses" and "respect democracy".

In August, 2007, CNN reported that the firm of Barbour, Griffith & Rogers had "begun a public campaign to undermine the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki." The network described BGR as a "powerhouse Republican lobbying firm with close ties to the White House."CNN also mentioned that Ayad Allawi is both al-Maliki's rival and BGR's client, although it did not assert that Allawi had hired BGR to undermine al-Maliki.

The lobbying firm boasts the services of two onetime foreign policy hands of President Bush: Ambassador Robert Blackwill, the former Deputy National Security Adviser, and Philip Zelikow, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Ingrid Henick, a vice president for Barbour Griffith & Rogers, confirmed to CNN the firm has signed a contract to "provide strategic counsel for and on behalf of Dr. Allawi."

Henick refused to comment on why such a prominent Republican firm would work to hurt al-Maliki, whom President Bush has repeatedly backed as the best hope for forging political reconciliation in Iraq.

Pressed on why allies of the White House would be contradicting the president so publicly, the senior administration official said of the lobbyists, "They're making a lot of money."

Wow- remember when people denied that the Iraqi government was a 'puppet for the U.S.'? Now you have a former Prime Minister, chosen by the White House, paying a U.S. PR Firm to lobby the U.S. Congress and White House and undermine the current PM. This is despicable.

Also, Allawi-for-iraq.com is owned by Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Inc , according to WHOIS records.

Very nice journalism here from CNN. Keep it coming.

FACTBOX: Vladimir Putin - man of the year

(Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2007 on Wednesday for bringing stability and renewed status to his country.

US: Turkish attack 'not as agreed to'

By PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press Writer
56 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - U.S. and Turkish military officials were working Wednesday to streamline procedures for any future attacks against rebels in northern Iraq after top American officials in Baghdad were angered about how Sunday's Turkish bombing unfolded.

Response to Dr. Kissinger Part t0

Similarly, in pursuing the cost-benefit rationale, the estimate concludes that a combination of international scrutiny along with security guarantees might "prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program." That is a policy, not an intelligence, judgment. ( Fmr. Sect'y of State, Henry Kissinger )

I disagree that policy considerations assimilated into intelligence estimates are necessarily "policy judgments," as Dr. Kissinger stipulates. There is a distinction. An intelligence " estimate " is just that, a projection, that must, inherently, by definition, incorporate policymaking. In other words, intelligence estimates are a function of an array of possible policies, or policy trajectories, from which one will be chosen or pursued. It is true that the intelligence agent may not be aware of the full scope of that array - a "contollability" conjecture - and that should be all the more reason an estimate not bias intelligence in favor of the desired policy based upon some theoretical interplay of policy and outcome, or estimate. But the outcome of a decision - short-term actionability - or policy - some actionable trajectory - is what an estimate must gage based upon what raw intelligence exists at any present time, t0.

Three formidable examples come to mind, the first of which, a friend told me about, the second being one with which we're all familiar, while the third is related to the second in a reciprocal manner, meaning that the second is also related to the third.

A friend told me recently that a psychic had predicted that if Barack Obama were to accept the Vice Presidential nomination, he'd become President, if not, he'd never be President, which seems to concur with some of Barack's own stated reasoning about the timing being right for his 2008 candidacy rather than, say, 10 or 15 years down the road.

What this seems to be is a " conditional projection, " which is a form of conditional information. In other words, if A is the choice, B will happen; if not, then not B, perhaps ever. So instead of projecting what decision will be made, it projects what will happen if a decision is or is not made. Hence, it's more an examination of the role of decisionmaking in human sociological causality, or the interplay of decision and condition with respect to sociological outcomes, than it is a sheer projection about either what decision will be made regardless of outcome, of what outcome will result despite what decision is made, either of which indicating a kind of preordained order, or inevitability, or fatalism in a case where an outcome, like 9/11, is tragic.

When an intelligence estimate deems to integrate or assimilate decisionmaking and policymaking parameters, it merely says, " This is how a decision may affect projected conditions where those conditions may in turn affect the production of raw data as a function of policy, thereby indicating a posture in one direction or the other, where each all of which, condition, decision, and raw data, combine to affect or determine the estimate. "

So intelligence must report on external diplomatic conditions that decisions and policies may affect, the by-product of which will dictate what's being estimated, the acquisition of WOMDs, the proliferation of extremism or the like.

Fatalism and predestination, on the other hand, are obviously un-American because we believe that democracy to be their antithesis, and that it is, by way of democracy that some subjective notion of " inevitability, " is rendered, or transformed into that which is controllable by virtue of human choice or a multitude of choices filtered through a representative framework - a republic - even as some of the determinors of those choices might be, themselves, subjective.

In other words, the greatest, most powerful bond is to predestination, a bond that can only be transcended where history itself is observable in an unbiased manner, and a bond which is given to the notion of historical recurrence, or symmetry, but also given to a tendency to which human beings are naturally inclined - security. Why ? Because security depends upon predictability, which depends upon symmetry, or recurrence and it is precisely the imposition of security, and thus predictability that the driving force of totalitarianism. From this, historical recurrence follows naturally, but not where its causes are observable in an unbiased manner. Paradoxically, where historical recurrence is supposed to be some liberating force to those things external to us, even to our ability to observe, things that present a threat to our security, it becomes a rather repressive and deliberating force, thrusting to forefront of human affairs the insatiability of human desire embodied in a single or small group of people.

Moreover, there is a psychoanalystic theory of totalitarianism, formulated by Sigmund Freud, during the rise of the Third Reich ( Journal of Management, Vol. 13, No. 1, 41-54 (1987), On the Psychodynamics of Organizational Totalitarianism
Howard S. Schwartz ).


Human fate in totalitarian states is understood to be predestined, which is what distinguishes America. Why is totalitarianism consistent with predestination, conceptually ? Because real, or actual " controllability, " the way its defined in the applied scienes, is contingent upon " observability," which cannot exist in a totalitarian state. For " observability " to exist, there must be freedom. The mind must be free in order to see, else the entire process is biased and the mind sees what it wants to see or has to see under the threat of force. As controllability dwindles or dimishes, predestination, or pure determinism proceeds.

So even though states may evolve in the direction of totalitarianism in a way that appears to be natural, or evolutionary, even with respect to terror, inevitable, its existence is undesirable, and yet that remains unknown until such a time as it becomes observable. But is the undesirability of totalitarianism observable relative to history ? Does the " observability " conjecture bear some historical contingency ? Absolutely. Which is the antithesis of historical recurrence as a function of a totalitarian state and which defines the paradox of totalitarianism: while the prupose of totalitarism may be control which is deemed to be necessary as a result of threats to the state which cannot be mitigated otherwise, control depends upon observability, which cannot exist in the absence of liberty. Controllability and observability, controllability and liberty are thus, interdependent, lest we become fatalistically predestined in the absence of liberty and thus, our own inability to observe, primarily, but among other things as well, truth.

Generally speaking, real-world systems are only partially controllable, and sometimes only indirectly at that, thereby compounding the significance of diplomacy in an effort to modify conditions in such a way that the latter might be enlarged, on virtuous grounds.

In other words, 9/11. Suppose that the government, even the public, had known about 9/11 before it happened. The first problem is apparent. It's a Catch 22. Nobody would have believed that airplanes could have crashed into buildings. It's far too apocalyptic. You would have been called a propagandist crackpot with some sort of vendetta against Islam had you believed such a thing.

But it was real. It was true. Which is the problem. To some extent avoidability, which refutes predestination, depends upon believability, or credibility. In the case of 9/11, it was somewhat more involved. The World Trade Center had been attacked in 1993. By Al-Qaeda, as far as we know, not assuming some wider conspiracy. Airplanes might crash into the World Trade Center. Exactly. And the terrorists had already attacked the Trade Center. So even though it's still apocalyptic, it's more believable because the target, a symbolic target is consistent with a previous attack.

Now let's suppose that the intelligence had entered the system early, by way of a psychic like the one who made the conditonal projection regarding Barack Obama's presidential candidacy. Let's say that the government knew in 1987, 6 years prior to the first Trade Canter attack, in 1993. Of course it would not be deemed credible. There wasn't any precedent for such a thing outside of what occurred in Beirut in 1983. And yet that was an attack on a military installation, with hardly the same symbolism that an attack on the Trade Center might inspire.

When 1993 does arrive, the 2001 projection, an estimate, even with specifics attached, becomes more credible. It has a more substantive basis than just Beirut. But if there's going to be an attack, it can't be stopped. Stopping it might ential consequences. Exactly, which is why we have intelligence agents, one to whom this particular intelligence was reported, the Director of SCS, Robert Philip Hanssen.

So in as much as Dr. Kissinger claims to have defended agents in the past, he did not defend Hanssen. If relations with Russia were st stake as a result of Hanssen's having sold secrets, that's a policy consideration, not an intelligence estimate. To not stop an attack for political reasons is beyond atrocious; it's an act of depraved indifference.

So the attack could not be stopped. Why ? Because a psychic predicted it ? Or because we were not a democracy, which is what I believe to be a more fundamental reason. George W. Bush was elected by the Supreme Court, and was still an unelected leader at the time we went to war with Iraq, in 2003. The government of the United States was illegitimate, the war was illegal, and still is, threatening now, to become World War III. The war is predicated on the testimony of an Iraqi defector by the name of " Curveball, " testimony that ended up in Bush's state of the union address.

The problem here is exactly the opposite of what Dr. Kissinger claims it to be. The problem is that intelligence that would have been conditional, may have stopped the attack, or at least mitigated it, in the very least, led us along a decisionmaking trajectory that would render the most desirable outcome. To merely accept that an attack is going to happen, that it can't be stopped, that we shouldn't even try, that it can be easily, given the power of the American media, attributed, to Saddam Hussein, to justify an invasion, who villainized during Desert Storm, and a Sunni Muslim, is again, beyond atrocious, beyond even depraved - it's premeditated. Saddam Hussein was exonerated by the 9/11 Commission.

The U.S. military is still in Iraq, for no apparent reason. And how long has the U.S. Military occupied Saudi Arabia ? And how democratic is Saudi Arabia ? I'll tell you. Saudi Arabia just granted a girl who'd been raped there, clemency. How generous.

Response To Dr. Kissinger

The NIE does not so much reject this theory; it does not even examine it. It concludes that "Tehran's decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon." But a cost-benefit analysis does not exclude a rush to weapons on a systematic basis. It depends on the criteria by which costs and benefits are determined. Similarly, in pursuing the cost-benefit rationale, the estimate concludes that a combination of international scrutiny along with security guarantees might "prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program." That is a policy, not an intelligence, judgment.

In drawing a distinction between policy, " might ' prompt Tehran to halt its nuclear weapons program,'" and intelligence, " We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program, " Former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger raises an excellent point: The NIE has become a policy vehicle.

Yet, what appears to also be the case is the suggestion that Dr. Kissinger either supported, or currently does support the use of military force to secure the outcome.

By the fall of 2003, when Iran voluntarily joined the Additional Protocol for Nuclear Non-Proliferation, Saddam Hussein had just been overthrown. Is it unreasonable to assume that the ayatollahs concluded that restraint had become imperative? By the fall of 2005, the American effort in Iraq showed signs of bogging down; the prospects for extending the enterprise into Iran were diminishing. Iranian leaders could have felt free to return to their policy of building up a military nuclear capability -- perhaps reinforced by the desire to create a deterrent to American regional aspirations.

What Dr. Kissinger seems to indicate is that a military presence in both Afghanistan and Iraq has proven to be a deterrent, at least with regard to warhead development, which he qualifies by questioning whether the warhead development timeline is even a mitigating factor once some critical mass of fissile material has been accumulated:

The NIE holds that Iran may be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by the end of 2009 and, with increasing confidence, more warheads by the period 2010 to 2015. That is virtually the same timeline as was suggested in the 2005 National Intelligence Estimate. The new estimate does not assess how long it would take to build a warhead, though it treats the availability of fissile material as the principal limiting factor. If there is a significant gap between these two processes, it would be important to be told what it is. Nor are we told how close to developing a warhead Tehran was when it suspended its program or how confident the intelligence community is in its ability to learn when work on warheads has resumed.

So, in identifying the notorious " gap " that the NIE fails to quantify in terms of fissile material production and warhead development and production, a gap that may extend the far end of that 2009 - 2015 timeline, Dr. Kissinger speculates that the current halt in warhead development is actually directed toward a more subtle strategy that will phase in a warhead in a brief period of time, and at which there will be ample fissile material available; hence, a short warhead development gap in the context of enriched uranium.

In short, if my analysis is correct, we could be witnessing not a halt of the Iranian weapons program -- as the NIE asserts -- but a subtle, ultimately more dangerous, version of it that will phase in the warhead when fissile material production has matured.

Dr. Kissinger's conclusions regarding Iran hold that normalization of relations is in order.

What is required is a specific vision linking assurances for Iran's security and respect for its identity with an Iranian foreign policy compatible with the existing order in the Middle East. But it must also generate an analysis of the strategy to be pursued should Iran, in the end, choose ideology over reconciliation.

But how Dr. Kissinger is able to speculate upon so obscure, almost purely subjective a notion as " existing order, " is anyone's hypothesis. The existing order in the Middle East appears to be one in which most Arab states want the United States to end the Iraqi occupation, which is exactly what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said to Morley Safer on 60 Minutes.

Misreading the Iran Report

Why Spying and Policymaking Don't Mix

By Henry A. Kissinger
Thursday, December 13, 2007; A35

The extraordinary spectacle of the president's national security adviser obliged to defend the president's Iran policy against a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) raises two core issues: How are we now to judge the nuclear threat posed by Iran? How are we to judge the intelligence community's relationship with the White House and the rest of the government?

Response to Bolton's Pas de Deux

" Second, the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported. It implies that Iran is susceptible to diplomatic persuasion and pressure, yet the only event in 2003 that might have affected Iran was our invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, not exactly a diplomatic pas de deux."

Just for the record, I won't be bashing the French here, calling for freedom fries, sledgehammering automobiles, pouring out bottles of Dom, shaking down recount trailers. So please don't tase me bro, that is, if you just so happen to be from one of the red states.

I'm actually happy to see that Mr. Bolton, unlike one of his predecessors, Mr. Rumsfeld, who appeared to have struggled so mightily with " situational awareness " that, 9/11 aside, he wasn't even aware by the spring of 2005 that Iraqis had been sex tortured at Abu Ghraib even though Seymour Hersch, a pulitzer-prize winning journalist and one of the paragons of his generation, had written about it a year earlier in the New Yorker. What that serves to demonstrate is the power of the mass media to persuade public perception. 9/11 could not have been more demonstrative of that power, which is what lends Osama bin Laden the almost surreal nature of his persona. But the question at hand here is whether some veritable combination of media and war have the same kind of power to persuade an entire nation-state like Iran.

Do I sympathize with Don ? In a way, yes. I felt bad that, as Maureen Dowd had reported, others members of the Bush cabal had treated him as the elder eccentric uncle. Don was upset for a time that the French had opposed the invasion. It led to French-bashing which costs America diplomatic capital, particularly at the U.N., where because America is a superpower, America is held to a higher standard. Iran-Contra didn't help the Republican cause either. And now it's torture, which clearly violates the High Commission on Torture, which went into force in June, 1987, but seems to have been contradicted by a loophole in the Torture Treaty passed by a Republican Congress in 1994, which many of its imcoming members, taking their cues from Newt, who appears, at this juncture to be resigned to World War III, probably failed to read.

I don't exactly follow Mr. Bolton when he claims that the Iraqi Invasion has had little effect on diplomacy relative to Iran. He makes it appear as if the invasion was nothing more than an insignificant element of a broader diplomatic policy and geostrategic calculus. The very theme of the invasion was Saddam's suspected weapons-of-mass-destruction program, although it might also be looked upon as vindication for Saddam's use of poison gas during Desert Storm and alleged involvement in the 1994 CIA-Langley attack documented in the 9/11 Report, which presumably led to Saddam's suspected involvement with 9/11 itself, an attack for which Saddam was vindicated by the commission.

But here's the rub, which, I would hope Mr. Bolton might agree, could even be likened to the kind of intelligence analysis that might have, and notevenwithstanding sodomy or waterboarding, stopped 9/11 : if we're just now discovering, via our much beloved mass media, that it was Iran that allegedly bombed Argentina in 1994, rather than Al-Qaeda, which might have been the obvious conclusion as a result of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, and which may have led to the idea of Saddam's involvement, as a function of the belief that he was, as a Sunni Muslim, supporting Osama, which was, as has been noted by Senator Carl Levin ( D-Mi ), since, dispelled by the DIA in 2003, prior to the invasion, then how do we know that it was not Iran that bombed Langley in 2004, assuming, as we witnessed with the 7/7/05, and then 7/21/05, London bombings, some measure or degree of coordination and simultanaeity ?

So Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction, wasn't supporting Osama, and may have had nothing to do with the 1994 attack on Langley which resulted in a Clinton counterattack and likely, the 1998 incursion of alleged 1441 violations, and yet Saddam is dead. What we do know about the 1994 Langley attack is that it involved Pakistanis, which is not at all unusual, as so too did the 7/7/05 London subway bombings. What we know about the Iranian nuclear program, with respect to the latest intelligence, that enriched uranium had been discovered on a centrifuge at the University of Tehran, is that the centrifuge was ascertained from Pakistan. And there have been unsubstantiated reports that Syria was able to acquire nuclear technology from North Korea. But again, how do we know that it wasn't acquired from Pakistan ?

Moreover, there were also nuclear triggers discovered in Dubai, caught by customs, in transit, about which the status is still somewhat ambiguous as Dubai has attempted recently to purchase a significant part of the Nasdaq, and as Halliburton is currently set up a regional headquarters there.

More importantly, there was a French teen who was sodomized in Dubai, but the case hasn't been presecuted because it does not violate UAR law, even though it certainly violates international law and if I was Nick Sarkozy, I would not hesitate for a second to make my case to NATO that the entire government be forcibly deposed until such time as there was a law that might address such an atrocity.

That said, I would hesitate to support the surreptitious use of force, NATO or otherwise, regardless of whether there was an international legal vacuum, because it would open the door too easily to intervention on grounds that might sometimes be perceived to be tenuous. I would, however, sympathize with the argument, support pressure on the UAR to reform, notify the U.N. and contact NATO where a compliance plan was not set into motion in a timely manner. In other words, regarding such a matter, there would be no place for indifference, whether it was Abu Ghraib, or Dubai. Such a sitution would have to be acted upon or the door would be kept ajar to the possible future use of force.

How many of us were aware that Iran had bombed Argentina in 1994, an immediate precedent and probably almost certain cause of the Argentinian credit crisis that lingers on even today, and was exacerbated after 9/11 in a way that continues to pose a threat to world credit markets ? Were those attacks coordinated, and moreover, coordinated in such a way as to precipitate a global credit market crisis which could, as it did in 1987, result in a major stock market correction, a correction that military dictatorships worldwide would almost invariably leverage, leaving the United States with much less diplomatic capital than even the current Iraqi Invasion ?

The Flaws In the Iran Report

By John R. Bolton
Thursday, December 6, 2007; Page A29

Rarely has a document from the supposedly hidden world of intelligence had such an impact as the National Intelligence Estimate released this week. Rarely has an administration been so unprepared for such an event. And rarely have vehement critics of the "intelligence community" on issues such as Iraq's weapons of mass destruction reversed themselves so quickly.

Bush: Iran must explain nuclear program

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday called on Iran to explain why it had a secretive nuclear weapons program, and warned that any such efforts must not be allowed to flourish "for the sake of world peace."

World powers set to discuss Iran sanctions Tuesday

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World powers will hold talks on Tuesday over finalizing the text of a third U.N. sanctions resolution against Iran which could be voted on in the coming weeks, said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.

WKGB-TV: Putting the big dots together

All we heard, after 9/11, was that the intelligence community had failed, and failed miserably - failed to " put the dots together." And we accepted it, in the haze of a traumatic aftermath, just as the South Vietnamese were once upon a time in the early 1970s, told that they would have to accept being ruled by the communist North Vietnamese.

We accepted it as a function of traumatic stress and the state of partial cognitive incapacitation it induced, which is why many Americans sympathize with the alleged " enemies " who've been tortured. Americans have also been tortured, by the trauma of 9/11, and then the fact that we'd be forced to accept our own willingness to believe things that have since been dispelled and disproven, things like WOMDS, things like " Saddam attacked us on 9/11;" things that are, in fact, not little things, but big things, things intent on deceiving the American public into supporting an illegal invasion and now longstanding occupation in Iraq that has strained alliances across every continent.

Things that could get us attacked again by Osama bin Laden, who will never have the explicit support of the International Community, but will have gain the willingness of many to look the other way because of how America is currently perceived as a function of the actions and decisions of the Bush administration.

Why are the lies important and serious ? Because a democratically-controlled Congress would normally have the ability to end a war that could result in terrorist attacks on the American people, a war that would threaten the public safety of every American in the face of a government incapable of stopping attacks that prior to 9/11, countless governments warned the adminstration were imminent. It didn't matter. 9/11 was not stopped even though the CIA knew was told by French Intelligence, and the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, told the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice. John Ashcroft wanted to know why the FBI didn't know. Maybe he could have asked Agent Hanssen. Or, better yet, maybe Hanssen should never have been prosecuted.

So the problem here is not entirely in the intelligence ranks, but also in the diplomatic ranks.

Somehow it's our fault. Either we've done wrong in the Middle East at some point and probably aren't aware of it because we're in the process of being systematically deceived by our own government and Pentagon-controlled media which, together form what President Dwight Eisenhower, Noam Chomsky, C. Wright Mills and others called the " military-industrial complex," which might also be referred to as the " media-industrial " complex; or we've been deceived and can't respond as a result of the trauma of 9/11 combined with the denial that resulted from 9/11 and an increased willingness to fall victim to deception, which compounds that same denial, because we're forced to accept our own fallibility, or that we can be deceived, and those doing it will never be held accountable.

Truth be told, the Vietnam war will always be a part our both our politics and our national identity, as it is very much a part of the current war in Iraq, both in rhetorical form, and in real strategic and domestic political-ideological terms. Why was south bombed by the north when American troops finally vacated in 1975 ? Did it have anything to do with Russian and Chinese military support ?

That's only a part-rhetorical question ? Again, it has real connotations. 9/11 was entirely surreal, or symbolic, even as watching it on television may have led us to believe otherwise. The surreal, although vile and evil in the most hideous of ways, is also captivating to the human imagination. Our response is invariably a rhetorical, diplomacy-seeking one; hence, we were against the war, and we were right. Saddam was exonerated. Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. But neither did he possess weapons on mass destruction, even as Washington still occupies Iraq while the vast majority of Americans are against it.

Bush appears to be incapable of understanding the American people in as much what has evolved since Vietnam is a very keen distaste for war. Republicans still whine that public opposition to the Vietnam war is the reason why we lost.

We lost a proxy war we were fighting, and still are, with Russia and China, in Vietnam, only now it's in Iraq. Did we fight a second proxy war in Afghanistan in late 1970s, that included support for Osama bin Laden and the mujahideen, against Russia ? Yes. And Russia has suffered dramatically because of it and Vladimir Putin is capitalizing, as any nationalistic dictator might be inclined to do. It's not entirely politically irrational at 'this particular juncture ? to either demonize the west or join in the spirit of demonization that permeates much of the extremist Islamic Middle East, and parts of Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.

Our response to 9/11 was invariably rhetorical, and bureacratic, because we're invariably human and we want to know why they'd want to kill us, whomever they are. and what we did wrong in some foreign land, again probably unbeknownst to most Americans, as were many of the sins of Vietnam, some of which, like waterboarding, have appeared to recur, or repeat themselves in Iraq.

Does that make Iraq, Vietnam ? Strategically, no, but relative to public perception and support competing with opposition to the war, and war competing for the human soul, or where " soul meets body, " yes. Was it, as in Vietnam, agent orange, which is - for those of us Generation X'ers who have, even though we still listen to R.E.M., religiously, lost our religion - also known as " Orange Crush " ?

Probably not. But for Saddam it may have been. He did not hesitate to use gas during Desert Storm which many inside of the Beltway believe is the real reason Bush went to war. Hundreds of thousands of veteran's suffer from Gulf War Syndrome today.

So now that Russia appears to have tested and featured on Russian television, which one might might be inclined to refer to as KGB-TV, or, better yet, WKGB-TV, and which I'm sure every cable operator in the West would die to be able to offer as part of a package that might also include Al-Jazeera and the Red Hugo Channel, featured " the bomb " which actually is, according to some, the most powerful non-nuclear weapon known to the intelligence and miltary community; featured the bomb on, of all days, 9/11, hopefully, in the spirit of a vast departure from the failure to put the together prior to 9/11, Washington will be able to, in the very least, begin a process of putting the big dots together.

Russia sends warning to the West

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent

President Putin wants Russia to be treated as an equal by the US.President Vladimir Putin's decision to suspend Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe, or CFE, treaty is a potent political signal.

Russia tests giant fuel-air bomb ( on 9/11 )

Wednesday, 12 September 2007, 12:29 GMT 13:29 UK

Russia tests giant fuel-air bomb

Russia's main TV channels carried reports on the test

The Russian air force has tested a giant fuel-air bomb which the military says is the biggest non-nuclear explosive device in the world.
Russian TV showed a Tupolev bomber dropping the bomb over a test range, a powerful explosion and a four-storey building reduced to rubble.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ( who ) has become the public face of opposition to new U.N. sanctions

Rice seeks Russian backing on Iran By MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press Writer
49 minutes ago

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Armed with support from NATO allies, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will try to convince a skeptical Russia that it should back U.S. plans to step up pressure on Iran to suspend its nuclear activities

The American people should march to the White House and immediately tar and feather Bush & Cheney and toss them into the Potomac.

The Bush/Cheney administration claims that the NIE proves they were right is the most amazingly ridiculous spin I have ever seen. The American people should march to the White House and immediately tar and feather Bush & Cheney and toss them into the Potomac. Their claim is like a cop arresting someone based on bad information, then that person is found to not have done anything wrong, and the cop claims that law enforcement policies are working because they deterred the guy from committing a crime. What a crock.

Bush lied then, so why should we trust him now?

Prior to the Powell presentation to the UN and proior to the State of the Union on Iraq's WMD, it was known that the Engineers at the TVA Nuclear Lab had reported that the Iraqi aluminum tubes were not adequate for nuclear reactor use, the CIA had researched and determined that there was no meeting between Al Qaida and Iraqi representatives in Czechoslovakia/

A Blow to Bush's Tehran Policy

By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A01

President Bush got the world's attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

VIDEO | Bush: Iran's Nuclear Program Still a Threat

Bush: Iran's Nuclear Program Still a Threat

U.S. Renews Efforts to Keep Coalition Against Tehran

Bush Says New NIE Shows Iran Is Still a Threat

By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; Page A23

President Bush scrambled yesterday to hold together a fragile international coalition against Iran, declaring that the Islamic republic remains "dangerous" and that "nothing has changed" despite a new intelligence report that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago.

Comparing Two Intelligence Estimates on Iran

" Assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons...

U.S. nuclear report opportunity for Iran: IAEA chief

By Isabel Versiani

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A U.S intelligence report saying Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 offered Tehran a "window of opportunity" to resolve the crisis, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed El-Baradei, said on Wednesday

U.S. Finds That Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Bid in 2003

By Dafna Linzer and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A01

A major U.S. intelligence review has concluded that Iran stopped work on a suspected nuclear weapons program more than four years ago, a stark reversal of previous intelligence assessments that Iran was actively moving toward a bomb.

Lessons of Iraq Aided Intelligence On Iran

By Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 5, 2007; Page A01

The starkly different view of Iran's nuclear program that emerged from U.S. spy agencies this week was the product of a surge in clandestine intelligence-gathering in Iran as well as radical changes in the way the intelligence community analyzes information.

NIE Estimate on Iranian Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities

NIE Estimate on Iranian Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities (pdf)

Iran declares victory after U.S. nuclear report

By Reza Derakhshi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's president declared victory over the United States on Wednesday and the head of a U.N. watchdog said Iran had been "somewhat vindicated" by a U.S. report that it halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 — A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

Report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program

By Matt Spetalnick
44 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new U.S. intelligence report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold, contradicting the Bush administration's earlier assertion that Tehran was intent on developing a bomb.

The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released on Monday could undermine U.S. efforts to convince other world powers to agree on a third package of U.N. sanctions against Iran for defying demands to halt uranium enrichment activities.

Tensions have escalated in recent months as Washington has ratcheted up the rhetoric against Tehran, with U.S. President George W. Bush insisting in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War Three.

Marines to cut armored vehicle orders

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 31 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The Marines plan to buy fewer bomb-resistant vehicles than planned despite pressure from lawmakers who are determined to spend billions of dollars on the vehicles.

Bush pushes Democrats to OK war funding

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 15 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - President Bush sternly pressed Democrats to approve money to fund the Iraq war "without strings and without delay" before leaving town for the Christmas holidays, something congressional leaders have already indicated they will not do.

After Annapolis, hurdles for Israeli and Palestinian leaders

Observers warn that Palestinian President Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Olmert may be too weak to keep peace efforts on track.
By Joshua Mitnick | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 29, 2007 edition

Can Iran and Hamas Sink Annapolis?

By SCOTT MACLEOD
Wed Nov 28, 12:25 PM ET

As would-be peacemakers bask in the international limelight of the Annapolis conference, back in the Middle East two other parties are serving up notice that no deal will come to pass, if they can help it: Iran and its Palestinian ally, Hamas. "The Annapolis conference was already a failure," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told journalists after a cabinet meeting in Tehran on Wednesday.

Recapping the Annapolis Mideast Conference

Aaron David Miller
Woodrow Wilson Center Public Policy Scholar
Wednesday, November 28, 2007; 12:30 PM

Aaron David Miller, a Woodrow Wilson Center public policy scholar and an adviser to the State Department on Israeli-Palestinian issues for 25 years, was online Wednesday, Nov. 28 at 12:30 p.m. to analyze the outcome of the Mideast Conference in Annapolis, Md., which is scheduled to end Tuesday.

Iran leader vows no concessions on nukes

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 34 minutes ago


ARDABIL, Iran - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed again Wednesday not to make concessions to the West over Iran's nuclear program, while an Iranian newspaper reproached the hard-line leader for his attacks on critics in the country's conservative camp.

Bush Presses Congress for Iraq War Funding

By Scott Stearns
White House
21 November 2007


President Bush is pressing Congress to approve his latest budget request for the war in Iraq, where he says leaders are beginning to make progress toward political reconciliation. VOA White House Correspondent Scott Stearns has the story

Middle East Peace Conference Convenes Next Week

By Meredith Buel
Washington
21 November 2007

Listen to Buel report

The United States has invited nearly 50 countries and international organizations to a Middle East peace conference next week designed as a springboard for Israel and the Palestinians to begin negotiations toward a solution of their conflict.

Washington In Iraq: A Convenient Truth

Iraq is not at war with Iran, but Washington appears to be posturing for just such a follow-up invasion, one that Americans fear would, in many ways, mirror the second Iraqi invasion. But based on everything we know about Al Qaeda in Iraq, it is but a small faction, a fraction of what might curtail counterinsurgency efforts there led by the Pentagon In Iraq and the Iraqi government.

The problem is really not the Pentagon In Iraq, just as it is not Al Qaeda In Iraq, just as it was not Saddam who bombed the Trade Center on 9/11, in Iraq. Clearly, the problem is becoming Washington In Iraq, which will become, if we're not careful, Washington In Iran. How are Pentagon commanders supposed to explain to the Shiite-led Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki that while Washington might be preparing for a war with Iran, over its nuclear programs, the Pentagon's primary concern is stability in Iraq, which could even be compromised by just such saber-rattling ? Sure the Iranian nuclear program is a concern to the International Community. But notwithstanding an Iraqi government at war with Iran, how can the Pentagon In Iraq justify to the Iraqi government and American people, Washington at war with Iran ?

It makes it appear as if the entire Iraqi endeavor was directed at Iran in the first place, and as if the Iraqi invasion, predicated on the testimony of one, " Curveball," was devoid any redeemingly substantive basis. Saddam never possessed WOMDs, even as the American people continued for at least two years after the invasion to believe otherwise.

That's not to say that Saddam never violated international law, in the early 1980s, as an Iraqi court ruled. But it happened in the context of a war with Iran. So the same arguments that the adminstration uses to justify sex torture with political aims of the kind that were committed at Abu Ghraib, because those acts occurred in the context of a war, coincide with what arguments were long used to justify acts committed by Saddam that were found to be genocidal, more than two decades hence, and not without strategic implication.

Again, if the purpose of invading Iraq was to wage war with Iran, strategically, the idea that Saddam had once committed genocide becomes ever less compelling with respect to the real strategic motive. The fact that Saddam committed genocide becomes nothing more than a convenient truth.

The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (Paperback)

A sprawling chronicle that details how a clutch of Ivy- educated Wall Street attorneys and their associates--the ``Old Boy network''--created the Central Intelligence Agency and influenced the formative decades of the cold war.

Prelude to Terror: the Rogue CIA, The Legacy of America's Private Intelligence Network the Compromising of American Intelligence

by Joseph J. Trento (Author) "THE MASSIVE INTELLIGENCE failures that resulted in the September 11th attacks have left many people wondering how this could have happened..."

1976: CIA and Other Intelligence Agencies Use BCCI to Control and Manipulate Criminals and Terrorists Worldwide

Saudi Intelligence Minister Kamal Adham is given the task. “With the official blessing of George H. W. Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed a small Pakistani merchant bank, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a world-wide money-laundering machine, buying banks around the world to create the biggest clandestine money network in history.” BCCI was founded in 1972 by a Pakistani named Agha Hasan Abedi, who was an associate of Adham’s. Bush himself has an account at BCCI established while still director of the CIA. French customs will later raid the Paris BCCI branch and discover the account in Bush’s name.

Bhutto: Time for Musharraf to go

LAHORE, Pakistan (CNN) -- Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto on Tuesday called on President Gen. Pervez Musharraf to immediately step down in the wake of a mass crackdown on the opposition this week.

Pakistan ISI officials well aware of Osama's whereabouts, CIA Officer

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf may not be knowing about al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden's presence within Pakistan's territorial limits, but ISI officials are very well aware about his whereabouts, CIA officer Gary Schroen, who spearheaded US' search for Osama in Afghanistan, has said.

ISI was in bed with Osama: 9/11 commission

July 23, 2004 10:05 IST
Last Updated: July 23, 2004 10:37 IST

While conceding that Pakistan's intelligence service "was in bed with Osama bin Laden", the bipartisan 9/11 Commission has recommended that the US should give long-term military and other aid to Pakistan.

How George Bush became the new Saddam

Patrick Graham

It was embarrassing putting my flak jacket on backwards and sideways, but in the darkness of the Baghdad airport car park I couldn’t see anything. “Peterik, put the flak jacket on,” the South African security contractor was saying politely, impatiently. “You know the procedure if we are attacked.”

Experts: Danger of nuclear-armed Iran may be hyped

By Warren P. Strobel

McClatchy Newspapers

Posted on Sunday, November 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — A hostile country led by anti-American ideologues appears close to developing its first nuclear weapon and, as a U.S. election approaches, the president and his advisers debate a pre-emptive military strike. Newspaper columnists demand action to stop the nuclear peril.

Turkish helicopters strike inside Iraq

By YAHYA BARAZANJI, Associated Press Writer
16 minutes ago

ULAIMANIYAH, Iraq - Turkish helicopter gunships attacked abandoned villages inside Iraq on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said, the first such airstrike since border tensions have escalated in recent months.

Commentary: Inexorable march toward war with Iran?

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, October 31, 2007

There were some things far more frightening this week than Halloween's small ghouls and goblins — and the scariest of all is the Bush administration's seemingly inexorable march toward military confrontation with Iran.

PetroChina tops $1 trillion in value, snatches crown from Exxon Mobil

BEIJING — The state-controlled firm PetroChina toppled Exxon Mobil from its perch Monday as the world's most highly valued company as eager Chinese investors briefly pushed its value to $1.1 trillion

As military balks, Chinese public pushes for aircraft carriers

TIANJIN, China — On a windswept pier at the Binhai theme park, tourists board an aged Russian aircraft carrier, the Kiev, and imagine what it would be like if China had such a symbol of maritime might.

Iraq orders $100 million arms supply from China

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq has ordered light military equipment from China worth $100 million because the United States is unable to meet Baghdad's requirements, the Washington Post reported President Jalal Talabani as saying

100,000 U.S. troops could leave soon: Iraq president

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At least 100,000 U.S. troops could return home from Iraq by the end of 2008, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said in an interview aired on Sunday although he proposed that several American military bases stay in Iraq.

Iranians held by U.S. released

By Bobby Caina Calvan | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, November 9, 2007

BAGHDAD — Nine Iranians held captive by the U.S. military, including two accused of helping smuggle weapons into Iraq, were freed Friday as military commanders continued monitoring for signs that Iran is sticking to its pledge to stop arming and supporting Shiite Muslim militias.

Millions of Iranians ready for martyrdom: Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday millions of Iranians would be ready to sacrifice themselves fighting the country's enemies, in an apparent reference to the United States and its allies.

U.S. business fears backlash from Iran sanctions bill

By Doug Palmer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. companies doing business in the European Union, China, Russia and other countries could face retaliation if a bill aimed at pressuring Iran to give up nuclear weapons becomes law, industry officials said on Wednesday

Bhutto under house arrest in Pakistan

By ZARAR KHAN, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 20 minutes ago

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pakistani police placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest Friday, uncoiling barbed wire in front of her Islamabad villa, and reportedly rounding up thousands of her supporters to block a mass protest against emergency rule.

China sees lessons for Iran in North Korea: report

BEIJING (Reuters) - Six-country talks that have nudged North Korea towards nuclear disarmament could be a model for defusing a standoff with Iran, but Washington appears set on a different path, an official Chinese newspaper said on Thursday.

In the overseas edition of the People's Daily -- the ruling Communist Party's mouthpiece -- China's former ambassador to Iran said six-party negotiations hosted by Beijing set an example for engaging Tehran, which is pressing ahead with nuclear development that Western powers say could give it weapons capability.

U.S. ambassador raps Norway for dialogue with Iran

By John Acher

OSLO (Reuters) - The U.S. ambassador to Norway said on Wednesday that Oslo's dialogue with Iran risked helping to legitimize policies of the Iranian government.

Ambassador Benson Whitney said his remarks were meant as "constructive suggestions" to a close and valued ally.

Bush: Threat of World War III if Iran goes nuclear

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush warned on Wednesday a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to World War III as he tried to shore up international opposition to Tehran amid Russian skepticism over its nuclear ambitions.

Bush was speaking a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has resisted Western pressure to toughen his stance over Iran's nuclear program, made clear on a visit to Tehran that Russia would not accept any military action against Iran.

Putin gave Iran "special" atomic message: report

During the visit, Putin made clear to Washington that Russia would not accept military action against Iran and he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Moscow for talks.

Russia to sell Iran 50 MiG-29 engines: report

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to sign a deal to sell 50 new jet engines to Iran for the Islamic Republic's air force during his visit to Tehran, a Russian newspaper said on Tuesday.

Russian business daily Kommersant, citing unnamed sources, said an initial $150 million deal for 50 RD-33 turbo-thrust engines for Iran's Azarakhsh fighters could be signed while Putin attends a Caspian regional summit in the Iranian capital.

Putin tells U.S. not to strike Iran

By Oleg Shchedrov and Parisa Hafezi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin made clear to Washington on Tuesday that Russia would not accept military action against Iran and he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Moscow for talks.

Putin made the invitation to Ahmadinejad, shunned by the West which fears his nuclear program is a cover for building atomic weapons, after meeting him and leaders of other Caspian Sea states who ruled out any strikes on Iran from their region.

New sanctions boosts talk of war with Iran

By Sue Pleming - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration's decision on Thursday to slap more sanctions on Tehran is aimed at hiking diplomatic pressure over its nuclear program but experts say it will be seen by many as a step closer to war.

Talk of war and anti-Iranian rhetoric has mounted in recent months over Tehran's refusal to give up sensitive nuclear work the West says is aimed at building a bomb, with so-called hawks in the administration pushing for action before President George W. Bush's term ends in January, 2009.

U.S. slaps new sanctions on Iran

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States slapped new sanctions on Iran and accused its Revolutionary Guard of spreading weapons of mass destruction on Thursday but Russian President Vladimir Putin said such moves only forced Tehran into a corner over its nuclear program.

Also labeling Iran's Qods military force a supporter of terrorism, Washington imposed sanctions on more than 20 Iranian companies, banks and individuals as well as the defense ministry, hoping to increase pressure on Tehran to stop uranium enrichment and curb its "terrorist" activities.

U.S. says plans new talks soon with Iran on Iraq

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - U.S. ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker said on Saturday he expected to meet his Iranian counterparts most likely in the next few weeks to discuss Iraq.

"The (Iran-U.S.) channel is not dead," Crocker told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on Iraq in Istanbul.

Iran welcomes atomic cooperation idea, will not yield

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran welcomes proposals to work with other countries to enrich uranium but will not accept an offer that requires Tehran to halt its sensitive atomic work, its deputy chief nuclear negotiator said on Saturday.

Congress presses Iran but wants to avoid war

By Susan Cornwell - Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Americans weary of the Iraq war and U.S. elections on the horizon, Congress is struggling over how to get tough on Iran without giving President George W. Bush a blank check for a military strike.

New threat stirs Iraqi nationalism

Oct 30, 2007 04:30 AM
Richard Gwyn

The Turkish man on the street, stopped by a roving BBC-TV camera crew, answered the reporter's question with a much more challenging question of his own.

Why, he asked, did the United States "support the Israelis in Lebanon when just a couple of soldiers were kidnapped?"

Ouch.

Multi-unilateralism and World War

An outbreak of unilateralism. Sounds like the making of something revolutionary.

Exactly. Exactly why the United Nations was formed after World War II.

Is London, for instance, part of the broader European Union, or does it exist in a special category ? How many special categories are there, for states, actors, regimes, agendas?

When Prince Charles or Bush/Cheney meet with Saudi royalty, and arab states enter into a campaign of support for providing Iran with uranium to meet energy demands, an Iran currently in economic turmoil, does it signal, as it did with Iraq, and by most accounts, wrongly, the tendency to isolate a single state when there are any number of arab states, including Egypt, with nuclear programs ?

And what happens when one of those Arab states, not capable of governance by a union of arab states, decides to, as a western regime or agenda, or actor, even, might, act unilaterally ?

I don't known that Osama bin Laden will serve as culpable pretext with respect to an invasion of Iran, or even weapons of mass destruction, which may or not at some point in time exist in Iran, but certainly, in this round of diplomatic negotations with two of the world's largest oil suppliers, who appear to now be under a systematic demonization and raid strategy, cannot render the kind of subjective basis, to those who consider themselves rational, for an invasion of Iran, at least not without the Security Council moving to take swift action, as it did against Saddam in 1990, against states which presume to invade a state such Iran, which hasn't deemed to invade or materially threaten any of its neighbors.

Oh, I know. Ahmadinejad said that he wanted to wipe Israel off of the map. And Bush believes that North and South Korea are technically still at war. Should we simply tarverse the entire list of stupid things leaders have ever said that have never led to WW III, before this does ? Do we have to go there ? Are the Bush Rogues that simple-minded and ignorant ?

What would Americans likely support, World War III, or the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, as a measure in pursuit of world peace ? Is Bush really a greater threat to world peace than Osama ?

In fact, Iran actually supports the current Iraqi neighborly regime, a fact that Bush and the Pentagon-In-Iraq may not like, but a fact nonetheless, that Bush and his allies, of which there may be one remaining, who is known to travel under the name, Luci, will be forced to reckon, as it pertains to international law. At what point does the U.N. decide to send peacekeepers into Iraq to prevent an outbreak of war between the PIQ and Iran, with Iraq as a launching pad ? Is the PIQ not not functioning as a " state within a state ? " Hopefully, as his predecessor did, amply, Secretary Moon is well, and amply aware, of the predisposition of Americans toward the illegal war, rape, torture, brutality and atrocity occurring in Iraq as we speak.

Americans do not eat and drink while tommorrow others starve and die so that states and corporations, the fascist elite, can extort wealth from the powerless. If Oil-For-Food was not that, what was it ? How many states supported the first Iraqi invasion, led by the first President Bush ? And why ? Because there may be profit attached. And money is not a good reason to support the killing and slaughter, not to mention disgusting and perverted acts of forcible homosexual sodomy that to which Iraqis have been exposed at the hands of the second, far worse, Bush. Homsexuality and fundmametalism do not make for pleasant bedfellows and Bush knew that going in, as a fundamentalist himself, a Christian fundamentalist, but a fundamentalist nonethless, a dangerous predisposition, about which the Constitition does not distinguish or dicriminate on the basis of religion. In other words, to say that Bush was not a fundamentalist, equally as dangerous as Osama bin Laden, would be an act of discrimination, and one in which liberals would hesitate to engage.

What makes Iran so different ? That seems to be the question to which Barack Obama has been seeking an answer that extends beyond the mere rhetorical diatribe of Bush and Gingrich, the former of which appearing to not only be incapable of distinguishing between Lebanon and Iran, as it might apply to World War, which with such rhetoric, each also seems to support as a measure that neoconservatives attempt to categorically brand as that which will solve the more abstract problem of Osama bin Laden, the condition known as " nuclear proliferation," and the sum of which may result in nuclear terror of a kind that Washington is not prepared to counter or stop.

In neologic, quite simply, war is the answer to terror. Occupying Iraq to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars will somehow either solve the problem or render it soluble. We need to do battle with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, you see. Because that's where they are, right along with those weapons of mass destruction that we'd been telling you about, me and Don, right before the Iraqi invasion that has only served to not only claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, but arguably, an innocent Saddam Hussein, who once supported the United States.

Is it possible to commit genocide in the context of a war, as Congress has been in the process of debating with respect to Turkey ? The Iran-Iraq war of the early 1980s was a war between states that also involved elements within states resisting their own governments. If Bush were repressive in response to war opposition in the U.S. on the basis of war opposition, would it amount to genocide if causalties resulted ?

Under the Bush regime's current interpretation of international law, it appears that might be exactly the case. The response to repression in the context of intervention, or external aggression, branded " unpatriotic " by the BR, seems to be pivotal, particularly where it's more than clear that the Patriot Act was drafted some time prior to 9/11 and as thus, could not possibly represent a response to 9/11, which the BR has portrayed as the Iraqi No Weapons Invasion. What the Patriot Act represents in the broader context of civil liberties, human rights and freedom, is some not irrelevant expectation of 9/11.

Is the Patriot Act, in that sense, damning ? Perhaps. Because NPT stipulates that attacks be a matter of shared intelligence with the Security Council, G-8, NATO, and other relevant institutional actors. Did the Bush Adminstration, by not either stopping or mitigating 9/11, not only render itself complicit in the attack, which is not to say that as former-President Bill Clinton pointed out earlier this week, that it was an " inside job," but also, given the Patriot Act and its obviously expectant and pre-emptive posture - did the Bush Regime violate NPT, at a time when NPT could not be more relevant, with Osama still lurking and Bush unable to deliver ?

Might not being able to capture Osama inspire " inside job " theories ? Absolutely. People worldwide are frustrated with Bush and have been since the Supreme Court stopped the recount. They don't want to hear about democracy in the Middle East when democracy in America ceased to exist with Bush v. Gore.

There is also, has also been, a decidedly anti-liberal tendency in the media dating back to 1993, when, with the election of Bill Clinton president, Rush Limbaugh declared America to be " Held Hostage," cleverly referencing the Iranian Hostage Crisis of 1979 in which President Jimmy Carter was depicted as having handled with ineptitude, and which may have cost President Carter a very close, though not as close as Bush v. Gore, election, to future President Ronald Reagan.

Bush strategy: Bash Democratic Congress

The latest scolding came Thursday. Bush accused Democrats of forgetting the lingering terrorist threat and putting the nation at risk.

Fox Cuts Off Sally Field's Anti-War Speech

Fox Censors Gidget

Bush Attacks Bloggers, CodePink Organizers

"When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground," Bush said, "and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters."

Bush rhetoric is sinister. He clearly used 9/11 as pretext to invade Iraq, claiming that Saddam was supporting Osama, which a post earlier today, referencing Curveball, dispels, and which raises serious speculation regarding the adminsitration's own own involvement: was the administration merely negligent and incompetent prior to 9/11, or is this a case of depraved indifference, particularly for those of us who watch Law and Order, or did, prior to Fred Thompson's entry into the presidential race?

Hillary seems to be on the right side:

"George Bush's faulty and offensive historical analogies aren't going to end the war in Iraq, make America safer or bring our troops home," she said in a statement. "Americans are tired of the president's efforts to play politics with national security and practice the politics of division."

In other words, the Bush cabal ( shrubs ) has managed to use 9/11 to implicate Saddam Hussein, largely predicated on the testimony of one Curveball, over and above that of George Tenet, Director of the CIA in conjunction with French intelligence ( see At The Center of the Storm and The 9/11 Report ), the DIA, which said that Saddam, a secular leader would not support someone like Osama, a revolutionary; implicate Saddam in 9/11 and then claim that he possessed WOMDs, which was proven false, and then continue to make the claim, which is to say, implicate the integrity of the weapons inspectors who said it was false, people like Hans Blix.

What's even more horrendous is that, for a time, 60% of the public, long after it was known to be false, still believed that Saddam had indeed possessed WOMDs, and may have also believed Saddam to have been involved with 9/11.

Now, in their defense, Americans who believed such a lie may have been manifesting a symptom of war trauma, or PTSD: denial induced rationalization. But not the denial to which Bush is referrring - war denial. And not the rationalization both Bush and Gingrich seem to be, persistently, undertaking: that of WW III.

While with Gingrich it was Lebanon and a " prisoner of war " having been taken in 2006, for Bush, it's Iran's nuclear program.

The only denial here is that this regime is one largely predicated upon dictatorship, given that the 1983 Supreme Court censured the 1973 Congress that ended Vietnam, a separation of powers issue, while allocating to itself the power to immediately terminate another such " National Emergency," which had been predicated largely upon a 1948 National Emergency with respect to Korea, that Harry Truman failed to terminate prior to leaving office, a Gulf of Tonkin " incident," that served, much as 9/11, as plausible interventative pretext, and expansionst greed.

What did Vladimir Putin say about Madelaine Albright ? Her lust for Siberia is almost erotic ?

What that 1983 decision led to was the 1985 Congress passing legislation that would require Congress to possess two-thirds majorities in both Houses to terminate a National Emergency, which is the current War in Iraq, a majority that Congress does not have and probably cannot get prior to a Bush-Gingrich rhetorically inspired rampage en route to WW III.

Bluebloggin

If Bush doesn’t arrange for a terrorist attack to make his point, he will pull the trigger on Iran. Either way, Bush has paved the way to finish off the US Constitution. We are already getting used to living in a ‘police state’, George Orwell was off by a few years … Bush’s definition of Democracy is fed to him by those imaginary voices he describes as ‘God’. I picture Cheney on a microphone at the other end of a speaker hidden under Bush’s pillow. “This is God … this is what I want next …”

http://www.bluebloggin.com/2007/10/31/bhutto-wont-accept-musharraf-state-of-emergency-stunt/

Iraqi Troop Presence May Mobilize Young Voters

Thomas Patterson, of the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, says the Iraq war played a big part in stirring up the youth vote in 2004 - and could do so again if the Bush administration decides to "stay the course" in Iraq.

Young US voters may get scoop in 2008

The creators of Scoop08.com, which launches on 4 November, say it will be the first to harness the power of students across the US to follow the campaign.

Bush tells Dems war denial is dangerous

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
Thu Nov 1, 7:52 PM ET

WASHINGTON - President Bush compared Congress' Democratic leaders Thursday to people who ignored the rise of Lenin and Hitler early in the last century, saying "the world paid a terrible price" then and risks similar consequences for inaction today.

Faulty Intel Source "Curve Ball" Revealed

Nov 1

CBS - 60 Minutes has identified the man whose fabricated story of Iraqi biological weapons drove the U.S. argument for invading Iraq.

Nuclear disarmament ( and NPT )

However, critics argue that the major nuclear powers are not doing enough themselves to disarm, or to put pressure on allies such as India, Pakistan and Israel who are known - or widely thought - to have nuclear weapons.

Are the nuclear states supposed to be disarming?

US pushes for tougher sanctions on Iran

By DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writer

LONDON - A top American diplomat pressed for harsher U.N. sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program on Friday, while Iran's former president said talks with the U.N. atomic watchdog were progressing and warned against threatening his country.

U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns was meeting diplomats from the four other permanent Security Council members and Germany to rally support for a tougher track with Iran, which has a deadline next month to fully disclose details of its nuclear program.

Rafsanjani warns Iran of ‘unprecedented’ US threats

TEHRAN (AFP) — Influential former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Thursday warned Iran to be alert in the face of “unprecedented” actions by its arch-foe the United States.
Washington has never ruled out taking military action against Iran over its nuclear programme although the White House insists it wants to calm the crisis through diplomacy.

“Since the (1979 Islamic) revolution, the enemies have plotted a lot but the current situation is unprecedented. Therefore everybody must be alert,” the powerful cleric said, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

Obama, Edwards accuse Clinton of flip-flop on Iran

"A couple of months ago, Sen. Clinton called me 'naive and irresponsible' for taking this position, and said that we could lose propaganda battles if we met with leaders we didn't like," Obama said in Des Moines.

"Just yesterday, though, she called for diplomacy with Iran without preconditions," he said. "So I'm not sure if any of us knows exactly where she stands on this."

Iran letter sparks new fight between Clinton, Obama

By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sen. Hillary Clinton signed a letter to President George W. Bush on Thursday warning he has no authority from Congress for an attack on Iran, setting off a new round of fighting with Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama.

Iran's complex political system

Iran's complex and unusual political system combines elements of a modern Islamic theocracy with democracy. A network of unelected institutions controlled by the highly powerful conservative Supreme Leader is countered by a president and parliament elected by the people.

Iran nuclear envoy vows no change

Iran's new nuclear negotiator has said his country will continue nuclear discussions "with strength".