Iran warns U.S. of "quagmire"

Iran warns U.S. of "quagmire" By Fredrik Dahl



TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran warned the United States on Wednesday it would find itself in a "quagmire deeper than Iraq" if it attacked the Islamic state, and Russia stepped up efforts for a diplomatic solution to Tehran's nuclear row with the West

Kristen Stewart Interview

Kristen Stewart starred in, Into The Wild (click for trailer). Here is her interview. She makes me laugh....in a good way.

Turkey-Iraq talks stop after 90 minutes

ANKARA (AFP) -- Talks here between Turkish and Iraqi ministers to avert military action by Ankara in northern Iraq were interrupted after an hour and a half and it was not immediately known if and when they would resume, an Iraqi Embassy official said.

Iraqi delegation in last-ditch effort to seek diplomatic solution to border crisis

ANKARA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- A high-level Iraqi delegation arrived in Ankara on Thursday to discuss steps Turkey and Iraq can take to ease tension along their borders and eradicate presence of the Kurdish Workers' Party's (PKK) in Iraq.

Iraqis try to defuse tension with Turkey (AP)

Turkey demands Kurd rebel extraditions

War Inches Closer to Iran

U.S. Soldiers Create Military Base on Iraq-Iran Border to Halt Weapons Smuggling From Iran

White House Bomber Request Leaves Some Wondering if U.S. Is Preparing Action in Iran

Tucked inside the White House's $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

Oil to Highest Level Since Iran Cut Supply in 1981: Paradox ?

Oil rose to its highest inflation-adjusted level since March 1981, when Iran cut supply, two months after Ronald Reagan was sworn in.

Yesterday, prices passed the previous all-time inflation- adjusted record reached in 1981 when Iran cut oil exports.

Is is a paradox that the very same day the U.S. announces sanctions aimed against Tehran, oil is at its highest level since Iran cut exports in 1981 ? Is that why we have to remain in Iraq, to ensure that financial markets, investors, and consumers are not so adversely affected that a full-scale World War might become increasingly unavoidable ?

Dodd fears Iran sanctions will cause war

PETER URBAN purban@ctpost.com
Article Last Updated: 10/26/2007 12:03:09 AM EDT


WASHINGTON — New sanctions against Iran that the Bush administration announced Thursday drew a quick rebuff from Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who worries that they are simply a precursor to war.

Oil Crosses $92 on Middle East Discord

Friday October 26, 8:13 am ET
By Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press Writer
Oil Briefly Rises Above $92 a Barrel on Mideast Tensions, Supply Worries


Crude oil prices spiked above $92 a barrel Friday on tensions in the Middle East and renewed concerns about supply.
The United States announced new sanctions against Iran on Thursday, targeting the elite Revolutionary Guards, which Washington accuses backing Shiite militants in Iraq. A confrontation between the world's largest oil consumer and its fourth largest oil producer could upend markets.

Fury as academics claim 9/11 was 'inside job'

The 9/11 terrorist attack on America which left almost 3,000 people dead was an "inside job", according to a group of leading academics.

Around 75 top professors and leading scientists believe the attacks were puppeteered by war mongers in the White House to justify the invasion and the occupation of oil-rich Arab countries

Regular Iranians

Like Iraqis, Iranians have done nothing to deserve this. The State Department wants to impose harsh sanctions now, similar to those imposed against Iraqis when Saddam was in power, which only served to punish by starvation, regular Iranians.

The Bush Axis of Evil Doctrine holds that if you starve innocent people by way of sanctions, in places like North Korea, Iraq, and now, Iran, they'll rise up, overthrow their governments and establish democracies with U.S. support. The problem with that is, as with Reagan's Iran-Contra Doctrine, Iraq and Iran are probably not quite in the same category as North Korea in that they control a great portion of the world's petroleum, that multinational oil service conglomerates wish to control. In terms of Reagan's Iran-Contra Doctrine, Nicaragua, as Korea to the Bush Doctrine, which involves using 9/11 - this generation's Gulf of Tonkin - and which should have been stopped, as pretext to invade Iraq, was the odd man out.

BTW: Iran-Contra is one the main reasons the U.S. has such trouble with the U.N., something most Americans fail to recognize but was documented by Hillary Clinton in her CodePink video in which she rationalized her Iraq War vote on the basis of Bosnia.

Oil prices hit $92 a barrel yesterday, which means that they are not far away from the pump and I read that Halliburton will be establishing a presence in Dubai, which is attempting to purchase 20% of the NASDAQ, but was caught by customs recently attempting to ship nuclear triggers to Islamabad, thereby jeopardizing the deal.

So yes, your very own Dick Cheney is, once again, at the center of a controversy, this time, a nuclear controversy, while Condi testified on Capitol Hill yesterday.

Is Dick, former Senate President, aiding the enemy ? Should the State Department categorize Dubai as an enemy after it misled customs inspectors about intercepted nuclear triggers ? Is Dick aiding Islamabad in the development of WOMDs - not sarin gas, but actual nuclear weapons ?

Iranians have done nothing to deserve this. I wonder when the world may awake to ponder the question of genocide. The Lancet did report last year that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had died or been killed as a direct result of this illegal war and occupation.

How is bombing Iran supposed to stabilize Iraq, how is it justified, and what about the Security Council ? Is this going to be yet another foray into the unilateral, as if the current one had not been unpopular enough ?

If General B-U is going to accuse Iranians of supplying weapons to Iraqi insurgents, can he, at least, unlike General I-can't-remember-what-the-Powell-Doctrine-said Powell, produce some evidence ? Can General BU please demonstrate some measure of respect for International Law now that innocent Iraqis have been butchered for no reason, tortured, raped and brutalized ?

The whole thing is hideous.

Iran dismisses the chance of a US strike

TEHRAN, Iran - The head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards dismissed the possibility of a U.S. military action against Iran and warned that his forces would respond with an "even more decisive" strike if attacked, an Iranian news agency reported Friday.

This is unbelievable. I'm starting to believe that the now-replicating bully-pulpit World War III meme first inspired by Newt Gingrich last year with respect to how World War III would start with Lebanon, also has real, tangible, undesirable properties.

Is it the end of the world as we know it ?

Congressman Accuses President of Deriving ‘Amusement’ from American War Dead

"You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

Americans Would Benefit From Another 9/11 ?

Another 9/11 would bring us together ? That's the neo, neothink. Pathetic, vulgar, repulsive as it may be.

It was the legendary Social Theorist Jean Baudrillard who was attacked in the media for suggesting that it was exactly that which led to 9/11: not complacency, but a twisted rationale that would serve as plausible pretext for an invasion of Iraq, a plundering of Iraqi oil and, of all things, sex torture so insidious it could not fail to violate Geneva in the worst imaginable way.

One of the ideas Scott Horton suggests is that President Clinton actually supported bin Laden and the mujahadeen in Bosnia and that there were no mass graves in Kosovo. Scott claims that Hillary Clinton brags about having cajoled Bill into bombing Bosnia which obviously involved Madelaine Albright, a Putin favorite, as well.

Scott's story is confirmed by Hillary's CodePink meeting ( posted at YouTube ), in which she again, rationalized the Bosnia incursion on the basis that the U.N. would simply not do anything. It's not as if Bosnia was Rwanda and one has to wonder why Shrub himself was against it if not because he knew that Osama was fighting there and would attack the U.S., which lends credibility to the neo-rationale that not only will we be attacked again, but we need to be attacked because war unites us. It also lends credibility to Baudrillard.

Here's the fascinating Scott Horton antiwar radio piece.

WWIII – Bring It On

This is taken from Gordon Prather's piece at www.antiwar.com:

Five years ago, in a new National Security Statement, President Bush announced that;

"The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security.

"The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction – and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack.

"To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively."

Is World War Three Comical ?

( From the Huffington Post )

Maybe Bush thinks so.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Anti-War Protest in Amsterdam, 15 February, 2003

Here's the link.

World Condemns Iraq War, Fears for Civilian Lives

Published on Friday, March 21, 2003 by Agence France Presse

World leaders condemned the launch of a US-led war against Iraq and pleaded for civilians to be spared, with some accusing Washington of flouting international law by striking Baghdad without UN backing.

Stay out of Iran, Pelosi warns Bush

Click here for the link.

Gingrich Says WW III Has Begun

Taken from a speech at the Young America's Foundation on 7/31/06 in Washington, DC, Newt declared WW III last year, in 2006, with Israel bombing Lebanon, much to the dismay of the International Community.

Here's the video clip.

Here's what Gingrich had to say last year:

"The Israelis withdrew from Gaza to create the circumstance of peace. The Israelis withdrew from south Lebanon to create the circumstance of peace,” Gingrich continued. "They now have a thousand missiles fired from Gaza, they’ve had hundreds of missiles fired from south Lebanon. You clearly have Iranian involvement. There are at least 400 Iranian guards in south Lebanon. Apparently it was an Iranian missile fired by Iranians which hit an Israeli warship yesterday. The United States should be saying to Syria and Iran, 'South Lebanon is going to be cleared out. We are for Israel and the Lebanese government breaking the back of Hezbollah, getting rid of all 10,000 to 13,000 missiles, and we will decisively stop any effort by Syria and Iran to intervene.'”

Bush on WW III

Keith Olberman, seen here, does an excellent job of deconstructing the Bush position on Iran, but also exposes a deep misconception that Bush is threatening World War III. Quite the contrary. What Bush does appear to be suggesting, however, is that if Iran were to acquire the means necessary, in the form of technical knowledge, to configure a nuclear weapon, Iran would use it. But when asked to comment on Israel's attack on an Iraqi nuclear facility in 1981, a provocative act that Saddam long resented, culminating in a counterattack aimed at Israel during the first Gulf War, with then Defense Secretary Cheney pleading for restraint from Israel, Bush declined, the suggestion being that the mere possession of such a weapon in the hands of Iran would provoke Israel, with the possibility of a World War III endgame scenario resulting with major powers entering the equation in some explicit fashion.

Recently, Israel has sought exemption from the NPT or nonproliferation treaty that governs the behavior of states which possess nuclear WOMDs so that it can begin to import more atomic weapons-grade material and which places into context not only the Israeli bombing of Saddam Hussein's nuclear facility in 1981, but the question posed to the President about it.

Take note as well, take note always, of Vladimir Putin, whom the Economist recently reported, a fact largely unbeknownst to most Americans, may have led the Russian coup to ovethrow Mikhail Gorbachev, in 1991, the day after he resigned from Russian intelligence service he later ran under Boris Yeltsin. It was just a couple of years ago that Putin seemed to support a plan for Russia to secure enriched uranium produced by Iranian reactors built by Russia in Bashehr, only to see that plan not prevail under pressure from the International Community, a response to fear of Vladimir's possibly expansionist intent. European Union members fear the Vladimir wishes to control much of the EU's oil and gas sector in a fashion that would be largely monopolistic.

But what was Vladimir planning anyhow ? To enrich uranium produced in Iran and send it to Israel ?

Utterly clever and nothing short of classic 007 - exactly to be expected from one of Russia's great former-spies. Also take note of the fact that the Ayatollah axed Larijani, Iran's key nuclear negotitator that day after Vladimir's historic visit with the Ayatollah. Apparently the Ayatollah wasn't going to fall for it possibly believing that Larijani had. Still, Russia insists on the Bashehr reactor proceeding as planned under whatever business arrangement had been crafted.

One of the major powers which might appear to be aligned against a bombing campaign directed against Iran, Japan, which recently forced its president to resign, possibly amid public pressure resulting from Japan's position on the war, does a great deal of business with Iran. There had been an outcry in Japan for the Japanese government to cease refueling Naval Warships in the Persian Gulf, ships that would be used to bomb Iran, which appears to be what Bush has been supporting as documented in Bob Woodward's State of Denial. In one scene, Bush asks Jay Garner whether he wants to " do Iran." The question, strategically, notwithstanding the ever complex diplomatic calculus that is that of the Middle East, is what effect bombing Iran would bear upon the stabilization of Iraq, which has long appeared to be the Pentagon's modus prima. It also appears, from the recent testimony of General Patraeus that the Pentagon believes Iran to be supplying Iraqi insurgents led by Maqtada al-Sadr, with conventional explosives and IEDS, in an effort to implicate Iran in a fashion similar to the manner in which Saddam had been implicated, to no avail, as WOMDs were never found, even as a broad swath of the American public seemed to believe otherwise for quite a period of time, but in the traumatic aftermath of 9/11, where suseptibility to irrationality would obviously be largely enhanced.