Rice Couldn't Snub Maliki; Will Meet with Syria and Iran

The Prime Minister of Iraq has called a regional conference to build an alliance for stability. Rice could hardly say no. That would signal that the US no longer supports that government. There is no change in policy here.
What will be interesting is if Rice actively sabatoges the talks, or actually participates in a meaningful way. This actually presents a unique opportunity for Rice to define herself as a leader, or a Bush henchman. Meanwhile, the military pressure will continue in the Gulf.
washingtonpost.com

The United States agreed yesterday to join high-level talks with Iran and Syria on the future of Iraq, an abrupt shift in policy that opens the door to diplomatic dealings the White House had shunned in recent months despite mounting criticism.
The move was announced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in testimony on Capitol Hill, after Iraq said it had invited neighboring states, the United States and other nations to a pair of regional conferences.


"I would note that the Iraqi government has invited all of its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, to attend both of these regional meetings," Rice told the Senate Appropriations Committee. "We hope that all governments will seize this opportunity to improve the relations with Iraq and to work for peace and stability in the region."


The first meeting, at the ambassadorial level, will be held next month. Then Rice will sit down at the table with the foreign ministers from Damascus and Tehran at a second meeting in April elsewhere in the region, possibly in Istanbul.


The Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel whose recommendations were largely ignored by the administration, had recommended such a regional meeting in its December report. Rice and other administration officials emphasized, however, that these conferences would be led and organized by the Iraqi government and not, as the study group suggested, by the United States. Still, Democrats seized on the announcement as a long-overdue change in direction by the administration.

Bush Administration Conflicted Middle East Policy

In the ultimate Double-Think, Dubya does seem to be coming around to the realization that the regime they deposed in Iraq was more their friend than enemy. While they have not been openly supporting the Sunni insurgency, they are looking the other way while Saudi Arabia supports the insurgents. While they single out Hezbollah as dangerous, they count among their allies the Iraqi Daiwa sect, founders of Hezbollah.
The Administration position is coming closer to the realization of my bizarre speculation that the US may well switch sides in Iraq.
The New Yorker

But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.


[..]The policy shift has brought Saudi Arabia and Israel into a new strategic embrace, largely because both countries see Iran as an existential threat. They have been involved in direct talks, and the Saudis, who believe that greater stability in Israel and Palestine will give Iran less leverage in the region, have become more involved in Arab-Israeli negotiations.


[..]“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”


Martin Indyk, a senior State Department official in the Clinton Administration who also served as Ambassador to Israel, said that “the Middle East is heading into a serious Sunni-Shiite Cold War.”


[..]The Administration’s new policy for containing Iran seems to complicate its strategy for winning the war in Iraq. Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran and the deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argued, however, that closer ties between the United States and moderate or even radical Sunnis could put “fear” into the government of Prime Minister Maliki and “make him worry that the Sunnis could actually win” the civil war there. Clawson said that this might give Maliki an incentive to coöperate with the United States in suppressing radical Shiite militias, such as Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.


Even so, for the moment, the U.S. remains dependent on the coöperation of Iraqi Shiite leaders. The Mahdi Army may be openly hostile to American interests, but other Shiite militias are counted as U.S. allies. Both Moqtada al-Sadr and the White House back Maliki. A memorandum written late last year by Stephen Hadley, the national-security adviser, suggested that the Administration try to separate Maliki from his more radical Shiite allies by building his base among moderate Sunnis and Kurds, but so far the trends have been in the opposite direction. As the Iraqi Army continues to founder in its confrontations with insurgents, the power of the Shiite militias has steadily increased.


Flynt Leverett, a former Bush Administration National Security Council official, told me that “there is nothing coincidental or ironic” about the new strategy with regard to Iraq. “The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them.”

Iran: Attack or Not?

What is going on with Iran? The mainstream press is pounding a steady beat towards war with Iran. Israel has pulled out all stops to persuade the world that Iran must be dealt with NOW.
Los Angeles Times

Israeli leaders rarely invoke the Holocaust in the face of enemies. The Jewish homeland founded after Adolf Hitler's genocide has, for the last generation, felt secure enough to fight its many battles with little or no help.


But the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran has rattled Israel's self-confidence. Its politicians and generals warn of a "second Holocaust" if, as in the 1930s, the world stands by while a heavily armed nation declares war against the Jews.


Spelling out that scenario, Israeli officials have begun an unusually open campaign to muster international political and economic pressures against Iran. They warn that time is growing short and hint that they will resort to force if those pressures fail to prevent Iran's development of an atomic weapon.


Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian bomb would undermine their nation's security even if Tehran never detonated it. That Israel has its own nuclear arsenal would not counteract the psychological and strategic blow, they believe.


Israel began secretly preparing in the early 1990s for a possible air raid on Iran's then-nascent nuclear facilities and has been making oblique public statements about such planning for three years.


What is new is Israel's abandonment of quiet diplomacy to rally others to its side. Until a few months ago, Israeli leaders worried that high-profile lobbying would backfire and provoke accusations that they were trying to drag the United States and its allies into a war.


Israel's new activism coincides with a recent drumbeat of U.S. threats against Iran, including President Bush's vow to "seek out and destroy" Iranian and Syrian networks he said were arming and training anti-American forces in Iraq, and his dispatch of a second aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf.


Several factors have contributed to Israel's more assertive campaign, Israeli officials and defense analysts said.


Israel's war against Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last summer brought Tehran's hostility alarmingly close to home. At the same time, the war made relatively moderate Sunni-dominated Arab nations more wary of Shiite Iran, easing Israel's isolation and creating a de facto anti-Iran coalition.


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. And while denying any plan to build an atomic weapon, Iran has continued to enrich uranium and acquire long-range missiles.

However, it looks more and more like some of the evidence provided by US intelligence to provide Iran's intent were fabricated. In particular, the laptop that allegedly contains bomb plans was in all English. Wouldn't at least some of the information on the laptop be in the owners native language?
Now, Los Angeles Times comes out with an article that seems to be exaggerate the imminence of the threat.

Iran has accelerated its program to enrich uranium and defied a United Nations Security Council deadline to suspend nuclear activities, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said here Thursday.


The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran recently began installing the first of 3,000 gas centrifuges in a heavily fortified, underground chamber at its Natanz plant and that it planned to "bring them gradually into operation by May 2007."


A facility that large, if it functions properly, could produce enough highly enriched uranium in a year to build a nuclear warhead. A senior U.N. diplomat here cautioned that the Iranian schedule was "fairly optimistic" and said that the highly sensitive linked centrifuges, called cascades, may not be operational before the fall.


[..]During an IAEA team's visit to the underground site Feb. 17, Iranian officials informed the group that they had installed two cascades of 164 centrifuges each and that another two cascades were in the "final stages of installation." The Iranians said they would begin introducing uranium hexafluoride gas into the system to start enrichment by the end of the month.


Officials at IAEA headquarters in Vienna said that Iranian scientists had mastered centrifuge technology in recent months. One agency official described as "wishful thinking" reports that the centrifuges tested at Natanz were prone to breakage. He said the Iranians had run engineering tests "to the breaking point" to measure the weakness in the system. "They know how to enrich," he added. "They know how to spin centrifuges."

Fortunately, there are alternative news sources in the Internet to balence the imbalence in mainstream press.
WIRED Blogs

First, Iran has only enriched uranium up to 4.2% U-235, just about the level required to fuel a proliferation-resistant light-water reactor. This is still far below the threshold required to make nuclear weapons (20% U-235 is the minimum required to make a weapon, but most use about 90%). Unfortunately, just because Iran hasn’t enriched further doesn’t mean they can’t; the report says nothing about possible technical problems.


Second, the IAEA’s inventory of nuclear material at the Natanz pilot plant is “consistent with” the inventory supplied by the Iranians themselves. This gives some assurance that nuclear material is not being diverted to secret facilities. However, the main (underground) enrichment facility is not mentioned.


Third, while Iran has “declined to agree at this stage” to the use of remote monitoring, in the interim it has allowed “frequent inspector access” to the main underground enrichment plant at Natanz – the IAEA has eyes there, occasionally at least. This agreement will satisfy the IAEA only until the number of centrifuges reaches 500.


Fourth, there seem to be only about 500 fully installed centrifuges at Natanz – if all of them were running at full speed it would take about six years to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb. However, Iran claims it has roughly 350 more “in final stages of installation;” this seems to be happening sooner than many experts expected.


Fifth, the IAEA has found no indications that spent fuel is being reprocessed for plutonium, at any of Iran’s declared nuclear facilities. However, construction continues at Iran’s planned heavy-water reactor, which could produce fuel for nuclear weapons. These are some pretty dim glimmers of hope, but they do indicate that some time remains before Iran will even have enough material to build a nuclear weapon. Given some hints that sanctions and financial pressure might be starting to work, who knows -- there might even be enough time to reach some sort of agreement.

There is good evidence that Bush is attempting to trigger an "accidental conflict," as a pretext to justify "limited strikes". The Raw Story has published a "Build Up To Iran Timeline" that documents all the moves on the chessboard.
Meanwhile, as I've been warning since January of 2005, US Special Forces have been operating within Iran since at least 2004. Unlike US news sources, the world has better information about what is going on in Iran.
India Times: Economic Times

Bomb blasts struck Iranian government buildings in the capital of an oil-rich border province, followed within hours by two other bombs in central Tehran, killing nine people, days before presidential elections.


Iran’s security service blamed the bombings on Sunday — the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade — on supporters of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. State-run TV quoted hospital officials as saying at least eight people were killed and 86 injured in four explosions in Ahvaz, the capital of the southwestern Khuzestan province bordering Iraq.


Hours later, two small bombs exploded in central Tehran, killing one person and wounding four. Police said one suspect was taken into custody. A spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top security decision-making body, blamed groups affiliated to Saddam’s former Baathist regime in Iraq. State TV quoted spokesman Ali Agha Mohammadi as saying the perpetrators of the Ahvaz bombings had infiltrated into Iran from Basra in southern Iraq.

There have long been reports that the US has enlisted Sadaam's Iranian terrorist organization, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to carry out US policy. The Raw Story reports on the not so secret Cheney/Rumsfeld order outsourcing special ops and intelligence to MEK.

According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.


“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source said.


Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.
Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.


“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.


Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.

One of my favorite alternate news sources AlterNet points out the obvious logical and moral hypocracy in US sponsored terrorism in Iran.

I believed that the attacks by MEK had been halted in March of last year. If this attack is shown to be tied to MEK terrorists or any other "group" we are funding, arming, and training in the region, then the US will be implicated - even if we had nothing to do with the bombing directly.


Let's use Al Qaeda and the US as an example to illustrate how the MEK-US relationship might look to Iranians:


Imagine that this morning you woke up to find that 18 US national guardsmen were assassinated on US soil via a car bomb on their way to a work facility. Now imagine that it was determined that Al Qaeda was behind the attack and that Syrian government officials were behind the funding, training, and harboring of this Al Qaeda cell. How would you react? Would you not see this as a declaration of war against our country? How then would this look to Iranian citizens if it turns out MEK or any other organization being run by Israel and the US is behind this attack?
We can only hope that the US backed groups had nothing to do with this bombing, but I fear given what we already know, the case against us is looking very strong.

Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 1st using unusually blunt predictions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Finally, the nations leaders have the real cards laid on the table. But will they resist the Israeli pressure to act? Iran does not present a threat to the US. It may threaten Israel, depending on who you listen to, the risk is 5 to 10 years away. In more than 10 years, it may threaten Europe. It seems we have plenty of time to deal with this situation without going to war.

Al-Hakim's Son Arrested By Mistake?

Arrest of Shiite leader's son proves thorny - Los Angeles Times
Soldiers arrested Ammar al-Hakim and at least three of his bodyguards around noon as they crossed into Iraq from Iran about 80 miles southeast of Baghdad, the capital. His father, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, heads the largest Shiite voting bloc in the Iraqi parliament. The elder al-Hakim met with President Bush in December in Washington, D.C., and pledged to help end bloodshed in Iraq.
In a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ammar al-Hakim said troops arrested him because his passport was nearing expiration and they thought his identification picture did not match his appearance. He complained of being treated roughly at the hands of U.S. soldiers, including being blindfolded as he was transported to a military base and having his underwear searched once he arrived there.
"We supported the new Baghdad (security) plan and we hoped that it would succeed, but at the same time people's dignity should respected," al-Hakim said. He said the government would seek answers from the U.S. about how the incident was handled.
Al-Hakim was released after about seven hours, and U.S. officials rapidly began damage control efforts. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad appeared on Iraqi government television, saying that the U.S. was "sorry about the arrest" and meant no disrespect.
Al-Hakim's father leads the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the largest Shiite party in parliament. The elder al-Hakim was a onetime opponent of Saddam Hussein and spent much of the 1980s in exile in Iran as a commander of the Badr Corps. The Badr Corps has been criticized for close ties with Iran and has been accused of operating death squads targeting Sunnis, but it is also viewed as among the more moderate Shiite forces in Iraq.
Ammar al-Hakim heads the Shahid al-Mihrab Foundation, a charity affiliated with SCIRI that provides food and money to the foundation's supporters.

Playing Into bin Ladin's Hands

Iraq 101
The rate of fatal terrorist attacks around the world by jihadist groups, and the number of people killed in those attacks, increased dramatically after the invasion of Iraq. Globally there was a 607 percent rise in the average yearly incidence of attacks (28.3 attacks per year before and 199.8 after) and a 237 percent rise in the fatality rate (from 501 to 1,689 deaths per year). A large part of this rise occurred in Iraq, the scene of almost half the global total of jihadist terrorist attacks. But even excluding Iraq and Afghanistan—the other current jihadist hot spot—there has been a 35 percent rise in the number of attacks, with a 12 percent rise in fatalities.

Globalization in India: No Help for the Poorest

India's growth of little benefit to its poorest | FP Passport
Two recent reports highlight just how far India still has to go in its development. Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report claiming that India's 165 million dalits—so-called "outcastes" or "untouchables," placed on the lowest rung in India's caste system—are still the victims of brutal and pervasive discrimination. India's extensive system of political protections for dalits has not, by any stretch of the imagination, translated into improved social practices. Just one example from the report:
Dalits are forced to perform tasks deemed too "polluting" or degrading for non-Dalits to carry out. According to unofficial estimates, more than 1.3 million Dalits – mostly women – are employed as manual scavengers to clear human waste from dry pit latrines. In several cities, Dalits are lowered into manholes without protection to clear sewage blockages, resulting in more than 100 deaths each year from inhalation of toxic gases or from drowning in excrement.
Fast on the heels of this criticism has come another report, this one from UNICEF, which found that an astounding 46 percent of Indian children under the age of three are undernourished—far higher, even, than in sub-Saharan Africa. India has yet to prove that its blistering economic growth can be translated into widespread improvement in the lives of its poorest citizens.

The Drum Beat of War Against Iran Intensifies

Los Angeles Times

Israeli leaders rarely invoke the Holocaust in the face of enemies. The Jewish homeland founded after Adolf Hitler's genocide has, for the last generation, felt secure enough to fight its many battles with little or no help.


But the specter of a nuclear-armed Iran has rattled Israel's self-confidence. Its politicians and generals warn of a "second Holocaust" if, as in the 1930s, the world stands by while a heavily armed nation declares war against the Jews.


Spelling out that scenario, Israeli officials have begun an unusually open campaign to muster international political and economic pressures against Iran. They warn that time is growing short and hint that they will resort to force if those pressures fail to prevent Iran's development of an atomic weapon.


Israeli leaders fear that an Iranian bomb would undermine their nation's security even if Tehran never detonated it. That Israel has its own nuclear arsenal would not counteract the psychological and strategic blow, they believe.


Israel began secretly preparing in the early 1990s for a possible air raid on Iran's then-nascent nuclear facilities and has been making oblique public statements about such planning for three years.


What is new is Israel's abandonment of quiet diplomacy to rally others to its side. Until a few months ago, Israeli leaders worried that high-profile lobbying would backfire and provoke accusations that they were trying to drag the United States and its allies into a war.


Israel's new activism coincides with a recent drumbeat of U.S. threats against Iran, including President Bush's vow to "seek out and destroy" Iranian and Syrian networks he said were arming and training anti-American forces in Iraq, and his dispatch of a second aircraft carrier group to the Persian Gulf.


Several factors have contributed to Israel's more assertive campaign, Israeli officials and defense analysts said.


Israel's war against Iranian-backed Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon last summer brought Tehran's hostility alarmingly close to home. At the same time, the war made relatively moderate Sunni-dominated Arab nations more wary of Shiite Iran, easing Israel's isolation and creating a de facto anti-Iran coalition.


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's destruction. And while denying any plan to build an atomic weapon, Iran has continued to enrich uranium and acquire long-range missiles.

Los Angeles Times

Iran has accelerated its program to enrich uranium and defied a United Nations Security Council deadline to suspend nuclear activities, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said here Thursday.


The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran recently began installing the first of 3,000 gas centrifuges in a heavily fortified, underground chamber at its Natanz plant and that it planned to "bring them gradually into operation by May 2007."


A facility that large, if it functions properly, could produce enough highly enriched uranium in a year to build a nuclear warhead. A senior U.N. diplomat here cautioned that the Iranian schedule was "fairly optimistic" and said that the highly sensitive linked centrifuges, called cascades, may not be operational before the fall.


[..]During an IAEA team's visit to the underground site Feb. 17, Iranian officials informed the group that they had installed two cascades of 164 centrifuges each and that another two cascades were in the "final stages of installation." The Iranians said they would begin introducing uranium hexafluoride gas into the system to start enrichment by the end of the month.


Officials at IAEA headquarters in Vienna said that Iranian scientists had mastered centrifuge technology in recent months. One agency official described as "wishful thinking" reports that the centrifuges tested at Natanz were prone to breakage. He said the Iranians had run engineering tests "to the breaking point" to measure the weakness in the system. "They know how to enrich," he added. "They know how to spin centrifuges."

Brits Pulling Out of Iraq As US Surges?

The spin masters will be busy with this one. How do you change an obvious loss of support from our principle ally in Iraq and turn it into a positive? Time for Double-think Dubya!
washingtonpost.com

As the British announced the beginning of their departure from Iraq yesterday, President Bush's top foreign policy aide proclaimed it "basically a good-news story." Yet for an already besieged White House, the decision was doing a good job masquerading as a bad-news story.
What national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley meant was that the British believe they have made enough progress in southern Iraq to turn over more of their sector to Iraqi forces. To many back in Washington, though, what resonated was that Bush's main partner in Iraq is starting to get out just as the president is sending in more U.S. troops.
No matter the military merits, the British move, followed by a similar announcement by Denmark, roiled the political debate in Washington at perhaps the worst moment for the White House. Democrats seized on the news as evidence that Bush's international coalition is collapsing and that the United States is increasingly alone in a losing cause. Even some Republicans, and, in private, White House aides, agreed that the announcement sent an ill-timed message to the American public.
"What I'm worried about is that the American public will be quite perplexed by the president adding forces while our principal ally is subtracting forces," said Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a longtime war supporter who opposes Bush's troop increase. "That is the burden we are being left with here."
The notion that the British pullback actually signals success sounds like bad spin, added Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). "I think it's Alice in Wonderland looking through the looking glass," he said.

Specter states the obvious, I wonder if he will pay for his candor like he did before?

Former CIA "Bin Laden Unit" Predicts Al Qaeda Will Nuke US

AlterNet: Blogs: Video: Al Qaeda is "going to" detonate a nuclear weapon [VIDEO]
On Monday night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann the former head of the "Bin Laden Unit" Michael Scheuer minced no words in detailing just how far off the mark the war on terror really is.
Al Qaeda is, predictably, making a comeback in Afghanistan and has base operations both there and in Pakistan. While Bush, the Republicans -- and most Democrats for that matter -- have their eyes on Iraq and Iran, Scheuer tells us that Al Qaeda will detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States and we won't know where the hell to even look for them...

Middle East, A Hotbed For Terrorism

Because of Bush's bumbling the war in Afghanistan which really does have a direct military threat towards the US as a haven terrorists, Al Qaeda has re-established command and control structures in the Pakistani mountainous autonomous states. While most of the infrastructure in place has been directed at Afghanistan, there is plenty of evidence of groups loosely associated with Al Qaeda receiving ideas and technical support from bin Ladin. Groups from Iraq and Afghanistan, but also Tunisia and even Britain have gotten orders from bin Ladin to carry out terrorist attacks.
And who funds Al Qaeda? Saudi Arabia of course.
New York Times

Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.


American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.


The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.


American analysts said recent intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan militants allied with Al Qaeda. They receive guidance from their commanders and Mr. Zawahri, the analysts said. Mr. bin Laden, who has long played less of an operational role, appears to have little direct involvement.


[..]As recently as 2005, American intelligence assessments described senior leaders of Al Qaeda as cut off from their foot soldiers and able only to provide inspiration for future attacks. But more recent intelligence describes the organization’s hierarchy as intact and strengthening.


“The chain of command has been re-established,” said one American government official, who said that the Qaeda “leadership command and control is robust.”


American officials and analysts said a variety of factors in Pakistan had come together to allow “core Al Qaeda” — a reference to Mr. bin Laden and his immediate circle — to regain some of its strength. The emergence of a relative haven in North Waziristan and the surrounding area has helped senior operatives communicate more effectively with the outside world via courier and the Internet.


[..]In a speech in November, the director general of MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, said that terrorist plots in Britain “often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan.” She said that “through those links, Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here on an extensive and growing scale.”

North Africa is a particular trouble spot, where searing poverty and oppression by government forces has created an underclass with European ties.
New York Times

The plan, hatched for months in the arid mountains of North Africa, was to attack the American and British Embassies here. It ended in a series of gun battles in January that killed a dozen militants and left two Tunisian security officers dead.


[..]Counterterrorism officials on three continents say the trouble in Tunisia is the latest evidence that a brutal Algerian group with a long history of violence is acting on its promise: to organize extremists across North Africa and join the remnants of Al Qaeda into a new international force for jihad.


[Last week, the group claimed responsibility for seven nearly simultaneous bombings that destroyed police stations in towns east of Algiers, the Algerian capital, killing six people.]


This article was prepared from interviews with American government and military officials, French counterterrorism officials, Italian counterterrorism prosecutors, Algerian terrorism experts, Tunisian government officials and a Tunisian attorney working with Islamists charged with terrorist activities.


They say North Africa, with its vast, thinly governed stretches of mountain and desert, could become an Afghanistan-like terrorist hinterland within easy striking distance of Europe. That is all the more alarming because of the deep roots that North African communities have in Europe and the ease of travel between the regions. For the United States, the threat is also real because of visa-free travel to American cities for most European passport holders.


The violent Algerian group the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known by its French initials G.S.P.C., has for several years been under American watch.


“The G.S.P.C. has become a regional terrorist organization, recruiting and operating in all of your countries — and beyond,” Henry A. Crumpton, then the United States ambassador at large for counterterrorism, said at a counterterrorism conference in Algiers last year. “It is forging links with terrorist groups in Morocco, Nigeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and elsewhere.”


Officials say the group is funneling North African fighters to Iraq, but is also turning militants back toward their home countries.


The ambitions of the group are particularly troubling to counterterrorism officials on the watch for the re-emergence of networks that were largely interrupted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. While most estimates put the current membership of the group in the hundreds, it has survived more than a decade of Algerian government attempts to eradicate it. It is now the best-organized and -financed terrorist group in the region.


Last year, on the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda chose the G.S.P.C. as its representative in North Africa. In January, the group reciprocated by switching its name to Al Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb, claiming that the Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, had ordered the change.


“Al Qaeda’s aim is for the G.S.P.C. to become a regional force, not solely an Algerian one,” said the French counterterrorism magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière, in Paris. He calls the Algerian group the biggest terrorist threat facing France today.


“We know from cases that we’re working on that the G.S.P.C.’s mission is now to recruit people in Morocco and Tunisia, train them and send them back to their countries of origin or Europe to mount attacks,” he said.


The G.S.P.C. was created in 1998 as an offshoot of the Armed Islamic Group, which along with other Islamist guerrilla forces fought a brutal decade-long civil war after the Algerian military canceled elections in early 1992 because an Islamist party was poised to win.


In 2003, a G.S.P.C. leader in southern Algeria kidnapped 32 European tourists, some of whom were released for a ransom of 5 million euros (about $6.5 million at current exchange rates), paid by Germany.


Officials say the leader, Amari Saifi, bought weapons and recruited fighters before the United States military helped corner and catch him in 2004. He is now serving a life sentence in Algeria.


Since then, an even more radical leader, Abdelmalek Droukdel, has taken over the group. The Algerian military says he cut his teeth in the 1990s as a member of the Armed Islamic Group’s feared Ahoual or “horror” company, blamed for some of the most gruesome massacres of Algeria’s civil war.


He announced his arrival with a truck bomb at the country’s most important electrical production facility in June 2004, and focused on associating the group with Al Qaeda.


[..]“It’s the same thing that we saw in Bosnia, Kosovo and above all Afghanistan,” said Mr. Bruguière, the French magistrate. “Al Qaeda’s objective is to create an operational link between the groups in Iraq and the G.S.P.C.”


Tunisia is among the most vulnerable of the North African countries, because its rigid repression of Islam has created a well of resentment among religious youth, and its popularity as a tourist destination for Europeans makes it a target.


MORE

White House Had An Iranian Proposal In 2003

Apparently, Iran made a proposal to the US in 2003 to compromise on outstanding issues between the US and Iran, including it's relations with Hezbollah, Hamas, and their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Although Rice denies receiving it, her aide insists he passed it on. It's not surprising that the proposal was ignored given the Bush Administrations commitment to isolating and confronting Iran by invading Iraq.
If the US had sat down to negotiate at that time, they would have negotated from a position of strength vis-a-vis Iran, unlike now when they have a decidedly weakened Middle East position. Another Bush stupidity!
AlterNet

Karl Rove, then White House senior political advisor for President George W. Bush, received a copy of the secret Iranian proposal for negotiations with the United States from former Republican Congressman Bob Ney in early May 2003, according to an Iranian-American scholar who was then on his Congressional staff.


Ney, who pleaded guilty last year and was sentenced to prison in January for his role in the Jack Abramov lobbying scandal, was named by former aide Trita Parsi as an intermediary who took a copy of the Iranian proposal to the White House.


Parsi is now a specialist on Iranian national security policy and president of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-partisan organisation that supports a negotiated settlement of the conflict between Iran and the United States. Parsi revealed that the document was delivered specifically to Rove, in an exclusive interview with IPS. Within two hours of the delivery of the document, according to Parsi, Ney received a phone call from Rove confirming his receipt of the document. Parsi said the proposal was delivered to Rove the same week that the State Department received it by fax, which was on or about May 4, 2003, according to the cover letter accompanying it.


Ney was chosen by Swiss Ambassador in Tehran Tim Guldimann to carry the Iranian proposal to the White House, according to Parsi, because he knew the Ohio Congressman to be the only Farsi-speaking member of Congress and particularly interested in Iran. Guldimann helped the Iranians draft the proposal and passed it on the United States.


The White House press office had not responded to a request for a comment on the account naming Rove as the recipient of the Iranian proposal by midday Friday.


The Iranian proposal for negotiations, which suggested that Iran was willing to consider far-reaching compromises on its nuclear programme, relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and support for a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel as part of a larger peace agreement with the United States, has become a contentious issue between the Bush administration and its critics in and out of Congress.


The identification of Rove as a recipient of the secret Iranian proposal throws new light on the question of who in the Bush administration was aware of the Iranian proposal at the time. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice denied in Congressional testimony last week that she had seen the Iranian offer in 2003 and even chastised former State Department, National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency official Flynt Leverett for having failed to bring it to her attention at the time.


At a Capital Hill conference on U.S.-Iran relations Wednesday, sponsored by the New America Foundation and NIAC, Leverett responded to Rice's criticism by saying it was "unthinkable that it would not have been brought to her attention" and demanding an apology from her.

Does Mitt Romney Have a Chance?

Mitt Romney may seem to be one of the most unlikely candidates for the Republican nomination for President. He is a Mormon. Many evangelicals have stated publicly that they would not vote for a Mormon and consider the Mormon Church a cult. But that's only the beginning. Consider this profile from CanadaFreePress.com.

However, to other pro-family leaders, Romney's purported pro-life conversion is hard to reconcile with the fact that as recently as 2002, he was still giving voice to pro-abortion rhetoric. For example: According to The Boston Globe, Romney, while responding to a 2002 "National Abortion Rights Action League" candidate survey, pledged, "I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose. This choice is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's."


On his 2002 gubernatorial campaign Web site, Romney emphasized abortion in his campaign platform: "As Governor, Mitt Romney would protect the current pro-choice status quo in Massachusetts. No law would change. The choice to have an abortion is a deeply personal one. Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not the government's."


Likewise, in 2002 Planned Parenthood posed the following question to candidate Romney in its campaign questionnaire: "Do you support the substance of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade?" Romney very simply and unequivocally replied, "Yes."


O.K. --you might say --that's fine. Romney was "pro-choice." This is America --people can change their opinion, right? Well, that may be true. Only one question --on the issues most important to conservative voters, why do Romney's opinions appear malleable, shifting in the wind as political expediency would seem to dictate?


In 2006, just four short years after he ran for governor and as his presidential ambitions were reaching a boiling point, Romney seemed to pull a 180. Sounding as though he'd lost a bet to Rush Limbaugh on a Patriots/Steelers game, Romney completely changed his tune on abortion and Roe v. Wade saying, "Roe v. Wade does not serve the country well and is another example of judges making the law instead of interpreting the Constitution."


Was Governor Romney the "Father of 'gay' marriage?" There's disagreement even within the pro-family legal community; however, there is a strong argument to be made that Romney, contrary to his pro-traditional marriage rhetoric, was chiefly responsible for unconstitutionally imposing "same-sex" marriage on Massachusetts and the rest of the country.


[...]In both his 1994 and 2002 political campaigns, Romney solicited and received the endorsement of the homosexual activist group "Log Cabin Republicans." In a 1994 letter to the Log Cabins, Romney promised that, "as we seek to establish full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent." Of course, Romney's opponent at the time was again, Ted Kennedy, one of the most liberal, pro-homosexual senators in U.S. history.

However, the Republican party has a long history of liberal converts in leadership positions. The best known is Ronald Reagan, a former liberal and president of the Screen Actors Guild, was converted to right-wing ideology while working for "General Electric Theater". After reading Nobel Prize-winner Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and under the considerable influence of his sponsor GE, Reagan came to "believe that liberals were naively leading the country down a road to serfdom". Little did he know that by taking on socialist ideology, he was in fact empowering the nation's fascists who were at least partly responsible for Hitler's rise to power.
So is Mitt Romney another patsy for the extreme right? He certainly is trying for it. Witness this white wash of his background by Newsweek.
MSNBC.com

Romney's campaign aides like to stress that he is a "turnaround" artist. They are referring to Romney's great success at salvaging failing companies as a venture capitalist in the 1980s and '90s and his near-miraculous rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from scandal and debt. The label carries the promise that Romney could reverse the fortunes of the GOP and the nation after the Bush years. But Romney's turnaround on the burning social issues of gay rights, stem-cell research and abortion has raised questions about the candidate's sincerity—a dangerous doubt at a time when voters seem to crave authenticity. In Massachusetts, as an unsuccessful Senate candidate in 1994 and in his winning race to become governor in 2002, Romney cast himself as liberal-to-moderate on social issues. But as Romney aims for the conservative Republican votes he will need to secure the presidential nomination, he has emerged as staunchly pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Was he, his critics ask, pretending then? Or is he pretending now?


Romney says he's always told the truth. On gay rights, he says, his basic views have not changed; rather, the political and cultural landscape has shifted. He still opposes discrimination against gays, but he does not favor recognizing gay marriage. "I never in a million years thought that we would have people of the same gender being told that they have a constitutional right to marry," Romney says. On the right to life, he did experience a turning point, he says, when he had to consider directly the morality of destroying human embryos in stem-cell research. [...]Questions about Romney's evolving views on abortion and gay rights could be a bigger issue with evangelicals than Romney's Mormonism, says Mark DeMoss, a Christian media strategist who's done evangelical outreach for the Romney campaign. A reconstruction of how Romney changed his views does not seriously challenge Romney's account of the evolution of his thinking, but it does suggest that political timing, as much as moral virtue, may have been on his mind.


[...]Romney is hardly the first Republican presidential candidate to be accused of expediency on social issues. Both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush moved to the right on abortion. A successful politician knows when to make compromises without appearing to abandon his or her dignity or moral compass. Romney's lifetime shows a history of getting along and going along—but also a capacity for boldness and an almost ruthless willingness to force change. MORE

The Covert War In Iran

Bush Iran War Agenda: Trigger an "Accidental Conflict," as a pretext to justify "Limited Strikes"
The Raw Story, "The Build Up To Iran Timeline"
Bomb blasts rock Iran-The Economic Times
Bomb blasts struck Iranian government buildings in the capital of an oil-rich border province, followed within hours by two other bombs in central Tehran, killing nine people, days before presidential elections.
Iran’s security service blamed the bombings on Sunday — the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade — on supporters of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. State-run TV quoted hospital officials as saying at least eight people were killed and 86 injured in four explosions in Ahvaz, the capital of the southwestern Khuzestan province bordering Iraq.
Hours later, two small bombs exploded in central Tehran, killing one person and wounding four. Police said one suspect was taken into custody. A spokesman for the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top security decision-making body, blamed groups affiliated to Saddam’s former Baathist regime in Iraq. State TV quoted spokesman Ali Agha Mohammadi as saying the perpetrators of the Ahvaz bombings had infiltrated into Iran from Basra in southern Iraq.
The Raw Story | On Cheney, Rumsfeld order, US outsourcing special ops, intelligence to Iraq terror group, intelligence officials say
According to all three intelligence sources, military and intelligence officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a known terrorist organization, which has been responsible for acts of terror against Iranian targets and individuals all over the world – including US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.
“They are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source said.
Indeed, Saddam Hussein himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’ that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely tortured, attacked and arrested.
Although the specifics of what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN official close to the Security Council explained that the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.
“We are already at war,” the UN official told RAW STORY.
Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.
AlterNet: Blogs: PEEK: US Sponsored Terrorism in Iran?
I believed that the attacks by MEK had been halted in March of last year. If this attack is shown to be tied to MEK terrorists or any other "group" we are funding, arming, and training in the region, then the US will be implicated - even if we had nothing to do with the bombing directly.
Let's use Al Qaeda and the US as an example to illustrate how the MEK-US relationship might look to Iranians:
Imagine that this morning you woke up to find that 18 US national guardsmen were assassinated on US soil via a car bomb on their way to a work facility. Now imagine that it was determined that Al Qaeda was behind the attack and that Syrian government officials were behind the funding, training, and harboring of this Al Qaeda cell. How would you react? Would you not see this as a declaration of war against our country? How then would this look to Iranian citizens if it turns out MEK or any other organization being run by Israel and the US is behind this attack?
We can only hope that the US backed groups had nothing to do with this bombing, but I fear given what we already know, the case against us is looking very strong.

American Funded Death Squads in Iraq

Wondering why the death squads in Iraq all have government issued fatigues, American weapons and drive new SUVs? It's because it's all part of the dirty war the Bush Administration is funding in Iraq. This dirty war has made civil war, the partition of Iraq, and a regional war involving Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran all but inevitable.
AlterNet

The Pentagon's ever-expanding secret armies are deeply enmeshed in such efforts as well. As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their teeth.


"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?" a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren't going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon insider added: "We're going to be riding with the bad boys." Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising.


[..]And indeed, in early 2005 -- not long after Bush's directives loosed the "Salvador Option" on Iraq -- the tide of death-squad activity began its long and bloody rise to the tsunami-like levels we see today. Ironically, the first big spike of mass torture-murders, chiefly in Sunni areas at the time, coincided with "Operation Lightning," a much ballyhooed effort by American and Iraqi forces to "secure" Baghdad. The operation featured a mass influx of extra troops into the capital; dividing the city into manageable sectors, then working through them one by one; imposing hundreds of checkpoints to lock down all insurgent movements; and establishing a 24-hour presence of security and military forces in troubled neighborhoods, the Associated Press reported in May 2005. In other words, it was almost exactly the same plan now being offered as Bush's "New Way Forward," the controversial "surge."


But the "Lightning" fizzled in a matter of weeks, and the death squads grew even bolder. Brazen daylight raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time. For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies -- including veterans of the original "Salvador Option" -- insisted that these were Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had "infiltrated" Iraq's institutions.


But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA agents. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room." And perhaps a British lieutenant colonel as well.


But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA agents. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room." And perhaps a British lieutenant colonel as well.


With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war -- infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" -- it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/to mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.


What's more, the "intelligence" churned out by this system is inevitably tainted by the self-interest, mixed motives, fear and criminality of those who provide it. The ineffectiveness of this approach can be seen in the ever-increasing, many-sided civil war that is tearing Iraq apart. If these covert operations really are intended to quell the violence, they clearly have had the opposite effect. If they have some other intention, the pious defenders of civilization -- who approve these activities with promotions, green lights and unlimited budgets -- aren't telling.

More Rumors About 9/11 Conspiracy

From information gradually emerging from Pakistan, Pakistani intelligence was involved in some level in the 9/11 attacks. Either a lower level operative utilized intelligence resources to support Al Qaeda, or the conspiracy flows to the top. And it would appear, the Bush Administration knew more than it's telling about Atta and the culpability of Pakistan.
AlterNet

Pakistan's top spy, Mahmood Ahmad, visited Washington for a week [in 2001], taking meetings with top State Department people like Tenet and Mark Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs. The Pakistani press reported, "ISI Chief Lt-Gen Mahmood's weeklong presence in Washington has triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council." Did they know that Ahmad had wired over $100,000 to Mohamed Atta, through U.K. national Saeed Sheikh in the summer of 2001? (Facts all confirmed, quietly, by the FBI investigation in Pakistan, and, partially, in the Wall Street Journal.)


That means that our top people at the State Department enjoyed only a few degrees of separation from 9/11's lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta. Here's the real kicker: As this story first broke in the Times of India, in October 2001, instead of retaliating, the United States gave Pakistan $3 billion in U.S. aid. Ahmad was allowed to quietly resign.


Bob Graham, D-Fla., who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, would later tell PBS's Gwen Ifill: "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down, make the further case, or find the evidence that would indicate that that is not true."

North Korea Gets Its Nukes and An Agreement

In an agreement the Bush Administration is sure to tout as a "success", North Korea will keep it's bombs and seal it's production facility while negotiations continue. In exchange, North Korean gets fuel aid.
Bush "got tough" with North Korea, they built a bomb, and the US settled for essentially Clinton's deal. Bush is a paper tiger and an idiot.
washingtonpost.com

In a landmark international accord, North Korea promised Tuesday to close down and seal its lone nuclear reactor within 60 days in return for 50,000 tons of fuel oil as a first step in abandoning all nuclear weapons and research programs.


North Korea also reaffirmed a commitment to disable the reactor in an undefined next phase of denuclearization and to discuss with the United States and other nations its plutonium fuel reserves and other nuclear programs that "would be abandoned" as part of the process. In return for taking those further steps, the accord said, North Korea would receive additional "economic, energy and humanitarian assistance up to the equivalent of 1 million tons of heavy fuel oil."


[..]The accord, described as "initial actions," left for further negotiations the question of what to do with North Korea's declared nuclear weapons, estimated at a half-dozen bombs, and a stockpile of perhaps 50 kilograms of plutonium. In addition, it postponed discussions on a separate highly enriched uranium program that the Bush administration contends -- but North Korea denies -- was undertaken in secret as a second source of nuclear weapons fuel.


As a result, the agreement seemed likely to face opposition in Washington by conservatives who remain unconvinced that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, ever intends to relinquish his nuclear weapons. Similarly, the Bush administration faces criticism from Democrats who charge that the administration, after breaking away from the Agreed Framework in 2002, ended up five years later with a roughly similar accord.

Allegations of Iranian Weapons Import A Run Up To War?

Unidentified military officers carted out weapons "proving" Iran is bringing weapons into Iran. Meanwhile, although denied by Administration officials, there continue to be rumors by high ranking officials of an imminent attack on Iran.
washingtonpost.com

Senior U.S. military officials in Iraq sought Sunday to link Iran to deadly armor-piercing explosives and other weapons that they said are being used to kill U.S. and Iraqi troops with increasing regularity. During a long-awaited presentation, held in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, the officials displayed mortar shells, rocket-propelled grenades and a powerful cylindrical bomb, capable of blasting through an armored Humvee, that they said were manufactured in Iran and supplied to Shiite militias in Iraq for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops.


"Iran is a significant contributor to attacks on coalition forces, and also supports violence against the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi people," said a senior defense official, who was joined by a defense analyst and an explosives expert, both also from the military.


The officials said they would speak only on the condition of anonymity, so the explosives expert and the analyst, who would normally not speak to the news media, could provide information directly. The analyst's exact title and full name were not revealed to reporters. The officials released a PowerPoint presentation including photographs of the weaponry, but did not allow media representatives to record, photograph or videotape the briefing or the materials on display.


An official at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad called the U.S. accusations "fabricated" and "baseless."

Anonymous sources often turn out to be intellegence developed dissinformation. The Dems in Congress will have none of the report.
Forbes.com

Explosives seem to be flowing into Iraq from Iran, but does it stem from a deliberate government policy or rogue elements within the Iranian government? asked Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said that ultimately Iran wants a stable Iraq and that the United States needs to engage in diplomacy. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said the administration could be laying the groundwork for an attack on Iran and that "I'm worried about that. That's how we got into the mess in Iraq," by relying on what Dodd called "doctored information." Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said "the administration is engaged in a drumbeat with Iran that is much like the drumbeat that they did with Iraq. We're going to insist on accountability."

Despite Congressional skepticism, the NY Times is selling the Iranian connection as different than the WMD data.
If anyone is getting Iranian arms, it's Sadr's Mahdi Army. Perhaps some of them are planting road side bombs, but with Iraqi forces heavily infultrated by Shia militias, why would they kill their own? Juan Cole at Informed Comment shares his skepticism.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that the Iraqi government distanced itself on Sunday from US charges against Iran. Maryam al-Rayyis, National Affairs Adviser to PM Nuri al-Maliki, said that Iraq has deep respect for Iran and other neighbors. She said that the Iraqi constitution prohibits Iraq from being an arena of contestation between other countries.


The same report says that Nassar al-Rubaie, a parliamentarian of the Sadr Movement led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, insisted in an interview that his bloc has never received any support from Iran and he is sanguine that it is not included in the American allegations. (In fact, Pentagon briefers specifically mentioned the Mahdi Army, though they appeared to allow that it was splinter groups from it that set these roadside bombs that killed US troops.)


Almost all roadside bombs in Iraq are set by Sunni Arab guerrillas who deeply dislike Shiites and hate Iran.

But then more retired military officials are leaking Bush Administration plans for an attack on Iran, a neocon plan six years in the making.
Vanity Fair

1) Retired Defense Intelligence official Patrick Lang told Unger that Bush has ordered StratCom " the military command responsible for "nuclear weapons, missile defense and protection against weapons of mass destruction" to draw up plans for a "massive strike against Iran." Lang noted that the shift away from Central Command "to StratCom indicates they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran]."
2) Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said, "I've heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen.

Meanwhile, political pressure on Iran, may actually be having an effect. Signs of dissent are growing more common.
Los Angeles Times

Iran's leadership is facing mounting public unease and the seeds of mutiny in parliament over the combative nature of its nuclear diplomacy.


For the first time since Iran resumed its uranium enrichment program, there is broad, open criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiance of the Bush administration and United Nations Security Council, and warnings have emerged that the public may not be prepared to support the Islamic regime through a war.


The criticism and public wariness come at a time when the Bush administration has moved additional ships to the Persian Gulf and Washington and Israel have refused to rule out a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.


The mounting dissent does not appear to have chipped away at Iran's determination to maintain an active nuclear program, say politicians, diplomats and political analysts here. But they say it opens the door to a face-saving compromise and signals that a broad range of Iranians hope to avoid an all-out confrontation.


"If [Ahmadinejad] wants to start a new war, from where does he think he's going to produce the army?" asked Mohammed Atrianfar, a well-known political commentator allied with former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been working behind the scenes in recent weeks to ease the tension.

In a bizarre twist, AlterNet speculates the supposed planned attack on Karbala last month blamed on Iran was in fact a mercenary group hired by Bush Administration.

Investigators were stumped at how the attackers, who wore American-style uniforms, secured forged US identity cards and American-style M-4 rifles, and used stun grenades like those used only by US forces. They are also confounded at the way the attackers' convoy of S.U.V.'s gave the impression that it was American and slipped through Iraqi checkpoints. Wednesday's article in the Times cites a theory that "a Western mercenary group" may have been involved. In the past the US government used the CIA to covertly overthrow governments, such as Iran's in 1953 and Chile's in 1973. Could mercenaries now be doing the Bush administration's dirty work?

Envoking History, With Stirring Words and Symbolism, Obama Declares His Candidacy

On the weekend before Abraham Lincohn's birthday, from his home town of Springfield, Illinois, Barack Obama declared his candidacy for President.
AFP.com

Senator Barack Obama launched "an improbable quest" to become America's first black president, audaciously invoking Abraham Lincoln, the US president who ended slavery.


"I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America," Obama told a crowd of thousands in temperatures of minus 11 degrees Celsius (13 Fahrenheit) in Lincoln's hometown.


"You didn't come here just for me, you came here because you believe in what this country can be," said the Illinois senator, 45, muscling his way into a packed Democratic field already dominated by New York Senator Hillary Clinton.


"In the face of war, you believe there can be peace. In the face of despair, you believe there can be hope," said Obama, whose dazzling charisma has giddy supporters evoking comparisons to giants like late Democratic president John F. Kennedy.


Obama, son of a Kenyan economist and white American mother, after a stunning two-year rise to political celebrity, also pledged to bring US troops home from Iraq, combat global warming and offer health care to every American.


He reminded Americans that, unlike Clinton, he had opposed the war in Iraq as a "tragic mistake" -- though he was not in the US Senate when the 2002 vote to authorize the invasion was taken. "It's time to start bringing our troops home. It's time to admit that no amount of American lives can resolve the political disagreement that lies at the heart of someone else's civil war," he said.


Obama also called on Americans to unite in a new crusade of national purpose. "Let's be the generation that ends poverty in America ... let's be the generation that finally tackles our health care crisis ... let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil."


Beneath a cloudless blue sky and with a piercing winter sun which helped his choreographers suggest a new dawn in US politics, Obama was framed by the red-domed Illinois Capitol where Lincoln, Republican president from 1861 to 1865, warned "a house divided against itself cannot stand."


Huge American flags draped nearby buildings as a crowd estimated by local police at more than 15,000 erupted, as Obama strode to center stage, to the pounding beat of U2's "City of Blinding Lights."


"If you will join me in this improbable quest, if you feel destiny calling, and see as I see, a future of endless possibility stretching before us ... if you sense, as I sense, that the time is now to shake off our slumber, and slough off our fear ... then I'm ready to take up the cause," Obama said. (Transcript)

In 1908, Springfield was, a city of 50,000. After a married white woman's accused a black man of rape to cover a beating by her boyfriend, her lie was taken as gospel truth. On Aug. 14, as local newspapers fanned outrage, Springfield exploded and several thousand whites descended on the county jail intent on lynching the accused. When that was unsuccessful, they rampaged through the local black neighborhood, burning business and houses and driving 3000 blacks to the local sports stadium to escape the violence. Two elderly innocent black men were lynched. Ultimately the event and lack of justice in the non-response of the community inspired the establishment of the NAACP.
However, Obama's support within the black community is far from automatic. He angered many black leaders in Illinois when he beat a popular black woman state legislator in his first election.

Would Obama be 'the black president', given his heritage as the son of a white American mother and black Kenyan father?


Obama is like a "plaid quilt" in which people of different races see themselves, said Eddie Read, chairman of the Black Independent Political Organization. He fears this may leave Obama insufficiently committed to fighting for the black community.


"He would not be the black president. He would be the multicultural president," said Read. "A black president would fight for black economic and political power."


Obama's appeal to white voters leaves some black activists questioning the depth of his links to the black community, said Conrad Worrill, director of inner-city studies at Northeastern Illinois University.


"When white folks begin to put their arms around a black person, there's always suspicion," he said. "The question is: Will this generation of new, college-trained beneficiaries of the black political power movement in America fight for black political interests?"


[...]In a later response, the Rev. Al Sharpton questioned why blacks should back Obama simply because of his race. Sharpton argued that Obama himself recently endorsed Chicago's white mayor for reelection, over at least two black challengers.


"You really don't want to nationally say that blacks should do something for Obama that he himself is not doing at home," Sharpton told CNN. He continued: "I think what is intelligent and respectful to our community, as in any community, is to talk our interests and our issues."

With Obama's lack of experience, Clinton's lead and deep political machine, he has a long uphill battle ahead of him. I expect that he will end up as a running mate for the Democratic standard bearer.

Chavez as Castro? It's not that simple in Venezuela

The mainstream media remains the propaganda instrument for the Bush Administration. It's shocking distortion of the news from Venezuela has demonstrated the media lock the Rightwing has on our source of news.
AlterNet

Reading the commercial press, one would think Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez became a dictator this week with the passage of an "enabling law" that allows him to issue executive orders over some key areas of public policy. According to the Times of London, "Fresh from a visit to Cuba and Fidel Castro, his closest ally and mentor" -- you've got to work that in somehow -- "President Hugo Ch�vez today assumed near dictatorial power in Venezuela." The Miami Herald's headline screamed "Chavez Granted Power to Rule by Decree," the Washington Post made the dubious -- and unsubstantiated -- claim that masses of Venezuelans, "filled with despair at President Hugo Ch�vez's growing power," are fleeing the country en masse and Investor's Business Daily warned us, simply, that "A Dictatorship Rises." Pretty much par for the course when it comes to coverage of Venezuela -- -- the international press declared Jihad on Chavez long ago.

There is one notable exception here from Chron.com - Houston Chronicle. I will archive this article for fear it will simply disappear as many have over the past few years.

Alarm bells are sounding in Washington, on Wall Street and around the world over President Hugo Chavez's latest moves to consolidate his Bolivarian Revolution in oil-rich Venezuela. He is — we are told — shutting down a television station, creating a single-party state, nationalizing key industries including some major oil projects, threatening perpetual re-election and vowing to impose "21st century socialism."


On the surface, it seems to Chavez's critics that he is finally doing what they have long predicted — creating a totalitarian state in the image of his mentor, Fidel Castro. But the situation in Venezuela is a little more complex than what many in the media and the establishment make it out to be. Take, for example, Chavez's decision not to renew the license of RCTV television network when it expires in May.


At first blush, this would certainly seem to be reason for alarm — a government shutting down a television station because it doesn't like its editorial bent. But RCTV is not exactly your average television station. In April 2002, it promoted and participated in a coup against Chavez in which a democratically elected president was overthrown by military rebels and disappeared for two days until large street protests and a counter-coup returned him to power.


For two days prior to the coup, RCTV suspended all regular programming and commercials and ran blanket coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. Then it ran nonstop ads encouraging people to attend a massive anti-Chavez march on April 11, 2002, and provided wall-to-wall coverage of the event itself with nary a pro-Chavez voice in sight.


When the protest ended in violence and military rebels overthrew the president, RCTV, along with other networks, imposed a news blackout banning all coverage of pro-Chavez demonstrators in the streets demanding his return. Andres Izarra, a news director at RCTV, was given the order by superiors: zero chavismo en pantalla, no Chavistas on the screen. He quit in disgust and later joined the Chavez government.


On April 13, 2002, after the coup-installed President Pedro Carmona eliminated the Supreme Court and the National Assembly and nullified the Constitution, media barons, including RCTV's main owner, Marcel Granier, met with Carmona in the presidential palace and, according to reports, pledged their support to his regime. While the streets of Caracas literally burned with rage over Chavez's ouster, the television networks ran Hollywood movies like Pretty Woman.


Venezuela's media, owned largely by the country's wealthy elites, are arguably the most rabidly antigovernment media in the world. In the past, opposition figures have appeared on television openly calling for a coup against Chavez, who says he is leading a revolution on behalf of Venezuela's majority poor.

Pentagon: War with Iran Is Going To Happen

Vanity Fair
1) Retired Defense Intelligence official Patrick Lang told Unger that Bush has ordered StratCom " the military command responsible for "nuclear weapons, missile defense and protection against weapons of mass destruction" to draw up plans for a "massive strike against Iran." Lang noted that the shift away from Central Command "to StratCom indicates they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran]."
2) Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said, "I've heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen.
Dissent grows in Iran - Los Angeles Times
Iran's leadership is facing mounting public unease and the seeds of mutiny in parliament over the combative nature of its nuclear diplomacy.
For the first time since Iran resumed its uranium enrichment program, there is broad, open criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiance of the Bush administration and United Nations Security Council, and warnings have emerged that the public may not be prepared to support the Islamic regime through a war.
The criticism and public wariness come at a time when the Bush administration has moved additional ships to the Persian Gulf and Washington and Israel have refused to rule out a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The mounting dissent does not appear to have chipped away at Iran's determination to maintain an active nuclear program, say politicians, diplomats and political analysts here. But they say it opens the door to a face-saving compromise and signals that a broad range of Iranians hope to avoid an all-out confrontation.
"If [Ahmadinejad] wants to start a new war, from where does he think he's going to produce the army?" asked Mohammed Atrianfar, a well-known political commentator allied with former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been working behind the scenes in recent weeks to ease the tension.
AlterNet: Holding Bush Back from Attacking Iran
Investigators were stumped at how the attackers, who wore American-style uniforms, secured forged US identity cards and American-style M-4 rifles, and used stun grenades like those used only by US forces. They are also confounded at the way the attackers' convoy of S.U.V.'s gave the impression that it was American and slipped through Iraqi checkpoints. Wednesday's article in the Times cites a theory that "a Western mercenary group" may have been involved. In the past the US government used the CIA to covertly overthrow governments, such as Iran's in 1953 and Chile's in 1973. Could mercenaries now be doing the Bush administration's dirty work?
Vanity Fair
1) Retired Defense Intelligence official Patrick Lang told Unger that Bush has ordered StratCom " the military command responsible for "nuclear weapons, missile defense and protection against weapons of mass destruction" to draw up plans for a "massive strike against Iran." Lang noted that the shift away from Central Command "to StratCom indicates they are talking about a really punishing air-force and naval air attack [on Iran]."
2) Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said, "I've heard from sources at the Pentagon that their impression is that the White House has made a decision that war is going to happen.
Dissent grows in Iran - Los Angeles Times
Iran's leadership is facing mounting public unease and the seeds of mutiny in parliament over the combative nature of its nuclear diplomacy.
For the first time since Iran resumed its uranium enrichment program, there is broad, open criticism of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's defiance of the Bush administration and United Nations Security Council, and warnings have emerged that the public may not be prepared to support the Islamic regime through a war.
The criticism and public wariness come at a time when the Bush administration has moved additional ships to the Persian Gulf and Washington and Israel have refused to rule out a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.
The mounting dissent does not appear to have chipped away at Iran's determination to maintain an active nuclear program, say politicians, diplomats and political analysts here. But they say it opens the door to a face-saving compromise and signals that a broad range of Iranians hope to avoid an all-out confrontation.
"If [Ahmadinejad] wants to start a new war, from where does he think he's going to produce the army?" asked Mohammed Atrianfar, a well-known political commentator allied with former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has been working behind the scenes in recent weeks to ease the tension.
AlterNet: Holding Bush Back from Attacking Iran
Investigators were stumped at how the attackers, who wore American-style uniforms, secured forged US identity cards and American-style M-4 rifles, and used stun grenades like those used only by US forces. They are also confounded at the way the attackers' convoy of S.U.V.'s gave the impression that it was American and slipped through Iraqi checkpoints. Wednesday's article in the Times cites a theory that "a Western mercenary group" may have been involved. In the past the US government used the CIA to covertly overthrow governments, such as Iran's in 1953 and Chile's in 1973. Could mercenaries now be doing the Bush administration's dirty work?

Armageddon: Christian Fascists Vs Islamic Fascists

The election of 2006 went well for the forces of civil liberties, pragmatism and democracy. The battle was won, but the war for the hearts and minds of America continues. We are facing the a major constitutional crisis driven by the rise of the Christian Right-wing extremists who's agenda is to rewrite our history, our values and the American way of life to pave the way for the Rapture and Armageddon.
It is critically important that we not underestimate the risks. Remember that the majority of Americans see creationism as fact or at least on a par with evolution as a theory. The Christian Right-wing extremist agenda is well documented. Their power has been witness throughout the Bush Administration, but as Chris Hedges in AlterNet points out, the war continues.

We must attend to growing social and economic inequities in order to stop the most dangerous mass movement in American history -- or face a future of fascism under the guise of Christian values.


Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age -- he was then close to 80 -- we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."


The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.


He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He had been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States. It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolf Hitler placed over the contents of his suitcases to hide the rolls of home-movie film he had taken of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied the Nazis, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the tops of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Führer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black-and-white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge.


Adams understood that totalitarian movements are built out of deep personal and economic despair. He warned that the flight of manufacturing jobs, the impoverishment of the American working class, the physical obliteration of communities in the vast, soulless exurbs and decaying Rust Belt, were swiftly deforming our society. The current assault on the middle class, which now lives in a world in which anything that can be put on software can be outsourced, would have terrified him. The stories that many in this movement told me over the past two years as I worked on "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" were stories of this failure -- personal, communal and often economic. This despair, Adams said, would empower dangerous dreamers -- those who today bombard the airwaves with an idealistic and religious utopianism that promises, through violent apocalyptic purification, to eradicate the old, sinful world that has failed many Americans.


These Christian Utopians promise to replace this internal and external emptiness with a mythical world where time stops and all problems are solved. The mounting despair rippling across the United States, one I witnessed repeatedly as I traveled the country, remains unaddressed by the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, like its Republican counterpart, for massive corporate funding.


The Christian right has lured tens of millions of Americans, who rightly feel abandoned and betrayed by the political system, from the reality-based world to one of magic -- to fantastic visions of angels and miracles, to a childlike belief that God has a plan for them and Jesus will guide and protect them. This mythological worldview, one that has no use for science or dispassionate, honest intellectual inquiry, one that promises that the loss of jobs and health insurance does not matter, as long as you are right with Jesus, offers a lying world of consistency that addresses the emotional yearnings of desperate followers at the expense of reality. It creates a world where facts become interchangeable with opinions, where lies become true -- the very essence of the totalitarian state. It includes a dark license to kill, to obliterate all those who do not conform to this vision, from Muslims in the Middle East to those at home who refuse to submit to the movement. And it conveniently empowers a rapacious oligarchy whose god is maximum profit at the expense of citizens.


We now live in a nation where the top 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, where we have legalized torture and can lock up citizens without trial. Arthur Schlesinger, in "The Cycles of American History," wrote that "the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense -- not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide."


Adams saw in the Christian right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists rise under the guise of religion to dismantle the open society. He despaired of U.S. liberals, who, he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil or the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand-wringing by Democrats, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.


[..]The radical Christian right, calling for a "Christian state" -- where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens -- awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity. This movement -- the most dangerous mass movement in American history -- will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance.