Iran: A Chronology of Disinformation
Gary Leupp (repost) | 19.02.2007 11:00 | Anti-militarism | History | Terror War | World
Raw Story's inimitable Larisa Alexandrovna has recently written an excellent article detailing the neoconservatives' six-year long project to use American power to attack and produce regime change in Iran. Appended to the piece is a timeline including key Bush administration statements about Iran, "news" stories and neocon writings abetting efforts to vilify Iran, and the antics of such characters as former Congressman Curt Weldon, Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, and spy-for-Israel Larry Franklin who have worked to facilitate that attack. I've used it as the basis for this more elaborate (although surely incomplete and imperfect) chronology.
2002
On January 29, 2002, President Bush gave his State of the Union speech featuring the now infamous formulation "axis of evil" contrived by speechwriter and Richard Perle cohort David Frum. (Frum currently writes a regular column for the extreme rightwing National Review, arguing among other things that Iran is supporting al-Qaeda-related Iraqi Sunni groups.) Iran was of course included in that "axis" alongside Saddam's Iraq and North Korea. The conceptual sloppiness of the phrase puzzled world leaders, while its bizarre linkage of dissimilar regimes alarmed mainstream scholarship. But for mass consumption it successfully conflated disparate targets and vaguely associated Iran with the Evil represented by the 9-11 attacks.
On August 14, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (led by the armed Iranian dissident movement Mujahedin-E-Khalq or MEK) held a press conference in Washington D.C. and announced that Iran was constructing a secret nuclear facility near the city of Natanz. The MEK had long been (and still is) listed as a "terrorist" organization by the State Department, and had been under the protection of Saddam Hussein's regime since the 1980s although disarmed by US forces following the Iraq invasion. But the Bush administration seized upon the report (while Cheney and the neocons pressed for a reconsideration of MEK's status). In February 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Natanz site, finding centrifuge machines. Iran declared that the facility was part of a civilian nuclear energy program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticized Iran for concealing this and other nuclear facilities and demanded that Iran submit to rigorous inspections of its nuclear sites. In December Iran suspended its uranium enrichment program and allowed such inspections, which have not to this day produced evidence for a nuclear weapons program. But the concealment in violation of IAEA rules (by no means unprecedented among Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories, such as close US ally South Korea) was presented by the US administration as virtual proof for an illegal nuclear weapons program.
2003
From this point the disinformation campaign against Iran got underway in earnest. In April Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, vice-chair of the Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committees, met with a certain "Ali" in Paris who informed him that Iranian agents had stolen enriched uranium from Iraq before the US invasion. (Iran-Contra figure and Weekly Standard neocon propagandist Michael Ledeen, fresh from his work with Donald Feith's Office of Special Plans, also dispensed this "intelligence.") This "Ali" was identified by American Prospect reporters Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer in April 2005 as Fereidoun Mahdavi, former minister of commerce in the government of the Shah of Iran and business partner of Manucher Ghorbanifar. (Ghorbanifar and Ledeen were old friends and had met in Rome in December 2001 with Farsi-speaking Defense Department officials Larry Franklin, Harold Rhode and Iranian dissidents to discuss regime change in Iran.)
"Ali" also told Weldon that Iranian-supported terrorists were plotting to fly a hijacked Canadian airliner into the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station outside of Boston, and that Iran was hiding Osama bin Laden. The congressman laid it all out in his 2005 book Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America . . . and How the CIA Has Ignored It. The CIA for its part has interviewed Mahdavi and determined that he, like his buddy Ghorbanifar long fingered as a charlatan by the Agency, is a liar. (Weldon's book in any case has apparently sold well and gets rave reviews on Amazon.com.)
In May 2003, soon after Weldon and Ledeen channeling Ghorbanifar began to disseminate such charges, al-Qaeda operatives bombed a foreigners' compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 26 people including 9 Americans. Unnamed US officials were quick to allege that the operatives had taken refuge in Iran, or had been directed from Iran. CBS News correspondent David Martin reported that such officials "say they have evidence the bombings in Saudi Arabia and other attacks still in the works were planned and directed by senior al Qaeda operatives who have found safe haven in Iran." So here was another supposed Iran-al Qaeda link. It was given relatively little attention at the time but could be resurrected in the future.
(This occurred during the same month that Iran faxed a letter to the State Department, via the Swiss ambassador to Iran, offering "full transparency" on its nuclear enrichment program, cooperative measures on terrorism, cooperation in establishing a stable democratic Iraq, and acceptance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The offer, welcomed by the State Department, was rejected out of hand by Cheney's office and only made public last year by Colin Powell's former chief of state Lawrence Wilkerson.)
On August 26, the IAEA reported it had found highly enriched uranium particles at Natanz. Iran insisted that the particles had come with imported centrifuges, an explanation the IAEA later confirmed. The existence of the particles hardly strengthened the case that Iran had a military nuclear program, but was used to encourage anxiety abut that possibility.
2004
By early 2004, the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia had emerged as a major challenge to the US occupation in Baghdad and the southern part of Iraq. Right-wing journalists and neocons close to the administration increasingly alleged that al-Sadr was working closely with Tehran. In April, Rowan Scarborough citing "military sources" wrote in the Unification Church-owned Washington Times that al-Sadr "is being aided directly by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and by Hezbollah, an Iranian-created terrorist group based in Lebanon." The Wall Street Journal's editors declared that the "Mahdi militia is almost certainly financed and trained by Iranians," adding, "Revolutionary Guards may be instigating some of the current unrest." The New York Times citing "Pentagon officials" reported the same thing, although Times reporter James Risen acknowledged that "some intelligence officials believe that the Pentagon has been eager to link Hezbollah to the violence in Iraq to link the Iranian regime more closely to anti-American terrorism." Critics pointed out that the Iranian mullahs were in fact closer to the leaders of the SCIRI and Dawa parties working with the occupation forces than with al-Sadr, whose Shiite religious solidarity with Iran is conditioned by Iraqi nationalism and pan-Arabism.
In June, the long-awaited 9-11 Commission Report was released. It stated that "Iran does not have long-standing ties to al-Qaeda" but made several claims about cooperation between the two. It linked Iran to Saudi Hezbollah, which carried out the1996 attack on the Khobar Towers residential complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans, adding that "there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown."
"In late 1991 or 1992," according to the report, " discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support -- even if only training -- for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. . . The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations."
The report claimed without evidence that there were "strong indications that elements of both the Pakistani and Iranian governments frequently turned a blind eye" to the transit through their countries of al-Qaeda members prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks. It cited "detainees" as describing "the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors would be told not to place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers. Such arrangements were particularly beneficial to Saudi members of al Qaeda. . . In sum, there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers." But the evidence for Iranian "willingness" to assist known al-Qaeda operatives seems very skimpy here; Iran almost went to war with al-Qaeda's host Afghanistan in 1999. The report does state, "We have found no evidence that Iran. . . .was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack."
The report indicated that some al-Qaeda members had found sanctuary in Iran. Iranian authorities replied that the only known al-Qaeda operatives in Iran were in prison awaiting trial. Serious intelligence scholars doubted whether the ferociously anti-Shiite al-Qaeda would receive any assistance from the Iranian government and noted Iran's cooperation with the US in toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. But any effort to link al-Qaeda and Iran includes reference to this report.
In August 2004 CBS News revealed that the FBI was investigating a spy for Israel within the Defense Department, working under Donald Feith. The spy, later revealed to be Larry Franklin, had passed on classified information regarding Iran to senior officials of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). (In January 2006 he was convicted of passing classified information to AIPAC and sentenced to over 12 years in prison.) Franklin had in December 2001, as noted above, met to discuss regime change in Iran with Ledeen, Rhodes, and Ghorbanifar in Rome. His bust may have set back neocon efforts, coordinated with Israeli friends, to engineer an attack on Iran.
In this context President Bush, interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News September 27, 2004 declared that he would never let Iran acquire nuclear weapons and that "all options are on the table."
2005
Following that remark, in January 2005, powerful hawks in the House of Representatives sponsored the "Iran Freedom Support Act" endorsing "a transition to democracy in Iran." A similar version was introduced in the Senate and the joint bill was passed in September 2006. (Ironically, Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State and key aide to Colin Powell, had in February 2003 referred to Iran as a democracy, based on the fact that the country holds competitive elections. The neocons had castigated him for the remark, although the State Department officially stood by it.)
On January 20 Vice President Cheney declared that Iran is "right at the top of the list" of global "trouble spots" adding, "given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards." Here the Bush administration was directly linking Iran's supposed military nuclear program with the survival of Israel -- a significant escalation of the rhetoric.
The Iranians, Cheney argued, "are already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy." This was a remarkably dishonest statement coming from a man who had been an official in the Ford Administration which had in fact encouraged the Shah of Iran in the 1970s to develop a peaceful nuclear program. The Iranians plausibly argue that their fossil fuel reserves are finite, and more valuable as a source of foreign exchange than domestic use, while nuclear power is cleaner. But the argument that Iran can only be building reactors and enriching plutonium for military purposes is useful in its very simplicity.
On June 24 Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. The mainstream news media immediately publicized various allegations against him, including the charge that he was deeply involved in the 1979-81 Iran Hostage Crisis. The Washington Times quoted one of the former hostages, Col. Charles Scott (then 73) as stating, "He was one of the top two or three leaders; the new president of Iran is a terrorist." The MEK produced a 1979 photograph of a young man resembling Ahmadinejad with an American hostage at the US embassy, which was quickly published by news agencies such as AP, Reuters and AFP alongside reportage on the Iranian election.
Iranian sources identified the youth as one Taghi Mohammadi, while the Los Angeles Times quoted a "US official familiar with the investigation of Ahmadinejad's role" as saying that analysts had found "serious discrepancies" between the person in the photo and images of Ahmadinejad, including differences in facial structure and height. Still, the State Department has made no official statement disputing the claim made by Scott and several other former hostages.
Another piece of likely disinformation was revealed in mid-July when senior (unnamed) US intelligence officials summoned IAEA leaders to the top of a Vienna skyscraper. There they revealed materials supposedly downloaded from a stolen Iranian laptop computer revealing a protracted attempt by the Iranians to design a nuclear warhead. The IAEA was not convinced; "The information did not seem conclusive, the 'smoking gun,'" one person in attendance told Reuters in November. "No one has augmented this data since, and we are in no position to know whether the data indeed came from the Iranians." But the story was prominently covered in the US press.
On August 23, the Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report describing Iran's nuclear program as a strategic threat to the US In a rare move, the IAEA denounced the report in a letter September 13 to committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan). The report, the IAEA declared, contained "erroneous, misleading, and unsubstantiated information." In particular the IAEA refuted the assertion that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons grade.
In September, following months of pressure from US UN Ambassador Bolton, the IAEA issued a report on Iran, declaring it in "non-compliance" with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It stated that the "history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities" and "resulting absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes have given rise to questions that are within the competence of the Security Council." The statement was actually opposed by 13 of the 35 voting countries (including such key international players as Russia, China, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and South Africa) but backed by NATO country representatives voting as a bloc. This was used to produce UNSC Resolution 1737, which while affirming the right of Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination," contradictorily "decides" that "Iran shall without further delay suspend . . . all [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities." The US intention here was to have the Security Council adopt a resolution condemning Iran's nuclear program and imposing sanctions. This was indeed achieved July 31, 2006.
In October, British ambassador to Iraq William Patey told reporters in London that Iran had been supplying technology used to kill British troops in Basra. There was no real evidence of Iranian government involvement, but the charge that Coalition forces are dying because of "explosively formed perpetrators" (EFP) manufactured in Iran has of course been echoed by Bush administration officials in recent weeks.
On October 26, Ahmadinejad gave a speech in which he quoted Ayatollah Khomeini (who died in 1989) as saying that "the occupation of Jerusalem" will be "erased from the page of time." Ahmadinejad used the quote in a speech noting that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union itself, and the regime of Saddam Hussein all ended in time, as he maintained the Israeli occupation of one of Islam's holiest cities would too. The statement has been incessantly misquoted in the US and global press as a statement that Tehran plans to "wipe Israel off the map." One Iranian writer calls it "the rumor of the century." Certainly it's central to the whole disinformation program.
2006
In May 2006, Laura Rozen reported in the Los Angeles Times that the Office of Special Plans had been reincarnated as the "Iranian Directorate" at the Pentagon, once again under Abram Shulsky and now reporting to none other than Elizabeth Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and daughter of the Vice President. In the same month Canada's National Post published a story alleging that the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) had passed a law establishing "separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean)." It appeared next to a 1935 photo of a Jewish businessman in Germany with the yellow Star of David badge sewn onto his coat, as required by Nazi law at the time. It was authored by Iranian-American Amir Taheri, chief editor of Iran's daily Kayhan (propaganda arm of the Shah's dictatorship) from 1972-1979, National Review contributor, and well-paid speaker for the warmongering neocon Benador Associates PR firm.
The story was picked up by UPI and reproduced in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, and represented as fact by US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "Despicable," declared McCormack, adding that Iran was just like "Germany under Hitler." "This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," echoed Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis." But the story was exposed as a hoax by the Iranian ambassador to Canada, and the Jewish representative in the Iranian Majlis among others and retracted by the National Post the day following its publication.
(In July, following discussions with the Bush-Cheney administration, Israel once again invaded Lebanon. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that "The White House was. . . focused on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel." A former intelligence officer told Hersh, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later -- the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'" The invasion, followed by withdrawal the next month, did not accomplish this objective but rather strengthened Iran ally Hizbollah politically.)
On August 6, Murdoch's Sunday Times of London reported that Iran had been plotting to obtain large amounts of uranium from the Congo. But Raw Story cited a source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who called the story "highly unlikely" and "not well researched." (The same Raw Story report noted that Abram Shulsky is still briefing Cheney regularly about Iran, suggesting a connection between the Times article and the neocon apparatus in Washington.)
As Israeli advocates of a US attack on Iran became increasingly anxious at the American delay, they ratcheted up the rhetoric, accusing Iran of planning what Hitler failed to accomplish: the annihilation of Jewry. (There are in fact at least 25,000 Iranian Jews, whose roots go back 2500 years, and one Jewish representative in the Majlis.) In December, former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu summoned seventy foreign diplomats in Israel to a meeting to pressure them to join Israel in efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program. According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the meeting was "the first event in an international public relations campaign. It will include a proposal to file a complaint in the International Court of Justice against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for war crimes, and his plans to commit genocide will be presented."
"In 1938," Netanyahu averred, "Hitler didn't say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide." Outgoing US UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of Criminal Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with "inciting genocide." "It's time to take action," Bolton told a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations symposium. "We're being given early warning, unambiguously, on what his intentions are." This is of course the most grandiose piece of disinformation inflicted on the public to date, with a shock value topping the "mushroom cloud over New York City" image used to sell the war on Iraq.
On December 6 the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton Commission) recommended to the president that he initiate a gradual withdrawal from Iraq and consult with Iraq's neighbors including Iran to stabilize the country. Towards the end of the month several Iranians including two invited into the country by Iraqi Vice President Jalal Talabani were detained by US forces, prompting criticism from the Iraqi puppet regime itself. The US accused the detained of complicity in attacks on US or "Coalition" troops. There was at year end a subtle shift of emphasis in the broad propaganda program from Iran's nuclear activities to its involvement in American deaths.
2007
On January 10, in a much awaited response to the Commission recommendations Bush announced that he would instead escalate the war and adopt an even more confrontational posture towards Iran. He declared (without evidence) that the Islamic Republic was "providing material support for attacks on American troops" and allowing "terrorists and insurgents" to use its territory "to move in and out of Iraq." "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces," he vowed. "We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran. . . .and we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
On January 11, US-led forces entered a building in the Kurdish city of Irbil, which both Iranian and Iraqi officials regard as an Iranian consulate flying the Iranian flag, and apprehended 6 Iranians. "I think it's instructive," declared Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "that in the last couple of weeks two of those raids that we conducted to go after these folks that are providing these kinds of weapons [EFP] -- two of those raids had policed up Iranians. So it is clear that the Iranians are complicit in providing weapons."
It's actually not clear at all, and a planned announcement to provide details had to be delayed three weeks as the administration conceded that it faced a credibility problem. "In the old days," said an unnamed administration official, "if the US government had come out and said, 'we've got this, here's our assessment,' reasonable people would have taken it at face value. That's never going to happen again." But in Baghdad on February 12 US officials briefed reporters on the issue of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents. The journalists, including those from Associated Press, The New York Times, and Reuters all attended having agreed to the condition that none of the three US officials taking part could be named or even closely described. All cameras and recording devices, including cell phones, were banned from the briefing room.
The anonymous officials at this spookiest of press briefings announced that the Islamic Republican Guard Corps-Quds Force, "believed to be" controlled by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had been delivering EFP to Iraq since 2004. The Washington Post thus reported: "Iranian security forces, taking orders from the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government, are funneling sophisticated explosives to extremist groups in Iraq, and the weapons have grown increasingly deadly for US-led troops over the past two years, senior defense officials said Sunday in Baghdad. Three defense officials from the US-led Multi-National Force in Baghdad, laid out for reporters what they described as a 'growing body of evidence' that Iran is manufacturing and exporting into Iraq the armor piercing explosives, known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' or EFPs, that have killed more than 170 coalition troops, and wounded more than 620 others, in the past two years." The New York Times headlined the Iranian arms link story two days in a row, while editors noted that the case was weak, and the timing of the announcement suspicious.
The Iraqi (puppet) deputy foreign minister himself questioned the charges. Labeed M. Abbawi told the Washington Post, that the Iraqi government remained in the dark. "It is difficult for us here in the diplomatic circles," he declared, "just to accept whatever the American forces say is evidence. If they have anything really conclusive, then they should come out and say it openly, then we will pick it up from there and use diplomatic channels" to discuss it with Iran. Various Iraqi officials urged the US not to pursue its quarrel with Iran on their turf. Meanwhile Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not know if the Iranian government itself was supplying EFP material to Iraqis. "That [Baghdad report] does not translate that the Iranian Government, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," he stated. "What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."
But Bush himself in his February 14 news conference told reporters that "we know that" the Quds Force was supplying weapons, and that the Quds Force is part of the Iranian government. "That's a known," he declared. "Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don't think we know. But we do know that they're there and I intend to do something about it. And I've asked our commanders to do something about it. And we're going to protect our troops."
Israeli officials (who surely have Washington's ear) continue to insist that there's no time to waste to end the genocidal threat that is Iran. Uri Lubrani, a former Israeli ambassador to the Shah's Iran and now a senior advisor to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, recently told the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors that the US "does not understand the threat and has not done enough," adding that the Americans and Europeans "must be shaken awake." Americans, that is to say, must be made to fear, must be disabused of their commonsense and moral qualms, must be compelled to share the paranoia.
The bland observation of Nazi Hermann Goering, made during the Nuremburg trials, bears frequent repeating. "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." All the above forms a case that Iran, a developing country, is attacking the United States of America, the world's sole superpower, and Israel, a country close to many Americans' hearts. All the above makes Iran the aggressor, the US and Israel the victims. No matter that Iran has never in modern times attacked another nation, or that an attack on the US or Israel would result in horrific consequences for the Islamic Republic.
The disinformation campaign eschews logic, gambling that fear alone will produce popular support. It anticipates the eventual discovery of its lies and charades, but calculates that the attainment of its heroic ends will make any embarrassment worth the effort. So what if following the nuking of Iran, after the rubble's cleared, we discover that Iran had no military nuclear program? Maybe there will be no evidence of anything at all left anyway. Maybe that's the radiant beauty of the plan.
Don't expect the neocons urging the Iran attack to apologize after the event, not matter how catastrophic the consequences. Consider Douglas Feith's response to the report by the Pentagon's inspector general that his Office of Special Plans peddled allegations about Iraq "not supported by the available intelligence" in order to get the US into a bloody war.
"All of that was wrong, wasn't it?" Feith was recently asked by Chris Wallace in the most neocon-friendly environment imaginable, Fox News studio.
"No, not at all," Feith responded. "There was substantial intelligence. . . . There was a lot of information out there."
A lot of information indeed. Lots of stuff to believe and fear. That's how it works, again and again, in the history of US imperialism. From the imaginary Spanish sinking of the USS Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to Saddam Hussein's WMD to Iran's plans for genocide. Disinformation has a long proud history of working well when deployed by amoral, unscrupulous, maybe insane men holding state power. Will it work once more?
On January 29, 2002, President Bush gave his State of the Union speech featuring the now infamous formulation "axis of evil" contrived by speechwriter and Richard Perle cohort David Frum. (Frum currently writes a regular column for the extreme rightwing National Review, arguing among other things that Iran is supporting al-Qaeda-related Iraqi Sunni groups.) Iran was of course included in that "axis" alongside Saddam's Iraq and North Korea. The conceptual sloppiness of the phrase puzzled world leaders, while its bizarre linkage of dissimilar regimes alarmed mainstream scholarship. But for mass consumption it successfully conflated disparate targets and vaguely associated Iran with the Evil represented by the 9-11 attacks.
On August 14, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (led by the armed Iranian dissident movement Mujahedin-E-Khalq or MEK) held a press conference in Washington D.C. and announced that Iran was constructing a secret nuclear facility near the city of Natanz. The MEK had long been (and still is) listed as a "terrorist" organization by the State Department, and had been under the protection of Saddam Hussein's regime since the 1980s although disarmed by US forces following the Iraq invasion. But the Bush administration seized upon the report (while Cheney and the neocons pressed for a reconsideration of MEK's status). In February 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency visited the Natanz site, finding centrifuge machines. Iran declared that the facility was part of a civilian nuclear energy program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) criticized Iran for concealing this and other nuclear facilities and demanded that Iran submit to rigorous inspections of its nuclear sites. In December Iran suspended its uranium enrichment program and allowed such inspections, which have not to this day produced evidence for a nuclear weapons program. But the concealment in violation of IAEA rules (by no means unprecedented among Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories, such as close US ally South Korea) was presented by the US administration as virtual proof for an illegal nuclear weapons program.
2003
From this point the disinformation campaign against Iran got underway in earnest. In April Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Curt Weldon, vice-chair of the Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committees, met with a certain "Ali" in Paris who informed him that Iranian agents had stolen enriched uranium from Iraq before the US invasion. (Iran-Contra figure and Weekly Standard neocon propagandist Michael Ledeen, fresh from his work with Donald Feith's Office of Special Plans, also dispensed this "intelligence.") This "Ali" was identified by American Prospect reporters Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer in April 2005 as Fereidoun Mahdavi, former minister of commerce in the government of the Shah of Iran and business partner of Manucher Ghorbanifar. (Ghorbanifar and Ledeen were old friends and had met in Rome in December 2001 with Farsi-speaking Defense Department officials Larry Franklin, Harold Rhode and Iranian dissidents to discuss regime change in Iran.)
"Ali" also told Weldon that Iranian-supported terrorists were plotting to fly a hijacked Canadian airliner into the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station outside of Boston, and that Iran was hiding Osama bin Laden. The congressman laid it all out in his 2005 book Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information that Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America . . . and How the CIA Has Ignored It. The CIA for its part has interviewed Mahdavi and determined that he, like his buddy Ghorbanifar long fingered as a charlatan by the Agency, is a liar. (Weldon's book in any case has apparently sold well and gets rave reviews on Amazon.com.)
In May 2003, soon after Weldon and Ledeen channeling Ghorbanifar began to disseminate such charges, al-Qaeda operatives bombed a foreigners' compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 26 people including 9 Americans. Unnamed US officials were quick to allege that the operatives had taken refuge in Iran, or had been directed from Iran. CBS News correspondent David Martin reported that such officials "say they have evidence the bombings in Saudi Arabia and other attacks still in the works were planned and directed by senior al Qaeda operatives who have found safe haven in Iran." So here was another supposed Iran-al Qaeda link. It was given relatively little attention at the time but could be resurrected in the future.
(This occurred during the same month that Iran faxed a letter to the State Department, via the Swiss ambassador to Iran, offering "full transparency" on its nuclear enrichment program, cooperative measures on terrorism, cooperation in establishing a stable democratic Iraq, and acceptance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The offer, welcomed by the State Department, was rejected out of hand by Cheney's office and only made public last year by Colin Powell's former chief of state Lawrence Wilkerson.)
On August 26, the IAEA reported it had found highly enriched uranium particles at Natanz. Iran insisted that the particles had come with imported centrifuges, an explanation the IAEA later confirmed. The existence of the particles hardly strengthened the case that Iran had a military nuclear program, but was used to encourage anxiety abut that possibility.
2004
By early 2004, the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia had emerged as a major challenge to the US occupation in Baghdad and the southern part of Iraq. Right-wing journalists and neocons close to the administration increasingly alleged that al-Sadr was working closely with Tehran. In April, Rowan Scarborough citing "military sources" wrote in the Unification Church-owned Washington Times that al-Sadr "is being aided directly by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and by Hezbollah, an Iranian-created terrorist group based in Lebanon." The Wall Street Journal's editors declared that the "Mahdi militia is almost certainly financed and trained by Iranians," adding, "Revolutionary Guards may be instigating some of the current unrest." The New York Times citing "Pentagon officials" reported the same thing, although Times reporter James Risen acknowledged that "some intelligence officials believe that the Pentagon has been eager to link Hezbollah to the violence in Iraq to link the Iranian regime more closely to anti-American terrorism." Critics pointed out that the Iranian mullahs were in fact closer to the leaders of the SCIRI and Dawa parties working with the occupation forces than with al-Sadr, whose Shiite religious solidarity with Iran is conditioned by Iraqi nationalism and pan-Arabism.
In June, the long-awaited 9-11 Commission Report was released. It stated that "Iran does not have long-standing ties to al-Qaeda" but made several claims about cooperation between the two. It linked Iran to Saudi Hezbollah, which carried out the1996 attack on the Khobar Towers residential complex in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, killing 19 Americans, adding that "there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown."
"In late 1991 or 1992," according to the report, " discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support -- even if only training -- for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. . . The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations."
The report claimed without evidence that there were "strong indications that elements of both the Pakistani and Iranian governments frequently turned a blind eye" to the transit through their countries of al-Qaeda members prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks. It cited "detainees" as describing "the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors would be told not to place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers. Such arrangements were particularly beneficial to Saudi members of al Qaeda. . . In sum, there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers." But the evidence for Iranian "willingness" to assist known al-Qaeda operatives seems very skimpy here; Iran almost went to war with al-Qaeda's host Afghanistan in 1999. The report does state, "We have found no evidence that Iran. . . .was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack."
The report indicated that some al-Qaeda members had found sanctuary in Iran. Iranian authorities replied that the only known al-Qaeda operatives in Iran were in prison awaiting trial. Serious intelligence scholars doubted whether the ferociously anti-Shiite al-Qaeda would receive any assistance from the Iranian government and noted Iran's cooperation with the US in toppling the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. But any effort to link al-Qaeda and Iran includes reference to this report.
In August 2004 CBS News revealed that the FBI was investigating a spy for Israel within the Defense Department, working under Donald Feith. The spy, later revealed to be Larry Franklin, had passed on classified information regarding Iran to senior officials of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). (In January 2006 he was convicted of passing classified information to AIPAC and sentenced to over 12 years in prison.) Franklin had in December 2001, as noted above, met to discuss regime change in Iran with Ledeen, Rhodes, and Ghorbanifar in Rome. His bust may have set back neocon efforts, coordinated with Israeli friends, to engineer an attack on Iran.
In this context President Bush, interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News September 27, 2004 declared that he would never let Iran acquire nuclear weapons and that "all options are on the table."
2005
Following that remark, in January 2005, powerful hawks in the House of Representatives sponsored the "Iran Freedom Support Act" endorsing "a transition to democracy in Iran." A similar version was introduced in the Senate and the joint bill was passed in September 2006. (Ironically, Richard Armitage, Deputy Secretary of State and key aide to Colin Powell, had in February 2003 referred to Iran as a democracy, based on the fact that the country holds competitive elections. The neocons had castigated him for the remark, although the State Department officially stood by it.)
On January 20 Vice President Cheney declared that Iran is "right at the top of the list" of global "trouble spots" adding, "given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards." Here the Bush administration was directly linking Iran's supposed military nuclear program with the survival of Israel -- a significant escalation of the rhetoric.
The Iranians, Cheney argued, "are already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas. Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy." This was a remarkably dishonest statement coming from a man who had been an official in the Ford Administration which had in fact encouraged the Shah of Iran in the 1970s to develop a peaceful nuclear program. The Iranians plausibly argue that their fossil fuel reserves are finite, and more valuable as a source of foreign exchange than domestic use, while nuclear power is cleaner. But the argument that Iran can only be building reactors and enriching plutonium for military purposes is useful in its very simplicity.
On June 24 Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran. The mainstream news media immediately publicized various allegations against him, including the charge that he was deeply involved in the 1979-81 Iran Hostage Crisis. The Washington Times quoted one of the former hostages, Col. Charles Scott (then 73) as stating, "He was one of the top two or three leaders; the new president of Iran is a terrorist." The MEK produced a 1979 photograph of a young man resembling Ahmadinejad with an American hostage at the US embassy, which was quickly published by news agencies such as AP, Reuters and AFP alongside reportage on the Iranian election.
Iranian sources identified the youth as one Taghi Mohammadi, while the Los Angeles Times quoted a "US official familiar with the investigation of Ahmadinejad's role" as saying that analysts had found "serious discrepancies" between the person in the photo and images of Ahmadinejad, including differences in facial structure and height. Still, the State Department has made no official statement disputing the claim made by Scott and several other former hostages.
Another piece of likely disinformation was revealed in mid-July when senior (unnamed) US intelligence officials summoned IAEA leaders to the top of a Vienna skyscraper. There they revealed materials supposedly downloaded from a stolen Iranian laptop computer revealing a protracted attempt by the Iranians to design a nuclear warhead. The IAEA was not convinced; "The information did not seem conclusive, the 'smoking gun,'" one person in attendance told Reuters in November. "No one has augmented this data since, and we are in no position to know whether the data indeed came from the Iranians." But the story was prominently covered in the US press.
On August 23, the Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a report describing Iran's nuclear program as a strategic threat to the US In a rare move, the IAEA denounced the report in a letter September 13 to committee chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan). The report, the IAEA declared, contained "erroneous, misleading, and unsubstantiated information." In particular the IAEA refuted the assertion that Iran was enriching uranium to weapons grade.
In September, following months of pressure from US UN Ambassador Bolton, the IAEA issued a report on Iran, declaring it in "non-compliance" with the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It stated that the "history of concealment of Iran's nuclear activities" and "resulting absence of confidence that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes have given rise to questions that are within the competence of the Security Council." The statement was actually opposed by 13 of the 35 voting countries (including such key international players as Russia, China, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela and South Africa) but backed by NATO country representatives voting as a bloc. This was used to produce UNSC Resolution 1737, which while affirming the right of Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories "to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination," contradictorily "decides" that "Iran shall without further delay suspend . . . all [uranium] enrichment-related and reprocessing activities." The US intention here was to have the Security Council adopt a resolution condemning Iran's nuclear program and imposing sanctions. This was indeed achieved July 31, 2006.
In October, British ambassador to Iraq William Patey told reporters in London that Iran had been supplying technology used to kill British troops in Basra. There was no real evidence of Iranian government involvement, but the charge that Coalition forces are dying because of "explosively formed perpetrators" (EFP) manufactured in Iran has of course been echoed by Bush administration officials in recent weeks.
On October 26, Ahmadinejad gave a speech in which he quoted Ayatollah Khomeini (who died in 1989) as saying that "the occupation of Jerusalem" will be "erased from the page of time." Ahmadinejad used the quote in a speech noting that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet Union itself, and the regime of Saddam Hussein all ended in time, as he maintained the Israeli occupation of one of Islam's holiest cities would too. The statement has been incessantly misquoted in the US and global press as a statement that Tehran plans to "wipe Israel off the map." One Iranian writer calls it "the rumor of the century." Certainly it's central to the whole disinformation program.
2006
In May 2006, Laura Rozen reported in the Los Angeles Times that the Office of Special Plans had been reincarnated as the "Iranian Directorate" at the Pentagon, once again under Abram Shulsky and now reporting to none other than Elizabeth Cheney, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, and daughter of the Vice President. In the same month Canada's National Post published a story alleging that the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) had passed a law establishing "separate dress codes for religious minorities, Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, who will have to adopt distinct colour schemes to make them identifiable in public. The new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake, and thus becoming najis (unclean)." It appeared next to a 1935 photo of a Jewish businessman in Germany with the yellow Star of David badge sewn onto his coat, as required by Nazi law at the time. It was authored by Iranian-American Amir Taheri, chief editor of Iran's daily Kayhan (propaganda arm of the Shah's dictatorship) from 1972-1979, National Review contributor, and well-paid speaker for the warmongering neocon Benador Associates PR firm.
The story was picked up by UPI and reproduced in Rupert Murdoch's New York Post and Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, and represented as fact by US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "Despicable," declared McCormack, adding that Iran was just like "Germany under Hitler." "This is reminiscent of the Holocaust," echoed Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. "Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis." But the story was exposed as a hoax by the Iranian ambassador to Canada, and the Jewish representative in the Iranian Majlis among others and retracted by the National Post the day following its publication.
(In July, following discussions with the Bush-Cheney administration, Israel once again invaded Lebanon. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that "The White House was. . . focused on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel." A former intelligence officer told Hersh, "We told Israel, 'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later -- the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.'" The invasion, followed by withdrawal the next month, did not accomplish this objective but rather strengthened Iran ally Hizbollah politically.)
On August 6, Murdoch's Sunday Times of London reported that Iran had been plotting to obtain large amounts of uranium from the Congo. But Raw Story cited a source close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) who called the story "highly unlikely" and "not well researched." (The same Raw Story report noted that Abram Shulsky is still briefing Cheney regularly about Iran, suggesting a connection between the Times article and the neocon apparatus in Washington.)
As Israeli advocates of a US attack on Iran became increasingly anxious at the American delay, they ratcheted up the rhetoric, accusing Iran of planning what Hitler failed to accomplish: the annihilation of Jewry. (There are in fact at least 25,000 Iranian Jews, whose roots go back 2500 years, and one Jewish representative in the Majlis.) In December, former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu summoned seventy foreign diplomats in Israel to a meeting to pressure them to join Israel in efforts to stop Iran's nuclear program. According to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, the meeting was "the first event in an international public relations campaign. It will include a proposal to file a complaint in the International Court of Justice against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for war crimes, and his plans to commit genocide will be presented."
"In 1938," Netanyahu averred, "Hitler didn't say he wanted to destroy [the Jews]; Ahmadinejad is saying clearly that this is his intention, and we aren't even shouting. At least call it a crime against humanity. We must make the world see that the issue here is a program for genocide." Outgoing US UN Ambassador John Bolton called on the UN International Court of Criminal Justice to charge Ahmadinejad with "inciting genocide." "It's time to take action," Bolton told a Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations symposium. "We're being given early warning, unambiguously, on what his intentions are." This is of course the most grandiose piece of disinformation inflicted on the public to date, with a shock value topping the "mushroom cloud over New York City" image used to sell the war on Iraq.
On December 6 the Iraq Study Group (Baker-Hamilton Commission) recommended to the president that he initiate a gradual withdrawal from Iraq and consult with Iraq's neighbors including Iran to stabilize the country. Towards the end of the month several Iranians including two invited into the country by Iraqi Vice President Jalal Talabani were detained by US forces, prompting criticism from the Iraqi puppet regime itself. The US accused the detained of complicity in attacks on US or "Coalition" troops. There was at year end a subtle shift of emphasis in the broad propaganda program from Iran's nuclear activities to its involvement in American deaths.
2007
On January 10, in a much awaited response to the Commission recommendations Bush announced that he would instead escalate the war and adopt an even more confrontational posture towards Iran. He declared (without evidence) that the Islamic Republic was "providing material support for attacks on American troops" and allowing "terrorists and insurgents" to use its territory "to move in and out of Iraq." "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces," he vowed. "We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran. . . .and we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
On January 11, US-led forces entered a building in the Kurdish city of Irbil, which both Iranian and Iraqi officials regard as an Iranian consulate flying the Iranian flag, and apprehended 6 Iranians. "I think it's instructive," declared Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "that in the last couple of weeks two of those raids that we conducted to go after these folks that are providing these kinds of weapons [EFP] -- two of those raids had policed up Iranians. So it is clear that the Iranians are complicit in providing weapons."
It's actually not clear at all, and a planned announcement to provide details had to be delayed three weeks as the administration conceded that it faced a credibility problem. "In the old days," said an unnamed administration official, "if the US government had come out and said, 'we've got this, here's our assessment,' reasonable people would have taken it at face value. That's never going to happen again." But in Baghdad on February 12 US officials briefed reporters on the issue of Iranian support for Iraqi insurgents. The journalists, including those from Associated Press, The New York Times, and Reuters all attended having agreed to the condition that none of the three US officials taking part could be named or even closely described. All cameras and recording devices, including cell phones, were banned from the briefing room.
The anonymous officials at this spookiest of press briefings announced that the Islamic Republican Guard Corps-Quds Force, "believed to be" controlled by Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had been delivering EFP to Iraq since 2004. The Washington Post thus reported: "Iranian security forces, taking orders from the 'highest levels' of the Iranian government, are funneling sophisticated explosives to extremist groups in Iraq, and the weapons have grown increasingly deadly for US-led troops over the past two years, senior defense officials said Sunday in Baghdad. Three defense officials from the US-led Multi-National Force in Baghdad, laid out for reporters what they described as a 'growing body of evidence' that Iran is manufacturing and exporting into Iraq the armor piercing explosives, known as 'explosively formed penetrators,' or EFPs, that have killed more than 170 coalition troops, and wounded more than 620 others, in the past two years." The New York Times headlined the Iranian arms link story two days in a row, while editors noted that the case was weak, and the timing of the announcement suspicious.
The Iraqi (puppet) deputy foreign minister himself questioned the charges. Labeed M. Abbawi told the Washington Post, that the Iraqi government remained in the dark. "It is difficult for us here in the diplomatic circles," he declared, "just to accept whatever the American forces say is evidence. If they have anything really conclusive, then they should come out and say it openly, then we will pick it up from there and use diplomatic channels" to discuss it with Iran. Various Iraqi officials urged the US not to pursue its quarrel with Iran on their turf. Meanwhile Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he did not know if the Iranian government itself was supplying EFP material to Iraqis. "That [Baghdad report] does not translate that the Iranian Government, for sure, is directly involved in doing this," he stated. "What it does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."
But Bush himself in his February 14 news conference told reporters that "we know that" the Quds Force was supplying weapons, and that the Quds Force is part of the Iranian government. "That's a known," he declared. "Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds Force to do this, I don't think we know. But we do know that they're there and I intend to do something about it. And I've asked our commanders to do something about it. And we're going to protect our troops."
Israeli officials (who surely have Washington's ear) continue to insist that there's no time to waste to end the genocidal threat that is Iran. Uri Lubrani, a former Israeli ambassador to the Shah's Iran and now a senior advisor to Defense Minister Amir Peretz, recently told the Jewish Agency's Board of Governors that the US "does not understand the threat and has not done enough," adding that the Americans and Europeans "must be shaken awake." Americans, that is to say, must be made to fear, must be disabused of their commonsense and moral qualms, must be compelled to share the paranoia.
The bland observation of Nazi Hermann Goering, made during the Nuremburg trials, bears frequent repeating. "The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." All the above forms a case that Iran, a developing country, is attacking the United States of America, the world's sole superpower, and Israel, a country close to many Americans' hearts. All the above makes Iran the aggressor, the US and Israel the victims. No matter that Iran has never in modern times attacked another nation, or that an attack on the US or Israel would result in horrific consequences for the Islamic Republic.
The disinformation campaign eschews logic, gambling that fear alone will produce popular support. It anticipates the eventual discovery of its lies and charades, but calculates that the attainment of its heroic ends will make any embarrassment worth the effort. So what if following the nuking of Iran, after the rubble's cleared, we discover that Iran had no military nuclear program? Maybe there will be no evidence of anything at all left anyway. Maybe that's the radiant beauty of the plan.
Don't expect the neocons urging the Iran attack to apologize after the event, not matter how catastrophic the consequences. Consider Douglas Feith's response to the report by the Pentagon's inspector general that his Office of Special Plans peddled allegations about Iraq "not supported by the available intelligence" in order to get the US into a bloody war.
"All of that was wrong, wasn't it?" Feith was recently asked by Chris Wallace in the most neocon-friendly environment imaginable, Fox News studio.
"No, not at all," Feith responded. "There was substantial intelligence. . . . There was a lot of information out there."
A lot of information indeed. Lots of stuff to believe and fear. That's how it works, again and again, in the history of US imperialism. From the imaginary Spanish sinking of the USS Maine to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident to Saddam Hussein's WMD to Iran's plans for genocide. Disinformation has a long proud history of working well when deployed by amoral, unscrupulous, maybe insane men holding state power. Will it work once more?
Gary Leupp (repost)
Homepage:
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Feb07/Leupp18.htm
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US POLICY - STRIKE IRAN - SUBSTITUTE MULLAHS WITH MONARCHY...
02.03.2007 22:09
US POLICY - STRIKE IRAN - CONTROL OF # 4 OIL EXPORTER...
THE LABOUR PARTY will SELF DESTRUCT it will go into MELTDOWN on 3 MAY 2007
It did not listen to the good tenants of the "flagship" Housing Association, NHHT of 27 Hammersmith Grove, Hammersmith, which was in the "flagship" LABOUR PARTY Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham which fell to the Opposition [after 38 years!] because the good tenants have been and continue to be treated so diabolically by the unaccountable 'flagship' Housing Association. It has a housing stock of over 19,000 properties worth over 4 BIllion pounds [£4,000,000,000+] that is receiving unaccounatable taxpayers money which is funneled through the prime-minister-Blair-created-unaccountable-QUANGO Labour Party member appointed board of the Housing Corporation. Regulated by the Blair created unaccountable QUANGO Labour Party member appointed board of the Audit Commission.
Yet no one is listened to. Like the British people in the UK.
Unaccountability - Lack of Transparency - Lack of Consultation - which leads to the ability to get away with Lies, Deception and more Dissembling that underpins the Betrayal of the good people which is the Lasting Legacy of the Blair elective dictatorship Labour Party policy.
All legitimate complaints made to the indirectly controlled Blair unaccountable Housing Association are not listened to. All directors are Labour Party members. The Housing Association implements Blair housing policy. It revolves around unaccountability and lack of transparency. It relishes in promoting lies. Its purpose is to gerrymander the vote through the unaccountable Housing Associations. [Look what Greg Hands MP has asserted at Prime Minister's Question Time in the UK House of Commons as recorded and faithfully reported from Hansard Parliamentary Debates! How many good people are obliged to suffer the confrontation, the Harassment, the Human Rights abuses - which continue unabated!
All going through the actions of the chief executive of NHHT - Ms Kate Davies!!!]
BLAIR UK HOUSING POLICY (through Office of Deputy Prime Mnister - ODPM under John Prescott now after its discrediting it was renamed to Department of Communities & Local Government DCLG under Ruth Kelly-Gadd Secretary of State of Communities & Local Government):
BRITISH SOCIAL HOUSING:
i) 3 MILLION COUNCIL HOMES - Labour Party Government desire to abolish rent ceilings - desire to abolish tenancy security of Secured and Assured tenancies - desire to increase rent to commercial rents - desire to abolish sibling to inherit the tenancy - desire not to be responsible for repairs - desire to sell off council properties - desire to abolish accountability of council housing tenants through local Councillors of the local Borough!
Setting up of unaccountable Arms Length Management Organisations (ALMOs) to transfer Council housing stock to unaccountable private housing "Trusts".
No debate - ignorance by the Public? No Consent of Tenants! No accountable mandate!
What sort of biased Tenancy "Contract" is this??? [There are 2 sides to a CONTRACT!]
ii) 1 MILLION HOUSING ASSOCIATION HOMES - become unaccountable through the appointment of Blair Labour Party member directors.
The so-called "shareholders" are determined by the Labour Party appointed chairman as one-pound Chairman-nominated nominee "token shareholdrers". Total lack of democracy.
That translates as a BIG slice of the vote under Housing, where Housing = VOTES.
Known as 'Gerrymandering' as used under many successive governments but it came to prominence under the leadership of the City of Westminster housing/electoral local government policies successfully implemented under Conservative Party member, Shirley Porter.
Housing = Votes, that is where priority, preference and precedence comes in.
Allocation of Housing is a very, very sensitive issue in local government politics.
It is controlled by central government, partly through the DCLG.
Those claiming asylum and those who have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) Immigration status get priority. They are processed through Law Centres controlled by the (guess who?) Labour Party controlled and funded Law Centres.
[Blair government departments promote the Multiculturism argument at every single opportunity!]
Targets have become so important to Blair.
Blair's wife tends to give priority to support Islamic causes.
Why?
To give the impression that Islamic people are "victims".
"Victims" then get maximum priority.
So Blair can be see as supporting Islamic causes in the UK but in reality he is fighting the true Islamic cause for their Oil!
Blair supports the B- Black police section (in Met. Police),
Blair supports the I - Islamic police section (in Met. Police),
Blair supports the G- Gay police section (in Met. Police),
Blair supports the B - I - G police divide.
Why?
So he can control it! Divide and Rule.
So there is now a BIG Police divide - it has been politicised and undermined in efficiency.
Its main independent unbiased procedures have been politically compromised.
Now it is top heavy with form filling.
Now it is compromised with political policing.
Now targets are being imposed.
Now the imposition of institutional distractions are being supported openly by Mr Blair.
[e.g. The perception that the Police is "Institutionally Racist..." as a fact... it is not... it is a political ploy... in order to impose "political" policing... (just read '1984' by George Orwell) - the elective dictatorship is complete - "the saying of a truth becomes a matter of revolution when everything is governed by (government imposed) lies!!!". ]
[It is certainly supportive if you seek advancement within the lower and higher (indeed all) echelons of the judiciary!]
The new entrants to the UK tend to vote for those who support them and gave them homes.
Indigenous people tend to be treated by Labour Party as "second class and without priority".
Labour Party support MULTICULTURISM policies to brand anyone not supporting them as "RACIST"
This is a devious way to SHUT UP the political Opposition.
Deviously Clever!
In the process the Indigenous people are found without work or sacked under Blair's divided society. [DIVIDE and RULE]
Public Sector is widened to create a supplicant Dependency Culture.
So Blair can secure as many votes as possible.
In the meantime - what happens - the concept of "(EVIL) WHITE TRASH" is promoted
British Culture is binned.
British beliefs are trashed.
British toleration is abused as an invitation to control.
Now it is clear why many are sick of the divide and rule concept of British politics.
Many are sick of Politics - many feel alienated from politics and do not bother to vote.
The politicians (lying as usual) blame the electorate (the illusion) - the reality is the reverse.
As the politicians rig the opportunity for the electorate to have a meaningful say - the electorate feel rightly excluded from a non-dialogue which is in truth a political party monologue.
Not inclusive but exclusive
The link between the British Prime Minister (political) and the legal executive in the UK (legal) is not separated and independant. Law is not separated from Politics in the UK.
Law is inextricably linked to politics.
There are many fatal flaws with British law and British politics.
The UK has NO written constitution. [Idea for any would-be Dictator (no limits)!]
The UK unwritten constitution was described by Lord Hailsham when in political opposition as an "Elective Dictatorship". [Lord Hailsham was a member of Lincoln's Inn.][Lord Hailsam was otherwise known by his real name as Quintin Hogg - Conservative Party Lord Chancellor for Mrs Thatcher (ex member of Lincoln's Inn)].
Lord Hailsham came from the family who were responsible for founding Westminister University. The University was founded by his family from which Cherie Blair was awarded an Honorary Doctorate. Mrs Blair had previously worked at the University as a law lecturer in the law department for a short period. Her mentor was Derry Irvine (the shadow Lord Chancellor). Lord Irvine had worked part time at the LSE as a part time law lecturer in the law department giving law lectures to Cherie Booth for her LLB law degree. Cherie Booth therefore turned to Derry Irvine for work. Derry Irvine - LABOUR LORD Derry Irvine gave Cherie Booth and Tony Blair their all important pupillage (practical traineeship in law) - Tony BLAIR and Cherie BOOTH were both members of Lincoln's Inn - where they studied for the Bar law exams [As Mrs Thatcher and many UK prime ministers had done before them!].
After John Smith's death [ex Labour Party leader who had been a law graduate and Barrister -Derry Irvine [Shadow Chancellor] was crossing Parliament Square and told Peter Mandelson [so-called ex "Communist" (agent of another world power? CIA agent?) head of Labour Party strategy (not trusted by ex Labour Leader John Smith)] that Tony (his ex pupil) would be the next Labour Party leader. Peter Mandelson then made it happen. Much to the chagrin of Gordon Brown PhD and all the other hopefuls for the Labour Party crown. Dr Gordon Brown (who was awarded his PhD in economics was 'stitched up'). Little did Gordon Brown PhD realise how "Princess Mandy" would "stitch him" up - good and proper!
After the general election on 2 May 1997, Tony Blair not unnaturally ensured that his ex pupil master (Derry Irvine) was appointed by him as Lord Chancellor. [Responsible for appointing, promoting and dismissing all judges and appointing and dimissing all magistrates in the UK and responsible for all law courts in the UK.] Apart from the prime minister, the Lord Chancellor is the most senior member in Cabinet (Executive). The Lord Chancellor was Speaker of the House of Lords - decides who speaks (head of the legislature). However, as head of the House of Lords as the supreme court in the UK which tends to sit in the publicly accessible Committee Rooms on the Lords side Corridor. As head of the five judge panel of Lords of Appeal in Ordinary [commonly referred to as 'Law Lords'] this means the Lord Chancellor was head of the Judiciary!
But wait.
This means that in the person of the Lord Chancellor the position as head of the judiciary, legislature and executive means this strikes at the very heart of the Independence of the Judiciary and the separation of powers! Compare this with the US written constitution which has a true separation of powers. Therefore, resorting to the law in the UK is totally compromised by the control of Law by the Executive.
Subsequently, a row erupted between Blair and Derry Irvine [Irvine was likened to a dictator - he dictated to his civil servants as if they were "servants" commanding them to even peel his oranges!][Derry Irvine came from a humble background - was his father not a roofer? - but acted like Cardinal Wolsey of Henry VIII's Court - he liked to compare himself to Cardinal Wolsey]. Derry Irvine went off with the wife of Donald Dewar MP with whom he had previously studied law together [Donald was a solicitor, Derry was a barrister - Derry bought an impressive house and collected paintings and impressed the poor cuckolded Donald. That is why Donald was put out of the way when they were both in the Blair Cabinet. Dewar was sent off to Scotland as secretary of state to Scotland - poor Donald. Dewar's life had changed when he went to Glasgow University, where he became part of a close circle that included John Smith, who was to become Labour leader and who shared Dewar's passion for devolution, and Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader. The Glasgow University Union debate on Friday nights was a bearpit, attended by drunken students howling from the balcony, and it was there that Dewar developed his debating skills: after those debates, Westminster was easy.
The battles between Irvine and Dewar in cabinet committee were bruising, perhaps overlaid with a residual personal animosity. Dewar had not spoken to Irvine from the time Irvine left with his wife in 1970 until the two were pushed together at the funeral of John Smith at Westminster Abbey, more than two decades later. Dewar came off second best in the early stages of the committee meetings but eventually got the upper hand, securing most of what he wanted in the Scotland Act.
Dewar is now dead. Derry Irvine's wife is now out of the way in isolation in Canada. Derry Irvine's son (Alastair) went off the rails and turned to drugs in the United States. He tried to find solace in another man's girlfried and was imprisoned by US law enforcement for pestering her. [His son following in the steps of the father? or a genuine desperate plea for help?] This would never ever have happened in the UK - to arrest the son of the Lord Chancellor! It would have been a very, very brave (a real foolish?) police officer who would have done anything of the sort.
Alastair Irvine himself was less gifted [far less gifted than Derry Irvine] and became interested in body-building during his late teens before becoming a professional personal trainer in a joint business with a former soft porn model, Carole Caplin. That is how Cherie Booth-Blair got to know her bisexual friend Carole - with whom she enjoyed a good "massage". As she did with the wife of Robin Gibb (of the UK pop group 'Bee Gees' named after his brother, Brian Gibb) - the beautiful blonde bisexual Dwina Murphy-Gibb!
Just as Alastair Irvine lived in the shadow of his highly intelligent/motivated father. The children of many many successful parents go off "the rails" as if for a cry for help. George Bush certainly ran into difficulty when his two daughters Jenna and Barbara from the Crawford Ranch [in the UK, Ranch = Farm](in Texas) had a few problems. Jenna "and tonic" Bush and her twin sister, Barbara, landed in trouble with the law for drinking margaritas. The Texas twosome, both 20, fell foul of strict underage drinking laws - Jenna was put on probation and fined for her second offence. Barbara has had a fine and community service.
Seven years ago, Tony Blair, as Prime Minister, was left nursing his son’s first hangover when Euan, then 16, was found lying in a gutter in Leicester Square, after downing one too many ciders with friends. It was wise to take him to Charing Cross Police station. When asked if he was Tony Blair's son, he continued to deny it. It became clear he was indeed Euan. Any charges were rapidly dropped. He was then immediately taken to 10 Downing Street where his dad proceeded to tell him off.
Similarly, Jack Straw (ex students leader), the home secretary who said no to decriminalising cannabis, was left humbled in 1997, when his son, William (ex students leader), 17 at the time, received a police caution after he was caught trying to sell hashish to an undercover journalist.
Prince Charles, on finding out that "his" son, Prince Harry had smoked cannabis, responded by sending "his" son to visit a drug rehabilitation centre.
All in a bid to stop SHORT-TERM shame leading to LONG-TERM tragedy.
[In reality Prince Harry = Harry Hewitt - son of ex Major James Hewitt and the late Diana Spencer when Princess Diana was married to Prince Charles - this fact will never ever appear in the UK media - no DNA genetic test would ever be allowed by the royal household for obvious reasons - to prove true paternity - just look at comparisons between the two - James Hewitt was proceeded against for "possession of cannabis" - was this intended as a subtle signal to say it might be a good idea to consider to emigrate, like Charles Earl Spencer to Constantia, Cape Town, South Africa?].
It is interesting how the conscious steps of the father [FATE of the father] end up leaving an indelible mark that CANNOT and WILL NOT ever be removed from the conscience of the FATHER on to the son or SIBLING!
It can be argued strenuously that what we DO links inextricably to what we BECOME.
CAUSE = EFFECT
After the blazing row with Tony Blair, Derry Irvine was swept out of the way and replaced by Charles Falconer. [LABOUR PARTY LORD Charles Falconer] Charles Falconer was of course Tony Blair's ex flatmate. He is now the LABOUR PARTY Lord Chancellor.
It is sick how Law in the UK has been compromised by LABOUR POLITICS.
No one appears to be speaking out?
Perhaps they do not want to damage their careers?
Perhaps they do not realise how far law has been prostituted in the UK?
Derry Irvine was the architect of the Access to Justice Act 1999 in the UK.
It was not intended to be an "access" to justice but a denial of acces to justice in the UK.
After this piece of law, many countless firms of solicitors went out of business.
Individuals could no longer instruct solicitors under Legal Aid for Personal Injury (PI) work.
Insurance Contracts were to take the place of Legal Aid in PI Cases - which became hard to obtain.
Legal Aid has been cut back drastically so it is easier for the Labour Party government to control the outcome of civil cases. Legal Services Commission (LSC) QUANGO controls the Legal Aid paid to any solicitor. This funding can be inhibited (stopped) very easily by a firm of solicitors that is prepared to use deceit (even against the client on 'the other side'). It happens far too often and far too easily.
Lord Harry Woolf [ex Lord Chief Justice was summoned by Derry Irvine to his office with the specific purpose to CUT BACK on the Legal Aid budget - WHAT PRICE JUSTICE? - WHAT EXACTLY IS JUSTICE? - it was a political act - not a legal act]. I know, as I spoke to both of them. Both of them said to me - out of their own mouths - exactly what had happened regarding the genesis of that piece of law.
Before I heard what they said separately to me, I had previously, naively, believed that there had been genuine consultation with all lawyers!!!
Not true!
It was already decided - so any consultation was not "genuine" like the decision (previously taken) to go to war in Iraq and the plan to go to war in Iran - so it was decided what will be the law by one person - Derry Irvine [coming from the ex pupil Blair?].
Ironically it was through Cherie Booth-Blair working at Matrix Chambers in Gray's Inn by Chancery Lane with the fellow barrister Ken Macdonald (the founder of the chambers) that Cherie recommended the LABOUR PARTY flag-waving Ken Macdonald - her colleague, to her husband as a man with NO experience in prosecution work (his only experience was in defence work - he was previously the recipient of a conviction for sending cannabis in the post). He was touted by Cherie to Tony as the "ideal" candidate for the position of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in charge of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) based at the unmarked office at 50 Ludgate Hill - around the corner from the Old Bailey - Central Criminal Courts - where the most serious criminal cases tend to be heard.
After all, criminal cases are cases brought by the State.
Who is the State?
The State tends to be the executive [read Tony Blair as head of the executive].
The State determines through criminal policy what or who should be prosecuted as a matter of sending the "right" signal to the British "subjects" of "the Crown"!!!
Note that the prime minister tends to rely on "relics of the Crown" when the King (or Queen) ordered Acts of State.
One of these "relics of State" is what is called the "Crown Prerogative" which gives a mandate for a prime minister to go to war without the necessary parliamentary mandate - or the unaccountable procedure in order to totally bypass parliamentary procedure.
Tony Blair tends to place a very very high priority on pursuing "unconstitutional" (as in the unwritten constitution) unaccountable methods!
Why?
This means the prime minister [or is it the "elective dictator"?] cannot be censured for whatever action he takes!!!
Tony Blair appointed Ken Macdonald [on Cherie Booth-Blair's advice] and made him a LABOUR PARTY Knight [next step the LABOUR PARTY Peerage].
Blair is just a puppet. He consciously allows himself to be under the control of Rupert Murdoch [Blair often drops everything to "run" for a meal with Rebekah Wade as Editor of Rupert Murdoch's 'Sun' newspaper/tabloid - she is married to BBC TV EastEnders actor Ross Kemp - Blair appoints the chairman of the BBC - Both Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson are vying for control of the BBC].
Blair consciously allows himself to be under the control of US president George (Dubya: "W" standing for Walker) Bush ('43'). Bill Clinton once told Blair to always follow the US president. Foolishly, Blair follows like a blind puppy-dog. Thatcher might not have been liked by many [Poll Tax in 1981 - the last poll tax in the UK was in 1381 - Peasants Revolt of 1381!] but Thatcher did command respect with the US president.
Just as the Queen commands respect.
The Queen discreetly Warns, Counsels, Listens. [She is NOT arrogant. She drives her own old green estate car in Scotland and outside London and she can confirm that she can say very rude words (to her dogs when one of them caught and killed a rabbit) - but never arrogant!][In comparison, Mrs Blair appears to see the Queen as a "rival" to "the (true) Crown".]
Bush might be portrayed as a fool. Yet he realises that the control of the West is in OIL.
He went to the universities of Harvard and to Yale.
He did a Bachelor's degree (in History at Yale)
then
a Master's degree (in Business Administration at Harvard).
Bush successfully ensured he did not fight in the Vietnam War by being a member of the Texas Air National Guard. He started an OIL company in 1979 called Arbusto Energy with James R. Bath of Houston, Texas. Arbusto meaning "Bush" (as in George 'Dubya' Bush) as translated in English. Guess who helped bail him out? None other than one member of the bin Laden family. Salem bin Laden (a brother to Osama). Bush does not want to acknowledge this connection.
Yet, he cannot deny it.
When President Bush announced he is "hot" on the trail of the money used over the years to finance terrorism, he knows that trail ultimately leads not only to Saudi Arabia, but to some of the very same financiers who originally helped propel him into the oil business and later the White House. The ties between bin Laden and the White House are so very very much closer than he will ever acknowledge.
Mr Bush has not always practiced what he is now preaching: Bush’s own businesses were once tied to financial figures in Saudi Arabia who currently support bin Laden.
As stated above, in 1979, Bush’s first business, Arbusto Energy, obtained financing from James Bath, a Houstonian and close family friend with whom he was in the Texas Air Guard. One of many investors, Bath gave Bush $50,000 for a 5 percent stake in Arbusto. At the time, Bath was the sole U.S. business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the wealthy Saudi Arabian family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden. It has long been suspected, but never proven, that the Arbusto money came directly from Salem bin Laden. In a statement issued shortly after the September 11 attacks, the White House [understandably] vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Laden’s, in Arbusto.
In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests. In fact, Bath has extensive ties, both to the bin Laden family and major players in the scandal-ridden Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) [which had many branches in London] who have gone on to fund Osama bin Laden. BCCI defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the 1980s in what has been called "one of the largest bank frauds in world financial history” by former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. During the ’80s, BCCI also acted as a main conduit for laundering money intended for clandestine CIA activities, ranging from financial support to the Afghan mujahedin to paying intermediaries in the IRAN-Contra affair.
[US policy links to financing other governments in order to control raw materials world wide].
When Salem bin Laden died in 1988, powerful Saudi Arabian banker and BCCI principal Khalid bin Mahfouz inherited his interests in Houston, Texas. Bath ran a business for bin Mahfouz in Houston and joined a partnership with bin Mahfouz and Gaith Pharaon, BCCI’s frontman in Houston’s Main Bank.
The Arbusto deal wasn’t the last time Bush looked to highly questionable sources to invest in his oil dealings. After several incarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation. When Harken ran into trouble a year later, Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh purchased a 17.6 percent stake in the company. Bakhsh was a business partner with Pharaon in Saudi Arabia; his banker there just happened to be BIN MAHFOUZ.
Though Bush told the Wall Street Journal he had “no idea” BCCI was involved in Harken’s financial dealings, the network of connections between Bush and BCCI is so extensive that the Journal concluded their investigation of the matter in 1991 by stating: “The number of BCCI-connected people who had dealings with Harken—all since George W. Bush came on board—raises the question of whether they mask an effort to cozy up to a presidential son.” Or even the president: Bath finally came under investigation by the FBI in 1992 for his Saudi business relationships, accused of funneling Saudi money through Houston, Texas, in order to influence the foreign policies of the Reagan and first Bush [his father's] administrations.
Worst of all, bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists. According to USA Today, bin Mahfouz and other Saudis attempted to transfer $3 million to various bin Laden front operations in Saudi Arabia in 1999. ABC News reported the same year that Saudi officials stopped bin Mahfouz from contributing money directly to bin Laden. (Bin Mahfouz’s sister is also a wife of Osama bin Laden, a fact that former CIA Director James Woolsey revealed in 1998 Senate testimony.)
Ironic - isn't it?
We do not live in the sort of "democracy" we would like to think.
It is more a jungle (in charge is the symbolic "Lion" - symbol on Royal Arms - found in all UK courts) with deception as the key (the mythical symbolic "Unicorn" found chained on the symbol on the Royal Arms in all UK courts - ironic).
Deception is manipulated through the eye of those who control the media.
Blair - Bush - control of Oil supplies.
Compare with the previous overthrow of the democratic Iranian prime minister (Mohammad Mossadeq) by US and UK through the clandestine CIA and SIS/MI6 in 1953.
Reason: because the US was not prepared to be compromised in control of its sphere of influence over control of the precious OIL [Life blood to Western capitalist society].
[TP OPERATION AJAX]
Compare to IRAQ [# 2 Largest Oil Exporter in the World] policy.
US wants to divide IRAQ into 3 sectors: Shia/Sunni/Kurds
US wants permanent bases in IRAQ to control the Oil for the WEST!
US wants there to be division in the Middle East so they fight amongst themselves - rather than fight against us.
DEVIOUSLY CLEVER!!!
Compare to IRAN [# 4 Largest Oil Exporter in the World] policy.
NORTHERN sector covered by US 6th (Mediterranean)(nuclear) Fleet off Turkey
WESTERN sector covered by US forces in IRAQ
SOUTHERN sector covered by US 5th fleet based out of BAHRAIN by Straits of Hormuz [recently supported by second US nuclear carrier group]
EASTERN sector covered by US forces in Afghanistan [recently moved in place]
US special forces are now operating in IRAN.
More importantly, US covert funding is being given to the parliamentary opposition in order to begin to destabilise the regime from within. [Same tactics used in Iraq! Plus ca change!]
To give cover to the 'lie' that there has been active ongoing diplomacy there appears to the outside world that there is a so-called "dialogue initiative" (dialogue initiative phase) is now being pursued as a 'false' option.
The "(non meaningful) dialogue" is the smokescreen "psychological-operation (psy-ops)" to give the public the impression that "they" (the Iranians) are "at fault".
Clear Perceived Message:
We are "democratic!"
They are "NOT democratic!!!"
US want to install guess who?
A Monarchical dictatorship - like most of the other US controlled Oil exporting Middle East countries.
Welcome...
Step forward....
Our Saviour... NOT BLAIR THE DISCREDITED "ELECTIVE DICTATOR"...NOT LIKELY!!!
A Leader....
The Leader ... CHOSEN by the US President... SORRY - wrong script...
The REAL LEADER...Now being paraded on US CIA controlled CIA paid Voice Of America (VOA) Persia Service TV, 'Roundtable with You', REZA PAHLAVI of IRAN (funded by the US taxpayer before he is paraded and returned in triumph to IRAN) said: - "The alternative is quite clear. We are faced with a dictatorial, medieval and religious system of government that like all other dictatorships suppresses its own people . . . OUR GOAL (US GOAL) is to replace this system with a "DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT.... based on respect for...blah blah blah...
Now you know the outcome...
So much for "true" DEMOCRACY!!!
MASSIVE UNSUSTAINABLE DEBT - LEADING TO RECESSION
The US$2.2 TRILLION+ dollar debt [US$ 2,200,000,000,000] cannot continue.
Another reason why the US is obliged to control IRAN
One way is to control spending.
In democracies it is hard to go against "the people's" choice - it is far easier to just knock out a weak country put in a "puppet" client dictator and appropriate the essential resources.
MASSIVE OVERPOPULATION - INCREASING EXPONENTIALLY - NEVER SPOKEN ABOUT - IT IS UNSUSTAINABLE
6 Billion [6,000,000,000] people and rising on Planet Earth makes it unsustainable so a few million people that are killed is no big loss in relation to "survival of the the fittest - the name of the game". According to some in the political elite!
WHAT OF THE WILDCARDS? - Russia and China of the UN SECURITY COUNCIL?
[i) US, ii) Russia, iii) China, iv) UK, v) France]
Russia will do nothing when the US invades.
Likewise, China will do nothing...it has too much to lose...
It has massive Investments in US government bonds in the United States.
If China was to withdraw its control over its holding of US government bonds, the US [McDonnell Douglas, Raytheon, Boeing, Halliburton, Texaco, Exxon, Aramco, McDonalds, Britney Spears Inc., fast-food, drug culture, pop culture] would be toast...
No! China wants its investments intact, thank you!
It will therefore not raise a finger.
As for Russia, it does not want to embark on an armed conflict.
The obvious news that was perhaps too predictable coming to you from west London...
Do NOT vote for a corrupt LABOUR PARTY local government on 3 MAY 2007!!!
3 MAY 2007 - local elections in Scotland, Wales and England.
WAR DEBATE
[WAR Cost to UK taxpayers: £1.8 Billion, Iraq: £1 Billion, Afghanistan: £0.8 Billion]
WAR Debate with 15 Cross-Party MPs on TUESDAY, 20 MARCH 2007 [4th Anniversary of Iraq Invasion] at Central Hall, Westminster between 2pm - 8pm.
DEBATE IS OPEN TO ALL - THE MORE THE MERRIER!!!
HAVE YOUR SAY!!!
YOUR SAY IS VERY IMPORTANT!!!
John Smith
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