Neocons One Step Closer to Attacking Iran
Kurt Nimmo | 28.08.2007 00:33 | Anti-militarism | History | Iraq | World
Now we have the Big Lie in regard to Iran, as preposterous and nonsensical as Iraq’s illusory weapons of mass destruction.
As should be expected, the neocons have shifted from one preposterous lie to another in order to prepare the way for eventually inflicting mass murder, mayhem, and misery on the people of Iran.
“In an effort to build congressional and Pentagon support for military options against Iran, the Bush administration has shifted from its earlier strategy of building a case based on an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program to one invoking improvised explosive devices (IEDs) purportedly manufactured in Iran that are killing US soldiers in Iraq,” writes Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story. “According to officials—including two former Central Intelligence Agency case officers with experience in the Middle East—the administration believes that by focusing on the alleged ties between IEDs and Iran, they can link the Iranian government directly to attacks on US forces in Iraq.”
Call it aluminum tubes redux. No doubt, in two or three years, after Iran suffers the horrific fate of Iraq, there will once again be rumblings in the media that the Iran IED accusations were not only baseless, but yet another primary example of the duplicitous nature of the neocons. Recall, as well, that the last time around the CIA argued that 100,000 high-strength aluminum tubes Iraq allegedly attempted to purchase demonstrated Saddam Hussein was feverishly and methodically working toward the objective of nuking grade school kids in Pocatello, Idaho. Of course, it did not matter at the time that technical experts from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, found this claim ludicrous.
Indeed, the entire “case” against Saddam Hussein was fixed around the “policy,” that is to say the neocon plan to mass murder extraordinary numbers of helpless and enfeebled Iraqis, emerging from the barbarity of more than a decade of medieval sanctions, a regime that cost over a million lives—more than 500,000 of them children—well “worth it,” as Clinton’s former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, infamously averred.
In 2005, Bush admitted to employing Hitler’s Big Lie, that is to say a series of lies so “colossal,” as Hitler explained in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf, that the public accepts all manner of crimes in their names by way of willful ignorance. “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda,” said Bush, obviously taking his cue cards from the neocons.
Now we have the Big Lie in regard to Iran, as preposterous and nonsensical as Iraq’s illusory weapons of mass destruction.
“The US military has provided credible evidence that the specialized IEDs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), which have been killing US troops in Iraq, appear to have been manufactured in Iran. Intelligence and military officials caution, however, that there is nothing tying the weapons directly to the Iranian government, nor is there a direct evidentiary chain of custody linking the IEDs to Iran,” Alexandrovna continues. Even so, this “is viewed by some in the Bush Administration as sufficient justification for taking military action against Iran,” that is to say “sufficient justification” to butcher Iranian grandmothers and toddlers.
“The origins of the [IED] theme of Iranian complicity strongly suggest that it was a propaganda line aimed at reducing the Bush administration’s acute embarrassment at its inability to stop the growing death toll of U.S. troops from shaped charges fired at armored vehicles by Sunni insurgents,” notes Gareth Porter. “The U.S. command admitted at first that the Sunnis were making the shaped charges themselves. On Jun. 21, 2005, Gen. John R. Vines, then the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that the insurgents had probably drawn on bomb-making expertise from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s army,” not the Iranians.
But never mind—the neocons can count on the fact the average American does not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite, the former engaged in resistance and the later not, preferring instead—with the exception of Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia and a handful of other Shia renegades—to fence sit and even participate in the U.S. imposed puppet government.
As usual, in now standard neocon fashion, the original story of the resistance manufacturing the IEDs morphed into Iranian complicity. Bush and the neocons—or rather the neocons—made the decision “to start blaming its new problem in Iraq on Tehran. On Aug. 4, 2005, Pentagon and intelligence officials leaked the story to NBC and CBS that U.S. troops had ‘intercepted’ dozens of shaped charges said to have been ’smuggled into northeastern Iraq only last week’” and the “NBC story quoted intelligence officials as saying they believed the IEDs were shipped into Iraq by Iranian Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah, but were ‘convinced it could not have happened without the full consent of the Iranian government.’” In short, it was a big enough lie to begin a process that will result in thousands of dead Iranians and yet another depleted uranium killing field.
“A senior intelligence official told Raw Story Tuesday that the CIA had stepped up operations in the region, shifting their Iran focus to ‘other’ approaches in preference to the ‘black propaganda’ that Raw Story ‘has already reported on,’” explains Alexandrovna. “The source would not elaborate on what these ‘other’ approaches are,” although this should be a no-brainer.
No doubt at least a few people in Iran understand what happens when the CIA shifts it focus. “The CIA did exactly what was asked of it in Iran, deposing a mildly nationalist regime that was a minor irritant to US policymakers,” writes Mark Zepezauer. “In 1951, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, “the most popular politician in the country,” was elected Prime Minister of Iran. His major election plank was the nationalization of the only oil company operating in Iran at that time-British Petroleum. The nationalization bill was passed unanimously by the Iranian Parliament…. Though Mossadegh offered BP considerable compensation, his days were numbered from that point on. The British coordinated an international economic embargo of Iran, throwing its economy into chaos. And the CIA, at the request of the British, began spending millions of dollars on ways to get rid of Mossadegh,” resulting in the installation of Reza Pahlavi, the son of a Nazi collaborator. Pahlavi the lesser unleashed SAVAK, a secret police force with “the worst human rights record on the planet, and that the number and variety of torture techniques the CIA had taught SAVAK were ‘beyond belief.’”
Iran has plenty of company, however. Since the “national security” organization was established in the late 1940s, it has sabotaged governments in Guatemala, Hungary, Laos, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Brazil, Greece, the Congo (now Zaire), Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Angola, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Iraq, and elsewhere.
“There’s a lesson in all of this,” John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, reflected nearly two decades ago. “And the lesson is that it isn’t only Gestapo maniacs, or KGB maniacs, that do inhuman things to other people, it’s people that do inhuman things to other people. And we are responsible for doing these things, on a massive basis, to people of the world today. And we do it in a way that gives us this plausible denial to our own consciences; we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these programs in our name, and we pretend like we don’t know it’s going on, although the information is there for us to know… And we’re just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we’ve slaughtered and for all the people we’ve tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was the people that they’ve slaughtered and killed.”
Indeed, “we are responsible for doing these things,” and we will be responsible for whatever nastiness the neocons inflict on the Iranian people, as we have allowed these psychopaths to take over the government, same as the Nazis seized the reigns of control before them.
Of course, if one is plugged into Borg News, and is more concerned about allegations of abuse on the “reality show” Kid Nation, he or she cannot be said to be responsible—as responsiblity requires a conscience—or even cognizant, for that matter.
“In an effort to build congressional and Pentagon support for military options against Iran, the Bush administration has shifted from its earlier strategy of building a case based on an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program to one invoking improvised explosive devices (IEDs) purportedly manufactured in Iran that are killing US soldiers in Iraq,” writes Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story. “According to officials—including two former Central Intelligence Agency case officers with experience in the Middle East—the administration believes that by focusing on the alleged ties between IEDs and Iran, they can link the Iranian government directly to attacks on US forces in Iraq.”
Call it aluminum tubes redux. No doubt, in two or three years, after Iran suffers the horrific fate of Iraq, there will once again be rumblings in the media that the Iran IED accusations were not only baseless, but yet another primary example of the duplicitous nature of the neocons. Recall, as well, that the last time around the CIA argued that 100,000 high-strength aluminum tubes Iraq allegedly attempted to purchase demonstrated Saddam Hussein was feverishly and methodically working toward the objective of nuking grade school kids in Pocatello, Idaho. Of course, it did not matter at the time that technical experts from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge, Livermore, and Los Alamos National Laboratories, as well as the International Atomic Energy Agency, found this claim ludicrous.
Indeed, the entire “case” against Saddam Hussein was fixed around the “policy,” that is to say the neocon plan to mass murder extraordinary numbers of helpless and enfeebled Iraqis, emerging from the barbarity of more than a decade of medieval sanctions, a regime that cost over a million lives—more than 500,000 of them children—well “worth it,” as Clinton’s former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, infamously averred.
In 2005, Bush admitted to employing Hitler’s Big Lie, that is to say a series of lies so “colossal,” as Hitler explained in his 1925 autobiography Mein Kampf, that the public accepts all manner of crimes in their names by way of willful ignorance. “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda,” said Bush, obviously taking his cue cards from the neocons.
Now we have the Big Lie in regard to Iran, as preposterous and nonsensical as Iraq’s illusory weapons of mass destruction.
“The US military has provided credible evidence that the specialized IEDs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), which have been killing US troops in Iraq, appear to have been manufactured in Iran. Intelligence and military officials caution, however, that there is nothing tying the weapons directly to the Iranian government, nor is there a direct evidentiary chain of custody linking the IEDs to Iran,” Alexandrovna continues. Even so, this “is viewed by some in the Bush Administration as sufficient justification for taking military action against Iran,” that is to say “sufficient justification” to butcher Iranian grandmothers and toddlers.
“The origins of the [IED] theme of Iranian complicity strongly suggest that it was a propaganda line aimed at reducing the Bush administration’s acute embarrassment at its inability to stop the growing death toll of U.S. troops from shaped charges fired at armored vehicles by Sunni insurgents,” notes Gareth Porter. “The U.S. command admitted at first that the Sunnis were making the shaped charges themselves. On Jun. 21, 2005, Gen. John R. Vines, then the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters that the insurgents had probably drawn on bomb-making expertise from former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s army,” not the Iranians.
But never mind—the neocons can count on the fact the average American does not know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi’ite, the former engaged in resistance and the later not, preferring instead—with the exception of Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia and a handful of other Shia renegades—to fence sit and even participate in the U.S. imposed puppet government.
As usual, in now standard neocon fashion, the original story of the resistance manufacturing the IEDs morphed into Iranian complicity. Bush and the neocons—or rather the neocons—made the decision “to start blaming its new problem in Iraq on Tehran. On Aug. 4, 2005, Pentagon and intelligence officials leaked the story to NBC and CBS that U.S. troops had ‘intercepted’ dozens of shaped charges said to have been ’smuggled into northeastern Iraq only last week’” and the “NBC story quoted intelligence officials as saying they believed the IEDs were shipped into Iraq by Iranian Revolutionary Guards or Hezbollah, but were ‘convinced it could not have happened without the full consent of the Iranian government.’” In short, it was a big enough lie to begin a process that will result in thousands of dead Iranians and yet another depleted uranium killing field.
“A senior intelligence official told Raw Story Tuesday that the CIA had stepped up operations in the region, shifting their Iran focus to ‘other’ approaches in preference to the ‘black propaganda’ that Raw Story ‘has already reported on,’” explains Alexandrovna. “The source would not elaborate on what these ‘other’ approaches are,” although this should be a no-brainer.
No doubt at least a few people in Iran understand what happens when the CIA shifts it focus. “The CIA did exactly what was asked of it in Iran, deposing a mildly nationalist regime that was a minor irritant to US policymakers,” writes Mark Zepezauer. “In 1951, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, “the most popular politician in the country,” was elected Prime Minister of Iran. His major election plank was the nationalization of the only oil company operating in Iran at that time-British Petroleum. The nationalization bill was passed unanimously by the Iranian Parliament…. Though Mossadegh offered BP considerable compensation, his days were numbered from that point on. The British coordinated an international economic embargo of Iran, throwing its economy into chaos. And the CIA, at the request of the British, began spending millions of dollars on ways to get rid of Mossadegh,” resulting in the installation of Reza Pahlavi, the son of a Nazi collaborator. Pahlavi the lesser unleashed SAVAK, a secret police force with “the worst human rights record on the planet, and that the number and variety of torture techniques the CIA had taught SAVAK were ‘beyond belief.’”
Iran has plenty of company, however. Since the “national security” organization was established in the late 1940s, it has sabotaged governments in Guatemala, Hungary, Laos, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Brazil, Greece, the Congo (now Zaire), Bolivia, Cambodia, Chile, Angola, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, Iraq, and elsewhere.
“There’s a lesson in all of this,” John Stockwell, former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, reflected nearly two decades ago. “And the lesson is that it isn’t only Gestapo maniacs, or KGB maniacs, that do inhuman things to other people, it’s people that do inhuman things to other people. And we are responsible for doing these things, on a massive basis, to people of the world today. And we do it in a way that gives us this plausible denial to our own consciences; we create a CIA, a secret police, we give them a vast budget, and we let them go and run these programs in our name, and we pretend like we don’t know it’s going on, although the information is there for us to know… And we’re just as responsible for these 1 to 3 million people we’ve slaughtered and for all the people we’ve tortured and made miserable, as the Gestapo was the people that they’ve slaughtered and killed.”
Indeed, “we are responsible for doing these things,” and we will be responsible for whatever nastiness the neocons inflict on the Iranian people, as we have allowed these psychopaths to take over the government, same as the Nazis seized the reigns of control before them.
Of course, if one is plugged into Borg News, and is more concerned about allegations of abuse on the “reality show” Kid Nation, he or she cannot be said to be responsible—as responsiblity requires a conscience—or even cognizant, for that matter.
Kurt Nimmo
Homepage:
http://adereview.com/blog/?p=14
Comments
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Harper's on Iran: The Next War Draws Nearer
28.08.2007 13:01
"I continue to put the prospects for a major military operation targeting Iran down as “likely,” and the time frame drawing nearer. When will Bush give the go ahead? I think late this year or early next would be the most congenial time frame from the perspective of the war party."
nowar
Homepage:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000995
Mossad recruiting Farsi translators
28.08.2007 15:25
Mossad published a job vacancy ad in several Israeli newspapers in July, including Yediot Aharonot."
That is from www.intelligenceonline.com which I have to assume isn't a left-wing journal. You have to pay $5 for the article so I'm none the wiser though. Yediot Aharonot is best known as ynetnews.com in the west, but the website doesn't carry job adverts. So Mossad are recruiting Farsi speakers, not a good sign. I'd rather the Israeli Foriegn Office and diplomatic corps were recruiting Farsi speakers.
Now President Sarkozy of France is threatening to bomb Iran too - little Napoleon Dynamite that he is.
“This initiative is the only one that can enable us to escape an alternative that I say is catastrophic: the Iranian bomb or the bombing of Iran,” he said. He did not say who would carry out such an attack, which has been suggested by policy experts in Israel and the US.
Most dangerous of all from an Iranian perspective is the fact the UN and the IAEA are completely satisfied that the Iranians have no ambitions for nuclear weapons. Remember what happened to Iraq when the UN and IAEA declared it lacking in WMD ?
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has resolved U.N. questions about tests with plutonium, a key fuel for atomic bombs, and the International Atomic Energy Agency considers the matter closed, according to the text of an IAEA-Iran accord released on Monday.
Danny
Homepage:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2007-08-27T231007Z_01_L27830580_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-IRAN-IAEA.xml
RIP the Walking Dead?
29.08.2007 06:15
Yes folks, it’s that time again. If I was talking about the holiday season we’d be thinking about pumpkins and turkeys and holiday lights; Christmas shopping, school pageants and “chestnuts roasting on an open fire”. But I’m not talking about the holiday season. I’m talking about the next terror attack. It won’t be sugar plums dancing but the new booga booga bin laden dancing by way of Iran. It’s time for ‘Go west, young terrorist, go west.’
You’ve seen dozens of reports like this
One reason is to let you know that we know they are coming. We also need to let you know that even though we know they’re coming we won’t be able to stop them; the actual reason being that the actual terrorists are employed by the U.S. government.
Another reason is simple confusion as exemplified in the motto of one of the chief terror players, the Israeli Mossad “by way of deception, thou shalt do war.” It’s a given that deception is greatly aided by confusion. Think how helpful it was for war games to have been in progress during 9/11 that were simulating exactly what was happening.
We’re seeing the strange ‘put options’ which are always a good indicator that both fan and shit are being readied back stage. We’ve got suspicious looking Middle Eastern men appearing in Seattle
By this time most of us know that if it isn’t the American neo-cons along with Israeli and British intelligence orchestrating the majority of all terror, domestic and abroad; including within Iraq, then its either aliens from outer space or those mysterious, inner earth dwellers, whose access ports to their underground realms are located at the poles.
Maybe the use of a little logic might help right about now. Who benefits from a major terror attack? Who has benefited from 9/11? Would Iran benefit from the coming terror attack that is going to be blamed on them? Hmmm… let’s see. They become the beneficiary of a horrific bombing attack from a collective American, British and Israeli joint operation. Yeah, I guess they’re really looking forward to that. Yeah, if I were an Iranian that would be at the top of my list of things to do; let’s blow up something in America so that we can be pulverized into rubble.
How did the Afghani Al Qaeda do following 9/11? They made out like bandits right? Let’s see, a bunch of guys, who couldn’t fly small planes very well, got together and hi-jacked four big airliners and did some synchronized aerial ballet that would try the abilities of an expert and then they won the Power-ball Lottery or… or…
American neo-cons got a mandate to wreak havoc upon every area of American life while looting the treasury and maintaining power over the landscape; war profiteers in London, in the center of world banking, made fortunes and Israel was able to turn world opinion against the Muslim, Arab world; turn public attention away from their apartheid and genocide practiced on The Palestinians and give free reign to unrestrained hegemony, not to mention attack Lebanon.
I know what my common sense tells me but then, I have common sense.
Yes people, it’s time to get ready. It’s time to stock up on duct tape, plastic sheeting, staple guns and staples, bottled water, dehydrated foodstuffs and lots of guns and ammo.
So where and when is it going to happen? Well, I’m not a psychic but I think we can speculate with some accuracy. It probably won’t be NYC; been there done that. It won’t be somewhere like Oklahoma because American conservatives are already onboard. The best place, from a tactical perspective is a heavy-weight liberal area. These are the clowns that are always complaining about Katrina and the war and other annoying things. Plus, they deserve it and double plus- scaring the liberal community will throw support to the fascists by sweeping in the fence sitters and ratcheting up the fear.
My best guess is in the area from San Francisco heading north. But… that could be a red herring. Now watch closely, at no point does the hand leave the wrist. Of course, LA is also a perfect spot. It would make sense to put public attention to the north while attacking the south. What's the latest Vegas line on Chicago? These are just mind games though and will only make you crazy.
When is it going to happen? The best guesstimates put it from early September to some time in March. It really depends on a combination of economic indicators, opportunity, who is where when and the usual concerns; remember, there’s no point in a major terror attack if you can’t make a financial killing too.
How totally devoid of conscience are these people? How cosmically arrogant are they? You only have to read this
There is always the possibility that they will get caught in the act. People with the sort of gigantic hubris that they possess often make gigantic mistakes. Their present mindset is that it doesn’t matter what we think or do because they are in charge and they can spin it any way they like afterwards. As you can see from the last link, a lot of the time they don’t bother to spin at all. As one of their members said a few years ago, more or less, “We are an empire. We control and shape reality. It is whatever we say it is.”
So… here we are. You can hear the drums and the bugles. You see the new patriotic commercials with the mothers of the dead soldiers and the disabled survivors. We’ve got Bin Laden and the mysterious Al Qaeda with a franchise outlet around the corner from every Starbucks on Earth and seemingly thousands of members with unlimited funding and terror think tanks and dirty bombs. We’ve got unusual and anonymous stock market action. We got unknown Middle Eastern guys doing Jack in the Box routines along the west coast. We’ve got drama, people. The same folks who brought you 9/11 are ready to bring you the next segment in the series. So get the popcorn in the microwave, make sure there’s enough beer in the fridge, call Dominos, call your friends and then sit back in the Barcalounger and get the remote handy.
This is a multimedia experience. The same people doing it will be reporting it... and analyzing it... and protecting and not protecting you all at the same time. Why, even now, Bush’s speechwriters are probably preparing his address. Bush himself may well be in the mirror striking poses and listening to an audio-book version of great speeches by Marc Anthony, Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt with a bullhorn in his hand and a roll of socks in his crotch. Whatever it’s going to be, it’s certainly going to be pay-per-view. It’s gonna cost. And whatever happens, in this case, it won’t be true that you have “nothing to fear but fear itself”. The fear and the fact, the problems, reactions and solutions are all going to be coming from the same place.
How about big hand for the psychopaths in charge?
'We Are Going to Get Hit Again'
The head of the National Counterterrorism Center speaks out on Al Qaeda's plans, America’s readiness—and the nature of the war on terror.
Retired Vice Admiral John Scott Redd, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, says, "We have very strong indicators that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the West."
By Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Bartholet
Newsweek
Updated: 5:14 p.m. ET Aug. 27, 2007
Aug. 27, 2007 - Al Qaeda has an active plot to hit the West. The United States knows about it but doesn’t have enough tactical detail to issue a precise warning or raise the threat level, says Vice Admiral (ret.) John Scott Redd, who heads the government’s National Counterterrorism Center. In an interview at his headquarters near Washington, D.C., Redd told Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball and Jeffrey Bartholet that the country is better prepared than ever to counter such threats. But he also believes another successful terror attack on the U.S. homeland is inevitable.
NEWSWEEK: People in various agencies have said that since Tora Bora in 2001, they at no time have had even 50-percent confidence that they knew where Osama bin Laden was on any particular day, and therefore they have been unable to mount any operations to go get him. Is that wrong?
Redd: What I’ll tell you about bin Laden is if we knew where he was, he’d either be dead or captured. It’s that simple. [He’s] obviously a tough target. That whole area is a tough target. And my standard answer on OBL is: remember [convicted Atlanta Olympics bomber] Eric Rudolph. Nobody likes to hear it but, I mean, here’s a guy [who was on the run] in the United States of America. We had unlimited access—the FBI, local law enforcement—and the guy hid out for an awful long time just by keeping a low profile. One reporter said the other day, “Well, gee, you’ve got all this great overhead stuff and various surveillance things.” I said, “Yeah. I’d trade those for about three great human sources.”
Why do people believe bin Laden’s still alive?
Well, I guess the question is, why do you believe he’s dead?
(Because he was living in a cave, with an advanced-stage, degenerative kidney disease. Note how he ducked the question?)
I think we’re into the longest period we’ve gone without hearing from him, but we’ve done this before. Back in ’05, I think [the length of time we didn’t hear from bin Laden] may have been a week shorter than [the period of his silence] now. So, yeah, we haven’t heard from him [since spring 2006]. People are starting to say, “He’s dead. He’s dead.” Quite frankly, we think that if he had died it would have become known. It would be very hard to keep that from leaking out.
Also, there are periodic rumors about him suffering from this disease or that disease, needing dialysis, having to get some exotic drug. Is any of that credible?
The short answer is, we don’t know. There are those sporadic reports indicating illness, indicating incapacitation, but nothing firm.
(That's a bald-faced lie. This 'official' just destroyed his credibility. "The CIA met Bin Laden while undergoing treatment at an American Hospital last July in Dubai"
Ayman al-Zawahiri seems to have much more freedom of expression, as it were, which implies more freedom of movement. His tapes now are reasonably well produced.
(That's what the unlimited CIA budget buys you ...)
We saw almost a 300-percent increase in media stuff in 2006 out of all of Al Qaeda, and I think this year we are heading toward that mark already, or getting ahead of that. They are becoming more sophisticated. They are not relying on Al Jazeera or you folks to get the message out. They are using the Internet. They’ve got a fairly well-oiled, if you will, media group. They are doing things like going after a different audience or going after a larger audience, by using subtitles.
(Funny that ...)
English-language…
German, Italian, a number of different things. So they have become more sophisticated.
So they actually upload this stuff on the Internet directly?
Well, Ayman al-Zawahiri doesn’t sit there and say, “Press and upload.”…But you know, what you see is sort of a desire to put themselves on the map. So Zawahiri, I think he had 15 videos last year—and he’s almost there [this year]. He’ll certainly get there this year, if not more, but you’re also seeing a broader spectrum of [Qaeda] people talking about subjects. To be crass about it, it kind of reminds me of a CEO in a start-up company in Silicon Valley. What do you want to do? You want your name out there. So you put out press releases. It helps your funding base—in that case, capitalists, in this case, people who fund Al Qaeda.
(It should be noted that the bulk of the sites used by "al Qaeda" have been traced back to the USA. Note that this man is stressing the easily-faked tapes, as opposed to actual, verifiable evidence.)
While we’re on this topic, what can you tell us about Pakistan’s release of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, who allegedly was a top Al Qaeda communications and computer guy and is now roaming free?
Obviously, we’re not exactly happy about that. We have a legal system, and the Pakistanis have a legal system, which was designed for a different era. I won’t go into their legal system because I am not an expert on it, but the [Pakistani] Supreme Court said, “You’ve got to release this guy,” and, you know, he’s out for a variety of reasons.
What does the progression of terror cases in Britain tell you? Two years ago terrorists actually managed to kill some people. This year it’s these two clowns in Glasgow. They were doctors and engineers who seemed to have some connection to Pakistan and/or Iraq, yet they couldn’t build a bomb. What does this tell you about the evolution of the organization, the evolution of the front-line terrorists?
It shows you the advantage of having a safe haven—a place where you can take someone and not just say, “Here is the formula. Godspeed and go do something,” but rather, “Let’s [try] it. Let’s make it. Let’s see it go bang.”
(Note that these cases have never been proven, and the Bliar Regime has been forced to change its official Conspiracy Theories several times, after LIES were exposed by the evidence.)
Iraq is a giant university for bombmakers.
But, see, they don’t have to [make] it there. They just buy the explosives. It’s HBX or C4. There’s so much explosive material around there.
But if they wanted to teach people, they certainly could.
But you don’t have to make C4. You put a detonator in it with a 99-percent likelihood that sucker is going to go off. And they are very good at that.
(Note how the "journalist" is trying to guide the interviewee here ...)
Is there evidence, though, that they are training people in Iraq to do operations abroad?
AQI has done—certainly under Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi—“external operations” [in Jordan]. I am not going to comment on the most recent U.K. thing and whether there was a connection.
(Note that there is no evidence to support the Propaganda about "al Qaeda in Iraq".)
The Europeans have been concerned about traffic between Iraq and Europe.
There’s always a concern. Frankly, with what is going on inside Iraq right now, it is probably fair to say that Abu Ayyub al-Masri [the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq] pretty much has his hands full, although not completely.
(He's got to, what with languishing in an Egyptian prison as we speak ...)
Tell us about the threat that emerged earlier this year.
We’ve got this intelligence threat; we’re pretty certain we know what’s going on. We don’t have all the tactical details about it, [but] in some ways it’s not unlike the U.K. aviation threat last year.
(Which turned out to be bogus, nothing but pure fearmongering hysteria.)
So we know there is a threat out there. The question is, what do we do about it? And the response was, we stood up an interagency task force under NCTC leadership. So you have all the players you would expect: FBI, CIA, DHS, DIA, DoD, the operators—the military side comes into that—participating in an integrated plan, but integrated in a much more granular and tactical way than we’ve ever done before. This is my 40th year in government service, 36 in uniform and almost four as a civilian. This is revolutionary stuff, and it is affecting the way we do business.
Earlier this summer, there was talk that people were picking up chatter that reminded them of the summer before 9/11. The Germans basically said this is like pre-9/11. They said, “We are very worried.” What do you make of this?
We have very strong indicators that Al Qaeda is planning to attack the West and is likely to [try to] attack, and we are pretty sure about that. We know some of the precursors from—
Attack Europe?
Well, they would like to come West, and they would like to come as far West as they can. What we don’t know is…if it’s going to be Mark Hosenball, and he’s coming in on Flight 727 out of Karachi, he’s stopping in Frankfurt, and he’s coming on through with his European Union passport, and he’s coming into New York, and he’s going to do something. I mean, we don’t have that kind of tactical detail. What we do have, though, is a couple of threads that indicate, you know, some very tactical stuff, and that's what—you know, that’s what you’re seeing bits and pieces of, and I really can’t go much more into it.
But this did not affect our threat level. We didn’t change our code.
We’re pretty high-threat right now. Until you know something that is going to make a difference, you know, you don’t necessarily change the threat level. What that does is really stir a lot of people up and get them ticked off, but it probably doesn’t accomplish very much.
And you don’t as of today see any particular reduction in that threat?
It’s still there. It’s very serious, you know, and we’re watching it. We’re learning more all the time, but it’s still a very serious threat.
Last thing: Are we winning or losing the war on terrorism?
This is a long war. People say, “What is this like?” I say it’s like the cold war in only two respects. Number one, there is a strong ideological content to it. Number two, it is going to be a long war. I’ll be dead before this one is over. We will probably lose a battle or two along the way. We have to prepare for that. Statistically, you can’t bat 1.000 forever, but we haven’t been hit for six years, [which is] no accident.
(No, it simply proves that there is no Grand Muslim Conspiracy, and that 911 was an inside job, designed to enable Bush/PNAC/Israel's agenda.)
I will tell you this: We are better prepared today for the war on terror than at any time in our history. We have done an incredible amount of things since 9/11, across the board. Intelligence is better. They are sharing it better. We are taking the terrorists down. We are working with the allies very carefully. We are doing the strategic operational planning, going after every element in the terrorist life cycle. So we have come a long way. But these guys are smart. They are determined. They are patient. So over time we are going to lose a battle or two.
We are going to get hit again, you know, but you’ve got to have the stick-to-itiveness or persistence to outlast it.
April 19, 2005
Laying the Groundwork for War With Iran
by Aaron Glantz
RIP The Walking Dead?
The Myth of an al Qaeda Takeover of Iraq
by Ted Galen Carpenter
Ted Galen Carpenter is vice president for defense and foreign policy studies and co-author of Exiting Iraq: Why the U.S. Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the War Against Al Qaeda (2004).
In his State of the Union Address last Tuesday, President Bush warned that if the U.S. fails in Iraq, al Qaeda will gain a safe haven from which to launch attacks against America. It is an argument that the President, other members of the administration, and neoconservative hawks have been using for years.
In late 2005, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld warned that al Qaeda leaders "would turn Iraq into what Afghanistan was before 9/11 -- a haven for terrorist recruitment and training and a launching pad for attacks against U.S. interests and our fellow citizens."
Despite such scare mongering, it is highly improbable that al Qaeda could use Iraq as the kind of safe haven it enjoyed in Afghanistan. There, the organization had the protection of an entrenched, friendly government, which it will not have in Iraq. Al Qaeda also had a much larger force in Afghanistan -- an estimated 18,000 fighters. Even the U.S. government concedes that there are fewer than 2,000 al Qaeda fighters in Iraq, and the Iraq Study Group put the figure at only 1,300.
Indeed, foreign fighters make up a relatively small component of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S. and British occupation forces. It strains credulity to imagine 1,300 fighters (and foreigners at that) dominating a country of 26 million people.
The challenge for al Qaeda in Iraq would be even more daunting than those raw numbers suggest. While the organization has some support among Sunni Arabs there, opinion even among that segment of the population is surprisingly negative.
A September 2006 poll conducted by the University of Maryland's prestigious Program on International Policy Attitudes found that 94 percent of Iraqi Sunnis had a somewhat or highly unfavorable attitude toward al Qaeda.
As the violence of al Qaeda attacks has mounted, and the victims are increasingly Iraqis, not Americans, many Sunnis have turned against the terrorists. There have been a growing number of reports during the past year of armed conflicts between Iraqi Sunnis and foreign fighters.
And the anemic Sunni support for al Qaeda is overshadowed by the intense Shiite and Kurdish hostility to the group. Almost to a person, they loathe al Qaeda. The PIPA poll showed that 98 percent of Shiite respondents and 100 percent of Kurdish respondents had somewhat or very unfavorable views of the organization.
The notion that a Shiite-Kurdish-dominated government would tolerate Iraq becoming a safe haven for al Qaeda is improbable on its face. Even if U.S. troops left Iraq, the successor government would continue to be dominated by Kurds and Shiites, since they make up more than 80 percent of Iraq's population. And, in marked contrast to the situation under Saddam Hussein, they now control the military and police.
At best, al Qaeda could hope for a tenuous presence in predominantly Sunni areas of the country while being incessantly stalked and harassed by government forces -- and probably hostile Iraqi Sunnis as well. That doesn't exactly sound like a reliable base of operations for attacks on America.
Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican of Nebraska, has it right. "I have never been persuaded to believe that whether we stay there six months, a year, or two years, that if we would leave, that somehow Iraq would turn into a haven for terrorists."
His skepticism is well placed.
The notion of al Qaeda using Iraq as a sanctuary is a specter -- a canard that the perpetrators of the current catastrophe use to frighten people into supporting a fatally flawed, and seemingly endless, nation-building debacle.
This article appeared in the Sacramento Bee Register on January 28, 2007.
THE MYTH OF AL QAEDA IS NOW ALMOST TOTALLY EXPOSED
In raising the ante in Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza by again raising the empty spectre of ‘al Qaeda’ in order to get at Iran, Syria and Hizbollah, the US and the Israelis have exposed their hand in the myth of ‘al Qaeda terrorism’ in the Middle East.
The Phony (Mossad) Al Qaeda Cell in Palestine
Hirsh: Debunking the Myth of Al Qaeda
Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden’s group was small and fractious. How Washington helped to build it into a 'global threat'.
Debunk the myth of Al Qaeda
Its size and reach have been blown out of proportion
By Kimberly A. McCloud and Adam Dolnik
al Qaeda = PNAC, CIA, Mossad (MI6?)
"People Get Ready there's a False Flag Coming. "
29.08.2007 12:52
Heard it too many times before
Sodthe "false flag" bingo, read this!
29.08.2007 13:58
The study considers the potential for US and allied war on Iran and the attitude of key
states. The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to
destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and
economic infrastructure within days if not hours of President George W. Bush
giving the order. The US is not publicising the scale of these preparations to
deter Iran, tending to make confrontation more likely. The US retains the option
of avoiding war, but using its forces as part of an overall strategy of shaping
Iran’s actions.
• Any attack is likely to be on a massive multi-front scale but avoiding a ground
invasion. Attacks focused on WMD facilities would leave Iran too many
retaliatory options, leave President Bush open to the charge of using too little
force and leave the regime intact.
• US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets
in Iran in a few hours.
• US ground, air and marine forces already in the Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan
can devastate Iranian forces, the regime and the state at short notice.
• Some form of low level US and possibly UK military action as well as armed
popular resistance appear underway inside the Iranian provinces or ethnic
areas of the Azeri, Balujistan, Kurdistan and Khuzestan. Iran was unable to
prevent sabotage of its offshore-to-shore crude oil pipelines in 2005.
• Nuclear weapons are ready, but most unlikely, to be used by the US, the UK
and Israel. The human, political and environmental effects would be
devastating, while their military value is limited.
• Israel is determined to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons yet has the
conventional military capability only to wound Iran’s WMD programmes.
• The attitude of the UK is uncertain, with the Brown government and public
opinion opposed psychologically to more war, yet, were Brown to support an
attack he would probably carry a vote in Parliament. The UK is adamant that
Iran must not acquire the bomb.
• Short and long term human, political and economic consequences of any war
require innovative approaches to prevent the crisis becoming war.
Heard it too many times before
and more
29.08.2007 21:35
And an uncritical parroting of the bellicose rantings with subtle merge with the Iraq "Surge"... which reads like the Pentagon are now embedded in the Guardian:
Heard it too many times before
All Flags are False
31.08.2007 12:48
Kurt Nimmo reposts are boring.
Waterstone