THE CRIME OF LEBANON AND PALESTINE - ARE IRAN AND SYRIA NEXT? - PART II
The Crime of Lebanon and Palestine - Are Iran and Syria Next?: Part II - by Stephen Lendman
On July 26, Aljazeerah reported a story headlined - "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June (2006)." It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney. The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country.
Following the Colorado meeting, Netanyahu returned to Israel for a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting in which he conveyed the message of US support to carry out the "Clean Break" policy officially ending all past peace accords including Oslo. At the meeting in Israel in addition to Binyamin Netanyahu were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.
Aljazeerah also reported that after the Colorado AEI conference Natan Sharansky met with the right wing Heritage Foundation in Washington and then attended a June 29 seminar at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia sponsored by the Middle East Forum led by US Israeli hawk Daniel Pipes. Sharansky appeared there with Republican Senator Rick Santorum who on July 20 was hawkishly advocating war against Syria, Iran, and "Islamo-fascism" in an inflamatory speech at the National Press Club attended by a cheering section of supporters composed of members of the neocon Israel Project, on whose Board Santorum serves along with Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss and Virginia Republican Representative Tom Davis.
Aljazeerah reported further that in a published interview in the Spanish newspaper ABC on July 23, Syrian Information Minister Moshen Bilal warned Israel that his country would enter the Lebanon conflict if Israel launched a major incursion into the country. He said: "If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of Damascus. What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict." Bilal said his country wanted above all a ceasefire "as soon as possible" combined with a prisoner exchange and explained he was working with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos with whom he had met in Madrid. Bilal also criticized the US saying it was "unjustifiable (that) the superpower is not working for a rapid ceasefire." He rejected claims by Washington that
Syria had armed Hezbollah (which contradicted an earlier admission by the Syrian defense minister that his country did supply some arms to Hezbollah), saying it offered "moral support" but not financing for "any resistance."
The Aljazeerah report also cited the work of former intelligence officer and now author/writer James Bamford who wrote about "going after Syria (and then Iran) in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' war for Israel agenda" in his book A Pretext for War published in 2004 which concentrated on the abuse of the US's intelligence agencies to invent reasons to attack Iraq. If Bamford is right, Syria may soon be drawn into this conflict, and if so, will Iran be next?
Another Report Believes the "War With Iran is On"
Iran may indeed be next (and Syria too) according to UK political scientist, human rights activist and writer Nafeez Ahmed in an article published in OpEd News on July 23 titled: "UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On." In it, Ahmed writes: "In the last few days, I learned from a credible and informed source that a former senior Labour government Minister, who continues to be well-connected to British military and security officials, confirms that Britain and the United States 'will go to war with Iran before the end of the year.' "
Ahmed goes on to say that in similar fashion to the lead-up to the March, 2003 Iraq invasion, current war plans may change and the scheduled time for it be begin may be postponed. But he quoted Vice President Dick Cheney in an MSNBC interview over a year ago saying Iran is "right at the top of the list (of) rogue states (and) Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel (so) Israel might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards." What the Vice President claimed the Iranians said was false (the Iranian president was deliberately misquoted), and he neglected to mention the immediate mass death and destruction that would result from this "act," and the resulting calamity from destroying commercial nuclear reactor and facilities sites that would spread devastating irremediable toxic radiation over a vast area making those territories uninhabitable forever and eventually killing an unknown number of people living there from the cancers and other diseases they will eventually contract from the deadly contamination.
Ahmed goes on to discount the possibility of Israel taking the lead in an assault against Iran saying it prefers to be a "regional proxy force in a US-led campaign." And he reports that writer Seymour Hersh quotes a former high-level US intelligence official saying that despite the increasing disaster in Iraq, overall "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah-we've got four years, and we want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism." Hersh has been on and off in what his sources are telling him about the likelihood of war with Iran so it may be uncertain what conclusion he now has as of this article's publication. But whatever it is, it's clear it can change in an instant as things in the Middle East are so fluid.
Nafeez's article also reported an analysis of the Monterey Institute for International Studies on the likely consequences of a war against Iran in which, if it happens, the US said it would use "bunker-buster mini-nukes." The language is deceptive as these are powerful nuclear bombs. The Institute painted the dire possibility that an extended conflict with Iran could catastrophically spin out of control with irreversible consequences for the global political economy. It would affect energy security, relations with other nations like China and Russia concerned about their own access to energy supplies in the region, and the US "dollar-economy" that would be under pressure, greatly harmed and even potentially threatened with collapse.
If this scenario is possible, why then would US, UK, Israeli, and other Western leaders who see what's going on, be willing to take the risk? Ahmed states what a growing number of knowledgeable observers now believe - that the Western, mainly US, so-called neoliberal imperial freewheeling "free-market" model is failing and may collapse short of a desperate "Hail Mary" military solution to try to save it even though the chance for success at best would be uncertain and in some views unlikely. And if it fails, the result may be an unimaginable social, political and economic calamity.
The fate of the corrupted neoliberal model may be what's now at stake. That model is already unraveling in Latin America where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is proving his alternate Bolivarian participatory democracy is overwhelmingly popular and working. It's based on a government serving the people by providing essential social services, especially to the poor and desperate ones most in need of it. Chavez's success has made him a symbol of hope and a hero in the region and beyond, it's allowed his form of governance to spread to Bolivia, and there's every reason to imagine and hope it will continue spreading unstoppably because people in other Latin countries are beginning to fight for it. It's all greatly alarmed the ruling authority in Washington that views Chavez as the threat it most fears, even above Iran - a powerful good example that will spread unless the US acts forcibly to stop it, which clearly is its plan.
Apparently though, with the conflict raging in the Middle East, including in Iraq, the US attention is focused there as well as on the upcoming mid-term elections in which Republicans fear they will lose their control of the Congress because of their geopolitical failures that have turned the public against them. Politicians never accept defeat without a determined fight to prevent it including assuming the added risk of expanding an already out-of-control conflict in the Middle East to one or more countries in it hoping to convince a doubting public it's only being done to protect our national security. Up to now, an unknowledgeable and naive public has bought the story, and with enough effective packaging of a new contrived Iranian and Syrian threat, likely may do it again. If it happens, the potential calamitous consequences may be enormous and unimaginable, and the likely disaster will only be worse if Iran is attacked with nuclear weapons. The world, indeed, is holding its collective breath with no clear idea yet what may unfold or what will result if the worst happens - a nuclear terror-war against Iran.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
The Crime of Lebanon and Palestine - Are Iran and Syria Next?: Part II - by Stephen Lendman
On July 26, Aljazeerah reported a story headlined - "Israeli invasion of Lebanon planned by neocons in June (2006)." It was done at a June 17 and 18 meeting at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) conference in Beaver Creek, Colorado at which former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Likud Knesset member Natan Sharansky met with US Vice President Dick Cheney. The purpose was to discuss the planned and impending Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) invasions of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. Cheney was thoroughly briefed and approved the coming assaults - before Hamas' capture of an IDF soldier on June 25 or Hezbollah's capturing of two others in an exchange first reported as occurring in Israel and now believed to have happened inside Lebanon after IDF forces illegally entered the country.
Following the Colorado meeting, Netanyahu returned to Israel for a special "Ex-Prime Ministers" meeting in which he conveyed the message of US support to carry out the "Clean Break" policy officially ending all past peace accords including Oslo. At the meeting in Israel in addition to Binyamin Netanyahu were current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres.
Aljazeerah also reported that after the Colorado AEI conference Natan Sharansky met with the right wing Heritage Foundation in Washington and then attended a June 29 seminar at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia sponsored by the Middle East Forum led by US Israeli hawk Daniel Pipes. Sharansky appeared there with Republican Senator Rick Santorum who on July 20 was hawkishly advocating war against Syria, Iran, and "Islamo-fascism" in an inflamatory speech at the National Press Club attended by a cheering section of supporters composed of members of the neocon Israel Project, on whose Board Santorum serves along with Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss and Virginia Republican Representative Tom Davis.
Aljazeerah reported further that in a published interview in the Spanish newspaper ABC on July 23, Syrian Information Minister Moshen Bilal warned Israel that his country would enter the Lebanon conflict if Israel launched a major incursion into the country. He said: "If Israel makes a land entry into Lebanon, they can get to within 20 kilometers (12 miles) of Damascus. What will we do? Stand by with our arms folded? Absolutely not. Without any doubt Syria will intervene in the conflict." Bilal said his country wanted above all a ceasefire "as soon as possible" combined with a prisoner exchange and explained he was working with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos with whom he had met in Madrid. Bilal also criticized the US saying it was "unjustifiable (that) the superpower is not working for a rapid ceasefire." He rejected claims by Washington that
Syria had armed Hezbollah (which contradicted an earlier admission by the Syrian defense minister that his country did supply some arms to Hezbollah), saying it offered "moral support" but not financing for "any resistance."
The Aljazeerah report also cited the work of former intelligence officer and now author/writer James Bamford who wrote about "going after Syria (and then Iran) in accordance with the 'A Clean Break' war for Israel agenda" in his book A Pretext for War published in 2004 which concentrated on the abuse of the US's intelligence agencies to invent reasons to attack Iraq. If Bamford is right, Syria may soon be drawn into this conflict, and if so, will Iran be next?
Another Report Believes the "War With Iran is On"
Iran may indeed be next (and Syria too) according to UK political scientist, human rights activist and writer Nafeez Ahmed in an article published in OpEd News on July 23 titled: "UK Govt Sources Confirm War With Iran Is On." In it, Ahmed writes: "In the last few days, I learned from a credible and informed source that a former senior Labour government Minister, who continues to be well-connected to British military and security officials, confirms that Britain and the United States 'will go to war with Iran before the end of the year.' "
Ahmed goes on to say that in similar fashion to the lead-up to the March, 2003 Iraq invasion, current war plans may change and the scheduled time for it be begin may be postponed. But he quoted Vice President Dick Cheney in an MSNBC interview over a year ago saying Iran is "right at the top of the list (of) rogue states (and) Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel (so) Israel might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards." What the Vice President claimed the Iranians said was false (the Iranian president was deliberately misquoted), and he neglected to mention the immediate mass death and destruction that would result from this "act," and the resulting calamity from destroying commercial nuclear reactor and facilities sites that would spread devastating irremediable toxic radiation over a vast area making those territories uninhabitable forever and eventually killing an unknown number of people living there from the cancers and other diseases they will eventually contract from the deadly contamination.
Ahmed goes on to discount the possibility of Israel taking the lead in an assault against Iran saying it prefers to be a "regional proxy force in a US-led campaign." And he reports that writer Seymour Hersh quotes a former high-level US intelligence official saying that despite the increasing disaster in Iraq, overall "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign. We've declared war and the bad guys, wherever they are, are the enemy. This is the last hurrah-we've got four years, and we want to come out of this saying we won the war on terrorism." Hersh has been on and off in what his sources are telling him about the likelihood of war with Iran so it may be uncertain what conclusion he now has as of this article's publication. But whatever it is, it's clear it can change in an instant as things in the Middle East are so fluid.
Nafeez's article also reported an analysis of the Monterey Institute for International Studies on the likely consequences of a war against Iran in which, if it happens, the US said it would use "bunker-buster mini-nukes." The language is deceptive as these are powerful nuclear bombs. The Institute painted the dire possibility that an extended conflict with Iran could catastrophically spin out of control with irreversible consequences for the global political economy. It would affect energy security, relations with other nations like China and Russia concerned about their own access to energy supplies in the region, and the US "dollar-economy" that would be under pressure, greatly harmed and even potentially threatened with collapse.
If this scenario is possible, why then would US, UK, Israeli, and other Western leaders who see what's going on, be willing to take the risk? Ahmed states what a growing number of knowledgeable observers now believe - that the Western, mainly US, so-called neoliberal imperial freewheeling "free-market" model is failing and may collapse short of a desperate "Hail Mary" military solution to try to save it even though the chance for success at best would be uncertain and in some views unlikely. And if it fails, the result may be an unimaginable social, political and economic calamity.
The fate of the corrupted neoliberal model may be what's now at stake. That model is already unraveling in Latin America where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is proving his alternate Bolivarian participatory democracy is overwhelmingly popular and working. It's based on a government serving the people by providing essential social services, especially to the poor and desperate ones most in need of it. Chavez's success has made him a symbol of hope and a hero in the region and beyond, it's allowed his form of governance to spread to Bolivia, and there's every reason to imagine and hope it will continue spreading unstoppably because people in other Latin countries are beginning to fight for it. It's all greatly alarmed the ruling authority in Washington that views Chavez as the threat it most fears, even above Iran - a powerful good example that will spread unless the US acts forcibly to stop it, which clearly is its plan.
Apparently though, with the conflict raging in the Middle East, including in Iraq, the US attention is focused there as well as on the upcoming mid-term elections in which Republicans fear they will lose their control of the Congress because of their geopolitical failures that have turned the public against them. Politicians never accept defeat without a determined fight to prevent it including assuming the added risk of expanding an already out-of-control conflict in the Middle East to one or more countries in it hoping to convince a doubting public it's only being done to protect our national security. Up to now, an unknowledgeable and naive public has bought the story, and with enough effective packaging of a new contrived Iranian and Syrian threat, likely may do it again. If it happens, the potential calamitous consequences may be enormous and unimaginable, and the likely disaster will only be worse if Iran is attacked with nuclear weapons. The world, indeed, is holding its collective breath with no clear idea yet what may unfold or what will result if the worst happens - a nuclear terror-war against Iran.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 
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Usual conspiracy bollocks.
28.07.2006 16:22
Götterdämmerung
Why racist scum like the 'conspiracy' word
28.07.2006 19:12
I HAVE TOLD YOU THAT THE STATE HAS INFILTRATED THE PEACE MOVEMENTS WITHIN THE UK SO THAT THEY CAN GUIDE THESE MOVEMENTS TO THE MOST HARMLESS KINDS OF PROTESTS POSSIBLE. Oh, but the racist scum just laugh, and say 'conspiracy'.
However, their use of this word requires the most intensive psychological conditioning by the mass media first. The agents of Blair need to ensure a 'pavlovian' response to their control words.
QUOTE
Two Oakland police officers working undercover at an anti-war protest in May 2003 got themselves elected to leadership positions in an effort to influence the demonstration, documents released Thursday show.
UNQUOTE
When I and others talk about state infiltration, it is because SOME of us are smart enough to have an awareness of Human history based on absolute fact, and NOT the half-truth propaganda that carefully spews from the BBC and The Guardian.
Did you know, for instance, that the US government have ADMITTED to the purposeful targetting of the civilian defense bunker in Iraq during the first Gulf War, that murdered hundreds of women and children sheltering within, by burning them all to death.
At the time, racist scum like 'Götterdämmerung' stated that anyone claiming that the US had deliberately murdered those people was a 'conspiracy' nut. See how the game gets played.
Operation Northwoods was a blueprint for 911, created by the self-same faction in the early 60's that now has absolute power in the US in our time. Operation Northwoods did not go ahead because the Neocons lacked a Blair and Bush. Operation Northwoods II, otherwise known as 911, succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of those 60's planners.
So why has Israel demanded that it's racist spammers like 'Götterdämmerung' blitz the net in their HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS at this moment? Why- because most people have the memory of a goldfish, and are proud of the fact. What they know is not the truth, but whatever crap they last heard from their favourite mass media outlet.
Even Noam Chomsky (Israel's beloved 'sleeper') is forced to bash the racist idiots like 'Götterdämmerung' when they use the word 'conspiracy', because of the mountains of evidence showing the truth behind every covert action by the UK, US, France, and Israel. Remember the conspiracy nuts that claimed french security service agents blew up the Greenpeace ship in New Zealand. I mean, dear god, these people really must stop watching 'James Bond'.
The final trick racist morons like 'Götterdämmerung' use is to acknowledge the truth when people like me cram it down their evil throats, but then claim that any action by the security services that lacks a smoking gun CANNOT be blamed on the security services. Of course, the logic of this is claiming that the security services have only done their job properly if they have been ANYTHING BUT SECRET. In reality, the secret services were set up with the explicit aim of carrying out CRIMES IN SECRET ON BEHALF OF THE STATE. When you have a dictator like Blair, Blair ***is*** the state.
Operation Northwoods detailed the fake evidence that would be used to blame the Cubans. It is no suprise that this matches exactly the fake evidence used to blame the muslims over 911. 'Götterdämmerung' relies on the fact that you are too thick to know about Operation Northwoods. Too thick to know about Operation Gladio. Too thick to know about the bombing of the shelter in Iraq. Too thick to know about every terrorist act carried out by the Israelis before and after the creation of the 'state' of Israel. Too thick, in other words, to have ever spent time reading about the history of how the 'bad men' operate (and none of this is 'conspiracy', just recorded history.) 'Götterdämmerung' and his racist ilk are very proud to think that they lead the worst eductaed sheep at a time of greatest access to education and information. Their dream 'sucker' is the person that sucks at the teat of the so-called liberal mass media, but will never spend 5 minutes at google learning about what lies beneath.
Now perhaps you will understand why Blair's people here say NEVER SHOW EXPLICIT IMAGES OF BLAIR'S WAR CRIMES and FIGHT THE BNP (BLAIR'S STATE RUN DISTRACTION OPERATION) NOT BLAIR and NEVER FORGET MARX AND LENIN ARE GODS SO WE MUST FIGHT FOR ISRAEL AT ALL COSTS.
Today we are engaged in a battle for the survival of our Human Race, and the planet on which we live. If Blair is allowed to trigger his World War 3 (and remember 'Götterdämmerung' acts to buy his master Blair just a little more time for this very purpose), WW3 will be to WW2 as WW2 was to WW1. An industrial war that maxs out the weapons we have today, and invents new weapons at a vastly accelerated rate. The last war ended with the allies perfecting the tech required to destroy whole cities in a day. Blair's war will start this way, and proceed to a place that no-one has seen, even in their worst nightmares.
Remember, 'Götterdämmerung' and the others mock you here, because they have been almost 100% successful in controlling the agenda of Indymedia UK (where are the pictures of the Blair green lighted atrocities in Lebanon, for instance). They do not completely control this place, of course, but their bartering and compromises that they make with the genuine people here give them far more success than failure. For instance, Outrage has now been proven to be as racist an organisation as the BNP, and pro-gay postings on the Indymedia's of the US are notable for being non-racist, proving that there is another way. However, 'pirate' and other extremists, more usually found publishing racist comment on self-styled pro-war 'left' sites (wasn't that what we used to call 'national socialism'- the other name for nazis) are allowed to add articles to the newswire on this site.
twilight