US, Israeli Program Against Iran Begins In Earnest

Olmert: Israel is not leading and should not lead standoff with Iran
By JPOST.COM STAFF

Israel is not leading and should not be leading the standoff against Iran, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday afternoon.

Israel Radio additionally reported that the prime minister warned government ministers to be cautious when making any public comments regarding Iran.

Last week Defense Minister Ehud Barak hinted that Israel might have to tackle Iran's contested nuclear program without help from the US or its allies.

(Even though he knows full well that defense agreements signed with the US state that, even if Israel starts the war, the US will assist. How many lies are you going to accept from this Government before you do something about it?)

Barak's utterance, the clearest and boldest Israeli reference to an Israeli strike on Iran to date, was answered Sunday with a warning from the Islamic Republic that Iran will retaliate on any Israeli aggression. Additionally, Iran accused Israel of trying to wreck relations between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA.)

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1192380789966&pagename=JPost/JPArtic

(I guess we know why the Plant's been Censoring this thread over and over, abusing the 'rate down' feature. It proves Olmert is lying to Israelis about the role of Israel in starting a war from which we might never recover.)

Bolton Smears ElBaradei As Iran Apologist, Says ‘Even A Stopped Clock Is Right Twice A Day’

Two weeks ago, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said on CNN that an attack on Iran would “lead absolutely to disaster.” He added that there is no evidence of a “concrete, active nuclear weapon program” going on inside Iran.

Today on CNN’s Late Edition, neconservative warhawk John Bolton responded by smearing ElBaradei as “an apologist for Iran” and said the United States is “paying the price” for not opposing him more vociferously.

When host Wolf Blitzer reminded Bolton that ElBaradei correctly warned prior the Iraq war that there was no evidence of a nuclear weapons program, Bolton derisively dismissed his warnings by claiming “even a stopped clock is right twice a day”.

thinkprogress.org/2007/11/11/bolton-baradei-apologist/

Apparently, Bolton has been chosen as the US's tag-team front man in the "Blixing" of Mohamed El Baradei. Right now, Israel is screaming for his head on their platter at the UN.

The problem is, El Baradei was absolutely correct when he stated that Iraq had no WMDS.

Of course, the US knew this was the case, but went along with the invasion and occupation of Iraq anyway.

It was all about the oil, and "neutralizing" Israel's perceived enemies.

And it will be the same should the US and Israel attack Iran.

Israel, US to set up joint committees on Iran: report
 http://rawstory.com /news/afp/Israel_US_to_set_up_joint.com mittee_11092007.html

Note the willingness of the original source to repeat the long-refuted LIE that Ahmadinejad threatened to 'wipe Israel off the map', the result of a mistranslation from Farsi to English, which was corrected the same week it was made.

It's ironic that we're supposed to support a war, based on this lie, yet ignore the fact that Israel and the US are actually plotting to attack this sovereign country.

Israel, US meet to discuss common Middle East strategy

Minister Shaul Mofaz speaks about possible future sanctions on Iran, replacing current director of IAEA

 http://www..net news.com /Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3469447,00.html

Israel urges ElBaradei removal
Thu, 08 Nov 2007

Israel has mockingly called for the removal of IAEA chief from his post, claiming he has turned a blind eye to Iran's nuclear progress.

 http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=30268

IAEA Leader's Phone Tapped
U.S. Pores Over Transcripts to Try to Oust Nuclear Chief
 http://www.washingtonpost.com /ac2/wp-dyn/A57928-2004Dec11?language=printer

Olmert: ElBaradei 'no fan of Israel'

Israel intensifies its criticism (slander) of IAEA, prime minister says its chief does not harbor positive feelings towards Israel. 'His lethargic and irresponsible conduct should have led to his dismissal,' says cabinet minister
 http://www..net news.com /articles/0,7340,L-3469118,00.html

Memo to Prime Minister Olmert: the only thing for which the Head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei should be "a fan" is simply this: the truth.

And he seems to be. That's why the Neo-Fascists want to replace him with someone more 'pliable' ...

What is happening here is, as Yogi Berra used to say. "deja vu all over again". We are again witnessing the personal smearing and crafted innuendos against the man who has stated very clearly that Iran has no weapons program.

Iran is simply building a power plant, nothing more.

Does anyone remember what happened, right before the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, when Hans Blix stated that Iraq absolutely had no weapons of mass destruction?

Blix: I was smeared by the Pentagon
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,974998,00.html

This is precisely the same thing.

Now, we can only wait to find out precisely when the US and Israel will declare the UN "irrelevant" again, and go in with guns blazing.

Given the plot for another Act of Aggression in the oil-producing region of the world, I thought this was rather timely:

Govt. plans to divert oil into reserve
By H. JOSEF HEBERT

WASHINGTON - Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Thursday defended plans to divert oil into the federal emergency reserve, although he acknowledged that tight supplies likely are one reason for surging crude oil prices.

The Energy Department announced it has awarded contracts to three companies — Shell Trading Co., Sunoco Logistics and BP North America — for 12.3 million barrels of oil to go into the government's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, beginning in January.

Deliveries are scheduled at a rate of 70,000 barrels a day for six months.

 http://news.yahoo.com /s/ap/20071109/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/bodman_oil_3

Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line on Iran
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program. The aim is to make the document more supportive of Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts provided by participants in the NIE process to two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the "unsatisfactory" draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.

A NIE coordinates the judgments of the US's 16 intelligence agencies on a specific country or issue.

A former CIA intelligence officer who has asked not to be identified told Inter Press Service (IPS) that an official involved in the NIE process says the Iran estimate was ready to be published a year ago but has been delayed because the director of national intelligence wanted a draft reflecting a consensus on key conclusions - particularly on Iran's nuclear program.

There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear program poses, according to the intelligence official's account. Some analysts who are less independent are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheney's office, but others have rejected that view.

The draft NIE, first completed a year ago, which had included the dissenting views, was not acceptable to the White House, according to the former intelligence officer. "They refused to come out with a version that had dissenting views in it," he says.

As recently as early October, the official involved in the process was said to be unclear about whether a NIE would be circulated and, if so, what it would say.

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi provided a similar account, based on his own sources in the intelligence community. He told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.

"The White House wants a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy," says Giraldi. Despite pressures on them to change their dissenting conclusions, however, Giraldi says some analysts have refused to go along with conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence.

In October 2006, Giraldi wrote in The American Conservative that the NIE on Iran had already been completed, but that Cheney's office had objected to its findings on both the Iranian nuclear program and Iran's role in Iraq. The draft NIE did not conclude that there was confirming evidence that Iran was arming Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq, according to Giraldi.

Giraldi said the White House had decided to postpone any decision on the internal release of the NIE until after the November 2006 congressional elections.

Cheney's desire for a "clean" NIE that could be used to support his aggressive policy toward Iran was apparently a major factor in the replacement of John Negroponte as director of national intelligence in early 2007. Negroponte had angered neo-conservatives in the administration by telling the press in April 2006 that the intelligence community believed that it would still be "a number of years off" before Iran would be "likely to have enough fissile material to assemble into or to put into a nuclear weapon, perhaps into the next decade".

Neo-conservatives immediately attacked Negroponte for the statement, which merely reflected the existing NIE on Iran issued in spring 2005. Robert G Joseph, the under secretary of state for arms control and an ally of Cheney, contradicted Negroponte the following day. He suggested that Iran's nuclear program was nearing the "point of no return" - an Israeli concept referring to the mastery of industrial-scale uranium enrichment.

Frank J Gaffney, a protege of neo-conservative heavyweight Richard Perle, complained that Negroponte was "absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons".

This January 5, President George W Bush announced the nomination of retired Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell to be director of national intelligence. McConnell was approached by Cheney himself about accepting the position, according to Newsweek.

McConnell was far more amenable to White House influence than his predecessor. On February 27, one week after his confirmation, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee he was "comfortable saying it's probable" that the alleged export of explosively formed penetrators to Shi'ite insurgents in Iraq was linked to the highest leadership in Iran.

Cheney had been making that charge, but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as well as Negroponte, have opposed it.

A public event last spring indicated that the White House had ordered a reconsideration of the draft NIE's conclusion on how many years it would take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon. The previous Iran estimate completed in the spring of 2005 had estimated it at five to 10 years.

Two weeks after Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad announced in mid-April that Iran would begin producing nuclear fuel on an industrial scale, the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Thomas Fingar, said in an interview with National Public Radio that the completion of the NIE on Iran had been delayed while the intelligence community determined whether its judgment on the time frame within which Iran might produce a nuclear weapon needed to be amended.

Fingar said the estimate "might change", citing "new reporting" from the International Atomic Energy Agency as well as "some other new information we have". And then he added, "We are serious about reexamining old evidence."

That extraordinary revelation about the NIE process, which was obviously ordered by McConnell, was an unsubtle signal to the intelligence community that the White House was determined to obtain a more alarmist conclusion on the Iranian nuclear program.

A decision announced in late October indicated, however, that Cheney did not get the consensus findings on the nuclear program and Iran's role in Iraq that he had wanted. On October 27, David Shedd, a deputy to McConnell, told a congressional briefing that McConnell had issued a directive making it more difficult to declassify the key judgments of national intelligence estimates.

That reversed a Bush administration practice of releasing summaries of key judgments in NIEs that began when the White House made public the key judgments from the controversial 2002 NIE on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction program in July 2003.

The decision to withhold key judgments on Iran from the public was apparently part of a White House strategy for reducing the potential damage of publishing the estimate with the inclusion of dissenting views.

As of early October, officials involved in the NIE were "throwing their hands up in frustration" over the refusal of the administration to allow the estimate to be released, according to the former intelligence officer. But the Iran NIE is now expected to be circulated within the administration in late November, says Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and founder of the anti-war group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

The release of the Iran NIE will certainly intensify the bureaucratic political struggle over Iran policy. If the NIE includes both dissenting views on key issues, a campaign of selective leaking to news media of language from the NIE that supports Cheney's line on Iran will soon follow, as well as leaks of the dissenting views by his opponents.

Both sides may be anticipating another effort by Cheney to win Bush's approval of a significant escalation of military pressure on Iran in early 2008.

Gareth Porter is a historian and national-security policy analyst. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.

(Inter Press Service)

 http://www.atimes.com /atimes/Middle_East/IK10Ak01.html

No doubt the intelligence community recalls how they were made a scapegoat to Bush/PNAC's LIES about Iraq.