When Iran (and possibly Russia) retaliates, and the Draft is reinstated (after all, Iran has well over 11 MILLION troops), remeber who picked the fight.
Like WWII, we will soon regret Appeasing these Fascists.
Like WWII, we will soon regret Appeasing these Fascists.
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.
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.
Comments
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Israel Training for Nuclear Strike on Iran
14.11.2007 00:16
By Reuven Koret November 10, 2007
With no alternative but to fight fire with fire, the Israel Air Force is training for a tactical nuclear strike on Iranian nuclear production facilities.
(Fight what fire? Israel is plotting unprovoked Aggression - for which men hung at Nuremberg - against a sovereign state, using nuclear weapons. By every yardstick these Extremists have used thus far to justify "pre-emption", not only is Israel ripe for attack itself, but since it's plotting against Iran, Iran has the right to attack Israel. Right ... ?)
As hope fades for a diplomatic solution to Iran's development of enriched uranium for production of weapons with the primary purpose of destroying Israel,
(Thaaat's quite the sentence. The Extremists who long ago planned to attack Iran, and are using this as a way to feign a justification, have no evidence to support their all-too-familiar allegations (Iraq, anyone?), are contradicted by the IAEA, and are flogging a lie that Iran's president made a threat that was never uttered.)
the IAF is practicing for a mission to destroy key Iranian facilities, at least one with low-yield nuclear munitions, the Times of London reported.
Citing "several Israeli sources," the Times said that two IAF squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using a combination of precision laser bombs and low-yield nuclear "bunker-busters". The Times report was supplemented by one from Fox News.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb, the Times said.
Under the plans, the report said, conventional laser-guided bombs would open shafts into the targets. Then the nuclear bombs would then be fired into a plant at Natanz, exploding deep underground to reduce the risk of radioactive fallout.
(No, to maximize their destructive power.)
"As soon as the green light is given, it will be one mission, one strike and the Iranian nuclear project will be demolished," said one of the sources.
Israeli intelligence recently announced that Iran is on the verge of producing enough enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons by 2009. Meir Dagan, head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, told the Knesset, Israel's parliament, also believes that the Iranians will have a complete nuclear device by 2009.
(Even though the International Atomic Energy Agency says that Iran hasn't even been able to enrich enough to generate power, which is vastly less than the amount needed for weapons development - should they choose to pursue such a course. Remember, "Israeli Intelligence" was instrumental in creating similar LIES that led to the war in Iraq.)
Conventional strikes, IDF commanders believe, are insufficient to destroy the deeply buried enrichment facilities, which are reportedly built beneath at least 70 feet of concrete and rock and surrounded by dozens of Iranian anti-aircraft batteries.
Israel has identified three prime targets south of Tehran believed to be central to Iran's nuclear program, the Times reported:
Natanz, where thousands of centrifuges are being installed for uranium enrichment;
A uranium conversion facility near Isfahan where, according to a statement by an Iranian vice-president last week, 250 tons of gas for the enrichment process have been stored; because this is located near a city of 4.5 million people, Israeli may opt to use conventional munitions here.
(May ...)
A heavy water reactor at Arak, which may in future produce enough plutonium for a bomb.
(Note the use of the phrase "may in future", meaning that there is no actual justification for this attack, just the usual fearmongering we've come to know under these Neo-Fascists.)
Israeli officials believe that destroying all three sites would delay Iran's nuclear program for years and prevent the Zionist State from living in fear of a "second Holocaust," a mounting threat since Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been declaring that "Israel must be wiped off the map" and promoting the desirability of "a world without Israel."
(But he never actually said that, as they know, and they don't actually believe any of this.)
Dr. Ephraim Sneh, the former deputy Israeli defense minister, said last month: "The time is approaching when Israel and the international community will have to decide whether to take military action against Iran." But he lamented that "At the end of the day it is always down to the Jews to deal with the problem."
(he means Israelis or Zionist Extremists. And there is no actual problem. The problem is that these fanatics think it's alright to start wars and attack their neighbours, and are willing to LIE through their teeth to Israelis, and the world, in order to achieve their goal.)
But the United States is believed to be backing away from military action in Iran, and the new US defense secretary, Robert Gates, has described a strike against Iranian targets as a "last resort", leading Israelis to believe that it will be left to the IAF to strike. Israeli sources do not believe that the US is likely to give explicit permission for Israel to use tactical nukes.
(Leaked documents, however, reveal that this has been the plan all along, and this has come directly from Dick Cheney himself. Since Israel and the US have signed a rather bizarre "defense" agreement, the US will side with Israel, even if it starts the war.)
The Times, citing Israeli sources, said Israeli pilots have flown to Gibraltar in recent weeks to train for the 2,000-mile round trip to the Iranian targets.
(And have done so for two years now.)
The report said that the air force squadrons are based at Hatzerim in the Negev desert and Tel Nof, south of Tel Aviv, under the personal supervision of Major General Eliezer Shkedy, commander of the Israeli Air Force, training to use Israel's arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons on the mission.
The strike is expected to release nuclear material from the plants, rendering the facilities uninhabitable and crippling their reconstruction.
The Israelis believe that Iran's expected retaliation would be constrained by fear of an Israeli second strike.
(Not really. And Russia has stated that any attack on Iran will be considered an attack on Russia. This attack, what the IAEA Head and many others have refered to as "an act of Madness" will most likely start a war from which we may never recover.)
The leak of a possible nuclear option by Israel may be intentional, US analysts have said. "In the cold war, we made it clear to the Russians that it was a virtual certainty that nukes would fly and fly early," said an American defense source. "Israel may be adopting the same tactics: 'You produce a weapon; you die'."
(Or in this case, you don't produce a weapon, you die ...)
Hold it.
Iran is building power stations, which it is allowed to do under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the United States and Iran (but not Israel) have signed. Under the NNPT Iran has the right to produce their own fuel rods.
Nobody has found any proof that Iran is doing anything other than building a power station.
They do not have a weapons laboratory hidden underneath their reactor (unlike Israel, which has a no-longer-secret weapons plant underneath the reactor at Dimona).
The IAEA has declared that Iran is not making weapons. (And Israeli Extremists have stated their desire to get rid of the IAEA's head as a result.)
So, Israel is getting ready to carry out an unprovoked attack on another nation using nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction.
Which is ironic, because that is the VERY crime Israel is claiming Iran is supposed to be planning, in order to 'justify' its long-held intentions.
But in the end, Israel is the Aggressor.
If they carry out this plan, they will join the United States as the only nations to actually use nuclear weapons against other countries.
Israel, in her cultural paranoid delusion, cannot admit that they are alone in creating clandestine weapons laboratories underneath reactors. For Israel to be comfortable with her own deceptions, she must believe that every other country is doing the same. So, in her paranoia, Israel bombed the Oseric reactor in Iraq, which turned out to be a power station and nothing more. Now Israel wants to bomb Iran's power station, and after they do, who will be next, because it is obvious that Israel is in a total state of denial over the facts on the ground at Oseric, and in Iraq in general.
Israel Insider