European capitals are wavering over how to approach the final two years of a US administration saddled with inconclusive wars.
By Robert Marquand Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
PARIS
The resignation of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi underscores the difficulty in Europe of governments trying to support US foreign policy on terror while at the same time pleasing their own publics.
Mr. Prodi, who has been in office less than a year, stepped down Wednesday after he was unable to convince his parliament of the "profound difference" between sending Italian troops to Afghanistan and sending them to Iraq. Italy currently deploys 1,950 troops in Afghanistan as part of a NATO mission of some 30,000 soldiers from European states.
The Prodi drama came hours after Britain and Denmark announced the start of troop withdrawals from Iraq – a blow to the White House as it deploys an additional 21,000 soldiers to stabilize Baghdad. In a further departure from perfect alignment with US policy in the Middle East, British prime minister Tony Blair also said this week that he will consider dealing with the Palestinian group Hamas as part of a new "national unity" government in the occupied territories.
European capitals are wavering over how to deal with a US administration in its final two years, one saddled with multiple inconclusive wars and battles against terror.
Yet despite the crisis in Italy, and general dislike in Europe for US tactics in fighting terrorism, a fairly clear distinction continues to exist in elite circles between US-led Iraq and Afghan ventures.
Those distinctions have both practical and legal foundations: While a defeat of the US in Iraq might be troubling for the West, an accompanying defeat in Afghanistan would be "catastrophic," says a Brussels-based European diplomat.
"The war in Afghanistan is seen by Europeans as having a real basis in the events of 9/11, under UN rulings of the right of self-defense," says Adam Roberts, a professor at Oxford University, "and this is seen as different from the war in Iraq.
"In Afghanistan, efforts at transformation are multilateral, as distinct from Iraq," he adds. "In Afghanistan, 2 million refugees have returned, whereas in Iraq, 2 million refugees have left. There is still a strong tendency to draw these distinctions, despite European concern over US policy, which is very widespread."
The center-left Prodi government in Rome was always fragile, a nine-party coalition whose main agreement was its dislike of the previous center-right government of Silvio Berlusconi. Prodi decided to resign, it appears, after he was unable to achieve supporting votes from within his coalition for Italy's troops in Afghanistan or to follow through on a two-year-old deal with Washington to expand a military base in Vicenza.
Still, growing negative perceptions in Italy over the US enterprise in the Middle East has been eroding many distinctions in the public mind between the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, according to French analyst Bernard Getta. Such perceptions deepened last week when a judge ordered that 25 suspected CIA operatives stand trial in Milan for kidnapping an Islamist cleric in 2003 and sending him to Egypt. On Feb. 18, tens of thousands of Italians marched in Vicenza.
In Britain, Mr. Blair's announcement Wednesday that he would forces in Basra by 1,600 as part of what may be a complete drawdown by the end of 2008 reflects a broad consensus about Iraq.
Blair emphasized the difference between relatively safer conditions in Basra and those in Baghdad, suggesting that British forces had played their part, and that "the next chapter ... will be written by Iraqis." But the Iraq deployment is increasingly less popular. Blair spoke with his heir apparent, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, sitting to his left; Mr. Brown is regarded as willing to take a more independent position vis-à-vis the White House.
In the case of the Palestinian territories, the US has said it won't deal with a unity government unless it abides by conditions set last year by the Quartet mediating group – Russia, the US, the EU, and the UN – that Hamas renounce violence and recognize Israel.
In Denmark, which will bring home all 460 ground troops from Iraq by summer, public opinion generally distinguishes between Iraq and Afghanistan, says Mogens Jakobsen, who runs Epinion, a polling firm in Copenhagen.
As in Britain, the Iraq war is losing traction among Danes.
"The British withdrawal gave the Danish government a window of opportunity to get out," Mr. Jakobsen says. "Popular support ... is dropping, and it is more difficult for the government to explain to the people why they are there. So the British action was a kind of fig leaf for the Danes."
In the past year, some Danes have become skeptical of their Afghan role. Mostly, this is over tensions with the US created by a Danish policy not to turn over Afghan prisoners to US forces. A perception exists that US troops have sometimes tortured prisoners in Afghanistan. But "the Afghan war is not ... high on the agenda of opposition," Jakobsen says.
Europe's pushback stems partly from frustration that until recently the US had not worked closely with its allies on the Continent. Yet most European foreign ministries, from Britain to Germany to France, are working closely with US allies on Afghanistan, the Iranian nuclear question, and the Middle East, and are now considering a controversial US missile-shield for central Europe.
Italy has had 61 governments in 62 years; its parliamentary system is rife with squabbling parties that often take uncompromising positions. It remains unclear whether the government will disband, leading to new elections. That would pave the way for another run by Mr. Berlusconi.
Thursday, however, President Giorgio Napolitano began polling parties to determine whether a new government can be formed in the immediate future.
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The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Friday, February 23, 2007
Just when you think things cannot possibly get any worse....
....they do, in a big way!
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. troops arrested the son of Iraq's top Shiite politician Friday as he returned to the country from Iran, Shiite officials said.
Amar al-Hakim, son of political leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, was taken into custody at the Zirbatyah crossing point and was transferred to a U.S. facility in Kut, according to the elder al-Hakim's secretary, Jamal al-Sagheer.
Security guards accompanying the younger al-Hakim were also detained, al-Sagheer said.
U.S. spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver said he was looking into the report.
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim is leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party with longtime ties to Iran. He met with President Bush at the White House in December, and his party is part of the Shiite alliance that includes Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
U.S. authorities have complained about Iranian weapons sales and financial aid to major Shiite parties in Iraq.
Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
As presidential aspirants announce their candidacies in an already mind-numbing procession, the "Sliming Bowl" is well under way. No candidate has been smeared more than Barack Obama, and no smearer more relentless than Fox News, as the short video (right) by Brave New Films demonstrates.
"Sliming" is the rabid, rapid, media barrage of persistently repeated lies and innuendo mastered by the right-wing media machine, which aims to tar candidates with negative associations before their campaigns get rolling. Or alternatively, to bruise them enough so that they will suffer under the burden of damaged goods as they try to gain footing.
The conservative roots usually puts out a speculative story through Fox News or Matt Drudge (of the Drudge Report), a powerful mouthpiece for the Bush White House. Then the right-wing echo reverberates as the lies make their way to talk radio and the right-wing blogosphere.
Eventually, it gets picked up and carried by the mainstream media, with few understanding where the story originated.
In fact, disinformation conjured by the conservatives often has its most profound impact with the steady cooperation of the corporate press in repeating their lies. How many people still think that Al Gore said he invented the Internet?
The power of Fox and Matt Drudge to serve as kingpins of the Bush White House echo chamber, while at the same time being key agenda-setters for the mainstream press is a daunting problem for Democrats, progressive media makers, and bloggers.
Fox's ability to be blatantly partisan, yet be treated like serious news journalists, is an unprecedented and thus far successful, juggling act. Furthermore, Fox critics are perpetually frustrated with the counter-productive collusion of Democrats and some activists to cooperate with Fox by appearing on its shows, aiding Fox's claims of the legitimacy of its new organization.
But bloggers and activist groups are fighting harder to discredit Fox News for its bias. Just last week, it was announced that Fox News Channel, working with the Nevada Democratic Party and the Western Majority Project, will host an August 2007 Democratic Debate in Reno, Nevada, "which is expected to attract the top Democratic contenders for President."
Not so fast says MoveOn, Free Press, and others. Petition campaigns are under way, aimed at the Nevada Democrats and the DNC, applying serious heat to drop Fox's control of the event because it is not a legitimate news organization. There are also plans to target Fox's advertisers in a campaign reminiscent of an earlier successful one against Sinclair Broadcasting for its nightly rabid right-wing harangues that were forced upon their affiliate's news shows.
Push back on McCain hypocrisy
Willing to fight dirtier and make up bigger lies, the right wing has dominated smear campaigns going back decades -- remember Donald Segretti and Nixon's dirty tricks? Most recently the "Swiftboaters for Truth" campaign mercilessly and inaccurately maligned John Kerry's military record, playing a role in his defeat to Bush in 2004. The anti-Kerry campaign stands as the gold standard for conservatives' ability to get the mainstream media to carry their message without doing their own work -- even creating a new verb for the political lexicon -- swiftboating.
But the progressive internet media and blogosphere are pushing back, using the speed and versatility of the web to whack the conservative "wing nuts" and pandering candidates with some of their own tools -- albeit stopping far short of making stuff up.
Most recently John McCain felt the sting of the blogosphere as the hypocrisy of his "Straight Talk Express" persona, applauded and enhanced by the mainstream media, has been nailed in the video McCain vs. McCain produced by Robert Greenwald and his team at Brave New Films.
More than 300 blogs linked to the video and thrust Greenwald onto the front page of the L.A. Times to tell the story. Other media are now covering the hypocrisy angle as a N.Y. Times front page story focused on dissent in McCain's own back yard among the grassroots conservative Republicans in Nevada. There, Rob Haney, a Republican state committeeman in McCains's own district told the Nation's Max Blumenthal, "The guy has no core, his only principle is winning the presidency. He likes to call his campaign the 'straight talk express.' Well, down here we call it the 'forked tongue express.'"
Obama bashing
While McCain has taken a much-deserved beating for his hypocrisy, blatant efforts at total disinformation have been aimed at Barack Obama, the fresh-faced Democratic candidate and senator from Illinois.
Obama has been hammered for a whole grab-bag of alleged misdeeds, most which he had nothing to do with -- such as his name, his early schooling, and his parentage -- while other "nuggets of expose," like the fact that he smokes cigarettes, is treated like a deep, dark media secret.
Fox News, with its Muslim bashing, leads the way in the smear campaign against Obama. A catalogue of Fox's propaganda aimed at Obama has been collected by Greenwald, who's highly popular film OutFoxed got wide distribution through Blockbuster, Net Flicks, and thousands of house parties across the country two years ago.
Paul Waldman, of Media Matters and the Gadfly, charts the first of what are already many false stories spread about Barack Obama -- that he attended a fundamentalist madrassa when he lived in Indonesia as a boy. Waldman writes:
When insightmag.com, a website owned by the right-wing Washington Times, put out a breathless report trumpeting the fantasy, Fox News immediately jumped on board, as did Limbaugh, Hannity and the rest of the talk radio bile spewers.
"Why didn't anybody ever mention," asked Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy, a man who makes Larry King look like Oscar Wilde, "that that man right there was raised -- spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father -- as a Muslim and was educated in a madrassa?"
This sentence contained no fewer than five falsehoods: Obama wasn't raised by his father, his father left the family when Obama was two years old, his father wasn't a practicing Muslim, Obama wasn't raised as a Muslim and he didn't go to a madrassa. "Well, he didn't admit it," chimed in co-host Brian Kilmeade. "I mean, that's the issue."
What to do
Lots of people tend to dismiss Fox's influence, saying that they have been discredited among those who matter, and its audience is mainly conservatives who are beyond reason. But that notion misses the point, as Fox's audience is larger than CNN and MSNBC combined, and many watch it for its perceived entertainment value.
More importantly, Fox, as one part of the right-wing echo chamber, is a key component in the feeder system into the mainstream media. Many journalists and editors revel in the right-wing disinformation machine as something akin to watching a car wreck and seem obliged to report accusations by right-wing media, even if made up.
And in the big picture, mainstream media does not seem to comprehend that in being unable or unwilling to find the truth before they report misinformation, they are contributing to their own demise. As the media system is increasingly transformed into polarized voices, mainstream media has already lost a good deal of its credibility and its audience.
As Waldman notes:
In their repugnant book "The Way to Win," ABC News political director Mark Halperin and John Harris of The Politico (and formerly of the Washington Post) explain that, as journalists, "Matt Drudge rules our world."
In other words, when Drudge -- a right-wing operative who closely coordinates his activities with the Republican National Committee -- puts up a sensational story on his website, Halperin, Harris and the rest of their cohorts simply have no choice but to run off and cover it, whether it is true or not.
In the case of the Madrassa issue, in what was seen as a marketing ploy to crow about the differences between CNN and Fox, CNN actually investigated the Insight/Fox lie about Obama's school being a hotbed of fundamentalism. Their journalist found the truth -- that the school Obama attended was benign and taught about various religions. But not before, as one example, the Washington Post's media reporter Howard Kurtz, who is also CNN's media reporter, featured the charges prominently in the Post, framing his story with the Insight/Fox lies, not with skepticism. He eventually followed up with more critical reporting and also debunked the story on CNN.
Many were cheered when Obama drew a line and seemed to take the position of refusing to go on Fox, in response to their disinformation campaign about him.
As Waldman sees it, "this kind of hardball is long overdue, not because Fox itself can be shamed into exercising some journalistic responsibility (shamelessness is one of the primary employment requirements at Fox) but because it sends a message to other journalists:
We will hold you accountable for your actions. If you spread lies, we'll
treat you like a liar, and we don't talk to liars."
In terms of Fox's role in the possible candidates debate in Nevada, Hugh Jackson, writing for the Las Vegas Gleaner, writes that the Nevada Dems are getting "outfoxed."
An example of how disrespectful and counterproductive such Fox News-sponsored Democratic debates are, consider the Sept. 9, 2003, Democratic debate in Baltimore, Md., hosted by Fox News in partnership with the Congressional Black Caucus. Fox News graphics, as well as a banner over the stage, titled the event as the "Democrat Candidate Presidential Debate," a misconstruction of "Democratic" used as an epithet. Fox News then summarized the debate with a story titled "Democratic Candidates Offer Grim View of America," continuing with such jabs as "the depiction of the president as the root of all evil began at the top of Tuesday night's debate."
Don't go on Fox
Filmmaker Greenwald feels adamant that in order to hold Fox accountable, Democratic candidates should not go on their shows:
Day after day, week after week, Fox viciously and brutally attacks, maligns and tries to destroy our values. And we participate in this obscenity to get some airtime? We are nuts to keep going on without a good fight about the rules. We should push back on them.
The idea that we will outsmart, outmanipulate, out-talk Hannity and O'Reilly on an ongoing basis is nonsense. And I say this having studied O'Reilly for a year. But there seems to be little appetite from our side, especially the politicians, to play hardball. Remember, Fox News is dead and gone if we don't go on so they have someone to fight with.
Jane Fleming may be an exception to the Greenwald rule. As head of Young Democrats of America, she has become a regular on Fox, and sees it differently:
I get emails from Republicans and Democrats thanking me for talking back to Hannity like: "Saw your clip from Fox News -- just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your performance against the she-devil and Hannity. You are making us proud -- keep up the good work!" and "I've seen you numerous times on Fox News representing the Democrats, and I wanted to let you know that you do a hell of a job! Some of our representatives on Fox are so lame, I think they might be closet Republicans, but you do very well handling the likes of Hannity and Coulter.I think if we don't go on Fox, it is a mistake. It allows them to continue to portray us as weak and not willing to fight back. I enjoy going on -- I think it gives us an opportunity to get our message out to Republicans and Independents and to show the Dems that are watching we are present.
Keep kickin' butt, Jane.
It remains to be seen if Obama and the other Democratic candidates are truly willing to hold journalists responsible for their actions. But, in the end the blogs and the progressive Internet can play a forceful role against Fox.
"They spread the facts, they put pressure on the media to report them accurately and they generally made the kind of ruckus the right wing has been much more effective at creating," wrote Waldman. "During the 2004 campaign, blogs were still a novelty ... years later they have become a major player, and journalists ... have finally realized that blogs can't be ignored. And if there's one thing bloggers don't hesitate to do, it is calling journalists to account when they have sinned ... The 2008 election will be a test of whether blogs have the power to enforce some standard of truth and shame on those news organizations that buy into made-up tales like the Obama madrassa story."
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
Oh, Jeebus, It's All So Damned Insane!
It all comes down to control
Noam Chomsky is a noted linguist, author and foreign policy expert. On February 9, Michael Shank interviewed him on the latest developments in US policy toward Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Venezuela. 02/21/07 "FPIF" -- - Michael Shank:
With similar nuclear developments in North Korea and Iran, why has the United States pursued direct diplomacy with North Korea but refuses to do so with Iran?
Noam Chomsky: To say that the United States has pursued diplomacy with North Korea is a little bit misleading. It did under the [Bill] Clinton administration, though neither side completely lived up to their obligations. Clinton didn't do what was promised, nor did North Korea, but they were making progress. So when [George W] Bush came into the presidency, North Korea had enough uranium or plutonium for maybe one or two bombs, but then very limited missile capacity. During the Bush years it's exploded.
The reason is, he immediately canceled the diplomacy and he's pretty much blocked it ever since.
They made a very substantial agreement in September 2005 in which North Korea agreed to eliminate its nuclear programs and nuclear development completely.
In return, the United States agreed to terminate the threats of attack and to begin moving toward the planning for the provision of a light-water reactor, which had been promised under the framework agreement.
But the Bush administration instantly undermined it. Right away, it canceled the international consortium that was managing the the light-water-reactor project, which was a way of saying we're not going to agree to this agreement.
A couple of days later they started attacking the financial transactions of various banks. It was timed in such a way to make it clear that the United States was not going to move toward its commitment to improve relations.
And of course it never withdrew the threats. So that was the end of the September 2005 agreement.
That one is now coming back, just in the last few days. The way it's portrayed in the US media is, as usual with the government's party line, that North Korea is now perhaps a little more amenable to accept the September 2005 proposal. So there's some optimism.
If you go across the Atlantic, to The Financial Times, to review the same events they point out that an "embattled George W Bush administration", it's their phrase, needs some kind of victory, so maybe it'll be willing to move toward diplomacy. It's a little more accurate, I think, if you look at the background. But there is some minimal sense of optimism about it. If you look back over the record - and North Korea is a horrible place, nobody is arguing about that - on this issue they've been pretty rational.
It's been a kind of tit-for-tat history. If the United States is accommodating, the North Koreans become accommodating. If the United States is hostile, they become hostile. That's reviewed pretty well by Leon Sigal, who's one of the leading specialists on this, in a recent issue of Current History.
But that's been the general picture, and we're now at a place where there could be a settlement on North Korea. That's much less significant for the United States than Iran. The Iranian issue I don't think has much to do with nuclear weapons, frankly.
Nobody is saying Iran should have nuclear weapons - nor should anybody else. But the point in the Middle East, as distinct from North Korea, is that this is center of the world's energy resources. Originally the British and secondarily the French had dominated it, but after World War II, it's been a US preserve.
That's been an axiom of US foreign policy, that it must control Middle East energy resources. It is not a matter of access, as people often say. Once the oil is on the seas, it goes anywhere. In fact if the United States used no Middle East oil, it'd have the same policies. If we went on solar energy tomorrow, it'd keep the same policies.
Just look at the internal record, or the logic of it: the issue has always been control. Control is the source of strategic power. [Vice President] Dick Cheney declared in Kazakhstan or somewhere that control over a pipeline is a "tool of intimidation and blackmail".
When we have control over the pipelines it's a tool of benevolence. If other countries have control over the sources of energy and the distribution of energy, then it is a tool of intimidation and blackmail, exactly as Cheney said.
And that's been understood as far back as [late US adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian] George Kennan and the early postwar days when he pointed out that if the United States controls Middle East resources, it'll have veto power over its industrial rivals. He was speaking particularly of Japan, but the point generalizes.
So Iran is a different situation. It's part of the major energy system of the world.
Shank: So when the United States considers a potential invasion you think it's under the premise of gaining control? That is what the United States will gain from attacking Iran?
Chomsky: There are several issues in the case of Iran. One is simply that it is independent and independence is not tolerated. Sometimes it's called successful defiance in the internal record.
Take Cuba. A very large majority of the US population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time, with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it too. But the government won't allow it. It's attributed to the Florida vote, but I don't think that's much of an explanation. I think it has to do with a feature of world affairs that is insufficiently appreciated. International affairs is very much run like the mafia.
The godfather does not accept disobedience, even from a small storekeeper who doesn't pay his protection money. You have to have obedience, otherwise the idea can spread that you don't have to listen to the orders, and it can spread to important places. If you look back at the record, what was the main reason for the US attack on Vietnam?
Independent development can be a virus that can infect others. That's the way it's been put, [former secretary of state Henry] Kissinger in this case, referring to [Salvador] Allende in Chile. And with Cuba it's explicit in the internal record. Arthur Schlesinger, presenting the report of the Latin American Study Group to incoming president [John] Kennedy, wrote that the danger is the spread of the [Fidel] Castro idea of taking matters into your own hands, which has a lot of appeal to others in the same region that suffer from the same problems.
Later internal documents charged Cuba with successful defiance of US policies going back 150 years - to the Monroe Doctrine - and that can't be tolerated. So there's kind of a state commitment to ensuring obedience.
Going back to Iran, it's not only that it has substantial resources and that it's part of the world's major energy system, but it also defied the United States.
The United States, as we know, overthrew the parliamentary government, installed a brutal tyrant, was helping him develop nuclear power. In fact the very same programs that are now considered a threat were being sponsored by the US government, by Cheney, [Paul] Wolfowitz, Kissinger and others in the 1970s, as long as the shah was in power. But then the Iranians overthrew him, and they kept US hostages for several hundred days. And the United States immediately turned to supporting Saddam Hussein and his war against Iran as a way of punishing Iran.
The United States is going to continue to punish Iran because of its defiance. So that's a separate factor. And again, the will of the US population and even US business is considered mostly irrelevant. Seventy-five percent of the population here favors improving relations with Iran, instead of threats. But this is disregarded. We don't have polls from the business world, but it's pretty clear that the energy corporations would be quite happy to be given authorization to go back into Iran instead of leaving all that to their rivals.
But the state won't allow it. And it is setting up confrontations right now, very explicitly. Part of the reason is strategic, geopolitical, economic, but part of the reason is the mafia complex. They have to be punished for disobeying us.
Shank: Venezuela has been successfully defiant, with President Hugo Chavez making a swing towards socialism.
Where are they on our list?
Chomsky: They're very high. The United States sponsored and supported a military coup to overthrow the government. In fact, that's its last, most recent effort in what used to be a conventional resort to such measures.
Shank: But why haven't we turned our sights more toward Venezuela?
Chomsky: Oh, they're there.
There's a constant stream of abuse and attack by the government and therefore the media, who are almost reflexively against Venezuela. For several reasons. Venezuela is independent. It's diversifying its exports to a limited extent, instead of just being dependent on exports to the United States.
And it's initiating moves toward Latin American integration and independence. It's what they call a Bolivarian alternative, and the United States doesn't like any of that. This again is defiance of US policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine.
There's now a standard interpretation of this trend in Latin America, another kind of party line. With rare exceptions, Latin America is all moving to the left, from Venezuela to Argentina, but there's a good left and a bad left.
The good left is [Peruvian President Alan] Garcia and Lula [Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva], and then there's the bad left, which is Chavez, [Bolivian President Evo] Morales, maybe [Ecuadorean President Rafael] Correa. And that's the split. In order to maintain that position, it's necessary to resort to some fancy footwork.
For example, it's necessary not to report the fact that when Lula was re-elected in October, his first foreign trip and one of his first acts was to visit Caracas to support Chavez and his electoral campaign and to dedicate a joint Venezuelan-Brazilian project on the Orinoco River, to talk about new projects and so on. It's necessary not to report the fact that a couple of weeks later in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is the heart of the bad guys, there was a meeting of all South American leaders.
There had been bad blood between Chavez and Garcia, but it was apparently patched up. They laid plans for pretty constructive South American integration, but that just doesn't fit the US agenda. So it wasn't reported.
Shank: How is the political deadlock in Lebanon impacting the US government's decision potentially to go to war with Iran? Is there a relationship at all?
Chomsky: There's a relationship.
I presume part of the reason for the US-Israel invasion of Lebanon in July - and it was US-Israeli, the Lebanese are correct in calling it that - I suppose was that Hezbollah is considered a deterrent to a potential US-Israeli attack on Iran. It had a deterrent capacity, ie rockets. And the goal, I presume, was to wipe out the deterrent so as to free up the United States and Israel for an eventual attack on Iran.
That's at least part of the reason. The official reason given for the invasion can't be taken seriously for a moment. That's the capture of two Israeli soldiers and the killing of a couple others. For decades Israel has been capturing and kidnapping Lebanese and Palestinian refugees on the high seas, from Cyprus to Lebanon, killing them in Lebanon, bringing them to Israel, holding them as hostages.
It's been going on for decades - has anybody called for an invasion of Israel? Of course, Israel doesn't want any competition in the region. But there's no principled basis for the massive attack on Lebanon, which was horrendous. In fact, one of the last acts of the US-Israeli invasion, right after the ceasefire was announced but before it was implemented, was to saturate much of the south with cluster bombs. There's no military purpose for that; the war was over, the ceasefire was coming. UN de-mining groups that are working there say that the scale is unprecedented. It's much worse than any other place they've worked: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, anywhere. There are supposed to be about 1 million bomblets left there.
A large percentage of them don't explode until you pick them up, a child picks them up or a farmer hits it with a hoe or something. So what it does basically is make the south uninhabitable until the mining teams, for which the United States and Israel don't contribute, clean it up.
This is arable land. It means that farmers can't go back; it means that it may undermine a potential Hezbollah deterrent.
They apparently have pretty much withdrawn from the south, according to the UN. You can't mention Hezbollah in the US media without putting in the context of "Iranian-supported Hezbollah". That's its name. Its name is "Iranian-supported Hezbollah". It gets Iranian support. But you can mention Israel without saying US-supported Israel. So this is more tacit propaganda. The idea that Hezbollah is acting as an agent of Iran is very dubious.
It's not accepted by specialists on Iran or specialists on Hezbollah. But it's the party line. Or sometimes you can put in Syria, ie "Syrian-supported Hezbollah", but since Syria is of less interest now, you have to emphasize Iranian support.
Shank: How can the US government think an attack on Iran is feasible given troop availability, troop capacity, and public sentiment?
Chomsky: As far as I'm aware, the military in the United States thinks it's crazy. And from whatever leaks we have from intelligence, the intelligence community thinks it's outlandish, but not impossible. If you look at people who have really been involved in the Pentagon's strategic planning for years, people like [retired US Air Force colonel] Sam Gardiner, they point out that there are things that possibly could be done. I don't think any of the outside commentators, at least as far as I'm aware, have taken very seriously the idea of bombing nuclear facilities. They say if there will be bombing it'll be carpet bombing. So get the nuclear facilities but get the rest of the country too, with one exception.
By accident of geography, the world's major oil resources are in Shi'ite-dominated areas. Iran's oil is concentrated right near the Gulf, which happens to be an Arab area, not Persian.
Khuzestan is Arab, has been loyal to Iran, fought with Iran, not Iraq, during the Iran-Iraq War. This is a potential source of dissension. I would be amazed if there isn't an attempt going on to stir up secessionist elements in Khuzestan.
US forces right across the border in Iraq, including the surge, are available potentially to "defend" an independent Khuzestan against Iran, which is the way it would be put, if they can carry it off.
Shank: Do you think that's what the surge was for?
Chomsky: That's one possibility. There was a release of a Pentagon war-gaming report, in December 2004, with Gardiner leading it. It was released and published in The Atlantic Monthly.
They couldn't come up with a proposal that didn't lead to disaster, but one of the things they considered was maintaining troop presence in Iraq beyond what's to be used in Iraq for troop replacement and so on, and use them for a potential land move in Iran - presumably Khuzestan, where the oil is.
If you could carry that off, you could just bomb the rest of the country to dust. Again, I would be amazed if there aren't efforts to sponsor secessionist movements elsewhere, among the Azeri population, for example. It's a very complex ethnic mix in Iran; much of the population isn't Persian.
There are secessionist tendencies anyway and almost certainly, without knowing any of the facts, the United States is trying to stir them up, to break the country internally if possible. The strategy appears to be: try to break the country up internally, try to impel the leadership to be as harsh and brutal as possible. That's the immediate consequence of constant threats.
Everyone knows that.
That's one of the reasons the reformists, Shirin Ebadi and Akbar Ganji and others, are bitterly complaining about the US threats, that it's undermining their efforts to reform and democratize Iran. But that's presumably its purpose. Since it's an obvious consequence, you have to assume it's the purpose. Just like in law, anticipated consequences are taken as the evidence for intention. And here it's so obvious you can't seriously doubt it.
So it could be that one strain of the policy is to stir up secessionist movements, particularly in the oil-rich regions, the Arab regions near the Gulf, also the Azeri regions and others. Second is to try to get the leadership to be as brutal and harsh and repressive as possible, to stir up internal disorder and maybe resistance. And a third is to try to pressure other countries, and Europe is the most amenable, to join efforts to strangle Iran economically. Europe is kind of dragging its feet, but they usually go along with the United States.
The efforts to intensify the harshness of the regime show up in many ways. For example, the West absolutely adores [President Mahmud] Ahmadinejad. Any wild statement that he comes out with immediately gets circulated in headlines and mistranslated.
They love him. But anybody who knows anything about Iran, presumably the editorial offices, knows that he doesn't have anything to do with foreign policy. Foreign policy is in the hands of his superior, the Supreme Leader [Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Ali] Khamenei.
But they don't report his statements, particularly when his statements are pretty conciliatory. For example, they love it when Ahmadinejad says that Israel shouldn't exist, but they don't like it when Khamenei right afterward says that Iran supports the Arab League position on Israel-Palestine. As far as I'm aware, it never got reported. Actually you could find Khamenei's more conciliatory positions in The Financial Times, but not here. And it's repeated by Iranian diplomats, but that's no good.
The Arab League proposal calls for normalization of relations with Israel if it accepts the international consensus of the two-state settlement, which has been blocked by the United States and Israel for 30 years. And that's not a good story, so it's either not mentioned or it's hidden somewhere. It's very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they're deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with, but now they're desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should've been one of the easiest military occupations in history, and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history.
They can't control it, and it's almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can't discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can't get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded. We're supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would've liberated them anyway.
It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea!
Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can't be true.
Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi'ite-dominated, at least if it's minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn't want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi'ite population, probably a majority. Moves toward sovereignty in Iraq stimulate pressures first for human rights among the bitterly repressed Shi'ite population but also toward some degree of autonomy.
You can imagine a kind of a loose Shi'ite alliance in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran, controlling most of the world's oil and independent of the United States. And much worse, although Europe can be intimidated by the United States, China can't.
It's one of the reasons, the main reasons, why China is considered a threat. We're back to the Mafia principle. China has been there for 3,000 years, has contempt for the barbarians, is overcoming a century of domination, and simply moves on its own. It does not get intimidated when Uncle Sam shakes his fist.
That's scary. In particular, it's dangerous in the case of the Middle East. China is the center of the Asian energy-security grid, which includes the Central Asian states and Russia. India is also hovering around the edge, South Korea is involved, and Iran is an associate member of some kind. If the Middle East oil resources around the Gulf, which are the main ones in the world, if they link up to the Asian grid, the United States is really a second-rate power. A lot is at stake in not withdrawing from Iraq.
I'm sure that these issues are discussed in internal planning. It's inconceivable that they can't think of this. But it's out of public discussion, it's not in the media, it's not in the journals, it's not in the Baker-Hamilton report. And I think you can understand the reason.
To bring up these issues would open the question why the United States and Britain invaded. And that question is taboo. It's a principle that anything our leaders do is for noble reasons.
It may be mistaken, it may be ugly, but basically noble. And if you bring in normal moderate, conservative, strategic, economic objectives, you threatening that principle. It's remarkable the extent to which it's held. So the original pretexts for the invasion were weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda that nobody but maybe Wolfowitz or Cheney took seriously.
The single question, as they kept reiterating in the leadership, was: Will Saddam give up his programs of weapons of mass destruction? The single question was answered a couple of months later, the wrong way. And quickly the party line shifted. In November 2003, Bush announced his freedom agenda: our real goal is to bring democracy to Iraq, to transform the Middle East. That became the party line, instantly. But it's a mistake to pick out individuals because it's close to universal, even in scholarship.
In fact you can even find scholarly articles that begin by giving the evidence that it's complete farce but nevertheless accept it.
There was a pretty good study of the freedom agenda in Current History by two scholars, and they give the facts. They point out that the freedom agenda was announced on November 2003 after the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, but the freedom agenda is real even if there's no evidence for it. In fact, if you look at our policies, they're the opposite. Take Palestine.
There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out the wrong way.
So instantly, the United States and Israel, with Europe tagging along, moved to punish the Palestinian people, and punish them harshly, because they voted the wrong way in a free election.
That's accepted here in the West as perfectly normal.
That illustrates the deep hatred and contempt for democracy among Western elites, so deep-seated they can't even perceive it when it's in front of their eyes.
You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way in a free election.
There's a pretext for that too, repeated every day: Hamas must agree to first recognize Israel, second to end all violence, third to accept past agreements. Try to find a mention of the fact that the United States and Israel reject all three of those.
They obviously don't recognize Palestine, they certainly don't withdraw the use of violence or the threat of it - in fact they insist on it - and they don't accept past agreements, including the roadmap. I suspect one of the reasons why Jimmy Carter's book has come under such fierce attack is because it's the first time, I think, in the mainstream, that one can find the truth about the roadmap. I have never seen anything in the mainstream that discusses the fact that Israel instantly rejected the roadmap with US support.
They formally accepted it but added 14 reservations that totally eviscerated it. It was done instantly.
It's public knowledge -
I've written about it, talked about it, so have others, but I've never seen it mentioned in the mainstream before. And obviously they don't accept the Arab League proposal or any other serious proposal. In fact they've been blocking the international consensus on the two-state solution for decades.
But Hamas has to accept them. It really makes no sense. Hamas is a political party, and political parties don't recognize other countries.
And Hamas itself has made it very clear, they actually carried out a truce for a year and a half, didn't respond to Israeli attacks, and have called for a long-term truce, during which it'd be possible to negotiate a settlement along the lines of the international consensus and the Arab League proposal.
All of this is obvious, it's right on the surface, and that's just one example of the deep hatred of democracy on the part of Western elites. It's a striking example, but you can add case after case. Yet the president announced the freedom agenda, and if the dear leader said something, it's got to be true, kind of North Korean-style.
Therefore there's a freedom agenda even if there's a mountain of evidence against it. The only evidence for it is in words, even apart from the timing.
Shank: In the 2008 US presidential election, how will the candidates approach Iran?
Do you think Iran will be a deciding factor in the elections?
Chomsky: What they're saying so far is not encouraging. I still think, despite everything, that the US is very unlikely to attack Iran.
It could be a huge catastrophe; nobody knows what the consequences would be. I imagine that only an administration that's really desperate would resort to that.
But if the Democratic candidates are on the verge of winning the election, the administration is going to be desperate. It still has the problem of Iraq: can't stay in, and can't get out.
Shank: The Senate Democrats can't seem to achieve consensus on this issue.
Chomsky: I think there's a reason for it.
The reason is just thinking through the consequences of allowing an independent, partially democratic Iraq.
The consequences are non-trivial. We may decide to hide our heads in the sand and pretend we can't think it through because we cannot allow the question of why the United States invaded to open, but that's very self-destructive.
Shank: Is there any connection to this conversation and why we cannot find the political will and momentum to enact legislation that would reduce carbon-dioxide emission levels, institute a cap-and-trade system, etc?
Chomsky: It's perfectly clear why the United States didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. Again, there's overwhelming popular support for signing - in fact it's so strong that a majority of Bush voters in 2004 thought that he was in favor of the Kyoto Protocol, it's such an obvious thing to support. Popular support for alternative energy has been very high for years. But it harms corporate profits.
After all, that's the administration's constituency. I remember 40 years ago talking to one of the leading people in the government who was involved in arms control, pressing for arms-control measures, detente, and so on. He's very high up, and we were talking about whether arms control could succeed. And only partially as a joke he said, "Well, it might succeed if the high-tech industry makes more profit from arms control than it can make from weapons-related research and production. If we get to that tipping point, maybe arms control will work." He was partially joking, but there's a truth that lies behind it.
Shank: How do we move forward on climate change without beggaring the South?
Chomsky: Unfortunately, the poor countries, the South, are going to suffer the worst according to most projections - and that being so, it undermines support in the North for doing much. Look at the ozone story. As long as it was the Southern Hemisphere that was being threatened, there was very little talk about it.
When it was discovered in the north, very quickly actions were taken to do something about it.
Right now there's discussion of putting serious effort into developing a malaria vaccine, because global warming might extend malaria to the rich countries, so something should be done about it. Same thing on health insurance.
Here's an issue where, for the general population, it's been the leading domestic issue, or close to it, for years. And there's a consensus for a national health-care system on the model of other industrial countries, maybe expanding Medicare to everyone or something like that.
Well, that's off the agenda, nobody can talk about that. The insurance companies don't like it, the financial industry doesn't like and so on. Now there's a change taking place. What's happening is that manufacturing industries are beginning to turn to support for it because they're being undermined by the hopelessly inefficient US health-care system.
It's the worst in the industrial world by far, and they have to pay for it. Since it's employer-compensated, in part, their production costs are much higher than those competitors who have a national health-care system.
Take GM [General Motors].
If it produces the same car in Detroit and in Windsor across the border in Canada, it saves, I forget the number, I think over $1,000 with the Windsor production because there's a national health-care system in Canada, it's much more efficient, it's much cheaper, it's much more effective. So the manufacturing industry is starting to press for some kind of national health care. Now it's beginning to put it on the agenda.
It doesn't matter if the population wants it. What 90% of the population wants would be kind of irrelevant. But if part of the concentration of corporate capital that basically runs the country - another thing we're not allowed to say but it's obvious - if part of that sector becomes in favor, then the issue moves on to the political agenda.
Shank: So how does the South get its voice heard on the international agenda? Is the World Social Forum a place for it?
Chomsky: The World Social Forum is very important, but of course that can't be covered in the West. In fact, I remember reading an article, I think in The Financial Times, about the two major forums that were taking place. One was the World Economic Forum in Davos and a second was a right-wing forum in Herzeliyah in Israel. Those were the two forums. Of course there was also the World Social Forum in Nairobi, but that's only tens of thousands of people from around the world.
Shank: With the trend toward vilifying the G77 at the UN, one wonders where the developing world can effectively voice its concerns.
Chomsky: The developing-world voice can be amplified enormously by support from the wealthy and the privileged, otherwise it's very likely to be marginalized, as in every other issue.
Shank: So it's up to us.
Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Michael Shank is the policy director for the 3D Security Initiative.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
The Conspiracy!!!!!
A War Conspiracy Documented
By John Prados
02/21/07 "TomPaine" -- - The now-infamous Downing Street documents showed how President George Bush managed his move to war by fitting intelligence to his policy, and by refusing to accept the reports of United Nations inspectors who could find no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Now there is a new hot document that confirms that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair intended to sucker Saddam into war. It demonstrates that this aim was present long before the Bush-Blair talks, and indeed that provocation formed an integral feature of the U.S. war plan.
A January 31, 2003 meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair clearly shows the two leaders discussing ways to provoke Saddam Hussein so as to justify war, indicating premeditation. Last week the National Security Archive in Washington posted the U. S. war plan—the set of briefing slides used by Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General Tommy Franks to brief President Bush on “Polo Step,” CENTCOM’s Iraq invasion scheme. The PowerPoint slides were prepared for a series of presidential meetings held from December 2001 to August 2002. The slides summarized CENTCOM’s buildup and maneuver concepts for Bush’s deliberations. Bush backed Franks’ concept of “adjusting” Iraqi defenses by executing what amounted to a covert offensive air campaign. They would use forces already in the Persian Gulf region for the ostensible purpose of enforcing no-fly zones created after the first Gulf War. TomPaine.com has previously covered this operation (“The War Before the War ,” June 24, 2005), but the new evidence establishes an explicit link between the aerial offensive and the Iraq war plans.
The no-fly zones were originally designed to prevent Iraqi government interference with humanitarian efforts in northern Iraq (“Operation Northern Watch”) and against Shiite minorities in the southern region of the country (“Operation Southern Watch”). They used aircraft based in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and on aircraft carriers in the Gulf. Until 2001, it had been standard practice for U.S. and British aircraft participating in these missions to retaliate against Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, missiles, and radars that had fired at the planes. CENTCOM had a plan it called “Desert Badger” that established standard operating procedures for such strikes.
In early 2002, General Franks and his aerial component commanders revised the old arrangement. CENTCOM created a set of “response options” from 1 to 5, providing successively higher levels of violence. The Polo Step briefing slides make clear that U.S. planners envisioned using response options in the case of “triggers,”—Iraqi actions—and specified 16 different possibilities to lead to retaliation These ranged from simple interference with flights to major threats or attacks on friendly regional neighbors. One of the Downing Street documents reveals that the British realized the no-fly zones had no basis in international law and the contemplated air campaign no justification as “self defense.” A May 2002 CENTCOM slide noted that “contingency plan execution is tailored to match strategic timing and current strategic environment.”
Several additional scales of action were denoted by colors (blue, white, red). Response Option 5 and Level Blue were to be triggered by a “provocative posture” or limited violence and envisioned as small scale warfare. By August 2002, “small scale” activity was defined in the Polo Step briefings as attacks over a 48-hour timeframe on a hundred targets by up to 300 aircraft. The “white” action level, an August briefing slide reveals, would “begin to shape [the] battlefield.” Tommy Franks notes in his memoirs that another color level actually became the “running start” war option once CENTCOM planners began calling it that and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fell in love with the concept.
Southern Watch air attacks resumed in May 2002, coincident with one of the Polo Step briefings, following a six-month period in which there had been virtually no air action. In August, when Franks presented near-final versions of his war plan, Rumsfeld changed the rules of engagement for the air forces and Southern Watch became Southern Focus. Suddenly, in early September, there followed a four-day series of sustained strikes hitting Iraqi military communications, headquarters, anti-ship missile and air defense communications facilities, all considered key targets in “adjusting” Saddam’s defenses. Two-thirds of more than 21,000 attack sorties, or flights counted by single aircraft, that took place before the invasion occurred in the Southern Focus timeframe beginning in August.
The September strikes corresponded to the White level that General Franks described in May and August slides. That was described as an air operation of five to seven days’ duration involving about 1,000 flights by coalition aircraft. This effort was supposed to have been triggered by the shootdown of a U.S. aircraft, an Iraqi link to a terrorist act, or confirmed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) within Iraq. After that strikes concentrated overwhelmingly upon shaping the battlefield rather than their supposed purpose of countering interference with the no-fly zones. In January 2003, it was reported that there had been almost two attacks on higher echelon Iraqi military targets for every one aimed at air defense or radar sites.
We know from history that Saddam’s air defenses never did destroy an aircraft in the no-fly zones—not even a Predator drone. Nor were there Iraqi terrorist attacks or prewar confirmations of WMDs. Saddam refused to supply the provocation that Bush wanted. Not to be put off, Bush simply dispensed with the triggers and moved ahead on his aerial offensive. When, at the height of the 2004 electoral season, President Bush told reporters that before the war his administration had been dealing only with Desert Badger, he was being disingenuous.
This decoupling of the air attacks from any relation to actual Iraqi activity is the smoking gun that makes plain Bush’s aggressive intent. Of course, an actual invasion of Iraq could not be done covertly, and that fact led directly to the Bush-Blair conversation in the Oval Office on January 31, 2003. Some justification for war remained necessary. Bush never got it. The prewar air campaign was purposeful, targeted and premeditated, one more manipulation on the road to tragedy.
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA. The Polo Step slides can be examined on the National Security Archive website.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
By John Prados
02/21/07 "TomPaine" -- - The now-infamous Downing Street documents showed how President George Bush managed his move to war by fitting intelligence to his policy, and by refusing to accept the reports of United Nations inspectors who could find no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Now there is a new hot document that confirms that Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair intended to sucker Saddam into war. It demonstrates that this aim was present long before the Bush-Blair talks, and indeed that provocation formed an integral feature of the U.S. war plan.
A January 31, 2003 meeting between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair clearly shows the two leaders discussing ways to provoke Saddam Hussein so as to justify war, indicating premeditation. Last week the National Security Archive in Washington posted the U. S. war plan—the set of briefing slides used by Central Command (CENTCOM) chief General Tommy Franks to brief President Bush on “Polo Step,” CENTCOM’s Iraq invasion scheme. The PowerPoint slides were prepared for a series of presidential meetings held from December 2001 to August 2002. The slides summarized CENTCOM’s buildup and maneuver concepts for Bush’s deliberations. Bush backed Franks’ concept of “adjusting” Iraqi defenses by executing what amounted to a covert offensive air campaign. They would use forces already in the Persian Gulf region for the ostensible purpose of enforcing no-fly zones created after the first Gulf War. TomPaine.com has previously covered this operation (“The War Before the War ,” June 24, 2005), but the new evidence establishes an explicit link between the aerial offensive and the Iraq war plans.
The no-fly zones were originally designed to prevent Iraqi government interference with humanitarian efforts in northern Iraq (“Operation Northern Watch”) and against Shiite minorities in the southern region of the country (“Operation Southern Watch”). They used aircraft based in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and on aircraft carriers in the Gulf. Until 2001, it had been standard practice for U.S. and British aircraft participating in these missions to retaliate against Iraqi anti-aircraft guns, missiles, and radars that had fired at the planes. CENTCOM had a plan it called “Desert Badger” that established standard operating procedures for such strikes.
In early 2002, General Franks and his aerial component commanders revised the old arrangement. CENTCOM created a set of “response options” from 1 to 5, providing successively higher levels of violence. The Polo Step briefing slides make clear that U.S. planners envisioned using response options in the case of “triggers,”—Iraqi actions—and specified 16 different possibilities to lead to retaliation These ranged from simple interference with flights to major threats or attacks on friendly regional neighbors. One of the Downing Street documents reveals that the British realized the no-fly zones had no basis in international law and the contemplated air campaign no justification as “self defense.” A May 2002 CENTCOM slide noted that “contingency plan execution is tailored to match strategic timing and current strategic environment.”
Several additional scales of action were denoted by colors (blue, white, red). Response Option 5 and Level Blue were to be triggered by a “provocative posture” or limited violence and envisioned as small scale warfare. By August 2002, “small scale” activity was defined in the Polo Step briefings as attacks over a 48-hour timeframe on a hundred targets by up to 300 aircraft. The “white” action level, an August briefing slide reveals, would “begin to shape [the] battlefield.” Tommy Franks notes in his memoirs that another color level actually became the “running start” war option once CENTCOM planners began calling it that and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fell in love with the concept.
Southern Watch air attacks resumed in May 2002, coincident with one of the Polo Step briefings, following a six-month period in which there had been virtually no air action. In August, when Franks presented near-final versions of his war plan, Rumsfeld changed the rules of engagement for the air forces and Southern Watch became Southern Focus. Suddenly, in early September, there followed a four-day series of sustained strikes hitting Iraqi military communications, headquarters, anti-ship missile and air defense communications facilities, all considered key targets in “adjusting” Saddam’s defenses. Two-thirds of more than 21,000 attack sorties, or flights counted by single aircraft, that took place before the invasion occurred in the Southern Focus timeframe beginning in August.
The September strikes corresponded to the White level that General Franks described in May and August slides. That was described as an air operation of five to seven days’ duration involving about 1,000 flights by coalition aircraft. This effort was supposed to have been triggered by the shootdown of a U.S. aircraft, an Iraqi link to a terrorist act, or confirmed weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) within Iraq. After that strikes concentrated overwhelmingly upon shaping the battlefield rather than their supposed purpose of countering interference with the no-fly zones. In January 2003, it was reported that there had been almost two attacks on higher echelon Iraqi military targets for every one aimed at air defense or radar sites.
We know from history that Saddam’s air defenses never did destroy an aircraft in the no-fly zones—not even a Predator drone. Nor were there Iraqi terrorist attacks or prewar confirmations of WMDs. Saddam refused to supply the provocation that Bush wanted. Not to be put off, Bush simply dispensed with the triggers and moved ahead on his aerial offensive. When, at the height of the 2004 electoral season, President Bush told reporters that before the war his administration had been dealing only with Desert Badger, he was being disingenuous.
This decoupling of the air attacks from any relation to actual Iraqi activity is the smoking gun that makes plain Bush’s aggressive intent. Of course, an actual invasion of Iraq could not be done covertly, and that fact led directly to the Bush-Blair conversation in the Oval Office on January 31, 2003. Some justification for war remained necessary. Bush never got it. The prewar air campaign was purposeful, targeted and premeditated, one more manipulation on the road to tragedy.
John Prados is a senior analyst with the National Security Archive in Washington, DC. His current book is Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA. The Polo Step slides can be examined on the National Security Archive website.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
By Mike Whitney
“The US economy is in danger of a recession that will prove unusually long and severe. By any measure it is in far worse shape than in 2001-02 and the unraveling of the housing bubble is clearly at hand. It seems that the continuous buoyancy of the financial markets is again deluding many people about the gravity of the economic situation.” Dr. Kurt Richebacher “The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles.” Karl Marx
02/21/07 "ICH" -- -- This week’s data on the sagging real estate market leaves no doubt that the housing bubble is quickly crashing to earth and that hard times are on the way. “The slump in home prices from the end of 2005 to the end of 2006 was the biggest year over year drop since the National Association of Realtors started keeping track in 1982.” (New York Times) The Commerce Dept announced that the construction of new homes fell in January by a whopping 14.3%. Prices fell in half of the nation’s major markets and “existing home sales declined in 40 states”. Arizona, Florida, California, and Virginia have seen precipitous drops in sales. The Commerce Department also reported that “the number of vacant homes increased by 34% in 2006 to 2.1 million at the end of the year, nearly double the long-term vacancy rate.” (Marketwatch) The bottom line is that inventories are up, sales are down, profits are eroding, and the building industry is facing a steady downturn well into the foreseeable future.
The ripple effects of the housing crash will be felt throughout the overall economy; shrinking GDP, slowing consumer spending and putting more workers in the growing unemployment lines. Congress is now looking into the shabby lending practices that shoehorned millions of people into homes that they clearly cannot afford. But their efforts will have no affect on the loans that are already in place. $1 trillion in ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) are due to reset in 2007 which guarantees that millions of over-leveraged homeowners will default on their mortgages putting pressure on the banks and sending the economy into a tailspin.
We are at the beginning of a major shake-up and there’s going to be a lot more blood on the tracks before things settle down. The banks and mortgage lenders are scrambling for creative ways to keep people in their homes but the subprime market is already teetering and foreclosures are on the rise.
There’s no doubt now, that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s plan to pump zillions of dollars into the system via “low interest rates” has created the biggest monster-bubble of all time and set the stage for a deep economic retrenchment. Greenspan’s inflationary policies were designed to expand the “wealth gap” and create greater economic polarization between the classes. By the time the housing bubble deflates, millions of working class Americans will be left to pay off loans that are considerably higher than the current value of their home.
This will inevitably create deeper societal divisions and, very likely, a permanent underclass of mortgage-slaves. A shrewd economist and student of history like Greenspan knew exactly what the consequences of his low interest rates would be. The trap was set to lure in unsuspecting borrowers who felt they could augment their stagnant wages by joining the housing gold rush. It was a great way to mask a deteriorating economy by expanding personal debt. The meltdown in housing will soon be felt in the stock market which appears to be lagging the real estate market by about 6 months. Soon, reality will set in on Wall Street just as it has in the housing sector and the “loose money” that Greenspan generated with his mighty printing press will flee to foreign shores.
It looks as though this may already be happening even though the stock market is still flying high. On Friday, the government reported that net capital inflows reversed from the requisite $70 billion to AN OUTFLOW OF $11 BILLION! The current account deficit (which includes the trade deficit) is running at roughly $800 billion per year, which means that the US must attract about $70 billion per month of foreign investment (US Treasuries or securities) to compensate for America’s extravagant spending.
When foreign investment falters, as it did in December, it puts downward pressure on the greenback to make up for the imbalance. Everbank’s Chuck Butler put it like this: “Not only did the buying stop in December by foreigners in December, but the outflows were huge! Domestic investors increased their buying of long-term overseas securities from $37 billion to a record $46 billion.
This is a classic illustration of ‘lack of funding’. So, the question I asked the desk was… ‘Why isn’t the euro skyrocketing?’” Why, indeed? Why would central banks hold onto their flaccid greenbacks when the foundation which keeps it propped up has been removed? The answer is complex but, in essence, the rest of the world has loaned the US a pair of crutches to bolster the wobbly dollar while they prepare for the eventual meltdown. China and Japan are currently hold over $1.7 trillion in US currency and US-based assets and can hardly afford to have the ground cut out from below the dollar.
There are, however, limits to the “generosity of strangers” and foreign banks will undoubtedly be pressed to take more extreme measures as it becomes apparent that Team Bush plans to produce as much red ink as humanly possible. December’s figures indicate that foreign investment is drying up and the world is no longer eager to purchase America’s lavish debt. The only thing the Federal Reserve can do is raise interest rates to attract foreign capital or let the dollar fall in value. The problem, of course, is that if the Fed raises rates, the real estate market will collapse even faster which will strangle consumer spending and shrivel GDP. In other words, we are at the brink of two separate but related crises; an economic crisis and a currency crisis.
That means that the unsuspecting American people are likely to be ground between the two mill-wheels of hyperinflation and shrinking growth. In real terms, the economy is already in recession. The growth numbers are regularly massaged by the Commerce Department to put a smiley face on an underperforming economy. Industrial output continues to flag (In January it was down by another .5%) while millions good paying factory jobs are being air-mailed to China where labor is a mere fraction of the cost in the USA.
Also, automobile inventories are up while factory production is in freefall. In addition, new jobless claims soared to 357,000 in the week ending February 10. 44,000 more desperate workers have been given their pink slips so they can join the huddled masses in Bush’s Weimar Dystopia. December’s net capital inflows are a grim snapshot of the looming disaster ahead. As the housing bubble loses steam, maxxed-out American consumers will face increasing job losses and mounting debt. At the same time, foreign investment will move to more promising markets in Asia and Europe causing a steep rise in interest rates.
This is bound to be a stunning blow to the banks which are low on reserves ($44 billion) but have generated $4.5 trillion in shaky mortgage debt in the last 6 years. It’s all bad news. The global liquidity bubble is limping towards the reef and when it hits it’ll send shock-waves through the global economic system. Is it any wonder why the foreign central banks are so skittish about dumping the dollar?
No one really relishes the idea of a quick slide into a global recession followed by years of agonizing recovery. Maybe that’s why Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson has reassembled the Plunge Protection Team and installed a hotline to his Chinese counterpart so he can quickly respond to sudden gyrations in the stock market or a freefalling greenback; two of the calamities he could be facing in the very near future. Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency. In fact, the parallels between our present situation and the period preceding the Great Depression are striking.
Just as massive debt was accumulating in the market from the purchase of stocks “on margin”, so too, mortgage debt between 2000 and 2006 soared from $4.8 trillion to $9.5 trillion. In both cases the “wealth effect” spawned a spending spree which looked like growth but was really the steady, insidious expansion of debt which generated economic activity. In both periods wages were either flat or declining and the gap between rich and working class was growing more extreme by the year.
As Paul Alexander Gusmorino said in his article, “Main Causes of the Great Depression”: "Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade".
The same factors are at work today except that the speculation is in real estate rather than stocks. Just as in the 1920’s the equity bubble was not created by wages keeping pace with productivity (the healthy formula for growth) but by the expansion of personal debt. Also, one could buy stocks without the money to purchase them, just as one can buy a $600,000 or $700,000 house today with zero-down and no monthly payment on the principle for years to come.
The current account deficit ($800 billion) could also weigh heavily in any economic shake-up that may be forthcoming. Bob Chapman of The International Forecaster made this shocking calculation about America’s out-of-control trade deficit: "US debt was up 10.1% to $4.085 trillion and accounts for 58.8% of all the credit issued globally last year.
That means the US expanded credit at a much faster rate than the economy grew. This was borrowing to maintain a higher standard of living and attempt to pay for it tomorrow."
Think about that; the US sucked up nearly 60% of ALL GLOBAL CREDIT in one year alone. That is truly astonishing. There are many similarities between the pre-Depression era and our own. Paul Alexander Gusmorino says: "
The Great Depression was the worst economic slump ever in U.S. history, and one which spread to virtually all of the industrialized world. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade....The excessive speculation in the late 1920's kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually lead to large market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the misdistribution of wealth, caused the American economy to capsize. (The income disparity) between the rich and the middle class grew throughout the 1920's. While the disposable income per capita rose 9% from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1% enjoyed a stupendous 75% increase in per capita disposable income…A major reason for this large and growing gap between the rich and the working-class people was the increased manufacturing output throughout this period. From 1923-1929 the average output per worker increased 32% in manufacturing8. During that same period of time average wages for manufacturing jobs increased only 8% (This ultimately causes a decrease in demand and leads to growth in credit spending) The federal government also contributed to the growing gap between the rich and middle-class. Calvin Coolidge's (pro business) administration passed the Revenue Act of 1926, which reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically…
(At the same time) the Supreme Court ruled minimum-wage legislation unconstitutional. The bottom three quarters of the population had an aggregate income of less than 45% of the combined national income; while the top 25% of the population took in more than 55% of the national income...Between 1925 and 1929 the total credit more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion”. (Just like now, the growing wage gap has spawned massive speculative bubbles as well as a steady up-tick in credit spending. Wage stagnation forces workers to seek other opportunities for getting ahead.
When wages fail to keep pace with productivity then demand naturally decreases and business begins to flag. The only way to spur more buying is by easing interest rates or expanding personal credit, and that is when equity bubbles begin to appear. That's what happened to the stock market before 1929 as well as to the real estate market in 2007. The availability of credit has kept the housing market afloat but, ultimately, the result will be the same.
n Monday October 21, 1929, the over-valued stock market began its downward plunge. It managed a brief mid-week comeback, but 7 days later on Black Tuesday it plummeted again; 16 million shares were dumped and there were no buyers. The game was over. Confidence evaporated overnight. People stopped buying on credit, the bubble-economy collapsed, and the mighty locomotive for growth, the American consumer, hobbled into the Great Depression. Tariffs were thrown up, foreigners stopped buying American goods; banks closed, business went bust, and unemployment skyrocketed.
Tens years later the country was still reeling from the implosion. Now, 77 years later, Greenspan has led us sheep-like to the same precipice. The economic dilemma we’re facing could have been avoided if the expansion of personal credit had been curtailed by prudent monetary policy at the Federal Reserve and if wealth was more evenly distributed as it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But that’s not the case; so we’re headed for hard times.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
“The US economy is in danger of a recession that will prove unusually long and severe. By any measure it is in far worse shape than in 2001-02 and the unraveling of the housing bubble is clearly at hand. It seems that the continuous buoyancy of the financial markets is again deluding many people about the gravity of the economic situation.” Dr. Kurt Richebacher “The history of all hitherto society is the history of class struggles.” Karl Marx
02/21/07 "ICH" -- -- This week’s data on the sagging real estate market leaves no doubt that the housing bubble is quickly crashing to earth and that hard times are on the way. “The slump in home prices from the end of 2005 to the end of 2006 was the biggest year over year drop since the National Association of Realtors started keeping track in 1982.” (New York Times) The Commerce Dept announced that the construction of new homes fell in January by a whopping 14.3%. Prices fell in half of the nation’s major markets and “existing home sales declined in 40 states”. Arizona, Florida, California, and Virginia have seen precipitous drops in sales. The Commerce Department also reported that “the number of vacant homes increased by 34% in 2006 to 2.1 million at the end of the year, nearly double the long-term vacancy rate.” (Marketwatch) The bottom line is that inventories are up, sales are down, profits are eroding, and the building industry is facing a steady downturn well into the foreseeable future.
The ripple effects of the housing crash will be felt throughout the overall economy; shrinking GDP, slowing consumer spending and putting more workers in the growing unemployment lines. Congress is now looking into the shabby lending practices that shoehorned millions of people into homes that they clearly cannot afford. But their efforts will have no affect on the loans that are already in place. $1 trillion in ARMs (Adjustable Rate Mortgages) are due to reset in 2007 which guarantees that millions of over-leveraged homeowners will default on their mortgages putting pressure on the banks and sending the economy into a tailspin.
We are at the beginning of a major shake-up and there’s going to be a lot more blood on the tracks before things settle down. The banks and mortgage lenders are scrambling for creative ways to keep people in their homes but the subprime market is already teetering and foreclosures are on the rise.
There’s no doubt now, that Fed chairman Alan Greenspan’s plan to pump zillions of dollars into the system via “low interest rates” has created the biggest monster-bubble of all time and set the stage for a deep economic retrenchment. Greenspan’s inflationary policies were designed to expand the “wealth gap” and create greater economic polarization between the classes. By the time the housing bubble deflates, millions of working class Americans will be left to pay off loans that are considerably higher than the current value of their home.
This will inevitably create deeper societal divisions and, very likely, a permanent underclass of mortgage-slaves. A shrewd economist and student of history like Greenspan knew exactly what the consequences of his low interest rates would be. The trap was set to lure in unsuspecting borrowers who felt they could augment their stagnant wages by joining the housing gold rush. It was a great way to mask a deteriorating economy by expanding personal debt. The meltdown in housing will soon be felt in the stock market which appears to be lagging the real estate market by about 6 months. Soon, reality will set in on Wall Street just as it has in the housing sector and the “loose money” that Greenspan generated with his mighty printing press will flee to foreign shores.
It looks as though this may already be happening even though the stock market is still flying high. On Friday, the government reported that net capital inflows reversed from the requisite $70 billion to AN OUTFLOW OF $11 BILLION! The current account deficit (which includes the trade deficit) is running at roughly $800 billion per year, which means that the US must attract about $70 billion per month of foreign investment (US Treasuries or securities) to compensate for America’s extravagant spending.
When foreign investment falters, as it did in December, it puts downward pressure on the greenback to make up for the imbalance. Everbank’s Chuck Butler put it like this: “Not only did the buying stop in December by foreigners in December, but the outflows were huge! Domestic investors increased their buying of long-term overseas securities from $37 billion to a record $46 billion.
This is a classic illustration of ‘lack of funding’. So, the question I asked the desk was… ‘Why isn’t the euro skyrocketing?’” Why, indeed? Why would central banks hold onto their flaccid greenbacks when the foundation which keeps it propped up has been removed? The answer is complex but, in essence, the rest of the world has loaned the US a pair of crutches to bolster the wobbly dollar while they prepare for the eventual meltdown. China and Japan are currently hold over $1.7 trillion in US currency and US-based assets and can hardly afford to have the ground cut out from below the dollar.
There are, however, limits to the “generosity of strangers” and foreign banks will undoubtedly be pressed to take more extreme measures as it becomes apparent that Team Bush plans to produce as much red ink as humanly possible. December’s figures indicate that foreign investment is drying up and the world is no longer eager to purchase America’s lavish debt. The only thing the Federal Reserve can do is raise interest rates to attract foreign capital or let the dollar fall in value. The problem, of course, is that if the Fed raises rates, the real estate market will collapse even faster which will strangle consumer spending and shrivel GDP. In other words, we are at the brink of two separate but related crises; an economic crisis and a currency crisis.
That means that the unsuspecting American people are likely to be ground between the two mill-wheels of hyperinflation and shrinking growth. In real terms, the economy is already in recession. The growth numbers are regularly massaged by the Commerce Department to put a smiley face on an underperforming economy. Industrial output continues to flag (In January it was down by another .5%) while millions good paying factory jobs are being air-mailed to China where labor is a mere fraction of the cost in the USA.
Also, automobile inventories are up while factory production is in freefall. In addition, new jobless claims soared to 357,000 in the week ending February 10. 44,000 more desperate workers have been given their pink slips so they can join the huddled masses in Bush’s Weimar Dystopia. December’s net capital inflows are a grim snapshot of the looming disaster ahead. As the housing bubble loses steam, maxxed-out American consumers will face increasing job losses and mounting debt. At the same time, foreign investment will move to more promising markets in Asia and Europe causing a steep rise in interest rates.
This is bound to be a stunning blow to the banks which are low on reserves ($44 billion) but have generated $4.5 trillion in shaky mortgage debt in the last 6 years. It’s all bad news. The global liquidity bubble is limping towards the reef and when it hits it’ll send shock-waves through the global economic system. Is it any wonder why the foreign central banks are so skittish about dumping the dollar?
No one really relishes the idea of a quick slide into a global recession followed by years of agonizing recovery. Maybe that’s why Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson has reassembled the Plunge Protection Team and installed a hotline to his Chinese counterpart so he can quickly respond to sudden gyrations in the stock market or a freefalling greenback; two of the calamities he could be facing in the very near future. Greenspan has successfully piloted the nation into virtual insolvency. In fact, the parallels between our present situation and the period preceding the Great Depression are striking.
Just as massive debt was accumulating in the market from the purchase of stocks “on margin”, so too, mortgage debt between 2000 and 2006 soared from $4.8 trillion to $9.5 trillion. In both cases the “wealth effect” spawned a spending spree which looked like growth but was really the steady, insidious expansion of debt which generated economic activity. In both periods wages were either flat or declining and the gap between rich and working class was growing more extreme by the year.
As Paul Alexander Gusmorino said in his article, “Main Causes of the Great Depression”: "Many factors played a role in bringing about the depression; however, the main cause for the Great Depression was the combination of the greatly unequal distribution of wealth throughout the 1920's, and the extensive stock market speculation that took place during the latter part that same decade".
The same factors are at work today except that the speculation is in real estate rather than stocks. Just as in the 1920’s the equity bubble was not created by wages keeping pace with productivity (the healthy formula for growth) but by the expansion of personal debt. Also, one could buy stocks without the money to purchase them, just as one can buy a $600,000 or $700,000 house today with zero-down and no monthly payment on the principle for years to come.
The current account deficit ($800 billion) could also weigh heavily in any economic shake-up that may be forthcoming. Bob Chapman of The International Forecaster made this shocking calculation about America’s out-of-control trade deficit: "US debt was up 10.1% to $4.085 trillion and accounts for 58.8% of all the credit issued globally last year.
That means the US expanded credit at a much faster rate than the economy grew. This was borrowing to maintain a higher standard of living and attempt to pay for it tomorrow."
Think about that; the US sucked up nearly 60% of ALL GLOBAL CREDIT in one year alone. That is truly astonishing. There are many similarities between the pre-Depression era and our own. Paul Alexander Gusmorino says: "
The Great Depression was the worst economic slump ever in U.S. history, and one which spread to virtually all of the industrialized world. The depression began in late 1929 and lasted for about a decade....The excessive speculation in the late 1920's kept the stock market artificially high, but eventually lead to large market crashes. These market crashes, combined with the misdistribution of wealth, caused the American economy to capsize. (The income disparity) between the rich and the middle class grew throughout the 1920's. While the disposable income per capita rose 9% from 1920 to 1929, those with income within the top 1% enjoyed a stupendous 75% increase in per capita disposable income…A major reason for this large and growing gap between the rich and the working-class people was the increased manufacturing output throughout this period. From 1923-1929 the average output per worker increased 32% in manufacturing8. During that same period of time average wages for manufacturing jobs increased only 8% (This ultimately causes a decrease in demand and leads to growth in credit spending) The federal government also contributed to the growing gap between the rich and middle-class. Calvin Coolidge's (pro business) administration passed the Revenue Act of 1926, which reduced federal income and inheritance taxes dramatically…
(At the same time) the Supreme Court ruled minimum-wage legislation unconstitutional. The bottom three quarters of the population had an aggregate income of less than 45% of the combined national income; while the top 25% of the population took in more than 55% of the national income...Between 1925 and 1929 the total credit more than doubled from $1.38 billion to around $3 billion”. (Just like now, the growing wage gap has spawned massive speculative bubbles as well as a steady up-tick in credit spending. Wage stagnation forces workers to seek other opportunities for getting ahead.
When wages fail to keep pace with productivity then demand naturally decreases and business begins to flag. The only way to spur more buying is by easing interest rates or expanding personal credit, and that is when equity bubbles begin to appear. That's what happened to the stock market before 1929 as well as to the real estate market in 2007. The availability of credit has kept the housing market afloat but, ultimately, the result will be the same.
n Monday October 21, 1929, the over-valued stock market began its downward plunge. It managed a brief mid-week comeback, but 7 days later on Black Tuesday it plummeted again; 16 million shares were dumped and there were no buyers. The game was over. Confidence evaporated overnight. People stopped buying on credit, the bubble-economy collapsed, and the mighty locomotive for growth, the American consumer, hobbled into the Great Depression. Tariffs were thrown up, foreigners stopped buying American goods; banks closed, business went bust, and unemployment skyrocketed.
Tens years later the country was still reeling from the implosion. Now, 77 years later, Greenspan has led us sheep-like to the same precipice. The economic dilemma we’re facing could have been avoided if the expansion of personal credit had been curtailed by prudent monetary policy at the Federal Reserve and if wealth was more evenly distributed as it was in the ‘60s and ‘70s. But that’s not the case; so we’re headed for hard times.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
JESUS, GOD, How much more can we take?
US ratchets up ‘psy-ops’ against Tehran
By Mahan Abedin 02/22/07 "SaudiDebate" -- -
Psychological warfare is fast emerging as the key component of the conflict between Iran and the United States. It is being used extensively by the latter to influence Iranian behavior in Iraq and secure a climbdown by the Islamic Republic in the intricate negotiations over the country's controversial nuclear program. As the Iranians analyze and react to this carefully crafted psychological-warfare campaign, they run the risk of miscalculating broader developments in the region.
The most important of these is Saudi Arabia's new proactive foreign policy. In this climate of heightened tensions and widespread misunderstanding it is easy for the Iranians to dismiss Saudi diplomacy as yet another plank of America's psychological warfare against the Islamic Republic. Miscalculations of this kind can have drastic long-term consequences for Iranian interests in the Middle East. War of words Psychological warfare has been a feature of Iranian-US relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Both sides have made extensive use of it, not only to damage the morale of the other, but also as a way of managing the conflict and preventing it from escalating into a shooting war.
But never has this psychological war been so intense and potentially dangerous as it is now. Given the unprecedented instability across the Middle East - with opposing factions allied either to Iran or to the US - there is a real danger of misunderstandings spinning out of control. As always, it is the Americans who have ratcheted up the war of words, with the Iranians trying to come to terms with it. The best analyses can be found on websites that are ideologically close to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. These are often managed by second-generation revolutionaries with loose links to the Islamic Republic's security establishment. A highly illuminating analysis is provided by Dr Hossein Kachouyan, a professor of sociology at Tehran University and an expert on psychological warfare.
In an interview with Raja News (www.rajanews.com), a website run by Ahmadinejad loyalists, Kachouyan provides a historical overview of the role of propaganda and psychological warfare in human conflict with a special focus on the Islamic way of war. Kachouyan concludes, "Given that the Americans are plagued by internal political disputes and international constraints in addition to huge political, economic and military problems associated with their aggressions [against Afghanistan and Iraq], they have no option but to engage in psychological warfare against Iran." He adds: "They are trying to cause splits in the internal [Iranian] front ... and prevent us from pursuing our objectives by creating fear, doubt and division." [1] As an Ahmadinejad loyalist, Kachouyan is clearly referring to the Rafsanjani camp, which has lately started a widespread misinformation campaign against the Ahmadinejad government, accusing it of radicalism, unnecessary militancy, economic incompetence and disregard for the national interest.
Another strong analysis (albeit a less sophisticated one) is put forward by Raja News' Qasim Ravanbakhsh. Ravanbakhsh identifies "Bush's foot soldiers" in the psychological-warfare campaign against Iran and concludes that the Islamic Republic should hit back with a propaganda campaign of its own and declare to the world that the US "cannot do a damn thing". [2] This confidence is only partially rooted in the factors outlined by the two authors - in particular Kachouyan - namely that the US lacks the requisite political will to wage war against the Islamic Republic. The main driver behind this conviction is the actual beliefs of Ahmadinejad and his hardcore supporters.
With backgrounds in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the IRGC, the Islamic Republic's large and competent ideological army), Ahmadinejad and his supporters believe the Islamic Republic is unconquerable; with its ability to project power well beyond its actual size and resources rooted in its "undeterrable" nature. It is very important to understand the origins and intricacies of this mindset.
People like Ahmadinejad and Kachouyan developed their political consciousness not on the turbulent streets of the Iranian revolution but in the revolutionary decade of the 1980s, and especially in the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War. The belief that Iran faced much of the Western and Eastern worlds during the war is widely shared in the population, but it is especially intense in the networks linked to the second-generation revolutionaries.
From their perspective, the Islamic Republic ensured its long-term stability by facing much of the world with modest means and with iron will as its only real strategic asset (against an enemy that enjoyed the unqualified support of much of the Arab and Western worlds). They believe that the culture of sacrifice born out of eight years of war, and the unique nationalist-Islamic political heritage it has spawned, will ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic against all odds.
Furthermore, the very distinct features of the Islamic Republic (a political system that effortlessly combines democratic and theocratic ideas and institutions) and the intense loyalty it inspires among a substantial section of the Iranian population (as well as a considerable number of non-Iranians) enables the regime to face its only serious security threat, namely the United States.
This belief in the "undeterrable" nature of the Islamic Republic in turn influences Iranian psychological warfare against the United States. While Iranian diplomats do their best to ease tension and neutralize US saber-rattling, the IRGC is busy conducting war games in 16 of the country's provinces. These latest military maneuvers follow numerous others during which the IRGC showcases new indigenous weaponry and boasts of its impressive missile capabilities. Moreover, the Revolutionary Guards have unveiled a new pilotless drone that they claim can be used to crash into US warships in the Persian Gulf. Furthermore, the IRGC claims that it recently managed to place its standard (logo) on the side of a US warship in the Gulf. [3] These activities were reinforced by the latest warning from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's spiritual leader, that in the event of US aggression, Iran would target US interests throughout the world.
This is not an empty threat.
While the Americans are not overly concerned about Iran's conventional military capabilities (which are modest, IRGC boasting and ceaseless maneuvers notwithstanding), they cannot so easily dismiss the capabilities of the Islamic Republic's intelligence services and special forces, which are widely believed to be among the best in the world.
The Quds Force But are Ahmadinejad loyalists correct in their assumption that US saber-rattling does not go beyond psychological warfare? Two developments in particular shed some light on this issue. The first is recent US allegations that elements of the Quds Force (the ultra-secretive special-operations arm of the IRGC) has been providing specialized technology - namely explosively formed penetrators or EFPs - to Shi'ite militias and insurgents in Iraq. While an exhaustive analysis of the US claims is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to point out that the allegations relating specifically to the technology have been met by widespread skepticism. Even before the allegations were made public, an article in Jane's Intelligence Review last month by Michael Knights, chief of analysis for the Olive Group, a private security-consulting firm, reported that British military intelligence had uncovered an entirely Iraqi network that arranged for the purchase and delivery of imported EFPs.
Apparently this network was centered in the heart of the Basra Police, and included members of the Police Intelligence Unit, the Internal Affairs Directorate and the Major Crimes Unit. [4] Moreover, the central contention of the original US allegations - namely that the highest levels of the Iranian government were complicit in the killing of American soldiers - was so controversial that the US administration had to backtrack immediately, claiming that it was "not sure" if the Tehran government was involved.
This position is ludicrous given the status of the Quds Force, a highly disciplined unit within the IRGC, which is in turn tightly controlled by the highest levels of the Islamic regime. Established in the early 1980s, and known inside the IRGC as the "2nd Quds Corps", the Quds Force is in charge of extraterritorial special operations. It has operated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sudan. In the early to mid-1990s, the Quds Force was in charge of a large-scale operation supplying arms and training to the Bosnian Muslims. Interestingly, this operation had the tacit approval of US officials who only moved against the Quds Force in Bosnia once the Dayton Peace Agreement had been signed in late November 1995.
In post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, the Quds Force - alongside other Iranian intelligence agencies - is active in widening and deepening Iranian influence, especially inside the new Iraqi security structures. It is highly unlikely that the Quds Force would directly counter US power in Iraq, for this would not only endanger its operations (much of which the Americans have tolerated) but would also violate the core principles of Iranian policy in Iraq, which is to avoid confrontation with the United States. Seen in this context, the recent US operations against Iranian interests (namely the assault on Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's compound in late December and the raid on the Iranian Consulate in Irbil in early January) reinforce wider US psychological warfare against Iran and are designed to force its leadership to rethink some of its policies in the Middle East and compromise on the nuclear issue.
Saudi Arabia: Old pawn or new kingmaker?In recent months, Saudi Arabia has shifted from its long-established role as a low-profile, behind-the-scenes regional player to pursue a more active foreign policy. This has been particularly evident in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. In Lebanon, the Saudis have played a major role in easing tensions between the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the Saad Hariri camp on one side and the Hezbollah-led opposition on the other. The Saudis have only been successful because of Iranian cooperation. Both sides thrashed out a deal during Ali Larijani's recent visit to Riyadh. Apparently Larijani - the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (and the country's chief nuclear negotiator) - had submitted a letter to King Abdullah that was signed by both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.
The letter stated Iran's willingness to work with Saudi Arabia to reduce sectarian and political tensions in the Middle East. In the case of Palestine, the Saudis have almost single-handedly brokered a truce between warring Hamas and Fatah factions and engineered the creation of a national-unity government. While Iran cannot be happy about this Saudi success, apparently the Iranians were confident enough that the Saudis would be unable to displace Iranian influence over Hamas that they did nothing to undermine the deal. While Iranian-Saudi relations have been steadily improving since the early 1990s, this level of cooperation (especially in the treacherous political landscape of Lebanon - where the two countries pursue very different objectives) is unprecedented.
The key question is, why are the Iranians appeasing the House of Saud? Iranian perceptions about the House of Saud are not very favorable. While the Iranian diplomatic community regards the Saudis as "enablers" of US foreign policy in the Muslim world, the hardline supporters of the Islamic Revolution go much further and regard the historical function of the House of Saud as pawns of the Western powers. They served the British during the heyday of their empire and now serve the Americans, so the argument goes.These hardliners tend to stay loyal to the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's famous statement that "we may reach peace with Saddam but we will never accept peace with al-Saud", even if they have not done much to undermine Iranian-Saudi detente.
It is entirely possible that Iranian cooperation with the Saudis over the political standoff in Lebanon and (to a much lesser extent) the deal that has ended the bloody factional strife between Hamas and Fatah (at least for the time being) is informed by the view that these latest Saudi maneuvers stem not so much from creative Saudi initiatives but pressure from Washington.
And this US pressure can only be understood in the wider context of intense US psychological warfare against Iran, so the policymakers in Tehran may argue. If this is indeed the case, then the Iranians have badly miscalculated. All evidence suggests that the Saudis have decided on a more proactive foreign policy largely because of Iran's growing role in the region. Far from neutralizing US intrigues, by engaging more closely with the Saudis the Iranians are in fact bolstering the position of their only serious regional rival.
The Iranian diplomatic community has long believed in the value of engagement with Saudi Arabia, arguing that the ejection of US forces from the region can only come about as a result of deep and wide-ranging Iranian-Saudi understanding. This view was articulated to the author by Dr Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh in an interview with Saudi Debate. [5]
However, the wider Iranian policymaking community (in particular Ahmadinejad loyalists) believe in keeping the Saudis at arm's length hoping that America's weakening position will in turn weaken the Saudis. It is interesting that Ahmadinejad loyalists have not protested about the recent Iranian overtures to the House of Saud.
In this respect they may be taking the psychological-warfare argument too far, thereby neglecting wider regional realities. After all, not every major development in the Middle East revolves around the United States. By drawing too close to the Saudis, Iran may be undermining its traditional allies, in particular Syria, whose president has just paid a visit to Tehran partly because of concerns over the recent Iranian-Saudi "deal", which undercuts Syria's position in Lebanon. In the final analysis, as the Iranians counter intense US psychological warfare, they run the risk of misinterpreting wider regional developments. These may prove costly in the long term, especially in regards to the balance of Iranian and Saudi influence in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. While the House of Saud enjoys the backing of the United States and has impressive resources, it - unlike the Islamic Republic - suffers from a major legitimacy deficit. Iranian policymakers ought to beware of this and plan their long-term approach to this declining monarchy accordingly.
Notes 1. "Jangeh ravaniye doshman va marooub shodaneh barkhi maghamat" (The psychological warfare of the enemy and the surrender of certain officials), Dr Hossein Kachouyan, Raja News. 2. "Piyadeh nezamhaye janageh ravaniye Bush dar Iran" (Bush's psychological-warfare foot soldiers in Iran), Qasim Ravanbakhsh, Raja News. 3. Raja News.4. "US's smoking gun on Iran misfires", Gareth Porter, Asia Times Online. 5. "Iran-Saudi strengthen ties despite US plot to sow division", Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, interviewed by Mahan Abedin, Saudi Debate. Copyright 2007 SaudiDebate.com
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
By Mahan Abedin 02/22/07 "SaudiDebate" -- -
Psychological warfare is fast emerging as the key component of the conflict between Iran and the United States. It is being used extensively by the latter to influence Iranian behavior in Iraq and secure a climbdown by the Islamic Republic in the intricate negotiations over the country's controversial nuclear program. As the Iranians analyze and react to this carefully crafted psychological-warfare campaign, they run the risk of miscalculating broader developments in the region.
The most important of these is Saudi Arabia's new proactive foreign policy. In this climate of heightened tensions and widespread misunderstanding it is easy for the Iranians to dismiss Saudi diplomacy as yet another plank of America's psychological warfare against the Islamic Republic. Miscalculations of this kind can have drastic long-term consequences for Iranian interests in the Middle East. War of words Psychological warfare has been a feature of Iranian-US relations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Both sides have made extensive use of it, not only to damage the morale of the other, but also as a way of managing the conflict and preventing it from escalating into a shooting war.
But never has this psychological war been so intense and potentially dangerous as it is now. Given the unprecedented instability across the Middle East - with opposing factions allied either to Iran or to the US - there is a real danger of misunderstandings spinning out of control. As always, it is the Americans who have ratcheted up the war of words, with the Iranians trying to come to terms with it. The best analyses can be found on websites that are ideologically close to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. These are often managed by second-generation revolutionaries with loose links to the Islamic Republic's security establishment. A highly illuminating analysis is provided by Dr Hossein Kachouyan, a professor of sociology at Tehran University and an expert on psychological warfare.
In an interview with Raja News (www.rajanews.com), a website run by Ahmadinejad loyalists, Kachouyan provides a historical overview of the role of propaganda and psychological warfare in human conflict with a special focus on the Islamic way of war. Kachouyan concludes, "Given that the Americans are plagued by internal political disputes and international constraints in addition to huge political, economic and military problems associated with their aggressions [against Afghanistan and Iraq], they have no option but to engage in psychological warfare against Iran." He adds: "They are trying to cause splits in the internal [Iranian] front ... and prevent us from pursuing our objectives by creating fear, doubt and division." [1] As an Ahmadinejad loyalist, Kachouyan is clearly referring to the Rafsanjani camp, which has lately started a widespread misinformation campaign against the Ahmadinejad government, accusing it of radicalism, unnecessary militancy, economic incompetence and disregard for the national interest.
Another strong analysis (albeit a less sophisticated one) is put forward by Raja News' Qasim Ravanbakhsh. Ravanbakhsh identifies "Bush's foot soldiers" in the psychological-warfare campaign against Iran and concludes that the Islamic Republic should hit back with a propaganda campaign of its own and declare to the world that the US "cannot do a damn thing". [2] This confidence is only partially rooted in the factors outlined by the two authors - in particular Kachouyan - namely that the US lacks the requisite political will to wage war against the Islamic Republic. The main driver behind this conviction is the actual beliefs of Ahmadinejad and his hardcore supporters.
With backgrounds in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the IRGC, the Islamic Republic's large and competent ideological army), Ahmadinejad and his supporters believe the Islamic Republic is unconquerable; with its ability to project power well beyond its actual size and resources rooted in its "undeterrable" nature. It is very important to understand the origins and intricacies of this mindset.
People like Ahmadinejad and Kachouyan developed their political consciousness not on the turbulent streets of the Iranian revolution but in the revolutionary decade of the 1980s, and especially in the front lines of the Iran-Iraq War. The belief that Iran faced much of the Western and Eastern worlds during the war is widely shared in the population, but it is especially intense in the networks linked to the second-generation revolutionaries.
From their perspective, the Islamic Republic ensured its long-term stability by facing much of the world with modest means and with iron will as its only real strategic asset (against an enemy that enjoyed the unqualified support of much of the Arab and Western worlds). They believe that the culture of sacrifice born out of eight years of war, and the unique nationalist-Islamic political heritage it has spawned, will ensure the survival of the Islamic Republic against all odds.
Furthermore, the very distinct features of the Islamic Republic (a political system that effortlessly combines democratic and theocratic ideas and institutions) and the intense loyalty it inspires among a substantial section of the Iranian population (as well as a considerable number of non-Iranians) enables the regime to face its only serious security threat, namely the United States.
This belief in the "undeterrable" nature of the Islamic Republic in turn influences Iranian psychological warfare against the United States. While Iranian diplomats do their best to ease tension and neutralize US saber-rattling, the IRGC is busy conducting war games in 16 of the country's provinces. These latest military maneuvers follow numerous others during which the IRGC showcases new indigenous weaponry and boasts of its impressive missile capabilities. Moreover, the Revolutionary Guards have unveiled a new pilotless drone that they claim can be used to crash into US warships in the Persian Gulf. Furthermore, the IRGC claims that it recently managed to place its standard (logo) on the side of a US warship in the Gulf. [3] These activities were reinforced by the latest warning from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's spiritual leader, that in the event of US aggression, Iran would target US interests throughout the world.
This is not an empty threat.
While the Americans are not overly concerned about Iran's conventional military capabilities (which are modest, IRGC boasting and ceaseless maneuvers notwithstanding), they cannot so easily dismiss the capabilities of the Islamic Republic's intelligence services and special forces, which are widely believed to be among the best in the world.
The Quds Force But are Ahmadinejad loyalists correct in their assumption that US saber-rattling does not go beyond psychological warfare? Two developments in particular shed some light on this issue. The first is recent US allegations that elements of the Quds Force (the ultra-secretive special-operations arm of the IRGC) has been providing specialized technology - namely explosively formed penetrators or EFPs - to Shi'ite militias and insurgents in Iraq. While an exhaustive analysis of the US claims is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to point out that the allegations relating specifically to the technology have been met by widespread skepticism. Even before the allegations were made public, an article in Jane's Intelligence Review last month by Michael Knights, chief of analysis for the Olive Group, a private security-consulting firm, reported that British military intelligence had uncovered an entirely Iraqi network that arranged for the purchase and delivery of imported EFPs.
Apparently this network was centered in the heart of the Basra Police, and included members of the Police Intelligence Unit, the Internal Affairs Directorate and the Major Crimes Unit. [4] Moreover, the central contention of the original US allegations - namely that the highest levels of the Iranian government were complicit in the killing of American soldiers - was so controversial that the US administration had to backtrack immediately, claiming that it was "not sure" if the Tehran government was involved.
This position is ludicrous given the status of the Quds Force, a highly disciplined unit within the IRGC, which is in turn tightly controlled by the highest levels of the Islamic regime. Established in the early 1980s, and known inside the IRGC as the "2nd Quds Corps", the Quds Force is in charge of extraterritorial special operations. It has operated in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Sudan. In the early to mid-1990s, the Quds Force was in charge of a large-scale operation supplying arms and training to the Bosnian Muslims. Interestingly, this operation had the tacit approval of US officials who only moved against the Quds Force in Bosnia once the Dayton Peace Agreement had been signed in late November 1995.
In post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, the Quds Force - alongside other Iranian intelligence agencies - is active in widening and deepening Iranian influence, especially inside the new Iraqi security structures. It is highly unlikely that the Quds Force would directly counter US power in Iraq, for this would not only endanger its operations (much of which the Americans have tolerated) but would also violate the core principles of Iranian policy in Iraq, which is to avoid confrontation with the United States. Seen in this context, the recent US operations against Iranian interests (namely the assault on Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's compound in late December and the raid on the Iranian Consulate in Irbil in early January) reinforce wider US psychological warfare against Iran and are designed to force its leadership to rethink some of its policies in the Middle East and compromise on the nuclear issue.
Saudi Arabia: Old pawn or new kingmaker?In recent months, Saudi Arabia has shifted from its long-established role as a low-profile, behind-the-scenes regional player to pursue a more active foreign policy. This has been particularly evident in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. In Lebanon, the Saudis have played a major role in easing tensions between the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and the Saad Hariri camp on one side and the Hezbollah-led opposition on the other. The Saudis have only been successful because of Iranian cooperation. Both sides thrashed out a deal during Ali Larijani's recent visit to Riyadh. Apparently Larijani - the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council (and the country's chief nuclear negotiator) - had submitted a letter to King Abdullah that was signed by both Ahmadinejad and Khamenei.
The letter stated Iran's willingness to work with Saudi Arabia to reduce sectarian and political tensions in the Middle East. In the case of Palestine, the Saudis have almost single-handedly brokered a truce between warring Hamas and Fatah factions and engineered the creation of a national-unity government. While Iran cannot be happy about this Saudi success, apparently the Iranians were confident enough that the Saudis would be unable to displace Iranian influence over Hamas that they did nothing to undermine the deal. While Iranian-Saudi relations have been steadily improving since the early 1990s, this level of cooperation (especially in the treacherous political landscape of Lebanon - where the two countries pursue very different objectives) is unprecedented.
The key question is, why are the Iranians appeasing the House of Saud? Iranian perceptions about the House of Saud are not very favorable. While the Iranian diplomatic community regards the Saudis as "enablers" of US foreign policy in the Muslim world, the hardline supporters of the Islamic Revolution go much further and regard the historical function of the House of Saud as pawns of the Western powers. They served the British during the heyday of their empire and now serve the Americans, so the argument goes.These hardliners tend to stay loyal to the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's famous statement that "we may reach peace with Saddam but we will never accept peace with al-Saud", even if they have not done much to undermine Iranian-Saudi detente.
It is entirely possible that Iranian cooperation with the Saudis over the political standoff in Lebanon and (to a much lesser extent) the deal that has ended the bloody factional strife between Hamas and Fatah (at least for the time being) is informed by the view that these latest Saudi maneuvers stem not so much from creative Saudi initiatives but pressure from Washington.
And this US pressure can only be understood in the wider context of intense US psychological warfare against Iran, so the policymakers in Tehran may argue. If this is indeed the case, then the Iranians have badly miscalculated. All evidence suggests that the Saudis have decided on a more proactive foreign policy largely because of Iran's growing role in the region. Far from neutralizing US intrigues, by engaging more closely with the Saudis the Iranians are in fact bolstering the position of their only serious regional rival.
The Iranian diplomatic community has long believed in the value of engagement with Saudi Arabia, arguing that the ejection of US forces from the region can only come about as a result of deep and wide-ranging Iranian-Saudi understanding. This view was articulated to the author by Dr Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh in an interview with Saudi Debate. [5]
However, the wider Iranian policymaking community (in particular Ahmadinejad loyalists) believe in keeping the Saudis at arm's length hoping that America's weakening position will in turn weaken the Saudis. It is interesting that Ahmadinejad loyalists have not protested about the recent Iranian overtures to the House of Saud.
In this respect they may be taking the psychological-warfare argument too far, thereby neglecting wider regional realities. After all, not every major development in the Middle East revolves around the United States. By drawing too close to the Saudis, Iran may be undermining its traditional allies, in particular Syria, whose president has just paid a visit to Tehran partly because of concerns over the recent Iranian-Saudi "deal", which undercuts Syria's position in Lebanon. In the final analysis, as the Iranians counter intense US psychological warfare, they run the risk of misinterpreting wider regional developments. These may prove costly in the long term, especially in regards to the balance of Iranian and Saudi influence in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories. While the House of Saud enjoys the backing of the United States and has impressive resources, it - unlike the Islamic Republic - suffers from a major legitimacy deficit. Iranian policymakers ought to beware of this and plan their long-term approach to this declining monarchy accordingly.
Notes 1. "Jangeh ravaniye doshman va marooub shodaneh barkhi maghamat" (The psychological warfare of the enemy and the surrender of certain officials), Dr Hossein Kachouyan, Raja News. 2. "Piyadeh nezamhaye janageh ravaniye Bush dar Iran" (Bush's psychological-warfare foot soldiers in Iran), Qasim Ravanbakhsh, Raja News. 3. Raja News.4. "US's smoking gun on Iran misfires", Gareth Porter, Asia Times Online. 5. "Iran-Saudi strengthen ties despite US plot to sow division", Pirouz Mojtahedzadeh, interviewed by Mahan Abedin, Saudi Debate. Copyright 2007 SaudiDebate.com
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.
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