Des ex-CIA mettent en garde le président: Israël pourrait bombarder l’Iran ce mois-ci ! 06/08/2010
« Veteran Professionnals for Sanity » , un groupe d’anciens officiers des services secrets et de l’armée, ont mis en garde le président Obama dans un mémo qu’ « Israël » prépare une attaque contre l’Iran ce mois ci, et qu’Obama doit dénoncer publiquement une telle attaque pour éviter une guerre plus étendue et la destruction éventuelle d’ « Israël ».
Le mémo des VIPS affirme que Netanyahou projette une attaque surprise contre l’Iran rendant intenable la position des États-Unis et les obligeant à fournir un soutien total à une campagne militaire.
« Nous vous écrivons pour vous mettre en garde sur la probabilité qu’Israël attaque l’Iran dés ce mois ci. Cela conduira probablement à une guerre plus étendue » déclare le mémo des VIPS adressé au président.
Les experts du renseignement explique que la tactique d’ « Israël » c’est de lancer une guerre par surprise et puis faire en sorte que cela soit politiquement intenable pour Obama afin qu’il offre le soutien total de l’armée US pour la campagne.
Le mémo met l’accent sur l’attitude de Netanyahou persuadé que le gouvernement US est à la disposition d’ « Israël » pour satisfaire ses demandes faisant référence à des commentaires qu’il avait fait il y a 9 ans à la télévision israélienne.
« L’Amérique est quelque chose qui peut être facilement activé. Activé dans la bonne direction… Ils ne se mettront pas en travers de notre chemin… 80% des américains nous soutiennent. C’est absurde » a dit Netanyahou.
« Nous espérons que vos conseillers vous ont dit que l’objectif premier d’Israël c’est un changement de régime et non pas les armes nucléaires iraniennes, » selon ce que déclare le mémo ajoutant : « une déclaration publique forte de votre part, mettant personnellement en garde Israël de ne pas attaquer l’Iran empêchera probablement une telle action d’Israël. »
Les membres du VIPS ont donc lancé un appel à Obama disant que lui seul peut actuellement empêcher une attaque contre l’Iran qui pourrait se produire dés ce mois-ci.
Ils font également remarquer que les dirigeants de l'entité israélienne, ont utilisé dans le passé l'argument selon lequel les Etats arabes menacent de déclencher une guerre contre l’entité sioniste, justifiant ainsi la guerre israélienne de 1967 et l'occupation des terres arabes.
Ils confirment que d’après les calculs israéliens, les chances d’une guerre sont de plus en plus réelles à cause d’une éventuelle reprise des pourparlers entre l'Iran et la communauté internationale le mois prochain sur un accord d'échange en uranium.
Dans leur mémo, ils précisent que dés le début des négociations en Septembre, considérés par les dirigeants de l'entité israélienne comme une fausse-manœuvre, "Israël" estime avoir une opportunité pour lancer une attaque pour empêcher à un tel accord.
Les membres des VIPs demandent à Obama de ne point faire confiance à Netanyahou car il peut affecter les performances de l'administration américaine avec le soutien du Congrès. C’est pourquoi ils exigent d’Obama de clarifier aux Israéliens que les Etats-Unis sont opposés à une attaque surprise contre l'Iran, soulignant qu’une telle position émanant du président américain pourrait dissuader l’entité sioniste d’attaquer l’Iran !
Enfin le mémo conclu, qu'il n'y a aucune garantie que la guerre aboutissent à de bons résultats, même avec l'intervention des États-Unis. Selon le texte «si les États-Unis ont de nombreuses victimes, les Américains se rendront compte que ces pertes sont dues à des allégations israéliennes exagérées concernant la menace nucléaire iranienne, et alors il n’est pas surprenant qu’Israël perd une grande partie de son statut aux États-Unis."
La lettre est signée par :
Phil Giraldi, ancient de la CIA (20 ans),
Larry Johnson, ancient de la CIA; (24 ans),
W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA, Special Forces (ret.);
Directeur of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 ans),
Ray McGovern, US Army Intelligence Officer, CIA (30 ans),
Coleen Rowley, FBI (24 ans),
et Ann Wright, Col., US Army Reserve (ret.), (29 ans); Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (16 ans).
http://www.almanar.com.lb/NewsSite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=149375&language=fr
PHILIP GIRALDI and RAY MCGOVERN CALL ON PRESIDENT TO PREEMPT ISRAELI ATTACK ON IRAN
Dear Friends,
We have disturbing and urgent news. Our new executive director, Philip Giraldi, and other former U.S. intelligence officers have just published an extremely important analysis warning that Israel may plan to attack Iran as early as this month (full-length article below).
They detail the evidence for this possibility and warn that such an action would quite likely drag the United States into yet another tragic, needless, and disastrous quagmire. It would be a war that Israel would begin and the United States would have to finish.
Fortunately, they also describe actions that President Obama could take to prevent this.
1. We urge you to circulate this information widely.
2. Also, please contact the White House and your Congressional representatives to tell them that you do not want another costly and profoundly tragic war. Explain that you desire that the U.S. issue a clear demand that Israel NOT attack Iran and instead allow the various excellent diplomatic initiatives to defuse the situation to move forward.
Our radio program “CNI: Jerusalem Calling” tomorrow at noon eastern time will discuss this topic. CNI President Alison Weir will be the host with Executive Director Philip Giraldi and CIA intelligence officer Raymond McGovern as the guests. Mr. McGovern served as an intelligence officer in the CIA for almost thirty years and prepared the President’s Daily Brief during both the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration. He has also published a number of articles and is one of the founding members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former and current officials in the intelligence community that got together in 2003 to protest the use of faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq War.
Alison Weir
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Below is the article, by Ray McGovern:
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: War With Iran
We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war.
Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel.
This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens.
We believe that comments by senior American officials, you included, reflect misplaced trust in Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu.
Actually, the phrasing itself can be revealing, as when CIA Director Panetta implied cavalierly that Washington leaves it up to the Israelis to decide whether and when to attack Iran, and how much “room” to give to the diplomatic effort.
On June 27, Panetta casually told ABC’s Jake Tapper, “I think they are willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically … as opposed to changing them militarily.”
Similarly, the tone you struck referring to Netanyahu and yourself in your July 7 interview with Israeli TV was distinctly out of tune with decades of unfortunate history with Israeli leaders.
“Neither of us try to surprise each other,” you said, “and that approach is one that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to.” You may wish to ask Vice President Biden to remind you of the kind of surprises he has encountered in Israel.
Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel’s quiver. During the emerging Middle East crisis in the spring of 1967, some of us witnessed closely a flood of Israeli surprises and deception, as Netanyahu’s predecessors feigned fear of an imminent Arab attack as justification for starting a war to seize and occupy Arab territories.
We had long since concluded that Israel had been exaggerating the Arab “threat” — well before 1982 when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly confessed:
“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”
Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and also mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify expansion of its borders.
Given this record, one would be well advised to greet with appropriate skepticism any private assurances Netanyahu may have given you that Israel would not surprise you with an attack on Iran.
Netanyahu’s Calculations
Netanyahu believes he holds the high cards, largely because of the strong support he enjoys in our Congress and our strongly pro-Israel media. He reads your reluctance even to mention in controversial bilateral issues publicly during his recent visit as affirmation that he is in the catbird seat in the relationship.
During election years in the U.S. (including mid-terms), Israeli leaders are particularly confident of the power they and the Likud Lobby enjoy on the American political scene.
This prime minister learned well from Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon.
Netanyahu’s attitude comes through in a video taped nine years ago and shown on Israeli TV, in which he bragged about how he deceived President Clinton into believing he (Netanyahu) was helping implement the Oslo accords when he was actually destroying them.
The tape displays a contemptuous attitude toward — and wonderment at — an America so easily influenced by Israel. Netanyahu says:
“America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. … They won’t get in our way … Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd.”
Israeli columnist Gideon Levy wrote that the video shows Netanyahu to be “a con artist … who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes,” adding that such behavior “does not change over the years.”
As mentioned above, Netanyahu has had instructive role models.
None other than Gen. Brent Scowcroft told the Financial Times that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush “mesmerized;” that “Sharon just has him “wrapped around his little finger.”
(Scowcroft was promptly relieved of his duties as chair of the prestigious President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and told never again to darken the White House doorstep.)
If further proof of American political support for Netanyahu were needed, it was manifest when Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham visited Israel during the second week of July.
Lieberman asserted that there is wide support in Congress for using all means to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power, including “through military actions if we must.” Graham was equally explicit: “The Congress has Israel’s back,” he said.
More recently, 47 House Republicans have signed onto H.R. 1553 declaring “support for Israel’s right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran … including the use of military force.”
The power of the Likud Lobby, especially in an election year, facilitates Netanyahu’s attempts to convince those few of his colleagues who need convincing that there may never be a more auspicious time to bring about “regime change” in Tehran.
And, as we hope your advisers have told you, regime change, not Iranian nuclear weapons, is Israel’s primary concern.
If Israel’s professed fear that one or two nuclear weapons in Iran’s arsenal would be a game changer, one would have expected Israeli leaders to jump up and down with glee at the possibility of seeing half of Iran’s low enriched uranium shipped abroad.
Instead, they dismissed as a “trick” the tripartite deal, brokered by Turkey and Brazil with your personal encouragement, that would ship half of Iran’s low enriched uranium outside Tehran’s control.
The National Intelligence Estimate
The Israelis have been looking on intently as the U.S. intelligence community attempts to update, in a “Memorandum to Holders,” the NIE of November 2007 on Iran’s nuclear program. It is worth recalling a couple of that Estimate’s key judgments:
“We judge with high confidence that in fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. … We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons …”
Earlier this year, public congressional testimony by former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (February 1 & 2) and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Ronald Burgess with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. James Cartwright (April 14) did not alter those key judgments.
Blair and others continued to underscore the intelligence community’s agnosticism on one key point: as Blair put it earlier this year, “We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build a nuclear weapon.”
The media have reported off-the-cuff comments by Panetta and by you, with a darker appraisal — with you telling Israeli TV “… all indicators are that they [the Iranians] are in fact pursuing a nuclear weapon;” and Panetta telling ABC, “I think they continue to work on designs in that area [of weaponization].”
Panetta hastened to add, though, that in Tehran, “There is a continuing debate right now as to whether or not they ought to proceed with the bomb.”
Israel probably believes it must give more weight to the official testimony of Blair, Burgess, and Cartwright, which dovetail with the earlier NIE, and the Israelis are afraid that the long-delayed Memorandum to Holders of the 2007 NIE will essentially affirm that Estimate’s key judgments.
Our sources tell us that an honest Memorandum to Holders is likely to do precisely that, and that they suspect that the several-months-long delay means intelligence judgments are being “fixed” around the policy — as was the case before the attack on Iraq.
One War Prevented
The key judgments of the November 2007 NIE shoved an iron rod into the wheel spokes of the Dick Cheney-led juggernaut rolling toward war on Iran. The NIE infuriated Israel leaders eager to attack before President Bush and Vice President Cheney left office. This time, Netanyahu fears that issuance of an honest Memorandum might have similar effect.
Bottom line: more incentive for Israel to pre-empt such an Estimate by striking Iran sooner rather than later.
Last week’s announcement that U.S. officials will meet next month with Iranian counterparts to resume talks on ways to arrange higher enrichment of Iranian low enriched uranium for Tehran’s medical research reactor was welcome news to all but the Israeli leaders.
In addition, Iran reportedly has said it would be prepared to halt enrichment to 20 percent (the level needed for the medical research reactor), and has made it clear that it looks forward to the resumption of talks.
Again, an agreement that would send a large portion of Iran’s LEU abroad would, at a minimum, hinder progress toward nuclear weapons, should Iran decide to develop them. But it would also greatly weaken Israel’s scariest rationale for an attack on Iran.
Bottom line: with the talks on what Israel’s leaders earlier labeled a “trick” now scheduled to resume in September, incentive builds in Tel Aviv for the Israelis to attack before any such agreement can be reached.
We’ll say it again: the objective is regime change. Creating synthetic fear of Iranian nuclear weapons is simply the best way to “justify” bringing about regime change. Worked well for Iraq, no?
Another War in Need of Prevention
A strong public statement by you, personally warning Israel not to attack Iran would most probably head off such an Israeli move. Follow-up might include dispatching Adm. Mullen to Tel Aviv with military-to-military instructions to Israel: Don’t Even Think of It.
In the wake of the 2007 NIE, President Bush overruled Vice President Cheney and sent Adm. Mullen to Israel to impart that hard message. A much-relieved Mullen arrived home that spring sure of step and grateful that he had dodged the likelihood of being on the end of a Cheney-inspired order for him to send U.S. forces into war with Iran.
This time around, Mullen returned with sweaty palms from a visit to Israel in February 2010. Ever since, he has been worrying aloud that Israel might mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran, while adding the obligatory assurance that the Pentagon does have an attack plan for Iran, if needed.
In contrast to his experience in 2008, though, Mullen seemed troubled that Israel’s leaders did not take his warnings seriously.
While in Israel, Mullen insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be “a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences.”
After his return, at a Pentagon press conference on Feb. 22 Mullen drove home the same point. After reciting the usual boilerplate about Iran being “on the path to achieve nuclear weaponization” and its “desire to dominate its neighbors,” he included the following in his prepared remarks:
“For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are and ought to be the levers first pulled. Indeed, I would hope they are always and consistently pulled. No strike, however effective, will be, in and of itself, decisive.”
Unlike younger generals — David Petraeus, for example — Adm. Mullen served in the Vietnam War. That experience is probably what prompts asides like this: “I would remind everyone of an essential truth: War is bloody and uneven. It’s messy and ugly and incredibly wasteful …”
Although the immediate context for that remark was Afghanistan, Mullen has underscored time and again that war with Iran would be a far larger disaster. Those with a modicum of familiarity with the military, strategic and economic equities at stake know he is right.
Other Steps
In 2008, after Mullen read the Israelis the riot act, they put their pre-emptive plans for Iran aside. With that mission accomplished, Mullen gave serious thought to ways to prevent any unintended (or, for that matter, deliberately provoked) incidents in the crowded Persian Gulf that could lead to wider hostilities.
Mullen sent up an interesting trial balloon at a July 2, 2008, press conference, when he indicated that military-to-military dialogue could “add to a better understanding” between the U.S. and Iran. But nothing more was heard of this overture, probably because Cheney ordered him to drop it.
It was a good idea — still is. The danger of a U.S.-Iranian confrontation in the crowded Persian Gulf has not been addressed, and should be. Establishment of a direct communications link between top military officials in Washington and Tehran would reduce the danger of an accident, miscalculation, or covert, false-flag attack.
In our view, that should be done immediately — particularly since recently introduced sanctions assert a right to inspect Iranian ships. The naval commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards reportedly has threatened “a response in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” if anyone tries to inspect Iranian ships in international waters.
Another safety valve would result from successful negotiation of the kind of bilateral “incidents-at-sea” protocol that was concluded with the Russians in 1972 during a period of relatively high tension.
With only interim nobodies at the helm of the intelligence community, you may wish to consider knocking some heads together yourself and insisting that it finish an honest Memorandum to Holders of the 2007 NIE by mid-August — recording any dissents, as necessary.
Sadly, our former colleagues tell us that politicization of intelligence analysis did not end with the departure of Bush and Cheney…and that the problem is acute even at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which in the past has done some of the best professional, objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis.
Pundits, Think Tanks: Missing the Point
As you may have noticed, most of page one of Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section was given to an article titled, “A Nuclear Iran: Would America Strike to Prevent It? — Imagining Obama’s Response to an Iranian Missile Crisis.”
Page five was dominated by the rest of the article, under the title “Who will blink first when Iran is on the brink?”
A page-wide photo of a missile rolling past Iranian dignitaries on a reviewing stand (reminiscent of the familiar parades on Red Square) is aimed at the centerfold of the Outlook section, as if poised to blow it to smithereens.
Typically, the authors address the Iranian “threat” as though it endangers the U.S., even though Secretary Clinton has stated publicly that this is not the case. They write that one option for the U.S. is “the lonely, unpopular path of taking military action lacking allied consensus.” O Tempora, O Mores!
In less than a decade, wars of aggression have become nothing more than lonely, unpopular paths.
What is perhaps most remarkable, though, is that the word Israel is nowhere to be found in this very long article. Similar think pieces, including some from relatively progressive think tanks, also address these issues as though they were simply bilateral U.S.-Iranian problems, with little or no attention to Israel.
Guns of August?
The stakes could hardly be higher. Letting slip the dogs of war would have immense repercussions. Again, we hope that Adm. Mullen and others have given you comprehensive briefings on them.
Netanyahu would be taking a fateful gamble by attacking Iran, with high risk to everyone involved. The worst, but conceivable case, has Netanyahu playing — unintentionally — Dr. Kevorkian to the state of Israel.
Even if the U.S. were to be sucked into a war provoked by Israel, there is absolutely no guarantee that the war would come out well.
Were the U.S. to suffer significant casualties, and were Americans to become aware that such losses came about because of exaggerated Israeli claims of a nuclear threat from Iran, Israel could lose much of its high standing in the United States.
There could even be an upsurge in anti-Semitism, as Americans conclude that officials with dual loyalties in Congress and the executive branch threw our troops into a war provoked, on false pretenses, by Likudniks for their own narrow purposes.
We do not have a sense that major players in Tel Aviv or in Washington are sufficiently sensitive to these critical factors.
You are in position to prevent this unfortunate, but likely chain reaction. We allow for the possibility that Israeli military action might not lead to a major regional war, but we consider the chances of that much less than even.
Footnote: VIPS Experience
We VIPS have found ourselves in this position before. We prepared our first Memorandum for the President on the afternoon of February 5, 2003 after Colin Powell’s speech at the UN.
We had been watching how our profession was being corrupted into serving up faux intelligence that was later criticized (correctly) as “uncorroborated, contradicted, and nonexistent” — adjectives used by former Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller after a five-year investigation by his committee.
As Powell spoke, we decided collectively that the responsible thing to do was to try to warn the President before he acted on misguided advice to attack Iraq. Unlike Powell, we did not claim that our analysis was “irrefutable and undeniable.” We did conclude with this warning:
“After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/vipstwelve.pdf
We take no satisfaction at having gotten it right on Iraq. Others with claim to more immediate expertise on Iraq were issuing similar warnings. But we were kept well away from the wagons circled by Bush and Cheney.
Sadly, your own Vice President, who was then chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was among the most assiduous in blocking opportunities for dissenting voices to be heard. This is part of what brought on the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation’s history.
We now believe that we may also be right on (and right on the cusp of) another impending catastrophe of even wider scope — Iran — on which another President, you, are not getting good advice from your closed circle of advisers.
They are probably telling you that, since you have privately counseled Prime Minister Netanyahu against attacking Iran, he will not do it. This could simply be the familiar syndrome of telling the President what they believe he wants to hear.
Quiz them; tell them others believe them to be dead wrong on Netanyahu. The only positive here is that you — only you — can prevent an Israeli attack on Iran.
Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
Ray Close, Directorate of Operations, Near East Division, CIA (26 years)
Phil Giraldi, Directorate of Operations, CIA (20 years)
Larry Johnson, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA; Department of State, Department of Defense consultant (24 years)
W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA, Special Forces (ret.); Senior Executive Service: Defense Intelligence Officer for Middle East/South Asia, Director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years)
Ray McGovern, US Army Intelligence Officer, Directorate of Intelligence, CIA (30 years)
Coleen Rowley, Special Agent and Minneapolis Division Counsel, FBI (24 years)
Ann Wright, Col., US Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (16 years)
The Drumbeats For War Grow Louder
Bob Livingston
Personal Liberty Digest
August 9, 2010
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Can you hear it?
It’s the drumbeat for war. And it’s beating louder by the day.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Eleven United States and one Israeli warships pass through the Suez Canal.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Former CIA Chief Michael Hayden says a United States military strike against Iran “seems inexorable” because diplomacy is failing.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen says the U.S. military has a plan to attack Iran.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last week introduced Resolution 1553 which would give Israel the go-ahead to attack Iran. The resolution grants support for Israel to “…confront nuclear threats posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran, including the use of military force…”
The neocons have never seen a war they couldn’t support, no matter the President’s party affiliation.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The end is near—so President Barack Obama tells us—for former President George Bush’s incursion into Iraq. He said last week that America’s combat mission in Iraq will end by Aug. 31. But that doesn’t mean all troops will come home. There will still be 50,000 there as August turns into September. And it’s going to be 18 more months before they all come home… if he sticks to his timeline.
We can only hope 50,000 troops are enough to prevent that governmentless nation from descending further into chaos.
For those troops that do come home, it appears they will only be home long enough to change their underwear and restock their ammunition belts before heading off to another Mideast hellhole to die… for what?
To blow up suspected nuclear sites, even though a 2007 U.S National Intelligence Estimate said that Iran had halted work on developing a nuclear warhead in 2003. Meanwhile, an unclassified military report submitted to Congress in April concluded, “Iran is developing technological capabilities applicable to nuclear weapons and, at a minimum, is keeping the option to develop nuclear weapons,” as The Washington Post reported.
A May report by the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Iran hasn’t sufficiently cooperated to allow the agency to determine if Iraq’s nuclear activities are solely for peaceful activities.
Conflicting stories of weapons of mass destruction: Haven’t we heard this before… during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq?
If HR 1553 were to pass and Israel does strike at Iran’s nuclear reactors and nuclear sites, what then? If Iran strikes back—which President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad has said they would—and is joined by Syria, Lebanon and Hezbollah, would the U.S. then be obligated to intervene?
It would seem so. And what would be the result of such a conflagration?
Obama has pledged America’s undying support of Israel no matter what… even if he did treat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu badly during his visit to the White House earlier this year. And Israel maintains it is convinced that Iran is working to acquire nuclear weapons.
Much of the international community also seems convinced Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. The feckless U.N. Security Council has been trying to agree on sanctions against Iran for some time. China and Russia continue to hold out.
But aren’t Americans growing sick of war? Apparently the political class isn’t.
Nine years later we remain in Afghanistan, NATO allies are abandoning us and more and more of our troops are dying. Obama, with no clear-cut strategy to fight what he considers the good war, vows to continue fighting on, and any timelines he may mention mean little.
Seven years later we are still in Iraq, and at least a few thousand troops will remain there for the foreseeable future. Nineteen years later we’re still in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, even though the first Persian Gulf War supposedly ended with a good outcome.
Sixty-four years later we still have troops stationed throughout Eastern Europe and in Japan. Fifty-seven years later we still have troops stationed in South Korea. That war has not ended—no official peace treaty ever signed—and there have even been some drumbeats sounding from there. Just not as loud… yet.
But the recent U.S.-South Korea joint air and sea military exercises in the Sea of Japan intended to send a message to a recalcitrant North Korea—who has been accused of torpedoing a South Korean ship—antagonized China. And who can blame them?
What would we think if China or Russia conducted military exercises in the Gulf of Mexico or off the coast of New York or San Francisco? Either Obama and the Pentagon were naive to the implications of conducting war games in the area, or they conducted them intending to raise tensions in the area.
Boom. Boom.
According to the think tank Foreign Policy In Focus, there were 865 Pentagon-confirmed U.S. troop base sites located off U.S. soil in 2009. But this number doesn’t include all of the bases being used in Iraq and Afghanistan—as many as 150 more.
There are 268 bases in Germany, 124 in Japan and 87 in Korea. Others are scattered around the globe in Aruba, Australia, Bulgaria, Bahrain, Colombia, Greece, Djibouti, Egypt, Qatar, Romania, Singapore and Cuba, to name just a few.
The bases are draining our economy of billions of dollars a year. Isn’t it time we ended Empire America? Isn’t it time we brought our troops home?
There would still be work for them to do. Our border with Mexico is under assault.
But the military-industrial complex might not be as happy about that. Stopping Mexican paramilitary units and drug cartel thugs isn’t as lucrative as dropping bunker busters on Iran and North Korea… and maybe China.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
ISRAEL’S PILLARS OF SAMSON: NOT QUITE ARMAGEDDON, BUT….
By Dr. Alan Sabrosky* for My Catbird Seat
As the US edges toward an unprovoked and utterly needless war with Iran, some remarks by an eminent and experienced observer of that part of the world caught my attention. First, he noted that “Israel and the US realize that the next war will burn much of the Middle East and may well spell the end of Israel.”
Now, Israel certainly believes that about the Middle East, and in fact hopes it happens, because that just makes its position stronger. But neither Israel nor the US — at least at a governmental level — accept the second part of the proposition, just the opposite, that in fact it will be the saving of Israel — because (as I’ve noted elsewhere) if the regional chaos is great enough, Israel will take the opportunity to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians (and probably Israeli Arabs as well) from “Greater Israel” by shoving them over its borders, into Jordan and the Sinai (and some into the Lebanon as well). That will leave it intact and Jewish, its neighbors overwhelmed by a few million destitute Palestinians — a 2nd and even worse Nakba — and everyone else in ruins or teetering on the edge. Netanyahu, Barak, Lieberman and their merry thugs won’t shed a tear or lose a second’s sleep over any of it, much less over the many Americans who will die in yet another of America’s Jewish Wars.
Second, he remarked that “Every week Israel becomes weaker vis a vis the “resistance axis” and at what point does Israel decide to bring down the house and start again if it can survive with enough military power (backed by the US) to remake the region.”
But I simply don’t see Israel getting weaker, just more beleaguered, which is not the same thing. We need to keep in mind that Israel defines its usable power (and therefore its security) not only in terms of what it has, but also what it can command from its “most favored goyim” in the US — and that, now, is virtually everything. We know about Israel’s control of the Congress and the media, and I think people on our side generally understand about their control of political appointments that absolutely keep opponents of Israel out of office – the Chas Freeman incident ought to have been telling. The American public, unfortunately, is almost absolutely clueless about the whole enterprise, thanks to the prevailing dominant theme they get from the President, national politicians, the press and mostly the Protestant pulpit.
Yet it goes beyond that. The fate of White House correspondent Helen Thomas and 20-year CNN editor Octavia Nasr has sent a signal to absolutely every journalist in the print and electronic media that any attempt to cross even slightly Israel’s line (which is what Nasr did), much less question Israel’s basic premise (as Thomas did), means total and almost instantaneous professional ruin. If senior people like them can be chopped in hours, what chance does a rising younger journalist have? None at all. This is along the lines of the old French saying (I translate roughly), “Shoot a few to encourage the others,” in this case encourage them to behave or at least to keep silent and not misbehave (as AIPAC and company define misbehavior). So the American public will continue to hear, see and read just what Israel wants, barring a small if growing number who do get at least some of their news from the internet.
Sadly, it is mostly the same for the US military now as well. The sequential sacking on overlapping grounds of Admiral William Fallon, Admiral (ret.) Dennis Blair and General Stanley McChrystal (and the concurrent enhancement of Admiral Michael Mullen and General David Petraeus) has sent the same signal to the professional military, and not just the generals and admirals. Question official policy (Fallon), do not conform to Administration (i.e., Israeli) priorities (Blair and Fallon), or speak openly (however unwisely) what almost all professional military here feel about this hapless commander-in-chief and his Zionist amateurs in the White House (McChrystal), and your careers are done, no matter how distinguished they might have been. So behave — and almost all will, knowing absolutely now that they’ll have no effective support from the generals and admirals if they don’t.
Besides, putting lots of discrete pieces together, including published information on Israeli penetration of the telecommunications security and cybernetic systems in the US since the ’70s and ’80s, the movement of Israelis (with or without dual nationality) or American Jews serving Israel across the US and Israeli governments and lobbies like AIPAC, and the presence of Israelis (again with or without dual nationality) and American Jews serving Israel throughout the US national security apparatus for decades (remember the far-from-unique stories of Lani Kass or David Wurmser, much less the likes of “Scooter” Libby or Rahm Emanuel?), one thing seems painfully clear to me. This is that Israel has had ongoing access for decades to US nuclear codes and systems, and may well be able to override safeguards here to obtain command and control (and therefore targeting and launch capabilities) over at least US land-based strategic nuclear systems.
Think about it. With those technical means, oversight of security and especially in-place human assets, Israel would have had to make a deliberate decision NOT to acquire that access and obtain those capabilities in order not to have them now, and that flies in the face of everything else Israel has done in its national security and espionage fields. That may be the club Israel holds over US presidents, and it would certainly explain a host of otherwise inexplicable actions by them. Understanding the actual dynamics of this phenomenon and how to counter them must have the highest priority.
*Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) is a ten-year US Marine Corps veteran and a graduate of the US Army War College. He can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net
AUDIO - L'autre monde - De la mosquée de ground 0 à la diabolisation de l'iran - Les sionistes aux pleins pouvoirs
Also see:
Karel De Gucht : ‘il ne faut pas sous-estimer l’influence du lobby juif au Capitole'
Des rabbins prédisent: "Israël est menacé d’une guerre sanglante ce mois-ci"!
Selon le propagandiste juif sioniste anti-Islam Daniel Pipes, Netanyahou devrait menacer de nucléariser l'Iran
Une blogosphère alerte et en santé est le dernier obstacle à une guerre contre l'Iran
