N
NOMOREWARFORISRAEL
Guest
British fear US commander is beating the drum for Iran strikes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/05/wiran105.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:53am BST 05/04/2008
British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in
Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed
Baghdad government.
Frontline: Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's
intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian
military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely
watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state
that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed
attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US
allies.
The outbreak of Iraq's worst violence in 18 months last week with
fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone
diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim
insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong
position to destabilise the country.
"Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on
the American effort in Iraq," a British official said. "Iran is waging
a war in Iraq. The idea that America can't fight a war on two fronts
is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves," he said.
"Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on
behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers
killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone."
Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran's
covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out
military strikes.
In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran,
Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. "The rockets
that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-
made rockets," he said. "All of this in complete violation of promises
made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian
leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."
The humiliation of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by the
Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Basra last week
triggered top-level warnings over Iran's strength in Iraq.
Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will
answer questions from American political leaders at the US Congress on
Tuesday and Wednesday before travelling to London to brief Gordon
Brown.
The Wall Street Journal said last week that the US war effort in Iraq
must have a double goal.
"The US must recognise that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war
against it in Iraq," wrote the military analyst Kimberly Kagan.
There are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians
across the bitter divide on Iraq. "Iran is the bull in the china
shop," said Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the Armed Services
Committee. "In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the
Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exclusive: Iran, Syria, Lebanon on military alert over US Gulf
movements and Israel's home defense drill
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5168
According to British media, the US is set to attack Iranian military
facilities. DEBKAfile's military sources add that the USS Abraham
Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf.
War tensions in the Middle East have shot up - not only over the
signals flashing between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, but also on the
US-Iranian front in Iraq in the wake of rising in violence around the
Basra conflagration.
Tuesday, April 8, US Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus and
ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will stress in their report to
Congress that Iran is waging war on America in Iraq, say sources in
Washington, London and Baghdad.
This emerged strongly last week, when US intelligence learned that
Iran had intervened directly in the Iraqi government's crackdown on
renegade militias in Basra and southern Iraq, by directing and
provisioning those militias through the Revolutionary Guards' al Qods
Brigades.
Official sources in London predict that Iran's intervention against
the American effort to stabilize Iraq may well prompt a US attack on
the military installations in Iran which are orchestrating the
interference.
Gen. Petraeus is on record as accusing Iran of being the source of the
daily rocket bombardment of Baghdad's Green Zone, seat of government
and US diplomatic and military headquarters.
DEBKAfile's military sources report that Moscow has dropped its two
nickels into the rising war alarm. In the last two weeks, Russian
military and intelligence officials have been leaking claims of
intensified American military movements around Iranian shores.
Iran is certain to come up in Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir
Putin's farewell talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Sunday, along
with other controversial business, such as Moscow's objections to
NATO's eastern expansion and US missile shield in East Europe.
Saturday, US defense secretary Robert Gates turned up in Oman, the
site of big American air bases, for talks with Sultan Qaboos. He then
flew straight back to Washington. While Gates insisted to
correspondents aboard his plane that the US is committed to a
diplomatic solution for Iran's covert nuclear program, the surpise
visit struck sparks in the already fraught regional atmosphere,
particularly as it followed on the heels of US Vice President Dick
Cheney's talks in Oman two weeks ago.
DEBKAfile's Middle East sources sum up how Tehran and Damascus read
these events and the picture they have built up of Washington's
intentions as combined with Israel's military steps:
1. US is preparing to attack the Iranian military installations linked
to subversion in Iraq. The operation will widen out into strikes on
the Islamic Republic's suspect nuclear sites.
2. Israel will use the chance for a concurrent attack on Syria.
3. Israel will attack Hizballah's strongholds in Lebanon.
4. A broad, coordinated US-Israeli offensive will be mounted against
Iran, Syria and Hizballah.
Iran and Syria view Israel's four-day home defense exercise against
missile attack, conventional or non-conventional, beginning Sunday, as
setting the stage for these attacks.
Both believe Washington and Jerusalem are in close military step.
Neither is reassured by soothing statements from prime minister Ehud
Olmert and defense minister Barak that Israel does not seek violent
confrontation - especially when the US administration is withholding
all comment. Hence the high state of preparedness ordered by the
jittery governments in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut.
Robert wrote:
A correspondent just led me to this article by the well-informed Scott
Ritter. Let's see: I'm no gambler, but 80 percent, or 4 out of 5,
chance of war on Iran...seems a very solid bet, bolstered by the new
information Ritter imparts (e.g., bombs/bombers enhancement by end of
this month...) and driven by the increasingly insane idiot residing in
our White House...Bob
http://www.rutlandherald.com:80/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080404/NEWS04/804040381/1002/NEWS01
Ritter says White House preparing for war in Iran
April 4, 2008
By ED BARNA Herald Correspondent
MIDDLEBURY -- Scott Ritter, former head of weapons inspection in Iraq
who protested there were no weapons of mass destruction to justify an
invasion, believes the same is true for Iran.
But there is an 80 percent chance of war with Iran, he told about 200
people Wednesday at Middlebury College as part of a series of talks
facilitated by the Vermont Peace and Justice Center.
The pattern of preparations for such a conflict has been steadily
developing and involves Congress as well as the Bush-Cheney
administration, he said.
People ask him if he feels vindicated by the absence of WMDs in Iraq,
he said, but "there isn't any vindication in being right about this
one." A war with Iran would hasten the ongoing decline of American
standing in the world, and afterward Russia and China would be ready
to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum, he said.
Among the war clouds Ritter cited were:
Preemptive strikes against the two groups most likely to erupt if the
United States invaded Iran, Hezbollah (unsuccessfully attacked by
Israel) and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (unsuccessfully attacked in
Basra by Iraq's central government).
Ritter predicted a similarly disappointing showing if the American
forces attacked Iran, a country 2-1/2 times as large and populous as
Iraq that is much more unified culturally and did not have its army
destroyed in a previous war with the United States.
Recent visits to Middle Eastern allies by high officials, ostensibly
for other purposes, but really to prepare them for the effects of such
a war.
The appearance of the "miracle laptop," as Ritter called it, a
thousand pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian
computer, which dubiously had just the sort of information the
administration needed to support a hard-line stand on Iran.
Congressional supplementary funding for more "bunker-busting" bombs,
with a contract completion deadline of April.
Congressional supplementary funding for the extra bombers to carry
those bombs, with a contract completion date of April.
Cheney's order to send a third aircraft carrier battle group close to
the Persian Gulf, a necessary bolstering of forces for a war with
Iran.
Admiral William Fallon, the first admiral to be head of Central
Command, said that level of naval forces was unnecessary and blocked
the move. Ritter said that was "a heroic thing."
The main target of Ritter's criticisms was an American public that
couldn't pass a test on the Constitution and understands little of
international history and politics, and refuses to believe the life of
an Iraqi is worth as much as the life of an American.
He began his talk, not by trumpeting the danger of war, but by talking
about spring, and the birds that will soon have babies in their nests.
Mother birds will forage, come to the nests, see open mouths begging
for food, and puke into each one, he said.
Just so, Ritter said, people sit in front of their televisions every
night and wait to be stuffed with mushy phrases like "The surge has
been successful" and "Baghdad is 70 percent secure" and "We have
apparently won the war."
"The reality of Iraq is that it is a broken nation," Ritter said.
Groups like the Kurds and Shia are not unified groups, there is
already a civil war, and most of the opposition to our presence comes
from our being the invaders, he said.
"It is far too easy to look for people to blame," he said. For
instance, "we blame the media, but the media simply give us what we're
asking for."
Everyone needs to start understanding and caring about their
Constitutional rights, and everyone needs to start finding the facts
for themselves and taking strong individual stands, Ritter said. If
you do nothing but take in what the TV and newspapers tell you, "all
you're going to get in return is puke."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded:
Bob wrote:
I pieced together the same information Secretary Roberts notes below
in his excellent CounterPunch article, writing these words last night
to a friend:
"xxxxx, this [the Russian colonel's intelligence] seems to be of a
piece with the notice you circulated today re Saudi Arabia's
preparation for nuclear fallout. Are we a criminal country -- acting
on Israel's behest -- or what? We don't give a damn how many people --
Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranis -- we murder, how many lives we
ruin, how many lands we devastate on the path to imperial MidEast
hegemony for USrael...."
Oddly, Secretary Roberts -- unlike many of his commentaries of late --
makes no mention below of Militant Zionist Israel, and the
machinations in which beyond doubt it is involved toward war on Iran
for its sake and in its ultimate interests....
To repeat a recurring theme expressed by me, I simply cannot
understand why Secretary Roberts, Admiral Fallon, retired Ambassadors
of any number of names and eminences, a principled Christian leader or
two, a principled journalist or two, university/thinktank scholars,
retired members of Congress, human-rights NGOs, etc., are not banding
together, calling a press conference, denouncing this administration
and the entire fabric of current governance (sic), and establishing/
building a momentum designed to pre-empt the execution of three
million Iranis (Iran's population = thrice that of Iraq...).
Full-bore insanity is upon us...Bob
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03312008.html
March 31, 2008
Iran in the Crosshairs
A Third American War in the Making?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Thanks for this send of Paul Craig Roberts' latest piece (linked
above) for counterpunch.org However, only apparent problem with it
though is that the Russian article referenced was dated 2007 making it
somewhat out of date (Paul Craig Roberts links to it at the following
URL):
Russians, Saudis Expect U.S. Attack On Iran
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/080330_iran.htm
Here is the actual article (as you can clearly see the '2007' date
shown):
Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070327/62697703.html
Saudi Arabia 'braces for nuclear war'
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=87121
http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM
http://NOMOREWARFORISRAEL.BLOGSPOT.COM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/05/wiran105.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 1:53am BST 05/04/2008
British officials gave warning yesterday that America's commander in
Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed
Baghdad government.
Frontline: Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan
A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran's
intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian
military facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment. In closely
watched testimony in Washington next week, Gen Petraeus will state
that the Iranian threat has risen as Tehran has supplied and directed
attacks by militia fighters against the Iraqi state and its US
allies.
The outbreak of Iraq's worst violence in 18 months last week with
fighting in Basra and the daily bombardment of the Green Zone
diplomatic enclave, demonstrated that although the Sunni Muslim
insurgency is dramatically diminished, Shia forces remain in a strong
position to destabilise the country.
"Petraeus is going to go very hard on Iran as the source of attacks on
the American effort in Iraq," a British official said. "Iran is waging
a war in Iraq. The idea that America can't fight a war on two fronts
is wrong, there can be airstrikes and other moves," he said.
"Petraeus has put emphasis on America having to fight the battle on
behalf of Iraq. In his report he can frame it in terms of our soldiers
killed and diplomats dead in attacks on the Green Zone."
Tension between Washington and Tehran is already high over Iran's
covert nuclear programme. The Bush administration has not ruled out
military strikes.
In remarks interpreted as signalling a change in his approach to Iran,
Gen Petraeus last week hit out at the Iranian leadership. "The rockets
that were launched at the Green Zone were Iranian-provided, Iranian-
made rockets," he said. "All of this in complete violation of promises
made by President Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian
leaders to their Iraqi counterparts."
The humiliation of the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by the
Iranian-backed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in fighting in Basra last week
triggered top-level warnings over Iran's strength in Iraq.
Gen Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Baghdad, will
answer questions from American political leaders at the US Congress on
Tuesday and Wednesday before travelling to London to brief Gordon
Brown.
The Wall Street Journal said last week that the US war effort in Iraq
must have a double goal.
"The US must recognise that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war
against it in Iraq," wrote the military analyst Kimberly Kagan.
There are signs that targeting Iran would unite American politicians
across the bitter divide on Iraq. "Iran is the bull in the china
shop," said Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the Armed Services
Committee. "In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the
Shi'ite groups, whether they be political or military."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exclusive: Iran, Syria, Lebanon on military alert over US Gulf
movements and Israel's home defense drill
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5168
According to British media, the US is set to attack Iranian military
facilities. DEBKAfile's military sources add that the USS Abraham
Lincoln Strike Force is heading for the Persian Gulf.
War tensions in the Middle East have shot up - not only over the
signals flashing between Syria, Lebanon, and Israel, but also on the
US-Iranian front in Iraq in the wake of rising in violence around the
Basra conflagration.
Tuesday, April 8, US Iraq commander, Gen. David Petraeus and
ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, will stress in their report to
Congress that Iran is waging war on America in Iraq, say sources in
Washington, London and Baghdad.
This emerged strongly last week, when US intelligence learned that
Iran had intervened directly in the Iraqi government's crackdown on
renegade militias in Basra and southern Iraq, by directing and
provisioning those militias through the Revolutionary Guards' al Qods
Brigades.
Official sources in London predict that Iran's intervention against
the American effort to stabilize Iraq may well prompt a US attack on
the military installations in Iran which are orchestrating the
interference.
Gen. Petraeus is on record as accusing Iran of being the source of the
daily rocket bombardment of Baghdad's Green Zone, seat of government
and US diplomatic and military headquarters.
DEBKAfile's military sources report that Moscow has dropped its two
nickels into the rising war alarm. In the last two weeks, Russian
military and intelligence officials have been leaking claims of
intensified American military movements around Iranian shores.
Iran is certain to come up in Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir
Putin's farewell talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi Sunday, along
with other controversial business, such as Moscow's objections to
NATO's eastern expansion and US missile shield in East Europe.
Saturday, US defense secretary Robert Gates turned up in Oman, the
site of big American air bases, for talks with Sultan Qaboos. He then
flew straight back to Washington. While Gates insisted to
correspondents aboard his plane that the US is committed to a
diplomatic solution for Iran's covert nuclear program, the surpise
visit struck sparks in the already fraught regional atmosphere,
particularly as it followed on the heels of US Vice President Dick
Cheney's talks in Oman two weeks ago.
DEBKAfile's Middle East sources sum up how Tehran and Damascus read
these events and the picture they have built up of Washington's
intentions as combined with Israel's military steps:
1. US is preparing to attack the Iranian military installations linked
to subversion in Iraq. The operation will widen out into strikes on
the Islamic Republic's suspect nuclear sites.
2. Israel will use the chance for a concurrent attack on Syria.
3. Israel will attack Hizballah's strongholds in Lebanon.
4. A broad, coordinated US-Israeli offensive will be mounted against
Iran, Syria and Hizballah.
Iran and Syria view Israel's four-day home defense exercise against
missile attack, conventional or non-conventional, beginning Sunday, as
setting the stage for these attacks.
Both believe Washington and Jerusalem are in close military step.
Neither is reassured by soothing statements from prime minister Ehud
Olmert and defense minister Barak that Israel does not seek violent
confrontation - especially when the US administration is withholding
all comment. Hence the high state of preparedness ordered by the
jittery governments in Tehran, Damascus and Beirut.
Robert wrote:
A correspondent just led me to this article by the well-informed Scott
Ritter. Let's see: I'm no gambler, but 80 percent, or 4 out of 5,
chance of war on Iran...seems a very solid bet, bolstered by the new
information Ritter imparts (e.g., bombs/bombers enhancement by end of
this month...) and driven by the increasingly insane idiot residing in
our White House...Bob
http://www.rutlandherald.com:80/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080404/NEWS04/804040381/1002/NEWS01
Ritter says White House preparing for war in Iran
April 4, 2008
By ED BARNA Herald Correspondent
MIDDLEBURY -- Scott Ritter, former head of weapons inspection in Iraq
who protested there were no weapons of mass destruction to justify an
invasion, believes the same is true for Iran.
But there is an 80 percent chance of war with Iran, he told about 200
people Wednesday at Middlebury College as part of a series of talks
facilitated by the Vermont Peace and Justice Center.
The pattern of preparations for such a conflict has been steadily
developing and involves Congress as well as the Bush-Cheney
administration, he said.
People ask him if he feels vindicated by the absence of WMDs in Iraq,
he said, but "there isn't any vindication in being right about this
one." A war with Iran would hasten the ongoing decline of American
standing in the world, and afterward Russia and China would be ready
to take advantage of the resulting power vacuum, he said.
Among the war clouds Ritter cited were:
Preemptive strikes against the two groups most likely to erupt if the
United States invaded Iran, Hezbollah (unsuccessfully attacked by
Israel) and Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army (unsuccessfully attacked in
Basra by Iraq's central government).
Ritter predicted a similarly disappointing showing if the American
forces attacked Iran, a country 2-1/2 times as large and populous as
Iraq that is much more unified culturally and did not have its army
destroyed in a previous war with the United States.
Recent visits to Middle Eastern allies by high officials, ostensibly
for other purposes, but really to prepare them for the effects of such
a war.
The appearance of the "miracle laptop," as Ritter called it, a
thousand pages of technical documents supposedly from a stolen Iranian
computer, which dubiously had just the sort of information the
administration needed to support a hard-line stand on Iran.
Congressional supplementary funding for more "bunker-busting" bombs,
with a contract completion deadline of April.
Congressional supplementary funding for the extra bombers to carry
those bombs, with a contract completion date of April.
Cheney's order to send a third aircraft carrier battle group close to
the Persian Gulf, a necessary bolstering of forces for a war with
Iran.
Admiral William Fallon, the first admiral to be head of Central
Command, said that level of naval forces was unnecessary and blocked
the move. Ritter said that was "a heroic thing."
The main target of Ritter's criticisms was an American public that
couldn't pass a test on the Constitution and understands little of
international history and politics, and refuses to believe the life of
an Iraqi is worth as much as the life of an American.
He began his talk, not by trumpeting the danger of war, but by talking
about spring, and the birds that will soon have babies in their nests.
Mother birds will forage, come to the nests, see open mouths begging
for food, and puke into each one, he said.
Just so, Ritter said, people sit in front of their televisions every
night and wait to be stuffed with mushy phrases like "The surge has
been successful" and "Baghdad is 70 percent secure" and "We have
apparently won the war."
"The reality of Iraq is that it is a broken nation," Ritter said.
Groups like the Kurds and Shia are not unified groups, there is
already a civil war, and most of the opposition to our presence comes
from our being the invaders, he said.
"It is far too easy to look for people to blame," he said. For
instance, "we blame the media, but the media simply give us what we're
asking for."
Everyone needs to start understanding and caring about their
Constitutional rights, and everyone needs to start finding the facts
for themselves and taking strong individual stands, Ritter said. If
you do nothing but take in what the TV and newspapers tell you, "all
you're going to get in return is puke."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Forwarded:
Bob wrote:
I pieced together the same information Secretary Roberts notes below
in his excellent CounterPunch article, writing these words last night
to a friend:
"xxxxx, this [the Russian colonel's intelligence] seems to be of a
piece with the notice you circulated today re Saudi Arabia's
preparation for nuclear fallout. Are we a criminal country -- acting
on Israel's behest -- or what? We don't give a damn how many people --
Lebanese, Palestinians, Iraqis, Iranis -- we murder, how many lives we
ruin, how many lands we devastate on the path to imperial MidEast
hegemony for USrael...."
Oddly, Secretary Roberts -- unlike many of his commentaries of late --
makes no mention below of Militant Zionist Israel, and the
machinations in which beyond doubt it is involved toward war on Iran
for its sake and in its ultimate interests....
To repeat a recurring theme expressed by me, I simply cannot
understand why Secretary Roberts, Admiral Fallon, retired Ambassadors
of any number of names and eminences, a principled Christian leader or
two, a principled journalist or two, university/thinktank scholars,
retired members of Congress, human-rights NGOs, etc., are not banding
together, calling a press conference, denouncing this administration
and the entire fabric of current governance (sic), and establishing/
building a momentum designed to pre-empt the execution of three
million Iranis (Iran's population = thrice that of Iraq...).
Full-bore insanity is upon us...Bob
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts03312008.html
March 31, 2008
Iran in the Crosshairs
A Third American War in the Making?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Thanks for this send of Paul Craig Roberts' latest piece (linked
above) for counterpunch.org However, only apparent problem with it
though is that the Russian article referenced was dated 2007 making it
somewhat out of date (Paul Craig Roberts links to it at the following
URL):
Russians, Saudis Expect U.S. Attack On Iran
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/080330_iran.htm
Here is the actual article (as you can clearly see the '2007' date
shown):
Russian intelligence sees U.S. military buildup on Iran border
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070327/62697703.html
Saudi Arabia 'braces for nuclear war'
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/zone0/viewtopic.php?t=87121
http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM
http://NOMOREWARFORISRAEL.BLOGSPOT.COM