Iran 31

De Toronto Star bericht: 'U.S. strike on Iran could make Iraq look like a warm-up bout. Fallout around the world would be grim. WASHINGTON—On the ground, more terror.Poison-laced missiles raining down on U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, the downing of a U.S. passenger airliner, suicide bombers in major cities, perhaps unleashing their deadly payload in a shopping mall food court. It could be 9/11 all over again. Or worse.On the political front, more anti-Americanism.Renewed venom aimed at Washington from European capitals, greater distrust from China and Russia, outright hatred in the Arab and Muslim world. Oil prices spiralling out of control, a global recession at hand.In Iran, a galvanizing of a splintered nation. An end to hopes for political reform, a rally-around-the-leader phenomenon common among the victimized, an ability to rebuild a nuclear program in two to four years.These are the potential costs of a U.S. military strike in Iran."It would be Iran's Pearl Harbor and it will be the beginning of a war, not the end of a war. It will set back American strategic interests for a generation," says Joseph Cirincione, the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace."The war will take place at a time and location of Iran's choosing. It will make Iraq look like a preliminary bout."But the cost of inaction could be even higher: a defiant nation with an apparently unstable leadership steeped in hatred for Americans in the heart of the Middle East with nuclear capabilities.With Tehran ignoring both threats and cajoling from the international community and declaring itself — prematurely — part of the world's "nuclear club" this week, talk of the Washington stick moved to the forefront, while the carrot, now discredited, was pushed off centre stage.While the week began with the White House trying to tamp down speculation about military strikes in Iran, reported by The Washington Post and by journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, it was becoming clear the Bush administration was growing impatient with a diplomatic effort that is not working with Tehran.It may have also welcomed talk of potential military strikes, even if it would be extremely reluctant to use them, simply to remind some recalcitrant United Nations members such as China and Russia that diplomacy does have an end date.The bluntest assessment of diplomatic success came from Karl Rove, U.S. President George W. Bush's political adviser and deputy chief of staff, who told a Houston audience Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "not a rational human being.""We are engaged in a diplomatic process with our European partners and the United Nations to keep (Iran) from developing such a weapon," Rove said. "It's going to be tough because they are led by ideologues who have a weird sense of history."Ahmadinejad announced this week that Iran had taken its nuclear enrichment program to new levels. Before he did so, he dismissed any influence of the United Nations, according to state media. "They know they cannot do a damned thing," he said.The Iranian government has stated it will construct 3,000 centrifuges at a facility in Natanz and would eventually expand that to 54,000 centrifuges, which spin uranium into fuel rich enough to produce atom bombs. Estimates of their capability date range from 2010 to 2020.Bush has been clear he wants to stop Tehran from acquiring even the knowledge needed to build nuclear weapons, and last month he vowed U.S. military might could be used to protect staunch allies such as Israel.' Lees verder: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12747.htm

Iran 30

Weet u nog? Het ging om deze man. Althans, dat was de officiele versie. De Asian Age bericht: 'U.S. backup plan: invade iran by land, air, water strikes Washington, April 16: The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a former US intelligence analyst disclosed on Sunday. William Arkin, who served as the US Army’s top intelligence mind on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against Iraq, said the plan is known in military circles as Tirannt, an acronym for "Theatre Iran Near Term." It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass destruction, Mr Arkin wrote in the Washington Post. US and British planners have already conducted a Caspian Sea war game as part of these preparations, the scholar said. "According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to Army General John Abizaid, now commander of Centcom, in 2002," Arkin wrote, referring to the Florida-based US central command. But preparations under Tirannt began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The plan has since been updated using information collected in Iraq. Air Force planners have modelled attacks against Iranian air defences, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal targets and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz.A follow-on Tirannt analysis, which began in October 2003, calculated the results of different scenarios to provide options to commanders, Mr Arkin wrote. The Marines, meanwhile, have come up with their own document called Concept of Operations that explores the possibility of moving forces from ship to shore without establishing a beachhead first. "Though the marine corps enemy is described only as a deeply religious revolutionary country named Karona, it is — with its Revolutionary Guards, WMD and oil wealth — unmistakably meant to be Iran," Mr Arkin said.' Lees verder: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12753.htm Of:
http://www.asianage.com/main.asp?layout=2&cat1=3&cat2=33&newsid=220056&RF=DefaultMain

Nederland en Afghanistan 52

Al Jazeera bericht: 'Forty-one Taliban and six police officers were killed in a battle in southern Afghanistan in an area where the Taliban's leader once lived, a governor said on Saturday.
In the insurgency-hit Helmand province, an official was killed in a Taliban ambush on Saturday, police said. Nine police and several Taliban were wounded in Friday's fighting in Sangisar, a town 40km (25 miles) southwest of Kandahar, said Asadullah Khalid, the provincial governor.
"Acting on intelligence reports that Taliban have gathered in Sangisar to plan an attack in Kandahar, we launched this operation Friday and the fighting continued from morning to evening," he said, according to the Associated Press. Taliban denial. However, a Taliban spokesman, in a telephone call to Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, rejected Khalid's account. Mohamed Hanif said 15 Afghan police and one Taliban fighter were killed in Friday's battle. Khalid said that although major fighting near Kandahar had ended and the area was under control, a search was under way to capture Taliban fighters who had fled to a nearby village.' Lees verder:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/963CB632-3EA5-4573-A894-97C52FE3DAC4.htm

Irak 66

Dahr Jamail schrijft: 'Baghdad Morgue Overflowing Daily. Baghdad - As sectarian killings continue to rise in Iraq, the central morgue in Baghdad is unable to keep up with the daily influx of bodies. The morgue is receiving a minimum of 60 bodies a day and sometimes more than 100, a morgue employee told IPS on condition of anonymity. "The average is probably over 85," said the employee on the morning of April 12, as scores of family members waited outside the building to see if their loved ones were among the dead.
The family of a man named Ashraf who had been taken away by the Iraqi police Feb. 16 anxiously searched through digital photographs inside the morgue. He then found what he was looking for.
"His two sons were killed when Ashraf was taken," said his uncle, 50-year-old Aziz. "Ashraf was a bricklayer who was simply trying to do his job, and now we see what has become of him in our new democracy."
Aziz found that the body of Ashraf was brought to the morgue Feb. 18 by the Iraqi police two days after he was abducted. The photographs of the body showed gunshot wounds in the head and bludgeon marks across the face. Both arms were apparently broken, and so many holes had been drilled into his chest that it appeared shredded. A report Oct. 29, 2004 in the British medical journal The Lancet had said that "by conservative assumptions, we think about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq."
In an update, Les Roberts, lead author of the report said Feb. 8 this year that there may have been 300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths since the invasion. Such findings seem in line with information IPS obtained at the Baghdad morgue. Morgue official said bodies unclaimed after 15 days are transferred to the cemetery administration to be catalogued, and then taken for burial at a cemetery in Najaf. As he spoke, three Iraqi police pick-up trucks loaded with about 10 bodies each arrived at the morgue. At the cemetery administration, an official told IPS: "From February 1 to March 31, we've logged and buried 2,576 bodies from Baghdad."' Lees verder:
http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000382.php#more Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041506B.shtml

Dick Cheney

De National Journal bericht: 'Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report. The March 2002 intelligence report was a debriefing of Wilson by the CIA's Directorate of Operations after Wilson returned from a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger to investigate claims, later proved to be unfounded, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation, according to government records. The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report. The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission. Both Libby and Cheney have repeatedly insisted that the vice president never encouraged, directed, or authorized Libby to disclose Plame's identity. In a court filing on April 12, Libby's attorneys reiterated: "Consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson [Plame] by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else." But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband. A spokesman for the vice president declined to comment. On April 5, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, asserted in a court filing that Joseph Wilson's July 6, 2003 op-ed piece in The New York Times criticizing the Bush administration's Iraq policies "was viewed in the office of Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."' Lees verder: http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0414nj3.htm Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041506Y.shtml

Iran 29

De Amerikaanse politica Dianne Feinstein schrijft: 'Confronting Iran. Will we learn from our mistakes and apply tough diplomacy - or rely once again on the failed doctrine of preemption?--Dianne Feinstein, California's senior US senator. Tehran this week claimed that it had enriched uranium, a first step toward nuclear weapons capability. The question now is whether the Bush administration has learned from its mistakes in Iraq, or will it set our nation on a road that leads to military confrontation with Iran? No one concerned about U.S. national security wants Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability. It would be a destabilizing force in the Middle East and throughout the world. That's exactly why we need strong American leadership, working toward a verifiable diplomatic solution. Instead, the administration reportedly is intent upon relying on the failed doctrine of preemption and new Pentagon planning that stokes the prospect of military conflict. If this is true, Americans ought to be deeply concerned. The doctrine of preemption, first articulated by President Bush at West Point in June 2002, was spelled out in the September 2002 National Security Strategy: "The greater the threat, the greater the risk of inaction - and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves."
Just a few weeks ago, the doctrine was reiterated in the latest National Security Strategy. According to this document, the U.S. may use force before it is attacked because the nation cannot afford to "stand idly by as grave dangers materialize." Yet it is the doctrine itself that is dangerous.
First, it demands that our intelligence be right - every time. This is difficult, if not impossible, in the shadowy world of terrorism and WMD. As we've seen in Iraq, intelligence not only can be wrong, it can be manipulated. Our nation's credibility and stature have taken a huge hit as a result, and the U.S. is in no position to garner support in the international community for military confrontation based on preemption.
Second, the doctrine of preemption may lead to a less stable world in general - especially if our adversaries believe they are safe from preemptive action only if they possess nuclear weapons. Iran has no doubt noted the difference in our dealings with North Korea, which possesses nuclear weapons, and Iraq, which the administration believed was still developing them. So the administration may have encouraged the very proliferation it is seeking to prevent. Third, an overreliance on preemption can lead to the downplaying of diplomacy. By the administration's own account, Iran is years away from possessing nuclear weapons; there is time to engage in forceful diplomatic action.' Lees verder:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-feinstein15apr15,0,7075952.story?coll=la-home-commentary Of:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041606Z.shtml

Amerikaans Terrorisme 12

De Amerikaanse journalist Chris Floyd schrijft: 'Dead Cities. Of all the war crimes that have flowed from the originating crime of President George W. Bush's unprovoked invasion of Iraq, perhaps the most flagrant was the destruction of Fallujah in November 2004. Now, as ignominious defeat looms for Bush's Babylonian folly, some of the key players in fomenting the war are urging that the "Fallujah Option" be applied to an even bigger target: Baghdad.What these influential warmongers openly call for is the "pacification" of Baghdad: a brutal firestorm by U.S. forces, ravaging both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in a "horrific" operation that will inevitably lead to "skyrocketing body counts," as warhawk Reuel Marc Gerecht cheerfully wrote last week in the ever-bloodthirsty editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal. Gerecht's war whoop quickly ricocheted around the right-wing media echo chamber and gave public voice to the private counsels emanating from a group whose members now comprise the leadership of the U.S. government: The Project for the New American Century.As oft noted here, PNAC was founded by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush, Zalmay Khalilzad and the now-indicted Lewis Libby, among others. In September 2000, they publicly called for sending U.S. forces into Iraq -- even if Saddam Hussein was already gone -- as well as planting new bases in Central Asia, putting weapons in space, building new nukes and funding a vast militarization of American society. Being such savvy inside players and all, they recognized that this lunatic program would not be accepted by the American people -- unless, of course, the nation was struck by a "catalyzing event" like "a new Pearl Harbor." Who says dreams don't come true?Gerecht, an ex-CIA man, is a senior fellow at PNAC. He was one of the many munchkins who laid the groundwork for the mass deception that led to the war by constantly undermining any CIA report that failed to conform to the warmongers' highly profitable fantasies of America's imminent destruction by the broken, toothless regime of Saddam Hussein. The intelligence services' many caveats about this bogus threat were placed directly on Bush's desk, as the National Journal reports, but the P-Nackers in the White House tossed them aside. They dreamed of war, and they got it.But the natives failed to play their part in the imperial masque macabre. As noted here last week, they have churlishly failed to show proper appreciation for being slaughtered, looted, tortured and controlled. Even the Shiites, hailed by the Bushists just a few weeks ago as salt-of-the-earth lovers of moderate democracy, are now denounced as hate-filled sectarians, even worse than the Sunni insurgents -- who are suddenly being courted by Bush's man in Baghdad, the P-Nacker Khalilzad, the BBC reports. Not that the Shiite death squads -- backed by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government -- have been all bad, mind you. Sure, they've been kidnapping Sunni civilians, drilling holes in their skulls, beheading them and then dumping the corpses on city streets or burying them in schoolyards. But all of this been "healthy," says Gerecht, because it has made the Sunnis and Kurds fear "Shiite power." Or something. To be honest, Gerecht's column is filled with so many canards, delusions and logical inconsistencies that it often leaves the plane of rational discourse altogether. But its import is clear: By daring to defy Washington's edicts, the Shiites have gotten too big for their britches and must be brought to heel, along with the rest of the scum who are making the Dear Leader look bad back home.' Lees verder: http://context.themoscowtimes.com/story/167359/ Of:
http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12734.htm