AIPAC

Ex-weapons inspector says Iran not pursuing nukes, but U.S. will attack before ‘09

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Jun 27, 2008

In 2002, Scott Ritter, the former chief United Nations weapons inspector In Iraq, publicly accused the Bush administration of lying to Congress and the public about assertions that Iraq was hiding a chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

By speaking out publicly, Ritter emerged as one of the most prominent whistleblowers since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in the early 1970s.

Ritter’s criticisms about the Bush administration’s flawed prewar Iraq intelligence have been borne out by numerous investigations and reports, including one recently published by the Senate Armed Services Committee that found President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other senior administration officials knowingly lied about the threat Iraq posed to the United States.

Now Ritter, who was a Marine Corps intelligence officer for 12 years, is speaking out about what he sees as history repeating itself regarding U.S. policy toward Iran and the inevitability of a U.S.-led attack on the country, which he believes will happen prior to a new president being sworn into office in January 2009.

“We’re going to see some military activity before the new administration is sworn in.” Ritter said. But he added that “Iran is not a threat to the United States and Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapons program. That’s documented.” Ritter teamed up with the Los Angeles-based U.S. Tour of Duty’s Real Intelligence, a nonprofit organization that represents former intelligence officials who openly discuss domestic and foreign policy issues. Ritter went on the road nearly a year ago to promote his recently published book, Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. But over the past several months, issues related to Iran have dominated his discussions.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Public Record, Ritter said he has been keeping close tabs on the issue for years and continues to approach the issue as if he were still employed as an intelligence officer. He explained why he believes the U.S. is gearing up toward launching a military strike in Iran and how the media has misrepresented a recent report by the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) regarding Iran’s continued enrichment of uranium.

AIPAC

He said one of the reasons he believes Democratic lawmakers have been reluctant to address the issue is the powerful Israeli lobby, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC has been pressuring the Bush administration to be even tougher on Iran. The lobby is largely responsible for drafting a resolution calling for stricter inspections and harsher economic sanctions against the country, which is expected to be voted on by the House next week.

Read moreEx-weapons inspector says Iran not pursuing nukes, but U.S. will attack before ‘09

Why “President Obama” will cause World War III

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OK, maybe the headline is a little misleading, but let me explain.

You’ve probably seen polls out this week that show Barack Obama opening up a lead in the race for the White House, quite possibly as large as double digits. That could change quickly — Michael Dukakis’ 17-point lead over George H.W. Bush in 1988 is now the stuff of legend — but with gas prices rising toward $5-a-gallon and Americans’ homes now worth less than they were 3 1/2 years ago, the GOP and the White House is well aware that there are big problems looming in November.

Which means only one thing.

We — or at least our closest regional ally, Israel — need to start a war with Iran! Pronto! As in, before January 20, 2009. For all the talk over the last generation of an “October surprise” in an American election, we’ve arguably never had one before. But things could be different this time in around.

I noted here recently that I’ve been avoiding some recent scare stories about planned military attacks on Iran’s incipient nuclear program, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I believe that while Dick Cheney clearly wants to strike Tehran, there are also now saner people within the Bush administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and many of the top Pentagon brass. And those recent reports have come from sources that have mixed credibility in my mind, Rupert Murdoch’s British papers and the Israeli press.

But this story comes from CBS News, and it’s alarming. There a new factor that’s been tossed into the mix, and has given Israeli leaders and the Cheney faction new life on the issue.

It’s “President Barack Obama.”

CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn’t want to wait for a new administration.

“The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize,” Oren said. “Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran.”

Israel’s message is simple: If you don’t, we will. Israel held a dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military analysts say Israel can not do it alone.

“Keep in mind that Israel does not have strategic bombers,” Oren said. “The Israeli Air Force is not the American Air Force. Israel can not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.”

The U.S. with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles has a much greater capability. Vice President Cheney is said to favor a strike, but both Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates are opposed to an attack which could touch off a third war in the region.

Mullen is Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, who left last night to meet with the Israelis. To be sure, Americans — including Obama, of course — and much of the rest of the world don’t want Iran to develop nuclear weapons; the nuclear club already has too many members. In fact, my sense after watching Obama’s recent speech to AIPAC is that his stance on that is tougher than people give him credit for. There are still positive memories of how Israel in a down-and-dirty 1981 airstrike was able to destroy a Saddam Hussein nuclear start-up in Iraq.

But this isn’t 1981. Tehran learned from Baghdad’s mistake — it’s nuclear start-up facilities are a lot better protected, and it would be hard to successfully strike them without significant civilian casualties, especially if, heaven forbid, tactical nuclear bombs were needed to reach them.

Read moreWhy “President Obama” will cause World War III

Senate report exposes key role of the Israel lobby in fomenting war with Iran

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Scott McClellan, the most significant defector from behind the Iron Curtain of the War Party’s domain, doesn’t think we were lied into war. According to him, it was all due to the “partisan” attitudes that dominate Washington discourse on every issue. As he puts it, “the permanent campaign” atmosphere made them do it: “I don’t think that this was some deliberate, conscious effort to mislead the American people.”

In an interview with Keith Olbermann the other night, he disdained the very idea as a “conspiracy theory.” McClellan seems to believe that the need to bias intelligence is inherent in the American political system, the inevitable consequence of the Washington ethos as defined by the struggle between the two major parties. He denies any “criminal intent” in the actions of the administration and its flunkies, and he trivializes the matter by referring to “people sitting around a table” making plans to dupe Congress and the American people. The evidence, however, points in the other direction, as “Phase Two” of the long-awaited and deliberately-delayed report of the Senate Intelligence Committee makes clear [.pdf].

In spite of Keith’s effusive reference to McClellan as “the Rosetta Stone” for helping us understand what we’ve endured during the past eight years, the former White House spokesman seems incapable of deciphering what he saw and participated in, as the first section of the “Phase Two” Senate report shows. All the prewar “talking points” of the administration, and the flimsy-to-nonexistent “evidence” used to back them up, are here debunked, and the pattern of deceit is all too clear. However, it is the second section of the report – which deals with the activities of the Office of Special Plans and other parallel intelligence-gathering operations set up by the neocons – that suggests something more sinister than extreme partisanship is motivating the actors in this drama of deception.

In 2001, as the wheels that would eventually drive us to war with Iraq began to turn, the groundwork was being laid for the inevitable denouement of that historic error: the present looming conflict with Iran.

Leafing through the story of the secret Rome meetings conducted by Michael Ledeen and Manucher Ghorbanifar – set up by a “foreign intelligence service,” as the report avers – this section of the Senate report reads like a spy thriller set in the future, a future in which we are about to go to war with Iran.

Neocon warlord Ledeen isn’t just one of the War Party’s most tireless polemicists. The fun part about being a foreign agent disguised as a “commentator” is that you get to rail away at the Bushies for not being enthusiastic enough about the Grand Plan of “liberating” the Middle East, demanding “faster, please!” Yet Ledeen isn’t just one of those armchair types who merely pontificates from his pundit’s perch: this student of Italian fascism is a man-of-action, too.

Indeed, that’s a considerable understatement. He and Ghorbanifar are longtime partners in crime, having been the two biggest spiders at the center of the Iran-Contra web, in which Ledeen and Ghorbanifar deployed their contacts in Israel – and within the Iranian government – to broker the mid-1980s arms-for-hostages deal.

Read moreSenate report exposes key role of the Israel lobby in fomenting war with Iran

Ron Paul: Nancy Pelosi pulled Iran bill on orders of Israel

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in a speech given on 06 june 2008, in reston, virginia, at the hyatt regency, reston, to the future of freedom foundation, ‘restoring the republic 2008: foreign policy and civil liberties’ conference,

Congressman Ron Paul, tells how speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, acting on orders of Israel and AIPAC, ‘deliberately’ pulled a supplemental bill requiring congressional approval for attacking Iran.

Source: You Tube

And the winner is … the Israel lobby

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Related article: Israel Gives America Go-Ahead To Invade Iran

WASHINGTON – They’re all here – and they’re all ready to party. The three United States presidential candidates – John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Madam House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most US senators and virtually half of the US Congress. Vice President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Embattled Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. And a host of Jewish and non-Jewish political and academic heavy-hitters among the 7,000 participants.

Such star power wattage, a Washington version of the Oscars, is the stock in trade of AIPAC – the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the crucial player in what is generally known as the Israel lobby and which holds its annual Policy Conference this week in Washington at which most of the heavyweights will deliver lectures.

Few books in recent years have been as explosive or controversial as The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, written by Stephen Walt from Harvard University and John Mearsheimer from the University of Chicago, published in 2007. In it, professors Walt and Mearsheimer argued the case of the Israeli lobby not as “a cabal or conspiracy that ‘controls’ US foreign policy”, but as an extremely powerful interest group made up of Jews and non-Jews, a “loose coalition of individuals and organizations tirelessly working to move US foreign policy in Israel’s direction”.

Walt and Mearsheimer also made the key point that “anyone who criticizes Israeli actions or says that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle East policy stands a good chance of being labeled an anti-Semite”. Anyone for that matter who “says that there is an Israeli lobby” also runs the risk of being charged with anti-Semitism.

All the candidates in the House say yeah
Republican presidential candidate McCain is opening this year’s AIPAC jamboree; Clinton and Obama are closing it on Wednesday. Walt and Mearsheimer’s verdict on the dangerous liaisons between presidential candidates and AIPAC remains unimpeachable: “None of the candidates is likely to criticize Israel in any significant way or suggest that the US ought to pursue a more evenhanded policy in the region. And those who do will probably fall by the wayside.”

Take what Clinton said in February at an AIPAC meeting in New York: “Israel is a beacon of what’s right in a neighborhood overshadowed by the wrongs of radicalism, extremism, despotism and terrorism.” A year before, Clinton was in favor of sitting and talking to Iran’s leadership.

Read moreAnd the winner is … the Israel lobby