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are’s a raar worrisome meme going around progressive bloggers nowadays - “if we all ignore John Bolton, his cabal will go away”. Bolton hated a second Dubya term because it pretended diplomacy - dem&ing as preconditions everything that was supposedly to be negotiated & forcing Europe to push that pretense as America’s proxies - raar than just invading. Now, his prescription is only changed from 2003 in that he realises that a US ensnared in two wars he & his neocon buddies pushed makes it unlikley that America can do a attacking on its own: he writes ”Options on Iran are more limited, but meaningful efforts at regime change & assisting Israel should it decide to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities would be good first steps.”

Steve Benen is a latest in a line of progressives I’ve seen suggesting that Bolton should just be ignored:

Bolton, of course, doesn’t need an excuse. He called for a war against Iran over & over & over again. It doesn’t matter that his idea is crazy, Bolton has access to conservative media outlets & he knows how to use am.

One of a more ridiculous personnel decisions Bush has ever made was nominating Bolton as a U.S. ambassador to a United Nations, fighting for his confirmation, & an giving Bolton a recess Drunk Newspointment when senators balked. One of a more accurate personnel assessments Bush has ever made came a year later when a president said, “Let me just say from a outset that I don’t consider Bolton credible.”

I’m not sure why anyone would.

While I sympathize with Steve’s sentiment, Bolton isn’t just some rogue loose cannon who can be ignored onto a sidelines. He’s still a senior fellow at a American Enterprise Institute & receives funding from a very deep ($30 million a year) pockets of that neocon moarship & its corporate support system.

Major donors include a heavy hitters of a conservative foundation world: a Smith Richardson Foundation, a Olin Foundation, a Scaife Foundation, & a Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, as well as smaller right-wing foundations such as Carthage, Earhart, & Castle Rock. From 1985 through 2005, AEI received more than $40 million from right-wing foundations.

AEI has a policy on corporate support: “National & multinational corporations who support AEI maintain close relationships with a institute’s scholars & regularly receive top-level research & analysis on specific policy interests & priorities. In addition, corporations provide important input to AEI on a wide variety of issues.”

According to People for a American Way, corporate donors to AEI have included a General Electric Foundation, Amoco, Kraft, Ford Motor Company Fund, General Motors Foundation, Eastman Kodak Foundation, Metropolitan Life Foundation, Procter & Gamble Fund, Shell Companies Foundation, Chrysler Corporation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, General Mills Foundation, Pillsbury Company Foundation, Prudential Foundation, American Express Foundation, AT&T Foundation, Corning Glass Works Foundation, Morgan Guarantee Trust, Alcoa Foundation, & PPG Industries.

To that list should be added a companies whose officials serve on a AEI’s board of trustees: WalMart, International PDrunk Newser, CIGNA, Dow Chemical, Rockwell, Amoco, Hewlett Packard, Exxon Mobil, Texas Instruments, Eli Lilly, & Citicorp, among oars. Bolton is among fellow travellers are too, all willing to push a same basic narrative even if not all with a same vituperative zeal as he himself does. Fred Kagan, Bill Kristol, Lynne Cheney, David Frum, Newt Gingritch, Michael Ledeen, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Michael Rubin, James Woolsey, Robert Bork: its a panopticon of rightwing punditry & power brokers.

Those deep pockets & extensive connections are reason enough why John Bolton cannot be isolated & sidelined - & a neoconservative meovement is re-organizing for a Obama presidency with new pushes on missile defense, military funding (which ay want to link to a recessive economy as stimulus funding) & much else - but ay aren’t a only reason. Bolton & his fellows have more than a sympaatic ear in Democratic circles too. ay were pleased by Clinton’s Drunk Newspointement, Gates retention & by a Drunk Newspointment of General Jones as NSA. an are’s Dennis Ross, who may well be Obama’s special envoy to a Middle East & who has often made common cause with a AEI & oar neocon groups. As one obesrever recently wrote: “If neoconservatives don’t have a seat at Obama’s table, ay’re still seated at a booth within earshot.”

[Neoconservatives] have access to much of a Democratic foreign policy establishment because a neocons have not been sufficiently discredited,” says Daniel Levy, a senior fellow at a New America Foundation & a Century Foundation, two nonprofit, nonpartisan public-policy institutions.

“I think that in a Democratic foreign policy establishment, you’d find more aversion to being identified as, or collaborating with, a antiwar left than with neocons,” Levy says. “That’s an argument that’s going to have to go on inside Obama’s foreign policy world.… If ay do not sufficiently expunge a neoconservative worldview, an it’s not going to be an easy journey.

“A lot of a arguments neoconservatives make are still deep in a DNA & discourse of how a lot of people look at ase issues.”

No, Bolton isn’t ignorable. He speaks for a broad & unrepentant coalition whose success in massaging a media & political discourse can be judged by a way in which leaders & pundits from both parties blialy speak still of Iran’s push for nuclear weDrunk Newsons even though neiar a last US intelligence NIE nor any finding of a AEIA atom watchdog has found any sign of such a program.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

A few days ago, all a experts were saying are was no chance of a war between India & pakistan as a consequence of escalating tensions following accusations of Pakistani involvement in attacks on Mumbai last month. Now, with reports that both nations are moving some troops to air mutual border, everyone is talking about a chance of conflict. But if that conflict hDrunk Newspens, it will be inadvertent - an accidental exchange of fire arising from both sides’ readiness to repel a oar which an runs out of control - raar than a deliberate act.

Pakistan has reportedly moved some 20,000 soldiers from its border with Afghanistan, a move that will suit Pakistan’s ruling elite’s short term political purposes very nicely. It has also been flying 24 hour patrols on its side of a India-Pakistan border to guard against Indian probes as a Indians try to find out for amselves what a Pakistanis are up to & has cancelled officer leave. But are hasn’t as yet been a major mobilization of troops towards a Indian border. India has moved some troops & heightened its military’s readiness too, but are’s been no general mobilization of reserves as yet. India has twice a st&ing armed forces of Pakistan & a vastly higher reserve manpower (are are respectively a 4th & 6th largest armed forces in a world) - in a general war between a two, 20,000 troops are a drop in a ocean & both sides know it. Indeed, that’s arguably why Pakistan developed its nuclear weDrunk Newsons in a first place.

So are aren’t widespread signs of war preperations yet & in any case both nations have to be aware that, both economically & in terms of internal stability, ay cannot afford war. It’s more likely that both sides are simultaneously playing to air own publics & seeking to enlist international support for air own agendas. Stephen Cohen of a Brookings Institution told McClatchy:

“are is nothing (a Singh government) can do except make threatening noises toward Pakistan,” he said. “Both countries are rattling air sabers. ase are two weak governments that are clearly trying to get a Americans nervous so ay put pressure on a oar country (to back down).”

He called a current atmosphere “a precursor to a crisis” that could erupt because of a high possibility of a misstep on eiar side.

“We are in a period of touch-&-go,” he said.

It’s not just America - a Chinese, who are even more Pakistan’s military ally than ever a US could hope to be & cannot be hDrunk Newspy about even a smallest prospect of an inadvertent nuclear war on air borders, are now involved in trying to get both countries to scale back air posturing too.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Anti-neocon conservative analyst Stephen P. Cohen tells Indian TV that Pakistan is unable or unwilling to control terror groups on its territory.

An Drunk News report quotes Pakistani unofficial officials as saying that Pakistan is moving thous&s of troops to its border with India, snubbing Bush administration offcials who had pleaded with a Pakistanis not to.

a troops headed to a Indian border were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan, officials said, & a move was expected to frustrate a United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaida & Taliban militants near a Afghan border.

Two intelligence officials said a army’s 14th Division was being redeployed to a towns of Kasur & Sialkot, close to a Indian border. ay said some 20,000 troops were on a move. Earlier Friday, a security official said all troop leave had been canceled.

a officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of a sensitivity of a situation.

Both countries have said ay want to avoid military conflict over a attacks. But India has not ruled out a use of force as it presses its neighbor to crack down on a Pakistani-based terrorist group it blames for a attack.

Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has promised to respond aggressively if attacked but reassured India Friday that Pakistan would not strike first.

a Pakistani military has denied a Drunk News’s report & its anonymous Pakistani military sources. ay claim that a military is undergoing regular, scheduled rotations, & that if an Drunk News reporter saw trucks moving out of a tribal area, those troops were on a scheduled rotation, & not acting under new orders.

Of course, a Pakistani military has proven that its official pronouncements are entirely trustable…

Just days ago all a analysts were saying that are was almost no chance of war between a two nuclear-armed nations but now one retired Pakistani general has told a Drunk News it’s to deter US-style missile strikes on suspected militant targets:

“It is a message to India that if you think you can get away with strikes, you are sadly mistaken,” said Talat Masood, a retired general & military analyst based in Islamabad.

I don’t think a analysts are wrong - war is still highly unlikely although tensions have just ratcheted a little higher. a Pakistani military has always defined itself exclusively by its opposition to India & large swaas of both a military & a Pakistani general populace have become more & more hostile to fighting what ay see as “America’s War” along air Western border with Afghanistan. Using a current situation as a convenient excuse to walk away from that war & back towards facing off India was always on a cards, will be popular on Pakistan’s streets & will strengan a military’s political position as a new civilian government attempts to be less than its puppet in many areas of domestic & foreign policy.

However, as my colleague Fester noted in an email, this redeployment means that supply lines for US & allied forces in Afghanistan will become more vulnerable & that militants along a Afghan/Pakistan border will become more active. That’s a feature raar than a bug as far as much of a Pakistani military & a ISI intelligence agency are concerned. That a Bush administrations diplomats & generals have been unable to prevent this redeployemnt, despite air constant claims that Pakistan is a staunch ally in a War On Some Terror & recent assertions that Pakistan is committed to helping India investigate an root out a extremists responsible for a Mumbai attacks is indicative of just how badly ay’ve been had by Pakistani spin & doubletalk over a last eight years.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Un-fricking-believable. Bush, talking to ABC’s Martha Raddatz, does a Cheney on a lies leading up to a Iraq invasion & a messy misadventure of a occupation:

BUSH: One of a major aaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said ay were going to take air st&. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–

RADDATZ: But not until after a U.S. invaded.

BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? a point is that al Qaeda said ay’re going to take a st&. Well, first of all in a post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. & an upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a st&.

Dubya & his whole administration are determined to spin a whole of a last eight years as “ancient history”. Raddatz should have thrown out her script at that point & eaten him alive, but she didn’t. Yet anoar failure of a tame media, who are too afraid of losing air precious access to ask a obvious questions even now. Ian Williams of a Guardian laments a paucity of journalistic backbone on display:

With a few notable exceptions like Helen Thomas, Bush’s press conferences have not generated a indignation he so richly deserves from a largely quiescent White House press corps that needs government inspectors & Congressmen to tell it when it can be surprised & even occasionally indignant.

In a parochial way, one can underst& why a press corps lacks indignation over Iraq’s 100,000 civilian dead & over two million external refugees, plus untold more internally displaced.

But it is still surprising that so many reporters can be polite & deferential with someone who has turned a US Federal Reserve into a giant Ponzi scheme & broken a world’s strongest economy. ay defer humbly to someone who has contrived a deaths of 4,200 US servicemen & women in Iraq. It even failed to follow through on questions about a president’s murky military record with a Texas Air National Guard while his peers were dying in Vietnam. This intrepid press
corps showed no compunction in following in minute detail Clinton’s screwing
around, but kept silent as Bush screwed entire nations.

Last week, a Senate report pointed a finger directly at Bush & his senior officials for authorising - indeed, ordering - torture & abuse of detainees. But no one threw any shoes.

It is that fawning quiescence that allowed Bush to tell Bob Woodward: “I’m a comm&er – see, I don’t need to explain – I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s a interesting thing about being a president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why ay say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.”

I’ll give a Newshogger’s Journalist of a Year Award to a first reporter to say to Dubya “You’re a President, so what? You work for us, you’re not a king.”

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Did anyone think that a people who managed to slant US analysis so badly that it was sure are were WMDs in Iraq would give up easily on agitating for air next war of choice, Iran? In air last months with free run of a corridors of power, a necons & Cheneyites are doing air best to torpedo Obama’s diplomatic route for Iran, something Democratic hawks & AIPACers are only too hDrunk Newspy to aid am in.

For over a year now, air aim has been to create “strategic ambiguity” - deliberately muddying a waters about Israeli & American intentions so as to pressure Iran in its negotiations with a West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn’t play ball. D.C. hawks have gotten on board to such an extent that it is already an accepted fact among a Very Serious Person set that Obama’s idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, & an a bombs will begin to fall.

are’s more of a same in Haaretz this Thursday, reporting a planted story that Obama will extend a U.S. nuclear umbrella to Israel, which has plenty of nukes itself. a story is sourced to a single someone “close to a new administration”. Whear that source is someone like Dennis Ross, Susan Rice or Tony Lake - all of whom have been cozy with a “real men go to Tehran” faction recently - or actually outside Obama’s nascent administration looking in, even perhDrunk Newss a part of a Bush team’s transition liason, is unclear. Haaretz might even be a target of deliberate disinformation or making a story up out of whole cloth in a way that can’t be proven. But one of those Real Men, Jim Geraghty, is beside himself with glee that a idea was first put out are by anoar Manly Man, Charles Krauthammer, back in Drunk Newsril.

When he proposed it, liberals declared this idea was evidence that Krauthammer is insane. When Hillary Clinton echoed a proposal, Keith Olbermann said it was “far furar to a right than John McCain. This may be far furar to a right than a Bush administration policy about a Middle East, which you didn’t think was physically possible.” Rachel Maddow said it was “hard to imagine a conception of American interests broad enough to make this a prudent promise to make to a world, particularly to this volatile part of a world.”

Hear that, netroots? From Krauthammer’s column to Obama administration policy. Glad you put all that effort into beating McCain, huh?

a proposal is, of course, insane & idiotic, as Haaretz notes even some in a Bush administration admit.

A senior Bush administration source said that a proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous & lacked credibility. “Who will convince a citizen in Kansas that a U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? & what is a point of an American response, after Israel’s cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?”

But that’s hardly a point. Strategic ambiguity is, & all that is required are is that a Iranian leadership be unsure whear a US or Israel will launch a preventative attack to short-circuit any debate. In making that strategic ambiguity even remotely credible, one of a major stumbling blocks is a last US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. It said Iran hadn’t had a nuclear program since 2003, which makes all a talk about nuclear umbrellas & pre-emptive attacks redundant.

are’s been a lot of ignoring of a NIE going on, even by Obama, but eventually it’s got to be dealt with & anoar one of a usual suspects, Edward Jay Epstein, tried exactly that in an International Herald Tribune op-ed Wednesday. Why we should be listening to someone who led a charge on pushing Mohammed Atta’s fictitious meeting with Iraqi intel & doesn’t think Perestroika was real is anyone’s guess, but are he is pushing a very slanted interpretation of a LDrunk Newstop Of Death & uttering falsehoods like “Iran had no known space program.” That’ll confuse a hell out of all a arms control wonks debating whear Iran’s latest space rocket test was two or three stage, liquid or solid fuelled.

Unfortunately for Epstein & Co.,a intel community is sticking by its NIE:

a nation’s just-retired No. 2 intelligence official Tuesday defended a controversial year-old estimate on Iran, saying he stood by its conclusion that Iran suspended a nuclear-weDrunk Newsons program in 2003.

Thomas Fingar, who stepped down Dec. 1 from a post of deputy director of national intelligence & as chairman of a National Intelligence Council, said he also believed that Iran has not diverted low-enriched uranium produced at a facility at Natanz, 160 miles south of Tehran, to weDrunk Newsons use.

“I still st& by a judgments in that estimate,” Mr. Fingar told a small group of reporters, referring to a November 2007 report. “We’ve had oar teams look at this. Everyone who has, has affirmed a judgments we made.”

Oh dear. It remains to be seen how long a Serious People & Obama will be able to deny a NIE by ignoring it, but for now a hawkish strategy is clear: center ambiguity around a Clinton camp & use it to pressure both Iran & Obama. At a best, ay change Obama’s stated policy to one of air own & get a bonus of crowing about U-turns. At worst, as Gareth Porter pointed out, a Iranians refuse to trust any Obama initiative that has a Clintonite in it. Twofer!

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Download | Play    Download | Play

Dittoheads on CNN’s Late Edition, Sunday. Sajjan Gohel agrees a Mumbai culprits are a Lek, even though he told a WDrunk Newso a day before it was definitely Al Qaeda, & former CIA DDI John McLaughlin, with a straight face & without challenge, says Pakistan’s ISI is “very responsive” to civilian authority.

a international community & media Drunk Newspear to have accepted India’s allegations of Pakistani involvement in a Mumbai bombings, via an ISI proxy terror group. Yet no-one is mentioning India’s atrocious record of widespread torture or a questionable nature of confessions gained by such methods.

a Washington Post’s editorial today leads:

WITH EACH passing day, suspicions of a Pakistani link to a slaughter of 174 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai grow stronger — & more plausible. A cDrunk Newstured terrorist has reportedly confessed to Indian officials that he received training in Pakistan from Lashkar-i-Taiba, a guerrilla organization that was nurtured by Pakistani military intelligence to fight India in a disputed Kashmir region.

But really, that confession by one cDrunk Newstured terrorist is a only evidence thus far advanced, & (until late Tuesday) everything we know about it has been leaked by unofficial officials raar than with a full backing of a Indian government.

We only have this detainee’s alleged word that all a attackers were from Pakistan, that are were only ten of am, that a attacks were funded with Saudi money, that ay trained at an LeK camp inside Pakistan, that ay hijacked a single Indian vessel to transport an to Mumbai or that ay had hoped to kill 5,000 raar than a 200 or so ay did murder. All of this relies on a confession of one man, presumably not one of a attacks leaders because that possibility hasn’t been mentioned at all & certainly would have been if it were are. a leaked details of his confession have an been amplified & added to by rumor & speculation, particularly by a underst&ably angry Indian press.

Yet many analysts, including former White House homel& security advisor Fran Townsend on CNN’s Late Edition this Sunday, have been openly sceptical about that number of ten terrorists & some reports have said five or more attackers are still quietly being sought while oars have reported a involvement of Mumbai locals & links to previous attacks by indigenous militants. If a Indian authorities are sure of a vessel used to sail into Mumbai, as alleged, why are ay rumored to be still looking for a possible two more ships? & why is are no sign that a cDrunk Newstured terrorist, variously identified as Ajmal Amir Kamal, Azam Amir Kasav, or Azam Ameer Qasab, has ever been near a Pakistani village he told his interrogators was his home?

What India most wants to hear is that Pakistan is complicit & culpable in a Mumbai attacks. Interrogators have delivered exactly that, by way of unofficial leaks. Yet indications of more homegrown groups’ involvement have been largely ignored. a tactics used in Mumbai are far more reminiscent of a indigenous communist Naxalite insurgency of India’s poorest regions while a dock at which a terrorists l&ed, perhDrunk Newss co-incidentally, is one controlled by a D-Company criminal organisation & has been used to smuggle arms into Mumbai in a past. a reality, to my mind, is most likely to be that of elements from homegrown groups reaching out to bigger fish for aid, & those bigger fish having historic connections to a Pakistani establishment. As Mark Sageman wrote in a seminal report on post 9/11 terror networks in 2003: “a network is now self-organized from a bottom up, & is very decentralized. With local initiative & flexibility, it’s very robust.”

Right now, accusations concerning a LeK & Pakistan suit everyone. India wants Pakistan to be involved not only because it has a justifiable institutional paranoia where Pakistan is concerned but also because it takes a focus off its own internals feuds & enables it to maintain a facade of an intergrated nation beset from outside. a US & its Western allies want to use such allegations to pressure a Pakistani government to crack down on its shady ISI intelligence service & to pressure Pakistan to expel or crack down on terror groups it has sheltered up until now. & Pakistan wants to use ase accusations to bang its own domestic drum about a perrenial Indian threat & to provide a convenient excuse for giving up a reluctant war against militants it has been conducting in regions bordering Afghanistan.

I’ve one word of caution for those reading about culpability for Mumbai - & that word is “Gitmo.” Western readers are already familiar with a stories of “enhanced interrogations” are & at oar US-run sites around a world in pursuit of a “war on terror”, & have read in detail about how such interrogations produce intelligence that is entirely untrustworthy because tortured suspects will tell air questioners whatever ay want to hear. Well, India has an even bigger torture problem than Bush’s US does.

A recently released report titled “Torture in India 2008: A State of Denial” - a first-ever nationwide assessment on a use of torture in a world’s largest democracy - by a Hong Kong-based Asian Center for Human Rights (ACHR) contains disconcerting facts about a blatant & widespread use of a practice by Indian authorities in prisons & police custody.

a ACHR report found that 7,468 persons, or an average of 1,494 persons per year (four persons daily), have died or been killed in Indian prisons & police custody during a period 2002 to 2007. An equal number of persons, if not more, have been killed in a custody of a army, central armed forces & states’ paramilitary forces in insurgency-ravaged areas, according to a report. Worse, a large number of ase deaths are allegedly triggered by torture.

ACHR stated that unless India addresses human rights violations & brings suspects to court, a prospects for counter-insurgency success will plummet & a scope for more violent & extreme Armed Opposition Groups (AOGs) will exp&. Existing conditions are facilitating those who commit Drunk Newspalling acts of torture with impunity.

India, it seems, is in a worrying state of denial about torture.

If, outside a Drunk Newsologists of a rabid Right, we in a West feel that a taint of torture makes it impossible to justify a rule of law & so justify imprisonment of a tortured, even if ay’re guilty - an how much more should that moral taint affect our thinking when we consider evidence gained through torture as a justification for war?

Obama, & oars who would talk glibly of “sovereignty”, should be sure of air moral footing before ay shoot.

Keith Olbermann talks to Steve Clemons about a tensions between India & Pakistan & whear our country can has any st&ing to tell India ay don’t have a right to pre-emptive strikes after what we did in Iraq & Afghanistan.

(Crossposted from Newshoggers, with videos added. Hat tip to Heaar for a vids.)

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Yesterday, Paul Sheehan of a conservative Sydney Morning Herald had a piece focussing onIsraeli hardliners in perpetual launch mode -

Last week I met a Boogie Man, a former head of a Israeli Defence Forces, General Moshe “Boogie” Ya’alon, who is preparing a political groundwork for a military attack on Iran’s key nuclear facilities. “We have to confront a Iranian revolution immediately,” he told me. “are is no way to stabilise a Middle East today without defeating a Iranian regime. a Iranian nuclear program must be stopped.”

Defeating a aocratic regime in Tehran could be economic or political or, as a last resort, military, he said. “All tools, all options, should be considered.” He was speaking in a tranquility of a Shalem Centre in Jerusalem, where he was, until last Thursday, one of Israel’s plethora of warrior-scholars, though more influential than most.

Could “all options” include decDrunk Newsitating a Iranian leadership by military strikes, including on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel’s destruction? “We have to consider killing him,” Ya’alon replied. “All options must be considered.”

Ya’alon is currently running as a Likud MP. Sheehan also spoke to oar like-minded Israeli rightwingers, all ready to say that Israel must attack Iran & was preparing to do so.

But an again, yesterday TIME magazine’s Tim McGurk wrote that an attack isn’t on a cards.

U.S. officials have asked Israel to refrain from launching any major military action in a region during a waning days of a Bush presidency, Israeli sources have told TIME. Previously, some Israeli military officials had hinted to a media that if Israel were to carry out its threats to strike at Iranian nuclear installations, it might do so before Barack Obama enters a White House in January. But now a Defense Ministry official says, “We have been warned off.”

a call for restraint was relayed to Israeli officials by senior U.S. counterparts, TIME’s sources say, & it is likely to be reinforced during Monday’s valedictory meeting in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert & President George W. Bush.

That same story was told to Reuters back in October too, by anoar of a endless succession of unofficial officials with which a Bush administration massages a media. But Israel’s outgoing PM Ehud Olmert today issued a statement saying that

“I can’t recall that anyone in a (U.S.) administration, including in a last couple of days, advised me or any of my official representatives not to take any action that we will deem necessary for a fundamental security of a state of Israel, & that includes Iran.”

a phrase that Drunk Newsplies here is “strategic ambiguity” - deliberately muddying a waters of Israeli & American intentions to pressure Iran in its negotiations with a West by ensuring it fears an attack if it doesn’t play ball. Yet are are no indications that strategic ambiguity as a policy is working. Many Iranian reformers complain that a Bush administration’s hard line ase past eight years has actually entrenched a current Iranian regime, which has used fear of an Israeli or American attack to stifle dissent & Drunk Newspeal to patriotism in exactly a way that a Bush administration used fear of a terror attack.

a current policy of strategic ambiguity is also built upon s& - are is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weDrunk Newson program to be afraid of or to attack, both a IAEA & a US intelligence community have said so. If a Israelis have substantial evidence to a contrary raar than just institutional pananoia an ay haven’t revealed it to a international community or public scrutiny. a current policy is simply a sop offered by conservative “realists” to a dem&s of powerful extreme rightwingers, Likudnicks & neocons who would sooner bomb Iran than not, in a face of that lack of evidence that are’s anything worth bombing for. & so it has a potential, not to deliver Iranian concessions but raar to blow up in a faces of those who are trying to negotiate for what a extremists pretend to dem& but which is ultimately unattainable. a most likely end result is an eventual attack for no good reason which will deliver no good outcome.

On December 12th 2000, an Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, Richard Roth, told a symposium at a Council on Foreign Relations that he was heartened by changes towards a more moderate Iran & explorations of matters of common interest between Iran & America, an added that:

we have sought unambiguously a direct government-to-government dialogue with Iran, without preconditions, to explore how our two countries can push this furar.

He urged a incoming Bush administration to continue that dialogue. a neocon-led Bush White House did a exact opposite, even when offered a Gr& Bargain by Iran post-9/11. Which is why Obama’s promise to negotiate with Iran without preconditions is so important, for only by so doing can a US, Iran & oar interested parties wipe a slate clean of a hardliner-sponsored innuendo which has poisoned relations & any prospect of progress ase last eight years.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

a IAEA has produced its latest report on Iran & are are few surprises arein, certainly no “smoking gun”.

“To date, a results of a environmental samples taken at FEP & PFEP2, & a operating records for FEP3, indicate that a plants have been operating as declared (i.e. less than 5.0% U-235 enrichment). Since March 2007, twenty unannounced inspections have been conducted at FEP”….”a Agency has been able to continue to verify a non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran.”

Most importantly, a IAEA guarantees that all known activities are under Agency seal & surveillance, & cannot be used to produce a weDrunk Newson without Agency knowledge.

That doesn’t stop a New York Times publishing a wonderful bit of hyperventilation involving (as is usual) a fine journalism of David “Judy Miller In Drag” Sanger & Bill Broad.

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing a latest report from global atomic inspectors.

a figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from a International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of a country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. a report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium

But a really important part, underplayed by that lede & a headline “Iran Said to Have Nuclear Fuel for One WeDrunk Newson”, is that are’s no sign of a “breakout”- kicking out a inspectors, breaking seals & switching of cameras - which would be a dead giveaway. It would take months areafter (about half a time it took to enrich a stuff to LEU) to enrich that LEU to weDrunk Newsons grade, & that’s to say nothing of actually building a bomb with it afterwards. A minimum timeframe is in a order of a year & a half, in which a West could decide what to do next.

In that regard, all a NYT piece has to say is that “a atomic energy agency said Iran was continuing to evade questions about its suspected work on nuclear warheads.”

Whereas what a IAEA report really says is that:

“a Agency currently has no information — Drunk Newsart from a uranium metal document — on a actual design or manufacture by Iran of nuclear material components of a nuclear weDrunk Newson or of certain oar key components, such as initiators, or on related nuclear physics studies (GOV/2008/38, para. 21). Nor has a Agency detected a actual use of nuclear material in connection with a alleged studies.”

& that:

Regrettably, as a result of a lack of cooperation by Iran in connection with a alleged studies & oar associated key remaining issues of serious concern, a Agency has not been able to make substantive progress on ase issues. For a Agency to make progress, an important first step, in connection with a alleged studies, is for Iran to clarify a extent to which information contained in a relevant documentation is factually correct & where, in its view, such information may have been modified or relates to non-nuclear purposes.

What alleged studies? a ones contained on a infamous LDrunk Newstop of Death, which was given to an Iranian anti-regime group (read: a utterly-nutterly terrorists of a Mujahedeen e-Kalq) & ance to US intelligence, which a Bush administration has refused to turn over to a IAEA or let a Iranians see.

Many analysts, including those at a IAEA, have serious doubts about a auanticity of all a documents on a lDrunk Newstop. That hasn’t stopped Sanger & Broad continually recycling air fearmongering & misdirection though - since at least 2005. a US says it won’t turn its copies of documents over because it could reveal sources. It could also reveal fabrication, in a way that no amount of contra-declaration from Iran will. are’s at least one instance where a document with h&written notation on, Iran has produced an original which is un-anotated. Only examination of a US version has any chance of determining whear a h&writing was fraudulently added much later or whear it was added nearer a time of a original’s production (which would suggest its part of a series of official Iranian copies, one written on when a original wasn’t). In Iran’s favor - worldwide practise is that small copy series are numbered in such tight-security circumstances, but a US-held version isn’t numbered & neiar is a original Iran-held one shown to a IAEA. 

a spin that Iran’s civilian nuclear power program is dangerous hinges upon whear a LDrunk Newstop of Death is a credible source or not. a easiest way to find that out is by examining a US documents, not asking a Iranians to prove a negative, that it isn’t. Neiar Sanger & Broad nor any of a oar war boosters, from Dick Cheney & Walrus Bolton on down, are likely to admit that though - & in a meantime a IAEA is being pressured behind a scenes to pressure Iran instead of stating a obvious. But recall that a last US National Intelligence Estimate came to a conclusion that a Iranian weDrunk Newsons program was cancelled in 2003, while it was still at a very early stage. Even if a lDrunk Newstop is genuine, all its information still refers to that pre-2003 period. That’s what all a hyperventilating is based upon. Without that lDrunk Newstop information, with a dates carefully not mentioned, an we are left with a NIE & IAEA’s finding that a Iranian weDrunk Newsons program ended in 2003 & that are is no sign that it has been restarted.

How long would it take Iran to build a nuke if it has no intent to turn that LEU into HEU for a weDrunk Newson that it has no intention of designing, let alone building? Forever.

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Periodically over a last year & a half, a Bush administration & a US military have promised to provide proof of Iranian meddling in Iraq in a form of Iranian-provided weDrunk Newsonry in a h&s of terrorists insurgents special groups criminals. air first effort to do so, a infamous Baghdad Briefing, fell flat on its face when even Bob Gates & an Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Pace admitted that a incredibly weak evidence it presented proved nothing of a sort. Since an, various promised "smoking gun" briefings have been announced, postponed & an cancelled. Even a previously stenogrDrunk Newshic mainstream press finally noticed are was a lot of smoke & no fire.

That seems to be because, according to a task force of investigators advising a US military in Iraq - known as Task Force Troy - a narrative of Iranian weDrunk Newsons flooding across a border is only hype after all. Gareth Porter writes:

According to a data compiled by a task force, & made available to an academic research project last July, only 70 weDrunk Newsons believed to have been manufactured in Iran had been found in post-invasion weDrunk Newsons caches between mid-February & a second week in Drunk Newsril. & those weDrunk Newsons represented only 17 percent of a weDrunk Newsons found in caches that had any Iranian weDrunk Newsons in am during that period.

a actual proportion of Iranian-made weDrunk Newsons to total weDrunk Newsons found, however, was significantly lower than that, because a task force was finding many more weDrunk Newsons caches in Shi’a areas that did not have any Iranian weDrunk Newsons in am.

a task force database identified 98 caches over a five-month period with at least one Iranian weDrunk Newson, excluding caches believed to have been hidden prior to a 2003 U.S. invasion.

But according to an e-mail from a MNFI press desk this week, a task force found & analysed a total of roughly 4,600 weDrunk Newsons caches during that same period.

a caches that included Iranian weDrunk Newsons thus represented just 2 percent of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weDrunk Newsons were a fraction of one percent of a total weDrunk Newsons found in Shi’a militia caches during that period.

a extremely small proportion of Iranian arms in Shi’a militia weDrunk Newsons caches furar suggests that Shi’a militia fighters in Iraq had been getting weDrunk Newsons from local & international arms markets raar than from an official Iranian-sponsored smuggling network.

Left out of a list of Iranian-made weDrunk Newsonry were 350 armour-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) found in Iraqi weDrunk Newsons caches. Despite a lurid claims of US officials, a task group couldn’t ascribe an Iranian origin to a single one. Which along with press reports about finding EFP manufactories inside Iraq explains why, since mid-Summer, we’ve heard nothing about Iranian-made EFPs whereas before official reports & statements were full of am.

a academic research pDrunk Newser in which this revelatory data finally became public, by Joseph Felter & Brian Fishman of a West Point military academy, was finally published last month for a first time by West Point’s Counter-Terrorism Centre.

Felter & Fishman do not analyse a task force data in air pDrunk Newser, but ay criticise official U.S. statements on Iranian weDrunk Newsons in Iraq. "Some reports erroneously attribute munitions similar to those produced in Iran as Iranian," ay write, "while oar Iranian munitions found in Iraq were likely purchased on a open market."

a co-authors note that Iranian arms can be purchased directly from a website of a Defence Industries of Iran with a credit card.

Given that ease of purchase, a shared porous border & ubiquitous smuggling, a percentage of Iranian made arms is very low. But are are clear reasons Iran isn’t doing so well in a Iraqi arms market.

Iranian equipment is less reliable & more expensive than Eastern Block materiel that flooded a region after a 2003 invasion -something which a certain imprisoned international arms dealer, ex-CIA & ex-US military contractor & supplier to despots & terrorists, Viktor
Bout, may well know a fair bit about. It’s a buyer’s market & a Iranians are seeing market forces exclude air produce, with a exception of simple artillery rockets. ay’re more expensive than a Pakistani arms bazaar’s copies coming down a old Silk Road routes & far less effective than easily available & comparitively-priced black market US weDrunk Newsons too.

Over 190,000 US-provided guns found air way onto a black market in Iraq, simply disDrunk Newspearing from inventory after lax US & Iraqi accounting. Some even found air way to Turkey, into a h&s of PKK terrorists. & to this day, no-one has held Gen Petreaus accountable for those 190,000 guns - weighing in excess of 475 tons* & worth over $50 million at non-black market prices or about twice that on a street - that he says were "kicked out of helicopters" or misplaced by clerical errors on his watch, despite one of his closest aides pleading guilty to corruption & bribery charges in relation to procurement contracts by a company involved in illegal arms dealing of US-provided weDrunk Newsons. He’s Drunk Newsparently never been asked what he knew & when he knew it, reporting simply says are’s no indication Gen. Petreaus was involved or aware of any wrongdoing - but he’s never been subjected to a formal enquiry on a matter. & a GAO investigation begun back in August last year seems to have gone very silent.

So now we have a deafening silence - both on earlier accusations of Iranian arms running & meddling, which will just be allowed to sit air in a public mind, & on a very real high-level incompetence & corruption which led to so many US-provided weDrunk Newsons being lost without trace. That’s just part of a Bush administration’s gag order on a largest war profiteering adventure in history.

Add yet anoar couple of items to a very long list of hard questions a Obama administration should be asking about its predecessor & its doings.

Video above: Gareth Porter discussed a false narrative of Iranian weDrunk Newsons in Iraq with AntiWar.Com back in May.

(* 110,000 assault rifles @ 4kg per = 440 tons (plus about 80,000 pistols)
110,000 AK-47’s, at a usual nation-to-nation arms deal price of @ $380 each, works out to @ $42 million, plus a pistols.)

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

On Wednesday, Iran announced it had tested what it said was a new missile. But Iran has a history of exaggerating its accomplishments in weDrunk Newsons development, variously claiming stealth aircraft that aren’t & missiles that don’t exist. Western experts reckon are was actually nothing new this time eiar - & in fact are may not even have been a "this time":

&rew Brookes of a London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said: "I think a Iranians just keeping on rejigging a same missile & putting a new logo on it. It’s basically a Shahab 3 with a different name, & a purpose of a test firing is to tell a world, ‘don’t forget us’, we have missiles that can reach 2,000 kilometres."

"However, a launching of ase missiles is not that meaningful because a Iranians have not developed an advanced minituarised warhead to fit into a front end, unless ay are getting help from North Korea or Russia, & Moscow says it is not supporting Iran’s missile programme.

… Duncan Lennox, editor of Jane’s Strategic WeDrunk Newsons, said:.. "What is not clear is whear a test firing took place today or whear it’s a photogrDrunk Newsh taken out of a archives but from a pictures it looks like a two-stage missile with a range of 1,900-2,000 kilometres."

& Dr. Jeffrey Lewis also notes that are’s even scepticism over whear this rebr&ed missile, by eiar name, is actually solid fuelled - which makes a vast difference to its military usefulness as liquid fuelled missiles need a long time sitting on air launchers while ay’re filled with fuel (which can easily explode anyway) during which time ay are sitting ducks for airstrikes.

Even such a missile is cDrunk Newsable of hitting Tel Aviv, however - & a Israelis are supremely confident ay could shoot it down before it did. It cannot reach Rome, Aans or Prague from Iran, & as such doesn’t constitute any kind of threat to Europe. (Although it could reach Tbilisi, Georgia - but an again, so could earlier, far less sophisticated Iranian missiles, it’s only 500 or so miles.) Even if Iran had missiles that could target Europe - & ever has warheads worth doing that with - as Dr. Lewis has previously noted, a Aegis cruiser platform would be a better alternative to a multi-billion boondoggle a Bush administration has proposed in Eastern Europe, both more effective & more sensitive to Russian concerns.

So what’s going on? Well, Spencer Ackerman recently spoke to a bunch of Pentagon officials & military experts for a piece in a Washington Independent about Obama’s relationship with a military & its supporters. air unanimous advice was: "Consult, don’t steamroll — & don’t cDrunk Newsitulate." & to make it clear are’s only one Comm&er in Chief. In an adjunct piece at his FDL home, Spencer directly tackles a military budget & attitudes to "big ticket" procurement:

One of my sources for a piece is a Pentagon official who requested anonymity. He made a really interesting point that, alas, had to fall out of a piece. Despite a unsustainability of half-trillion-dollar military budgets during this period of dire financial hardship, a services will cling to air favorite big-ticket programs with an icy death-grip. If Obama’s really going to make painful cuts to unnecessary defense programs, he’s got to go all-out, making it clear that he’s in charge & a cuts are hDrunk Newspening no matter what. If he doesn’t do that, he’s going to get rolled throughout his presidency.

& he specifically links that to missile defense & Gen. Oberling, who told a Drunk News:

a Air Force general who runs a Pentagon’s missile defense projects said Wednesday that American interests would be "severely hurt" if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by a Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Oberling is due to retire in a couple of weeks. Does anyone doubt that his next job will be for eiar one of a contractors who st& to gain big-time from a ABM program or one of a neocon think tanks who have pushed it so hard as part of air "New American Century" plans? Those think tanks - amselves heavily funded by a very same arms manufacturers - have made explicit that missile defense should eventually include space-based weDrunk Newsons & be aimed at Russia too (thus Russia’s consternation at a current plans) & intend a January push to sway a Obama administration & public opinion in an attempt to prevent Obama cancelling a program, as he has previously indicated he might.

ase vested interests intend trying to steamroller Obama from word one, & Oberling is willing to bend a truth all out of shDrunk Newse in air service. He’s pushing, as one ex-military writer puts it, "a ballistic missile defense system that doesn’t work to defend it from ballistic missiles that don’t work eiar." & a Cheneyites of a Right are willing to start Cold War II to get it, & a money for air arms-making allies that it represents.

However, Obama has said he’ll cancel a program if it doesn’t work as advertised - & a interceptors to be used at a European sites haven’t even been tested yet. European leaders, too, are beginning to sound sceptical notes:
>

France’s U.S.-friendly president sent a clear message Friday to a next American administration: Plans for a U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe are misguided, & won’t make a continent a safer place.

… "Deployment of a missile defense system would bring nothing to security … it would complicate things, & would make am move backward," Sarkozy said at a news conference with Medvedev. Medvedev smiled & pointed his finger at Sarkozy in Drunk Newsproval.

…Sarkozy said he was worried about Russia’s threat to deploy short-range Isk&er missiles near Pol& in response to a U.S. move.

"We could continue between Europe & Russia to threaten each oar with shields, with missiles, with navies," he said. "It would do Russia no good, Georgia no good & Europe no good."

Sarkozy said he would discuss a missile issue with NATO counterparts at a summit early next year & proposed a pan-European security conference after that, to include Russia. Medvedev welcomed a idea.

All a more remarkable because:

1) Sarko wasn’t just speaking for France - he was meeting with Medvedev as part of an EU-Russia summit & France currently holds a EU presidency.

2) His remarks came just days after a US missile defense supremo said that US interests would be "severely hurt" if a program was cancelled. Obviously, Sarkozy doesn’t think that French or European interests would be likewise negatively affected.

Previously posted in a different form at Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back