La guerra que viene: IRÁN

[Gonzo]

Blair dice que su gente dejará de patrullar las aguas del golfo.

Si, claro, en un futuro se supone que lo harán.

[myeu]

Sí­, y la i de CIA es i de imberbes, como el marinero de la derecha.

[El Miserable]

En efecto, la ausencia de pinta anglo-marina era de tumbar de espaldas.

Pero es que ni de espí­as, vaya.

¿Qué coño eran estos tí­os? ¿Avanzadillas de alguna franquicia tipo Starbucks?

Si así­ eran, Dios les bendiga.

E.M.

[myeu]

Y que sí­, ghostdog, que no eran espí­as propiamente dichos, pero que el término inteligencia va asociado al espionaje, al menos para los profanos como yo, y en un mensaje a pijo sacao creo que es perdonable no haber dicho inteligencia en lugar de espionaje.

Después de haber leí­do un poco más sobre el tema, yo creo que eran lo más parecido a un cebo. Porque  si no, a qué santo el heli armado que debí­a darles apoyo cuando se iban a subirse a un barco no estaba con ellos. Quizá Irán ha reaccionado a tiempo liberándolos para no provocar un, a ojos británicos, incidente de Tonkin.

[NubeBlanca]

El martes en Madrid:

• THE wrangling over Iran and its nuclear programme will continue for a long time yet. This week may, just possibly, shed some light on whether Iran is willing to talk seriously about its nuclear activities, which outsiders say are designed to make a bomb but Iran says are for energy production only. If all goes to plan Iran's main nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, will travel to Madrid on Thursday for talks with the European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=9243913&fsrc=RSS


Hoy en Bagdad:

Arranca la primera reunión entre EE UU e Irán desde 1980
Teherán acepta el diálogo sobre Irak mientras las tropas de Washington sufren nuevas bajas
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Arranca/primera/reunion/EE/UU/Iran/1980/elpepuint/20070528elpepuint_10/Tes

[Casio]

Bagdag, abril de 2003. foto de satelite, me gustan los penachos de petroleo ardiendo. Son como los campos de trigo incendiados de las guerras medievales.

[myeu]

Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran

· Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out
· President 'not prepared to leave conflict unresolved'

Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger
Monday July 16, 2007
Guardian

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.
The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Last year Mr Bush came down in favour of Ms Rice, who along with Britain, France and Germany has been putting a diplomatic squeeze on Iran. But at a meeting of the White House, Pentagon and state department last month, Mr Cheney expressed frustration at the lack of progress and Mr Bush sided with him. "The balance has tilted. There is cause for concern," the source said this week.

Nick Burns, the undersecretary of state responsible for Iran and a career diplomat who is one of the main advocates of negotiation, told the meeting it was likely that diplomatic manoeuvring would still be continuing in January 2009. That assessment went down badly with Mr Cheney and Mr Bush.

"Cheney has limited capital left, but if he wanted to use all his capital on this one issue, he could still have an impact," said Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

The Washington source said Mr Bush and Mr Cheney did not trust any potential successors in the White House, Republican or Democratic, to deal with Iran decisively. They are also reluctant for Israel to carry out any strikes because the US would get the blame in the region anyway.

"The red line is not in Iran. The red line is in Israel. If Israel is adamant it will attack, the US will have to take decisive action," Mr Cronin said. "The choices are: tell Israel no, let Israel do the job, or do the job yourself."

Almost half of the US's 277 warships are stationed close to Iran, including two aircraft carrier groups. The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise left Virginia last week for the Gulf. A Pentagon spokesman said it was to replace the USS Nimitz and there would be no overlap that would mean three carriers in Gulf at the same time.

No decision on military action is expected until next year. In the meantime, the state department will continue to pursue the diplomatic route.

Sporadic talks are under way between the EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, and Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, on the possibility of a freeze in Iran's uranium enrichment programme. Tehran has so far refused to contemplate a freeze, but has provisionally agreed to another round of talks at the end of the month.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said that there are signs of Iran slowing down work on the enrichment plant it is building in Natanz. Negotiations took place in Tehran last week between Iranian officials and the IAEA, which is seeking a full accounting of Iran's nuclear activities before Tehran disclosed its enrichment programme in 2003. The agency's deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, said two days of talks had produced "good results" and would continue.

At the UN, the US, Britain and France are trying to secure agreement from other security council members for a new round of sanctions against Iran. The US is pushing for economic sanctions that would include a freeze on the international dealings of another Iranian bank and a mega-engineering firm owned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Russia and China are resisting tougher measures.

[popotez]

pues en the economist en las últimas semanas no paran de echar mierda sobre bush, y eso por no hablar de kissinger, que es lo más parecido a un oráculo que existe en el planeta tierra

[myeu]

pues en the economist en las últimas semanas no paran de echar mierda sobre bush, y eso por no hablar de kissinger, que es lo más parecido a un oráculo que existe en el planeta tierra

hombre, si estamos hablando de un oráculo como el de Delfos, ya sabemos cómo funcionaba aquél. De puta madre mientras las profecí­as las podí­a mangonear intragriegos. Con los invasores que no eran griegos, al no poder mangonear, escopeta de feria y tal.

[FranciscoFrancoBahamonde]

Pues vamos a poner de moda a Pakistán, dicne los gurús yanquies, que tiene más posibles que Irán como futuro enemigo público número uno (algo así­ como pasar de mirar con ojitos a Irak a quererselo follar pero con nukes):

Este mando (coordinador de 16 diferentes agencias de espionaje estadounidenses), según el informe, titulado "Amenazas Terroristas contra territorio de EE UU", "continúa preparando ataques de alto nivel, al mismo tiempo que anima a otros grupos radicales suní­es a reproducir sus esfuerzos e incrementar sus capacidades".

Los lí­deres de Al Qaeda, por tanto, parecen haber incrementado su trabajo polí­tico y sus contactos, al mismo tiempo que, añade el informe, "han protegido o regenerado elementos esenciales de su capacidad para atacar territorio estadounidense". Entre estos elementos, el documento menciona "un santuario en Pakistán en las íreas Tribales de Administración Federal, comandos especializados y un pleno alto mando". Esas áreas son las que gobiernan los jefes tribales en la frontera con Afganistán como resultado de un acuerdo alcanzado el año pasado con el Gobierno de Pervez Musharraf. Pese a eso, Townsend dijo ayer que Musharraf es un aliado de EE UU en la lucha contra el terrorismo y el primer interesado en privar a Al Qaeda de su santuario actual.
Townsend afirmó que EE UU colabora con Pakistán en la localización y destrucción de las bases de Al Qaeda y aseguró que "la muerte o captura de Bin Laden sigue siendo una máxima prioridad".

[NubeBlanca]

Pues vamos a poner de moda a Pakistán

Danos más.

[Menek]

20.000 M$ + 30.000 M$ = 50.000 M$ ...

Estados Unidos dará 30.400 millones de dólares a Israel en ayuda militar en 10 años

29/07/2007 | Actualizada a las 10:18h

Jerusalén. (Efe).- El primer ministro israelí­, Ehud Olmert, confirmó hoy que EE.UU. dará a su paí­s 30.400 millones de dólares en ayuda militar en los próximos diez años porque "está comprometido a mantener la superioridad militar" del Estado judí­o.

"No hay duda de que supone una mejora significativa en el presupuesto de defensa", apuntó el jefe de Estado al comienzo del consejo semanal de ministros.

Esta cantidad supera en 9.100 millones de dólares la ayuda militar a Israel en el último decenio, lo que supone un aumento de casi un 43 por ciento.

Olmert precisó que la cantidad fue acordada en su encuentro privado con el presidente estadounidense, George W. Bush. La suma forma parte de un paquete de la Casa Blanca de entregas masivas de armamento avanzado y fondos a sus aliados en Oriente Medio para hacer frente al creciente poderí­o militar iraní­, según informaron ayer en portada los diarios estadounidenses 'The New York Times' y 'The Washington Post'.

[myeu]

http://www.youtube.com/v/1-eyuFBrWHs

[Baku]

Bush League War Drums Beating Louder on Iran
    By Ray McGovern
    t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

    Friday 24 August 2007

    It is as though I'm back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be our own president.

    It is precisely the kind of work we analysts used to do. And, while it is still a bit jarring to be turning our analytical tools on the US leadership, it is by no means entirely new. For, of necessity, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been doing that for almost six years now - ever since 9/11, when "everything changed."

    Of necessity? Yes, because, with very few exceptions, American journalists put their jobs at grave risk if they expose things like fraudulent wars.

    The craft of CIA analysis was designed to be an all-source operation, meaning that we analysts were responsible - and held accountable - for assimilating information from all sources and coming to judgments on what it all meant. We used data of various kinds, from the most sophisticated technical collection platforms, to spies, to - not least - open media.

    Here I must reveal a trade secret and risk puncturing the mystique of intelligence analysis. Generally speaking, 80 percent of the information one needs to form judgments on key intelligence targets or issues is available in open media. It helps to have been trained - as my contemporaries and I had the good fortune to be trained - by past masters of the discipline of media analysis, which began in a structured way in targeting Japanese and German media in the 1940s. But, truth be told, anyone with a high school education can do it. It is not rocket science.

    Reporting From Informants

    The above is in no way intended to minimize the value of intelligence collection by CIA case officers recruiting and running clandestine agents. For, though small in percentage of the whole nine yards available to be analyzed, information from such sources can often make a crucial contribution. Consider, for example, the daring recruitment in mid-2002 of Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who was successfully "turned" into working for the CIA and quickly established his credibility. Sabri told us there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

    My former colleagues, perhaps a bit naively, were quite sure this would come as a welcome relief to President George W. Bush and his advisers. Instead, they were told that the White House had no further interest in reporting from Sabri; rather, that the issue was not really WMD, it was "regime change." (Don't feel embarrassed if you did not know this; although it is publicly available, our corporate-owned, war-profiteering media have largely suppressed this key story.)

    One former colleague, operations officer-par-excellence Robert Baer, now reports (in this week's Time magazine) that, according to his sources, the Bush/Cheney administration is winding up for a strike on Iran; that the administration's plan to put Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on the terrorism list points in the direction of such a strike; and that the delusional "neo-conservative" thinking that still guides White House policy concludes that such an attack would lead to the fall of the clerics and the rise of a more friendly Iran.

    Hold on; it gets even worse: Baer's sources tell him that administration officials are thinking "as long as we have bombers and missiles in the air, we will hit Iran's nuclear facilities."

    Rove and Snow: Going Wobbly?

    Our VIPS colleague Phil Geraldi, writing in The American Conservative, earlier noted that in the past Karl Rove has served as a counterweight to Vice President Dick Cheney, and may have tried to put the brakes on Cheney's death wish to expand the Middle East quagmire to Iran. And former Pentagon officer, retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with some of the most devoted neocons just before the attack on Iraq, has put into words (on LewRockwell.com) speculation several of us have been indulging in with respect to Rove's departure.

    In short, it seems possible that Rove, who is no one's dummy and would not want to be required to "spin" an unnecessary war on Iran, may have lost the battle with Cheney over the merits of a military strike on Iran, and only then decided - or was urged - to spend more time with his family. As for administration spokesperson Tony Snow, it seems equally possible that, before deciding he had to leave the White House to make more money, he concluded that his stomach could not withstand the challenge of conjuring up yet another Snow job to explain why Bush/Cheney needed to attack Iran. There is recent precedent for this kind of thing.

    We now know that it was because former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went wobbly on the Iraq war - as can be seen in his November 6, 2006 memo to the president - that Rumsfeld was canned. (That was the day BEFORE the election.) In that memo, Rumsfeld called for a "major adjustment" in war policy. And so, Robert Gates, who had been waiting in the wings, was called to Crawford, given the test for malleability, hired and dispatched by the president immediately to Iraq to weigh in heavily with the most senior US generals (John Abizaid and William Casey). They had been saying, quite openly, please, please; no more troops; a surge would simply give the Iraqis still more time and opportunity to diddle us while American troops continue to die. So much for the president always listening to his senior military commanders. And the bug of reality was infecting even Rumsfeld.

    In his memo to the president, Rumsfeld suggested that US generals "withdraw US forces from vulnerable positions - cities, patrolling, etc.," and move troops to Kuwait to serve as a Quick Reaction Force. Bush, of course, chose to do just the opposite.

    Our domesticated press has not yet been able to put two and two together on this story, so it has been left to investigative reporters like Robert Parry to do so. In his August 17 essay, "Rumsfeld's Mysterious Resignation", Parry closes with this:

    "The touchy secret about Rumsfeld's departure seems to have been that Bush didn't want the American people to know that one of the chief Iraq war architects had turned against the idea of an open-ended military commitment - and that Bush had found himself with no choice but to oust Rumsfeld for his loss of faith in the neoconservative cause."

    Granted, it is speculative that similar factors, this time with respect to war planning for Iran, were at work in the decisions on the departure of Rove and Snow. Someone ought to ask them.

    Surgical Strikes First?

    With the propaganda buildup we have seen so far on Iran, what seems most likely, at least initially, is an attack on Revolutionary Guard training facilities inside Iran. That can be done with cruise missiles. With some twenty targets already identified by anti-Iranian groups, there are enough assets already in place to do that job. But the "while-we're-at-it" neocon logic referred to above may well be applied after, or even in conjunction with, that kind of limited cruise missile attack.

    Cheerleading in the Domesticated Media

    Yes, it is happening again.

    The lead editorial in yesterday's Washington Post regurgitates the allegations that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is "supplying the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in Iraq;" that it is "waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible." Designating Iran a "specially designated global terrorist" organization, says the Post, "seems to be the least the United States should be doing, giving the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq."

    It's as though Dick Cheney and friends are again writing the Post's editorials. And not only that: arch neocon James Woolsey told Lou Dobbs on August 14 that the US may have no choice but to bomb Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons program. As Woolsey puts it, "I'm afraid within, well, at worst, a few months; at best, a few years; they could have the bomb."

    Woolsey, self-described "anchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs," has long been out in front plumbing for wars, like Iraq, that he and other neocons myopically see as being in Israel's, as well as America's, interest. On the evening of 9/11, Woolsey was already raising with Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings the notion that Iraq was a leading candidate for state sponsorship of the attacks. A day later, Woolsey told journalist James Fallows that, no matter who proved responsible for 9/11, the solution had to include removing Saddam Hussein because he was so likely to be involved the next time (sic).

    The latest media hype is also rubbish. And Woolsey knows it. And so do reporters for The Washington Post, who are aware of, but have been forbidden to tell, a highly interesting story about waiting for a key National Intelligence Estimate - as if for Godot.

    The NIE That Didn't Bark

    The latest National Intelligence Estimate regarding if and when Iran is likely to have the bomb has been ready since February. It has been sent back four times - no doubt because its conclusions do not support what Cheney and Woolsey are telling the president and, through the domesticated press, telling the rest of us as well.

    The conclusion of the most recent published NIE (early 2005) was that Iran probably could not acquire a nuclear weapon until "early to mid-next decade," a formula memorized and restated by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell at his confirmation hearing in February. One can safely assume that McConnell had been fully briefed on the first "final draft" of the new estimate, which has now been in limbo for half a year. And I would wager that the conclusions of the new estimate resemble those of the NIE of 2005 far too closely to suit Cheney.

    It is a scandal that the Congressional oversight committees have not been briefed on the conclusions of the new estimate, even though it cannot pass Cheney's smell test. For it is a safe bet it would give the lie to the claims of Cheney, Woolsey and other cheerleaders for war with Iran and provide powerful ammunition to those arguing for a more sensible approach to Iran.

    But Attacking Iran Would Be Crazy

    Despite the administration's warlike record, many Americans may still cling to the belief that attacking Iran won't happen because it would be crazy; that Bush is a lame-duck president who wouldn't dare undertake yet another reckless adventure when the last one went so badly.

    But rationality and common sense have not exactly been the strong suit of this administration. Bush has placed himself in a neoconservative bubble that operates with its own false sense of reality. Worse still: as psychiatrist Justin Frank pointed out in the July 27 VIPS memo, "Dangers of a Cornered Bush,", updating his book "Bush on the Couch:"

    "We are left with a president who cannot actually govern, because he is incapable of reasoned thought in coping with events outside his control, like those in the Middle East."

    "This makes it a monumental challenge - as urgent as it is difficult - not only to get him to stop the carnage in the Middle East, but also to prevent him from undertaking a new, perhaps even more disastrous adventure - like going to war with Iran, in order to embellish the image he so proudly created for himself after 9/11 as the commander in chief of 'the first war of the 21st century.'"

    Scary.

    ----------

    Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his 27 years as a CIA analyst, he chaired NIEs: he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

[Lacenaire]

Que no van a invadir Irán , pesaos.