MUMBAI, INVASION OF GAZA MAY BE PART OF A CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT NUCLEAR WAR

With the Israeli invasion of Gaza we can easily imagine a chain of events that lead to a nuclear war in Pakistan, India, Iran,Israel and Afghanistan. The immediate human toll is clear, a two hundred to one proportion of casualties. Or have two Israelis been killed by the oversized bottle rockets that were set off by Islamic Jihad, not Hamas during the ceasefire period. Two hundred to one!

More Palestinian dead are shown in the accompanying video than have been inflicted in all of Israel by those largely symbolic fireworks of Islamic Jihad.

Meanwhile, Israel used this Islamic Jihad issue to starve and deprive all
Gazans of food, medicine, potable water, electricity and the necessities of life. It is a great crime against humanity and now it is being followed by crimes against peace and war crimes as well.

Certainly there are likely to be some sort of military responses to this invasion. There has been a call for a third intifada by Hamas and who can blame them? Are they not like those in the Warsaw Ghetto? Will these attacks on Israel that are in retaliation for the invasion of Gaza lead to the Israeli's justifying a nuking of Iran and/or Pakistan?

Or perhaps the Bush-Cheney regime will strike Iran using Israel and do what it can to provoke a nuclear war between Pakistan and India and/or commit the ultimate crimes themselves.

Cheney and Bush can hope for a terrorist attack in the United States or set one up so they can declare emergency measures and remain in office.
After launching a nuclear war they will pretend that it is they who are under threat.

This can also leave us with Bush-Cheney carrying out any domestic power play they want including the removal of the President-elect! The obvious target for a coup maker would be the inauguration, staging a terrorist attack that kills Obama and his VP, and perhaps many more. Then it would be time to be protected by Republicans again! Maybe Cheney can hide in his bunker and get GEORGE too!

WILL PRIVATE CONTRACTORS PROVIDE A NEW EXCUSE FOR INTENSIFIED WAR WITH IRAN

Desperately seeking a plausible pretense for a more direct form of warfare on Iran the United States executive dictatorship has been quite creative. However, with even the mainstream press documenting the nine hundred plus lies told by George Bush to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq there is a wee bit of a problem selling new lies about Iran. Unable to sell any pseudo confrontation as an actual act of aggression by Iran against United States naval vessels the administration may have opted for the creation of numerous pseudo threats by Iranian motor boats, you know the kind with a little engine at the back of what is otherwise a rowboat! Anyway the impression will be created in the public mind that Iran has been harassing and threatening United States ships for a long time. After all, this propaganda is for American consumption, to foster support for more invasions, bombings and occupations or maybe a nuclear strike.

One pseudo-incident earlier in the year included a radio message threatening to blow up the U.S. military vessel being observed by a number of these unarmed Iranian motorboats. The message turned out to have nothing to do with any Iranian transmissions. It looked like a fabrication and a real exaggeration of what these motorboats can do. The impression was created, however, that some Iranian military folks were threatening to blow up a destroyer or battleship.

Today we get another supposed harrassment report from a military contractor running some sort of boat, The Westward Venture, for the U. S. navy. Perhaps, unable to get the U. S. military to go along with a full scale false flag fraud the executive dictatorship may have opted to use more compliant "private contractors", the president's SS. Perhaps these they will pave the way to the destruction of Iran. BBC and therefore Great Britain are obviously happy to promulgate these pseudo- confrontations with all the lies stated as facts. Later retractions and clarifications will not be covered by BBC because Great Britain must want a wider war as well. That's the way it looks to me.

RUMORS OF BOMBING IRAN CONTINUE

Unfortunately, we continue to see folks predicting that the United States will intensify its military aggression against Iran. Of course the Democrats did nothing to stop the war in Iraq and it is rather obvious that the both Obama and Clinton will continue the war just as much as McCain will. Of course the routing and military defeat of U. S. forces
would spoil their plans much as it did in Vietnam.

Considering the right-wing tenor of the debates the two democratic candidates have with each other it is impossible to be critical of third party candidates. Neither party and no candidate has much to offer the average American, the working American, Joe Sixpack, the hoi polloi.

The soaring costs and dramatic declines in our standard of living are essentially ignored by these ivy league snobs who accuse one another of
being impolite about something. Each seeks to prove his or her adeptness at serving the same capitalist system that is destroying our vital ecosystems today. The only thing real about the debate is the almost visible leash each candidate has about her neck leading to the hand of big money and big investors. "WILL WORK FOR BIG MONEY"
is stamped on their collars. Arf!

Of course Clinton has really played the subtle white supremacist and male baiter with some finesse. Still, every time you step on a cracker you hear it crack and that is the way it has always been with the blacker than black Clinton cult. Obama is obviously being crucified by the patriotic right-wing "invade the world" racists and those, like Clinton, who pander to their prejudices.

Nor will the endless crimes of Bush and Cheney be prosecuted by this Congress or any regime run by Obama or Clinton. It is a very cozy two party dictatorship and justice might screw up the duopoly. No one of a progressive ilk will let this issue lie.

Bush and Cheney, like Pinochet and Fujimori need to be fully prosecuted for their crimes. Permanent organizations need to be established to pursue justice in these matters.

Of course the Obama and Clinton supporters who are naive and really hope for an end to imperialist war and really want to see women liberated and the chains of racial and national oppression broken, all these people should be worked with to see through the lies once they are
more thoroughly exposed in the case of Obama, a sort of stealth candidate with a very sparse track record.

The point is that progressives should be promoting and fostering revolutionary and radical reformist ideas while organizing inside and outside the two parties to raise political consciousness in every sector of
the working and other oppressed folk. Permanent and semi-permanent institutions need to be buillt by the democratic revolutionary self-organization of the people. Parallel popular institutions should be created that can do what big business and capitalism can not, foster human liberty in a liberated society. Furthermore, the organized people can engage in production for their own use.

Neither candidate seems to notice the lack of true democracy. They pretend the two party system is democracy but it is not the democracy or the working an other oppressed people. It is a democracy of the rich and for the rich. Of course Obama and Clinton are just excellent self-promoters who cut others down with similar skill. They are fabulous fundraisers who serve the rich and powerful. They have as much to do with the average American as any other millionaire or billionaire, next to nothing if that.

Both Obama and Clinton demonstrate a complete ideological servility to the big investors and owners of society and the world today. "YES BOSS!" is their underlying political slogan whatever they say to us, the "rubes". They are confident that American workers will never independently organize themselves. Of course the legal framework for labor in the United States is like a prison cell, one of their favorite solutions to problems like real democratic input, prisons.


Will Bush-Cheney launch air strikes on Iran? They are already bombing Iraq daily. Yes, they are bombing Iraq in much the same way they bombed South Vietnam. Its the same old crap it was back then, U. S. Imperialism trying to dominate the world by bombing it.

What are the slogans that all the candidates of the Republican and Democratic parties share? BOMB AND IMPRISON". But don't forget you have the freedom to wear a flag lapel pin or not, and be crucified for it when you don't!

Will Bush-Cheney strike out at multiple nations one bright morning? In an undemocratic society like the United States this is not impossible.
Indeed it has been happening for decades and centuries. Will he use nuclear weapons? I think mere notification of Congress by the President that he is bombing Iran constitutes presidential dictatorship.

If Obama or Clinton really cared about progressive ideas and values they
very probably wouldn't be candidates for the White House! The "YES BOSS" vetting took place long ago!

So who are the agents of democratic change in society? Not the two
parties of big money and big government working with and for big money. No, they are our keepers and our oppressors.

BUSH CHENEY ESCALATE MILITARIZATION OF SPACE UNDERLINING THE NEED FOR THE DEMILITARIZATION OF SPACE

With the decision to destroy a military satellite, or at least to try to destroy one, it is clear that the Bush-Cheney administration has decided to follow China's example. China destroyed a satellite of its own earlier in the year with one of its own space weapons. I suppose that China was demonstrating to the world its military prowess in this area. They too claimed that they were somehow tiding up the heavens with another missile. Of course we need to remember that both China and Japan have extensive space programs of their own that include manned and unmanned missions. Proliferators are proliferating.

I saw something about the probability that the U. S. satellite will actually be hit by the U. S. missile sent to destroy it. This is the kind of thing you hear about when they are testing antimissile missiles. Anti-missile missiles tend to miss their targets. They are more properly designated anti-satellite MISSilesThey have a low probability of hitting their targets. A satellite is, physically speaking, a lot like a missile because it is an object going tens of thousands of miles an hour.

Wouldn't it be ironic if the U.S. could not hit its own reentering satellite? Of course hitting a satellite in orbit should be relatively easy since an orbit in the near vacuum of space would be highly predictable. A reentering satellite is another matter since it would be buffeted by the atmosphere upon reentry. It would skid this way and that, and might even break apart before a missile catches up to it.

So it's the bullet hitting a bullet problem except these bullets may go ten or twenty times the speed of more earthly bullets. Wiley Coyote has much the same problem trying to hit the Road Runner with a boulder but at much slower velocities.

Frankly, the whole era of satellite technology could be severely compromised or even ended if any capable party blows up the right satellites or otherwise introduces orbiting debris where communications and other vital satellites orbit. Goodbye satellite tv, internet and gps. Maybe the system is more robust than I think but the militarization of space seems likely to lead to more debris rather than less. Nightmare scenarios are endless.

A particle the size of a piece of sand, perhaps a hard metallic pellet, could annihilate a large satellite if it hit the right place at the right speed. If thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of these were to be orbited in vital satellite routes those satellites would be in grave danger.

The extreme aggressiveness of the United States toward many nations after 9-11 only intensified its already existing efforts to create a unipolar world where everything would be the U. S. way or the highway. This aggressiveness has led to nations like North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran,among others, to develop their missile technology so they can have the deterrence of satellite destruction in their quiver. Of course debris-filled satellite bombs could be deployed just waiting for a command from the ground to detonate. These nations are puny compared to the military might of the United States but they still could destroy our way of life and inflict great damage on us nonetheless. The peaceful regulation of earth and space is far more beneficial to nations than harsh competition and war.

These common sense observations underline the necessity and urgency of an international disarmament process that includes all wmd capable parties. Disarmament needs to include a ban on all satellite based weapons and anti-satellite weapons. Peace is more practical than war and a prohibition of certain weapons like nuclear weapons, mines and these space weapons makes us all a lot more secure. It looks like we are seeing more and more deployers of these weapons over the years and the more we have the more the necessity of disarmament. Sooner or later one of these parties will deploy anti-satellite weapons in a way that changes life on earth for a long time. Who knows, even this effort by Bush-Cheney to blow up a reentering satellite could lead to unintended consequences.

If the powers that be cannot resolve these threats our future may end up in the hands of the revolutionary peoples of the world because it is they who suffer from militarization on earth and in space and it is they who benefit by taking all political, economic and military power into their own hands for their own benefit. Surely the average chinese, russian, african or american has no need for weapons of mass destruction or those who hold the world hostage with them. Period.

SCOTT RITTER CONCERNED ABOUT BUSH-CHENEY INITIATED WWIII TOO!

Scott Ritter has provided reliable expert opinions United States warmaking in the middle east since he was a UNSCOM arms inspector disarming the Saddam Hussein regime. Of course he is now a famous critic of the second invasion of Iraq. Now he is warning about the President and the man holding the President's marionette strings, Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Ritter summarizes how the so-called "Hadley Rules" closed the door to negotiations with Iran earlier in the Bush administration. Steven Hadley is Condeleeza Rice's replacement as National Security advisor. Hadley appears to have implemented a policy dedicated to maintaining a "mortal enemy" status vis-a-vis Iran. Now Hadley is presumably pressing for military attacks on Iran.

Mr. Ritter focuses his critique on the Vice President's office which he asserts has taken over virtually all matters of National Security policy in this administration. He goes so far as to assert that, "Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in America today." Wouldn't that mean that the President should be impeached for not doing his job and that Cheney should be impeached for supplanting the President for all practical purposes?

Mr. Ritter argues that the Armageddon focused religious beliefs of this administration are compelling the creation of a military confrontation in the belief that this somehow is the fulfillment of some divine plan or prophecy.

Maybe we should impeach Bush-Cheney before they screw up the world even more by bombing Iran.

Bush's World War III 'Solution'

By Scott Ritter, Truthdig
Posted on October 23, 2007, Printed on October 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65846/

Don't worry, the White House is telling us. The world's most powerful leader was simply making a rhetorical point. At a White House press conference last week, just in case you haven't heard, President Bush informed the American people that he had told world leaders "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." World War III. That is certainly some rhetorical point, especially coming from the man singularly most capable of making such an event reality.

Pundits have raised their eyebrows and comics are busy writing jokes, but the president's reference to Armageddon, no matter how cavalierly uttered and subsequently brushed away, suggests an alarming context. Some might note that the comment was simply an offhand response to a reporter's question, the kind of free-thinking scenario that baffles Bush so. In a way, this makes what the president said even more disturbing, since we now have an insight into the vision, and related terminology, which hovers just below the horizon in the brain of George W. Bush.

When I was a weapons inspector with the United Nations, there was a jostling that took place at the end of each day, when decisions needed to be made and authorization documents needed to be signed. In an environment of competing agendas, each of us who championed a position sought to be the "last man in," namely the person who got to imprint the executive chairman (our decision maker) with the final point of view for the day. Failure to do so could find an inspection or point of investigation sidetracked for days or weeks after the executive chairman became distracted by a competing vision. I understand the concept of "imprinting," and have seen it in action. What is clear from the president's remarks is that, far from an innocent rhetorical fumble, his words, and the context in which he employed them, are a clear indication of the imprinting which is taking place behind the scenes at the White House. If the president mentions World War III in the context of Iran's nuclear program, one can be certain that this is the very sort of discussion that is taking place in the Oval Office.

A critical question, therefore, is who was the last person to "imprint" the president prior to his public allusion to World War III? During his press conference, Bush noted that he awaited the opportunity to confer with his defense secretary, Robert Gates, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice following their recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. So clearly the president hadn't been imprinted recently by either of the principle players in the formulation of defense and foreign policy. The suspects, then, are quickly whittled down to three: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, Vice President Dick Cheney, and God.

Hadley is a long-established neoconservative thinker who has for the most part operated "in the shadows" when it comes to the formulation of Iran policy in the Bush administration. In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, Hadley (then the deputy national security adviser) instituted what has been referred to as the "Hadley Rules," a corollary of which is that no move will be made which alters the ideological positioning of Iran as a mortal enemy of the United States. These "rules" shut down every effort undertaken by Iran to seek a moderation of relations between it and the United States, and prohibited American policymakers from responding favorably to Iranian offers to assist with the fight against al-Qaida; they also blocked the grand offer of May 2003 in which Iran outlined a dramatic diplomatic initiative, including a normalization of relations with Israel. The Hadley Rules are at play today, in an even more nefarious manner, with the National Security Council becoming involved in the muzzling of former Bush administration officials who are speaking out on the issue of Iran. Hadley is blocking Flynt Leverett, formerly of the National Security Council, from publishing an Op-Ed piece critical of the Bush administration on the grounds that any insight into the machinations of policymaking (or lack thereof) somehow strengthens Iran's hand. Leverett's article would simply underscore the fact that the Bush administration has spurned every opportunity to improve relations with Iran while deliberately exaggerating the threat to U.S. interests posed by the Iranian theocracy.

The silencing of informed critics is in keeping with Hadley's deliberate policy obfuscation. There is still no official policy in place within the administration concerning Iran. While a more sober-minded national security bureaucracy works to marginalize the hawkish posturing of the neocons, the administration has decided that the best policy is in fact no policy, which is a policy decision in its own right. Hadley has forgone the normal procedures of governance, in which decisions impacting the nation are written down, using official channels, and made subject to review and oversight by those legally and constitutionally mandated and obligated to do so. A policy of no policy results in secret policy, which means, according to Hadley himself, the Bush administration simply does whatever it wants to, regardless. In the case of Iran, this means pushing for regime change in Tehran at any cost, even if it means World War III.

But Hadley is simply a facilitator, bureaucratic "grease" to ease policy formulated elsewhere down the gullet of a national security infrastructure increasingly kept in the dark about the true intent of the Bush administration when it comes to Iran. With the Department of State and the Pentagon now considered unfriendly ground by the remaining hard-core neoconservative thinkers still in power, policy formulation is more and more concentrated in the person of Vice President Cheney and the constitutionally nebulous "Office of the Vice President."

Cheney and his cohorts have constructed a never-never land of oversight deniability, claiming immunity from both executive and legislative checks and balances. With an unchallenged ability to classify anything and everything as secret, and then claim that there is no authority inherent in government to oversee that which has been thus classified, the Office of the Vice President has transformed itself into a free republic's worst nightmare, assuming authority over almost every aspect of American national security policy at home and abroad. From torture to illegal wiretapping, to arms control (or lack of it) to Iran, Dick Cheney is the undisputed center of policy power in America today. While there are some who will claim that in this time of post-9/11 crisis such a process of bureaucratic streamlining is essential for the common good, the reality is far different.

It is said that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and this has never been truer than in the case of Cheney. What Cheney is doing behind his shield of secrecy can be simply defined: planning and implementing a preemptive war of aggression. During the Nuremberg tribunal in the aftermath of World War II, the chief American prosecutor, Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, stated, "To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Today, we have a vice president who articulates publicly about global conflict, and who speaks in not-so-veiled language about a looming Armageddon. If there is such a future for America and the world, let one thing be certain; World War III, as postulated by Dick Cheney, would be an elective war, and not a conflict of tragic necessity. This makes the crime even greater.

Sadly, Judge Jackson's words are but an empty shell. The global community lacks a legally binding definition of what constitutes a war of aggression, or even an act of aggression. But that isn't the point. America should never find itself in a position where it is being judged by the global community regarding the legality of its actions. Judge Jackson established a precedent of jurisprudence concerning aggression based upon American principles and values, something the international community endorsed. The fact that current American indifference to the rule of law prevents the international community from certifying a definition of criminality when it comes to aggression, whether it be parsed as "war" or simply an "act," does not change the fact that the Bush administration, in the person of Dick Cheney, is actively engaged in the committing of the "supreme [war] crime," which makes Cheney the supreme war criminal. If the world is not empowered to judge him as such, then let the mantle of judgment fall to the American people. Through their elected representatives in Congress, they should not only bring this reign of unrestrained abuse of power to an end, but ensure that such abuse never again is attempted by an American official by holding to account, to the full extent of the law, those who have trampled on the Constitution of the United States and the ideals and principles it enshrines.

But what use is the rule of law, even if fairly and properly implemented, if in the end he who is entrusted with executive power takes his instructions from an even higher authority? President Bush's relationship with "God" (or that which he refers to as God) is a matter of public record. The president himself has stated that "God speaks through me" (he acknowledged this before a group of Amish in Pennsylvania in the summer of 2004). Exactly how God speaks through him, and what precisely God says, is not a matter of speculation. According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, President Bush told him and others that "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did." As such, at least in the president's mind, God has ordered Bush to transform himself into a modern incarnation of St. Michael, smiting all that is evil before him. "We are in a conflict between good and evil. And America will call evil by its name," the president told West Point cadets in a speech in 2002.

The matter of how and when an individual chooses to practice his faith, or lack thereof, is a deeply personal matter, one which should be kept from public discourse. For a president to so openly impose his personal religious beliefs, as Bush has done, on American policy formulation and implementation represents a fundamental departure from not only constitutional intent concerning the separation of church and state but also constitutional mandate concerning the imposition of checks and balances required by the American system of governance. The increasing embrace by this president of the notion of a unitary executive takes on an even more sinister aspect when one realizes that not only does the Bush administration seek to nullify the will of the people through the shackling of the people's representatives in Congress, but that the president has forgone even the appearance of constitutional constraint by evoking the word of his personal deity, as expressed through his person, as the highest form of consultation on a matter as serious as war. As such, the president has made his faith, and how he practices it, a subject not only of public curiosity but of national survival.

That George W. Bush is a born-again Christian is not a national secret. Neither is the fact that his brand of Christianity, evangelicalism, embraces the notion of the "end of days," the coming of the Apocalypse as foretold (so they say) in the Book of Revelations and elsewhere in the Bible. President Bush's frequent reference to "the evil one" suggests that he not only believes in the Antichrist but actively proselytizes on the Antichrist's physical presence on Earth at this time. If one takes in the writing and speeches of those in the evangelical community today concerning the "rapture," the numerous references to the current situation in the Middle East, especially on the events unfolding around Iran and its nuclear program, make it very clear that, at least in the minds of these evangelicals, there is a clear link between the "end of days" prophesy and U.S.-Iran policy. That James Dobson, one of the most powerful and influential evangelical voices in America today, would be invited to the White House with like-minded clergy to discuss President Bush's Iran policy is absurd unless one makes the link between Bush's personal faith, the extreme religious beliefs of Dobson and the potential of Armageddon-like conflict (World War III). At this point, the absurd becomes unthinkable, except it is all too real.

Thomas Jefferson, one of our nation's greatest founders, made the separation of church and state an underlying principle upon which the United States was built. This separation was all-inclusive, meaning that not only should government stay out of religion, but likewise religion should be excluded from government. "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself," Jefferson wrote in a letter to Francis Hopkinson in 1789. "Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent." If only President Bush would abide by such wisdom, avoiding the addictive narcotic of religious fervor when carrying out the people's business. Instead, he chooses as his drug one which threatens to destroy us all in a conflagration derived not from celestial intervention but individual ignorance and arrogance. Again Jefferson, in a letter written in 1825: "It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams."

Nightmares, more aptly, unless something can be done to change the direction Bush and Dobson are taking us. The problem is that far too many Americans openly espouse not only the faith of George W. Bush but also the underlying philosophy which permits this faith to be intertwined with the governance of the land. "God bless America" has become a rallying cry for this crowd, and those too ignorant and/or afraid to speak out in opposition. If this statement has merit, what does it say for the 6.8 billion others in the world today who are not Americans? That God condemns them? The American embrace of divine destiny is not unique in history (one only has to recall that the belt buckles of the German army during World War II read "God is with us"). But for a nation born of the age of reason to collectively fall victim to the most base of fear-induced theology is a clear indication that America currently fails to live up to its founding principles. Rather than turning to Dobson and his ilk for guidance in these troubled times, Americans would be well served to reflect on President Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, delivered in the middle of a horrific civil war which makes all of the conflict America finds itself in today pale in comparison:

"Both [North and South] read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.... [T]hat He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?"

God is not on our side, or the side of any single nation or people. To believe such is the ultimate expression of national hubris. To invoke such, if one is a true believer, is to embrace sacrilege and heresy. This, of course, is an individual right, granted as an extension of religious freedom. But it is not a collective right, nor is it a right born of governance, especially in a land protected by the separation of church and state.

The issue of Iran is a national problem which requires a collective debate, discussion and dialogue inclusive of all the facts, and stripped of all ideology and theocracy which would seek to deny reasoned thought conducted within a framework of accepted laws and ideals. It is grossly irresponsible of an American president to invoke the imagery of World War III without first sharing with the American people the framework of thought that produced such a comparison. Such openness will not be forthcoming from this administration or president. Not in the form of Stephen Hadley's policy of no policy, designed with intent to avoid and subvert both bureaucratic and legislative process and oversight, or Dick Cheney's secret government within a government, operating above and beyond the law and in a manner which violates both legal and moral norms and values, and certainly not in the president's own private conversations with "God," either directly or through the medium of lunatic evangelicals who embrace the termination of all we stand for, and especially the future of our next generation, in a fiery holocaust born from the fraudulent writings of centuries past.

The processes which compelled George W. Bush to speak of a World War III are intentionally not transparent to the American people. The president has much to explain, and it would be incumbent upon every venue of civic and public pressure to demand that such an explanation be forthcoming in the near future. The stakes regarding Iran have always been high, but never more so than when a nation's leader invokes the end of days as a solution.

A former Marine Corps intelligence officer, Scott Ritter was a chief inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq from 1991 until 1998. He is the author of several books; "Target Iran," with a new afterword by the author, was recently released in paperback by Nation Books.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/65846/

HIGHTOWER LAMENTS THE DEFACTO SUPREMACY OF THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH BECAUSE OF A DO NOTHING CONGRESS

The post below from AlterNet is an expression of Jim Hightower's concerns about runaway Presidential power. I broadly share his concern and hope that we can all alert the American people about the dire threat to our democratic rights and basic liberties that are now posed by a campaign to bomb Iran. Unlike Iraq, which never had anything or any policy to harm the United States Iran is in a position to inflict serious damage to regional military forces and the oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf. Bush's bellicose rhetoric is already driving up the price of oil which will most likely be unaffordable if the bombing of Iran takes place, and Bush and Cheney obviously intend to bomb.

Is a Presidential Coup Under Way?

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown
Posted on October 23, 2007, Printed on October 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/65450/

Where is Congress? It's way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being trampled, the very form of our government is being perverted, and nothing less than American democracy itself is endangered -- a presidential coup is taking place. I think of Barbara Jordan, the late congresswoman from Houston. On July 25, 1974, this powerful thinker and member of the House Judiciary Committee took her turn to speak during the Nixon impeachment inquiry.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total," she declared in her thundering voice. "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution."Where are the likes of Barbara Jordan in today's Congress? While the BushCheney regime continues to establish a supreme, arrogant, autocratic presidency in flagrant violation of the Constitution, members of Congress largely sit there as idle spectators -- or worse, as abettors of Bush's usurpation of their own congressional authority.

Why it matters

Separation of powers. Rule of law. Checks and balances. These may seem to us moderns to be little more than a set of dry, legal precepts that we had to memorize in high-school history class but need not concern us now. After all, the founders (bless their wigged heads!) established these principles for us back in 17-something-or-other, so we don't really have to worry about them in 2007. Think again. These are not merely arcane phrases of constitutional law, but the very keystones of our democracy, essential to sustaining our ideal of being a self-governing people, free of tyrants who would govern us on their own whim. The founders knew about tyranny. The monarch of the time, King George III, routinely denied colonists basic liberties, spied on them and entered their homes at will, seized their property, jailed anyone he wanted without charges, rounded up and killed dissidents, and generally ruled with an iron fist. He was both the law and above the law, operating on the twin doctrines of "the divine rule of kings" and "the king can do no wrong."

(Alert: Ready or not, the following is a high-school refresher course on American government. There will be a test.) At the front of the founders' minds was the necessity of breaking up the authority of their new government in order to avoid re-creating the autocracy they had just defeated. The genius of their structure was that legislating, administering, and judging were to be done by three separate but coequal branches, each with powers to check the other two, and none able to aggregate all three functions into its own hands (a result that James Madison called the very definition of tyranny). Just as important, to deter government by whim, all members of the three branches were to be subject to the laws of the land (starting with the Constitution and Bill of Rights), with no one above the law. As Thomas Paine said, "The law is king."

These were not legal niceties but core restraints designed to protect citizens from power grabs by ambitious autocrats. Such restrictions also make our country stronger by vetting policies through three entities rather than one. This balanced authority helps avoid many serious policy mistakes (or at least offers a chance to correct them later), and it is intended to prevent the one mistake that's fatal to democracy -- allowing one branch to seize the power to rule unilaterally.

Of course, sound schemes are oft screwed up by unsound leaders, and we've had some horrible hiccups over the years. John Adams went astray early in our democratic experiment by claiming the unilateral authority to imprison his political enemies; Abe Lincoln took it upon himself to suspend habeas corpus during the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson launched his notorious Palmer Raids; FDR rounded up and imprisoned Japanese-Americans; J. Edgar Hoover and the infamous COINTEL program spied on and arrested thousands in the Vietnam War years; and Ronnie Reagan ran his own illegal, secret war out of the White House basement.

In all these cases of executive excess and abuse, however, outrage flowed from the public, courts stood up to the White House, congressional investigations ensued, and the American system regained its balance relatively quickly. As Jefferson put it when he succeeded Adams and repealed the Alien and Sedition Acts, "Should we wander [from the essential principles of our government] in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

This time is different

Now, however, come two arrogant autocrats like we've never seen in the White House. George W and his snarling enabler, Dick Cheney, are making a power grab so unprecedented, so audacious, so broad and deep, so secretive, so stupefying, and so un-American that it has not yet been comprehended by the media, Congress, or the public. The dictionary defines "coup" not just as an armed takeover in some Third World country, but as "a sudden and decisive action in politics, especially one affecting a change of government illegally or by force."

Constantly waving the bloody flag of 9/11 and swaggering around in commander-in-chief garb, the BushCheney duo are usurping authority from Congress, the courts, and the people, while also asserting arbitrary power that does not belong to the presidency. Their coup is changing our form of government, rewriting the genius of the founders by imposing a supreme executive that functions in secret and insists that it is above the law, unaccountable either to congressional oversight or to judicial review.

As Al Gore pointed out in a powerful speech he gave last year (read it here), the BushCheney push for imperial power is much more dangerous and far-reaching than other presidential excesses for a couple of big reasons. First, the Bushites make no pretension that they want these powers only temporarily, instead contending that a super-powerful presidency is necessary to cope with a terrorist threat that they say will last "for the rest of our lives." Second, they are not merely pushing executive supremacy as a response to an outside threat, but as an ideological, right-wing theory of what they allege the Constitution actually meant to say.

Called the "unitary executive theory," this perverse, antidemocratic construct begs us to believe that the president has inherent executive powers that cannot be reviewed, questioned, or altered by the other branches. Bush himself has asserted that his executive power "must be unilateral and unchecked." Must? Extremist theorists aside, this effectively establishes an executive with arbitrary power over us. It creates the anti-America.

The list of Bushite excesses is long...and growing:

• Their sweeping, secret program of warrantless spying on Americans -- in direct violation of a long-standing federal law intended to forestall such flagrant intrusions into people's privacy.
• The usurpation of legislative authority by attaching "signing statements" to laws passed by Congress, openly asserting Bush's intention to disobey or simply ignore the laws. He has used this artifice to challenge over 1,150laws, even though the Constitution and the founders never conceived of such a dodge (signing statements were concocted by Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general, and were pushed at that time by a young Reaganite lawyer who is now ensconced for life on the Supreme Court, Sam Alito).
• Suspension of habeas corpus for anyone whom Bush deems to be an "enemy combatant"-allowing innocent people to be detained indefinitely in prison without charges or civil trial, subjected to abuse and even torture, and denied access to judicial review of their incarceration (thus usurping the power of the courts). The routine and illegal assertion of "executive privilege" to stonewall Congress's legitimate efforts to perform its constitutional obligation of executive oversight and to prevent the questioning of top officials engaged in outright violations of American law.
• The assertion of a "state secrets" doctrine to prevent citizens and judges from pursuing legitimate lawsuits on the spurious grounds that even to have the executive's actions brought before the court would endanger national security and infringe on executive authority.
• An ever-expanding grab bag of autocratic actions, including using "national security letters" to sidestep the courts and spy on American political groups and individuals with no connection at all to terrorism; censoring executive-branch employees and government information for political purposes and using federal officials and tax dollars to push the regime's political agenda; and, of course, outright lying to Congress and the public, including lying for the most despicable purpose of all -- putting our troops, our public treasury, and our nation's good name into a war based on nothing but hubris, oil, and ideological fantasies (including Bush's latest blatant lie that "progress" in Iraq warrants the killing and maiming of additional thousands of American troops -- none of whom comes from his family).

Democratic capitulation

What we have is a lawless presidency. But our problem is not Bush. He is who he is -- a bonehead. He won't change, and why should he? He's getting away with his power grab! So he has no reason to step back, and every reason to keep pushing and to keep trying to institutionalize his coup.

Rather, our problem is those weaselly, wimpy, feckless members of Congress who have failed to confront the runaway executive, who have sat silent or (astonishingly) cheered and assisted as their own constitutional powers have been taken and their once-proud, coequal branch has been made subservient to the executive.

In the first six years of BushCheney, the Republican Congress operated as no more than a rubber stamp for the accretion of presidential power, shamelessly surrendering its own autonomy in a burst of mindless partisan zeal. Too many Democrats just went along, either buying the lies or being cowed by the unrelenting politics of fear and intimidation whipped up by Bush and Cheney. (The Bushites are still using these bullying tactics, as when they demanded this past summer that Congress legalize their illegal domestic spy program and CIA chief Mike McConnell warned publicly that "Americans are going to die" if Democrats failed to pass it.)

Which brings us to the new Congress run by Democrats. Where are they? Yes, I know they have only slim majorities and that the GOP uses veto threats, filibusters, and demagogic lies to fight them -- but, come on, suck it up! At least stop voting for "the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." For example, the party now in charge did indeed cave in to Bush's summer demand that it legalize his warrantless spying on Americans (a Lowdowner sent an email to me saying he hopes Bush gets caught smoking pot, because then the Democrats will immediately legalize it).

The founders would be stunned that Congress has failed to assert itself. They saw checks and balances not as an option but as an obligation, a fundamental responsibility that goes to the very heart of each lawmaker's oath faithfully to support and defend the Constitution.

It's important to note that Congress is not a weak institution. It has powerful muscles to flex, including control of the purse, which Congress used in 1973 to tell Nixon, "No, we will not provide money for you to extend the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia." Nixon had to back off. Legislators also have clear constitutional mandates to oversee, probe, and expose presidential actions (remember the extensive Fulbright hearings in the '60s and the Church investigations of the '70s, for example). Members of Congress have wide-ranging subpoena power, as well as something called "inherent contempt" power to make their own charges against outlaw executive officials and to hold their own trials. And, of course, they have impeachment power -- which the founders saw not only as a way to remove an outlaw president (or veep or cabinet officer), but also as a means to compel a recidivist constitutional violator to come before the bar of Congress and to be held accountable. The process itself, even if it does not lead to conviction in the Senate, is educational and chastening, putting the executive branch back in its place.

None of this is about making a partisan attack on BushCheney. It's really not about them at all. Rather, Congress must find its backbone because our democracy cannot function without a vigilant legislative branch. Outlaw presidents must finally leave office, but their precedents live beyond them if left unchecked. As historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote of the power-grabbing Nixon administration, "If the Nixon White House escaped the legal consequences of its illegal behavior, why would future presidents not suppose themselves entitled to do [the same]?"

Bang pots and pans

Sam Adams, the organizer of the Boston Tea Party, knew that it is the citizenry itself that ultimately has to do the heavy lifting of democracy building. "If ever a time should come when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats of government," he declared, "our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."

That's us. And now is that time.

What can we do? We can do what millions have been doing-only more of it, more insistently, more loudly, more creatively. Our friend Molly Ivins, just before she died this year, urged us to start "banging pots and pans" to make the bastards hear us. Raise a ruckus through street demonstrations, peace actions, visits (and/or confrontations) with lawmakers, political campaigns, alliances with military families, religious ceremonies, coalitions with constitutional conservatives, outreach to young people, and grassroots media action, including blogs, email blasts, call-in radio, letters to editors, op-eds, bumperstickers, and whatever you've got. Make a mighty noise.

Don't forget our friends in office. Such Democrats as John Conyers, Henry Waxman, Barbara Lee, Lynn Woolsey, Russ Feingold, Pat Leahy, and Dennis Kucinich are all over Bush and Cheney with investigations, subpoenas, censure motions, impeachment bills, and exposes -- not only on the war, but most emphatically on constitutional abuses. Thank them, find out what you can do to help them, demand that your own Congress critter join them.

And here's a creative idea from Garret Keizer. I have no idea who he is, but he wrote a punchy piece in the October issue of Harper's Magazine (read it here) that I like and that Lowdowners might want to embrace. He's calling for a general strike. Not by unions, but by us-you and me. As a symbolically appropriate day, he suggests the first Tuesday of November, the traditional date for our elections -- this year, Nov. 6. He dubs it "The Feast of the Hanging Chads."

A general strike means that We The People, as many of us as possible, would disobey the inept, corrupt, undemocratic (add your own adjective here) system by withholding our presence at for least one day. Don't go to work. Stay home. Better yet, take some political action. Also, don't go to the mall, the supermarket, or the bank; don't use your credit card or make any commercial transaction. This would be the ultimate affront to the corporate president who so pathetically told us after 9/11 that our highest patriotic response to the attack was to "go shopping." So don't fly, use your cell phone (hard, I know), watch TV, or otherwise participate. Sometimes, silence is the loudest sound of all. As Keizer says, "As long as we're willing to go on with our business, Bush and Cheney will feel free to go on with their coup."

On one level, the strike is against the war, against Bush thumbing his nose at the American majority that has already emphatically said -- OUT! -- and against the Democratic leadership that can't seem to muster the will to rein in the Bush administration. On another level, however, this is a strike for the Constitution, a strike against the betrayal of the rule of law and our democratic ideals. It's a strike for the America we thought this was. It's an affirmation that the people are the only "larger force" that can stop the BushCheney coup and make America whole again.

From "The Hightower Lowdown," edited by Jim Hightower and Phillip Frazer, October 2007. Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker and author of Thieves In High Places: They've Stolen Our Country and It's Time to Take It Back.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/65450/

SO CALLED NEWS ASSUMES ATTACKS ON IRAN VIRUTALLY INEVITABLE

It really sucks to see the one and only supper power prepare to destroy yet another nation. Iraq has been converted into a
cauldron of warring factions and one to two million dead Iraqis during the most recent era of United States beneficence. Now Iran, once the fortunate beneficiary of an Anglo-American imposed dictator, the shah of iran, broke out from under their domination in 1979-80.

Unfortunately the Iranian revolution went islamic. Still, that is no reason to invade Iran. There is no good reason to invade Iran but there will be a lot of lies. The big propaganda now being that such a war is inevitable, the inevitable result of Iranians not being something the thugs in the White House say they ought to be.

So the United States has created something like a failed state or a mega-Lebanon in Iraq. This is nothing to boast about but
General Petraeus and his Commander-in-Chief like happy talk. They tell us happy stories while Mr. Bush hopes to distract from the
debacle by creating another war. This time the scenario will be more absurd and surreal than the last brutal invasion.

So is the French government going to be one of the diplomatic enablers of the war against Iran? Or is this a story that distorts the French position? I don't know. Clearly phrases like "right to the end" suggest an inevitable outcome.

I think the bombardment of Iran would be a crime very much like the recent invasion of Iraq, a crime that breaks the peace and
carries out crimes against the population of Iran. What is the United States going to do now, reduce another advanced muslim country to rubble?

Obviously Bush/Cheney should be prevented from committing these crimes. Impeachment might trim their authority and sideline their ambitions to make another imperialist war. Are those who oppose impeachment telling us they want this war?

If Congress allows yet another war of aggression to go forward then it is difficult to point to any part of the Federal Government that represents the interests of the American people.


BBC NEWS
France warning of war with Iran
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner says the world should prepare for war over Iran's nuclear programme.

"We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war," Mr Kouchner said in an interview on French TV and radio.

Mr Kouchner said negotiations with Iran should continue "right to the end", but an Iranian nuclear weapon would pose "a real danger for the whole world".

Iran has consistently denied it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons but intends to carry on enriching uranium.

Mr Kouchner also said a number of large French companies had been asked not to tender for business in Iran.

EU sanctions

"We are not banning French companies from submitting. We have advised them not to. These are private companies."

"But I think that it has been heard and we are not the only ones to have done this."

He said France wanted the European Union to prepare sanctions against Iran.

"We have decided that while negotiations are continuing to prepare eventual sanctions outside the ambit of UN sanctions. Our good friends, the Germans, suggested that," he said.

Until now the Security Council of the United Nations has imposed economic sanctions on Iran, but did not allow for military action.

The United States has not ruled out a military attack against Iran to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/6997935.stm

Published: 2007/09/16 19:29:25 GMT

© BBC MMVII

BUSH PROMOTES WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST IRAN

After leading a completely illegal and immoral war in Iraq Mr. Bush wants to do it again, only this time he wants to violate international law and commit crimes against peace vis-a-viz Iran. His recent speeches, like the one reported upon today by the BBC (see below)contain proof of his bellicosity.

Ignoring the domestic economic meltdown and any issue that really matters to American citizens Mr. Bush is intoxicated by the idea of deceiving the American people again by telling scary lies about Iran. Despite the fundamentally good relations between the Iraqi government and Iran Mr. Bush wants to blame the slaughter of over a million Iraqis since the second invasion of Iraq on someone else. Yet it is the hands of Mr. Bush and the rump Congress that has always ratifies his illegal acts of war who have the blood of over a million Iraqis on their hands. Some Americans may not want to recognize these facts and they will be the ones most likely to embrace Mr. Bush's lies, lies that blame someone else for what the United States has done to ravage and pillage Iraq.

Yes, American troops are being killed in Iraq but the idea that Iran is somehow behind the resistance to the faltering American invasion is ludicrous. Only Mr. Bush and his clique want American troops to continue the effort to make Iraq into a failed state under the thumb of American oil interests.

Indeed, Iran could readily provide shoulder launched missiles and knock down dozens of helicopters a month. They haven't done it. Mr Ahmadinejad's comments about working with other nations in the region underlines the fact that it is only the United States that is promoting war in the Persian Gulf. Iran wants to work with other regional powers and is working with the Maliki government now.

As for Mr. Bush's concern about nuclear weapons in the region it seems he has forgotten that the only serious nuclear threat is the United States and Mr. Bush may very well plan to use nuclear weapons by provoking a war with Iran just as he did with Iraq.


Impeach Bush/Cheney to Prevent Nuclear War!

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

BBC NEWS
Bush warns Iran over insurgents

Bush attacks Iran
US President George W Bush has warned Iran to stop supporting the militants fighting against the US in Iraq.

In a speech to US war veterans in Reno, Nevada, Mr Bush renewed charges that Tehran has provided training and weapons for extremists in Iraq.

"The Iranian regime must halt these actions," he said.

Earlier, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned that US authority in the region was rapidly collapsing, and Iran would help fill the void.

"Soon, we will see a huge power vacuum in the region," Mr Ahmadinejad said.

"Of course, we are prepared to fill the gap, with the help of neighbours and regional friends like Saudi Arabia, and with the help of the Iraqi nation."

'Nuclear threat'

In his speech to the American Legion, Mr Bush hit back, accusing Iran's Revolutionary Guards of funding and arming insurgents in Iraq.

And he said Iran's leaders could not avoid some responsibility for attacks on coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.

"I have authorised our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran's murderous activities," he said.

HAVE YOUR SAY
Lots of accusations, but absolutely no evidence to support them. He's not even taking the trouble to make any evidence up this time!
David, Newcastle

The BBC's Justin Webb, in Washington, says this looks like a conscious effort by the White House to elevate the tension between Washington and Teheran to a new level.

Such an effort might be designed to avoid the need for armed conflict or might equally be an effort to bring that conflict about, our correspondent says.

In a wide-ranging speech, Mr Bush also tackled the issue of Iran's nuclear ambition - which Tehran insists is solely to provide power, but the US believes may be used to develop weapons.

Mr Bush said Tehran's pursuit of nuclear technology threatened to put the Middle East "under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust".

It was Mr Bush's second major speech on foreign policy in a week.

Correspondents say he is seeking to rally support for the so-called surge strategy of sending more troops to Iraq.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6967502.stm

Published: 2007/08/28 21:47:38 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Former CIA Analysts Discusses the threat of a Bush Instigated War against Iran

The following is an article from AlterNet preceded by a little commentary of my own.

It seems that Mr. McGovern has made a strong case for the idea that Mr. Bush will attack Iran because he is guided by a neoconservative groupthink belief that this will lead to happy outcomes. It seems utterly unrealistic to imagine that an air and missile war will lead to the Iranian Mullahs being overthrown as the neoconservative scenario predicts.

The neoconservatives may have a rosy scenario for a war with Iran. They certainly were ecstatic about the imagined benefits of invading Iraq. The catastrophic consequences in Iraq suggest that neoconservatives may also be delusional about the real consequences of a war on Iran. Mr. Bush has yet to suggest that anything has gone wrong with the war in Iraq and this indicates that he is still in the neoconservative-psychotic mode, denying reality.

Bush sees progress in Iraq and thinks of the whole invasion and occupation as a success. So it seems that he may be predisposed to more happy results as a result of invading Iran or at least bombing it, possibly with nuclear weapons.

Furthermore, I think Mr. McGovern has provided disturbing evidence that suggests that Mr. Bush is being directed by neoconservative hardliners like Dick Cheney while no longer getting advice from Rumsfeld who ironically may have left because he wanted to start dealing with reality in Iraq. I had also never heard that Rove may have balanced Cheney. That's one of the scariest things I've ever heard. But when you think about it Rove has dealt with polling facts and real world data to manipulate the public into supporting Republicans and not Democrats. So now this evidence based guy is gone and we are left with the most extreme and disconnected neoconservatives. Did Rove leave because he doesn't want to be associated with a war of aggression against Iran?

An attack in Iran is likely to lead to high military casualties and a shutdown of a great deal of middle eastern oil production. Iran is a nation that could shut-down a good deal of Middle East oil production and inflict thousands of casualties on troops deployed in the region. They have a lot of missiles and missiles generally cannot be shot down. Those missiles will hit aircraft carriers and any other ship they are aimed at. Imagine that! The entire Persian Gult navy sinking! That is to say that I agree with Mr. McGovern that Mr. Bush is delusional.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are Bush & Co. Gearing Up to Attack Iran?
By Ray McGovern, AlterNet
Posted on August 23, 2007, Printed on August 26, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/60493/

A shorter version of this article first appeared on Consortiumnews.com.

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 U.S. 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 has largely suppressed this key story.)

One former colleague, operations officer-par-excellence Robert Baer, now reports (in this week's Time) 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 "neoconservative" 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 that "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 Nov. 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 U.S. generals (Abizaid and 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 U.S. generals "withdraw U.S. 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 Aug. 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 20 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 Aug. 14 that the Nited States 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, [or] 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 and 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.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
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Paul Craig Roberts on Probable Bush Overthrow of our Constitutional System

This is Paul Craig Roberts's scenario for a Bush-Cheney overthrow of our Constitutional government in the midst of a staged crisis.
I have had similar concerns although some of the particulars have been different. I have been particularly concerned that the private contractors in Iraq might be brought back here to form a sort of skeleton for fascist government operations directed against United States citizens during the implementation of dictatorial rule. Will Congress stand in their way? Recent legislation authorizing Mr. Bush's hitherto illegal spying on millions of Americans suggests otherwise.

http://www.vdare.com/roberts/070715_impeach.htm

July 15, 2007
Impeach Bush And Cheney Now

By Paul Craig Roberts

Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.

Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.

Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist- police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered.

William Norman Grigg recently wrote that the GOP is "praying for a terrorist strike" to save the party from electoral wipeout in 2008. Chertoff, Cheney, the neocon nazis, and Mossad would have no qualms about saving the bacon for the Republicans, who have enabled Bush to start two unjustified wars, with Iran waiting in the wings to be attacked in a third war.

The Bush administration has tried unsuccessfully to resurrect the terrorist fear factor by infiltrating some blowhard groups and encouraging them to talk about staging "terrorist" events. The talk, encouraged by federal agents, resulted in "terrorist" arrests hyped by the media, but even the captive media was unable to scare people with such transparent sting operations.

If the Bush administration wants to continue its wars in the Middle East and to entrench the "unitary executive" at home, it will have to conduct some false flag operations that will both frighten and anger the American people and make them accept Bush's declaration of "national emergency" and the return of the draft. Alternatively, the administration could simply allow any real terrorist plot to proceed without hindrance.

A series of staged or permitted attacks would be spun by the captive media as a vindication of the neoconservatives' Islamophobic policy, the intention of which is to destroy all Middle Eastern governments that are not American puppet states. Success would give the US control over oil, but the main purpose is to eliminate any resistance to Israel's complete absorption of Palestine into Greater Israel.

Think about it. If another 9/11-type "security failure" were not in the works, why would Homeland Security czar Chertoff go to the trouble of convincing the Chicago Tribune that Americans have become complacent about terrorist threats and that he has "a gut feeling" that America will soon be hit hard?[Homeland Security chief warns of 'increased risk’ Chertoff bases 'gut feeling' on history, Al Qaeda statements By E.A. Torriero ,July 11, 2007]

Why would Republican warmonger Rick Santorum say on the Hugh Hewitt radio show that "between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public's (sic) going to have a very different view of this war."

Throughout its existence the US government has staged incidents that the government then used in behalf of purposes that it could not otherwise have pursued. According to a number of writers, false flag operations have been routinely used by the Israeli state. During the Czarist era in Russia, the secret police would set off bombs in order to arrest those the secret police regarded as troublesome. Hitler was a dramatic orchestrator of false flag operations. False flag operations are a commonplace tool of governments.

Ask yourself: Would a government that has lied us into two wars and is working to lie us into an attack on Iran shrink from staging "terrorist" attacks in order to remove opposition to its agenda?

Only a diehard minority believes in the honesty and integrity of the Bush-Cheney administration and in the truthfulness of the corporate media.

Hitler, who never achieved majority support in a German election, used the Reichstag fire to fan hysteria and push through the Enabling Act, which made him dictator. Determined tyrants never require majority support in order to overthrow constitutional orders.

The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown. Are coming "terrorist" events of which Chertoff warns and Santorum promises the means for overthrowing our constitutional democracy?

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Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

IMPEACH BUSH-CHENEY TO PREVENT NUCLEAR WAR

It is difficult to predict the future with any degree of accuracy. Nonetheless the drumbeat and campaign to attack Iran has clearly begun. It appears that a decision has been made to make yet another war of aggression against an oil rich nation. Iran has the capability and disciplined troops to genuinely inflict damage upon United States military forces and oil installations throughout the region. In response, Mr. Bush will use nuclear weapons and declare a state of emergency, 2008 elections will be cancelled.

A former Reagan economist has essentially expressed the same sort of scenario. My point is that an impeachment movement, a grass roots movement that won't take no for an answer could hamstring the apolacalyptic leaders in the White House.

Remember, impeachment would put the Bush-Cheney administration on the defensive Their many acts of violence and corruption
would be opened for public exposure. The Senate may or may not convict but the Bush-Cheney clique could be weakened enough to prevent their plans for nuclear war.