The Truth About US Imperial Oil Wars Is Even Worse Than You Suspected

Germans now call Bush America's Hitler and they should know. Iran, meanwhile, has officially labeled the US army a "terrorist" organization.

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has consistently led the way in telling the story of what's really going on in Iraq and Iran. SPIEGEL ONLINE spoke to him about America's Hitler, Bush's Vietnam, and how the US press failed the First Amendment. Bush is accused of accepting 'Ethnic Cleansing'it's been underestimated how much the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) knows. If you follow what
(IAEA head Mohamed) El Baradei (more...) and the various reports have been saying, the Iranians have claimed to be enriching uranium to higher than a 4 percent purity, which is the amount you need to run a peaceful nuclear reactor. But the IAEA's best guess is that they are at 3.67 percent or something. The Iranians are not even doing what they claim to be doing. The IAEA has been saying all along that they've been making progress but basically, Iran is nowhere. Of course the US and Israel are going to say you have to look at the worst case scenario, but there isn't enough evidence to justify a bombing raid.

--Spiegel Online International

Bush at the UN: a war criminal lectures the world on “human rights”

George W. Bush delivered his next to the last annual address to the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday. Taking the same podium that he used five years ago to condemn the world body to “irrelevance” if it failed to rubber stamp his plans for a war of aggression against Iraq, Bush cast his regime in Washington as the world’s greatest champion of human rights and its most generous and selfless benefactor.

That the assembled UN delegates could sit through and then politely applaud such a hypocritical harangue from a man who is without rival as the world’s greatest war criminal is testimony to the spinelessness and complicity of both the world’s governments and the United Nations itself.

While Bush made only the barest mention of either Iran or Iraq in his address, everyone in the hall was well aware that he is attempting once again to utilize the world body—much as his administration did five years ago in relation to purported Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction”—to secure a phony pretext for another war of aggression, this time against Iran. More...

Sarkozy calls for UN-led 'new world order'

New York - The United Nations should avail itself as an instrument for a "new world order of the 21st century," French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Tuesday in his first address to the General Assembly. Sarkozy, who won the presidency this year on a strong reform platform to modernize France, urged the world body to embark on programmes ranging from equal wealth distribution to fighting corruption in his speech full of references to France's past revolutionary ideals.

"In the name of France, I call upon all states to join ranks in order to found the new world order of the 21st century on the notion that the common goods that belong to all of humankind must be the common responsibility for us all," he told the General Assembly.

The UN should ensure access for all human beings to vital resources, such as water, energy, food, medication and knowledge, he said. He called for "more morality" in "financial capitalism" and a fairer distribution of profits, earnings in commodities, raw materials and new technologies.

"There must be a change of mindset and behaviour," Sarkozy said in a long list of demands to the international community. Known for his admiration of the United States and its culture, Sarkozy said France will remain loyal to its friends and the values it shares with them. But he warned that loyalty should not be equated with submission, a reference to Paris' disagreement with the US-led war in Iraq.


"What I want to say to the world is that France, faithful to its friends, stands ready to talk to all people, on every continent," he said.

Attack on Iran Said To Be Imminent

In a sign that U.N. Security Council-based diplomacy is losing steam, a number of sources are reporting that a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities may be imminent. France and America also are pushing for tighter economic sanctions against Tehran, without U.N. approval.

Yesterday's edition of Le Canard Enchaîné, a French weekly known for its investigative journalism, reported details of an alleged Israeli-American plan to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. The frontpage headline read: "A report sent to the Elysée — Putin tells Tehran: They're going to bomb you!"

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, also expressed concerns to reporters in New York that an attack on Iran might be imminent.

Like most stories in the French paper, the article was based on unnamed sources who said that in order to reduce casualties, the attack against Iran is planned for October 15, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israel would bomb the first targets while America would orchestrate a second wave of strikes, the report said.New York Sun

'Combat Outpost Shocker:' The base that could spark Iran conflict

The US military is building a base in Iraq just five miles from the border with Iran to prevent cross-border arms smuggling. The base, called "Combat Outpost Shocker," will be manned by 200 soldiers, along with agents from the US Border Patrol, and will monitor truck traffic and cellphone conversations among Shi'ite pilgrims.

"Obviously, [the Iranians] probably won't be very happy about it," Col. Mark Mueller, the commander of the border transition team, told ABC News.

Border security has been essentially ignored since the US invasion of Iraq, but the establishment of the base at this time is also seen as targeting what the US claims are Iranian attempts to smuggle advanced arms to Iraqi insurgents. The Associated Press, however, concludes that it is likely to be a drop in the bucket when dealing with a 900-mile long border where smuggling is a centuries-old way of life. Raw Story

B-52 Nukes Headed for Iran, Not For Decommissioning: Airforce Refused

-- SPECIAL REPORT --
Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater
By Wayne Madsen

WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.

However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.

Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional
weapons.

The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an effort in damage control by the Bush administration. WMR has been informed by a knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was, and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting incident would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of PINNACLE.

Just as this report was being prepared, Newsweek reported that Vice President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago that Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch a missile attack on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz. Cheney reasoned that after an Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample reasons to launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to attack Iran directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.

WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village of Tal Abyad, in northern Syria, near the Turkish border. Israel's attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-conservative propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George Bush's three remaining "Axis of Evil" states -- Syria, Iran, and North Korea -- to justify a sustained Israeli attack on Syria and a massive U.S. military attack on Iran.

WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic that there was a definite connection between Israel's OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as the Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented U.S. Air Force program that has been working on an attack plan for Iran since June 2007, around the same time that Cheney was working on the joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.

PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the /Times of London/, is a program that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is headed by Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran that involves a "decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets in the country. Stutzriem and Kass report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Moseley, who has also been charged with preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear weapons incident.

Kass' area of speciality is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring "information blockades," such as that imposed by the Israeli government on the Israeli media regarding the Syrian air attack on the alleged Syrian "nuclear installation." British intelligence sources have reported that the Israeli attack on Syria was a "true flag" attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air Force push back against transporting the six cruise nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the Middle East, Israel went ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus, Tehran, and Pyongyang on the other.

The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure that a media "perception management" is waged against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. This involves articles such as that which appeared with Joby Warrick's and Walter Pincus' bylines in yesterdays /Washington Post/. The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear," quotes a number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that such an incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For example, Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the former chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the "nuclear business" since 1966 and has never been aware of an incident "more disturbing."

Command and control breakdowns involving U.S. nuclear weapons are unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now waging an internal war against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S. government and military chain of command who are intent on using nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.

CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a pre-emptive U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran had it not been for BENT SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to our sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections to Israeli intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington, including the Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member of Parliament; Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for Iran were delayed.

Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from the media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to /Military Times/ on September 5, the day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear installation in Syria and the day planned for the simultaneous U.S. attack on Iran. The leaking of classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons disposition or movement to the media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force regulations require the sending of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air Force authorities on the disclosure of classified Air Force information to the media.

In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before the Air Force has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of no confidence in the official investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air Combat Command.

Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry Welch, to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look into the BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force investigation has reportedly been delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO of the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded research contractor that operates three research centers, including one for Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and another for the National Security Agency. One of the board members of IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin Capital Group and wife of former CIA director and arch-neocon James Woolsey.

WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State Department nor the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley briefed President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that showed the Syrian installation was a joint nuclear facility built with North Korean and Iranian assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would rely on Israeli imagery intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites have greater capabilities.

The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution asking Israel to place its nuclear weapons program under IAEA controls, similar to those that the United States wants imposed on Iran and North Korea. The resolution also called for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's resolution, titled "Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by the 144-member IAEA General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions. The only two countries to vote against were Israel and the United States. However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press, and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and Islamic nations that voted for the resolution.

This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the White House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance of the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were China, Russia, India, Ireland, and Japan. The 47 abstentions were described as votes "against" the resolution even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France, Australia, Canada, and Georgia, all abstained.

Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution concerning Israel's nuclear program and a roll call vote was not available either at the IAEA's web site -- www.iaea.org -- or in the media.

The perception management campaign by the neocon operational cells in the Bush administration, Israel and Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's nuclear program, not on Israel's. Any international examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would likely bring up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu, a covert from Judaism to Christianity, who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad "honey trap" named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a Mossad team in 1986 and held against his will in Israel ever since.

Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons program would focus on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation, including its program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid South Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken Adelman in Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame 1983-1987 would also come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the Reagan-Bush transition State Department team from November 1980 to January 1981, voiced his understanding for the nuclear weapons programs of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 /New York Times/ article titled, "3 Nations Widening Nuclear Contacts." The journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller. Adelman felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of their ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility from the Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by Iran, North Korea, and other "Axis of Evil" nations so designated by the neocons in the Bush administration and other governments.

There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship between Israel and North Korea. On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's /Dominion Post/ reported that three Mossad agents were involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra), were arrested and imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in Canberra, Amir Lati, was expelled by Australia and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth Mossad agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The third Mossad agent in New Zealand, Zev William Barkan (aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former Israeli Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is also the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the /Sydney Morning Herald/ as trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in North Korea to help the nation build a wall to keep its citizens from leaving.

The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United States and Israel and the breakdown in America's command and control systems have every major capital around the world wondering about the Bush administration's true intentions.

NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in reporting the events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the discord within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and other military services. Any source with relevant information and who wishes to contact us anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at or send mail via the Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The Front Desk, National Press Club, 13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW, Washington, DC, 20045. By Wayne Madsen
Author's website

The lessons of Ahmadinejad at Columbia

It is strange, too, that the US took part in this violent Israeli exercise, and stranger, as Ahmadinejad pointed out later, that “if you have created the fifth generation of atomic bombs and tested them already, what position are you [the US] in to question the peaceful purposes of others who want nuclear power? We don’t believe in nuclear weapons, period. It goes against the whole grain of humanity.” He added that politicians interested in nuclear weapons “are backward, retarded.” So for all the sanctimonious Mahmoud-haters who came to Columbia for an Oxbow-type hanging, sorry. if the shoes fits wear it.

In answer to what would it take for Iran to engage in talks with the United States, Ahmadinejad said, “If the US government recognizes the rights of the Iranian people, respects all nations and extends a hand of friendship to all Iranians, they will see that Iranians will be among their best friends.” I would say that is a very generous response from the president of a nation who had its democratically elected President Mossadeq taken down by a violent coup in 1953. Why? Because he wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil and spread the wealth among his people. Online Journal

Podhoretz Granted Secret Access To Lobby Bush On ‘The Case For Bombing Iran’

Norman Podhoretz, the “patriarch of neoconservatism,” recently published a book entitled “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” staunchly supporting the Iraq war and pushing for war with Iran. In June, Podhoretz published a controversial piece in Commentary magazine titled “The Case for Bombing Iran.”

The Politico reports today that President Bush has been listening to Podhoretz’s radical agenda, recently enlisting Podhoretz to discuss his views on Iran. In a meeting that “was not on the president’s public schedule,” Bush and Karl Rove “sat listening to Norman Podhoretz for roughly 45 minutes at the White House”:

Rove was silent throughout, though he took notes. The president listened diligently, Podhoretz said as he recounted the conversation months later, but he “didn’t tip his hand.” Think Progress

Bush Bombs at the United Nations

Certainly not an earth shattering headline, but disturbing nonetheless. The lack of love between George Bush and the United Nations is an old “dog-bites-man” story. Having put haters like John Bolton at the helm of the U.S. delegation, Bush’s in your face “go fuck yourself” hostility to all things UN is no secret.

But today’s performance in New York set a new low even for the Bush Administration. Except for tepid applause when Bush was introduced and when he left the podium, no one clapped. Not even our allies. The world has caught on to the George Bush propaganda game and declines to show him a modicum of respect.

Bush’s efforts to wrap himself in the aura of AIDS prevention, feeding hungry children, rescuing refugees in Darfur, and restoring freedom in Myanmar fell flat. There was a time when the United States could stand proudly before countries like Cuba, Myanmar, Sudan, and Iran and lecture them on human rights and democracy. But in the wake of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret renditions and kidnappings of innocent Arab men, flaunting the UN Declarations on Human Rights, the creation of a million plus refugees in Iraq (and the deaths of hundreds of thousands), and the suspension of habeus corpus America has pissed away its credibility.

America’s moral authority is gone. Our credibility in talking about foreign threats and the need to respect human rights is zippo. What is truly appalling about this development is that we have aligned ourselves in practice with those very regimes we so vigorously condemn. In the past, authoritarian regimes like the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, would justify their right to detain people without worrying about due process because they defined those individuals as terrorists who threatened the state and the security of their people. From their standpoint, all was fair when it came to protecting the nation. Security of the people was paramount, and human rights and civil liberties be damned in the face of perceived threats. More

I Was a Cybercrook for the FBI

David Thomas loves movies. He took his online nickname -- "El Mariachi" -- from a Hollywood flick, and his conversation is occasionally peppered with dialogue from Scarface and other favorite films. He says he once legally changed his name to "Darius Jedburgh," a character from a popular old BBC miniseries called Edge of Darkness. In the series, Jedburgh is a CIA operative from Texas.

By the time David Thomas eased his Cadillac into the parking lot of an office complex in Issaquah, Washington, he already suspected the police were on to him.

An empty Crown Victoria in one of the parking spaces confirmed it. "That's heat right there," he told his two passengers -- 29-year-old girlfriend Bridget Trevino, and his crime partner Kim Marvin Taylor, a balding, middle-aged master of fake identities he'd met on the internet.

It was November 2002, and Thomas, then a 44-year-old Texan, was in Washington to collect more than $30,000 in merchandise that a Ukrainian known as "Big Buyer" ordered from Outpost.com with stolen credit card numbers. His job was to collect the goods from a mail drop, fence them on eBay and wire the money to Russia, pocketing 40 percent of the take before moving to another city to repeat the scam.

But things didn't go as planned.

CBS 60 mn Ahmadinejad Interview, Part 2

PELLEY: President Bush has pledged that you will not be allowed to possess a nuclear weapon and will use military force if necessary.

AHMADEINEJAD: I think Mr. Bush, if he wants his party to win the next election, there are cheaper ways and ways to go about this. I can very well give him a few ideas so that the people vote for him. He should respect the American people. They should not bug the telephone conversations of their citizens. They should not kill the sons and daughters of the American nation. They should not squander the taxpayers' money and give them to weapons companies. And also help the people, the victims of Katrina. People will vote for them if they do these things. But if they insist on what they are saying right now, this will not help them. Again, nobody can hurt the Iranian people. And history tells us that the people who have been less than kind to the Iranian people, they have lost out. What I'm saying, I am being very sincere here. I'm a Muslim. I cannot tell a lie. I am supposed to tell the truth. What I'm saying is that President Bush's conduct in Iraq is wrong. And his wrong conduct is behind his party losing the previous elections. This is very clear. The American people are very much dismayed with the behavior and the conduct of the present administration. They are not dismayed with Iran. In fact, the two nations are very close to one another. An example of that would be the letter sent to me by an American scholar a few days ago. More...

Israel seeks exemption from atomic rules

Israel is looking to a U.S.-India nuclear deal to expand its own ties to suppliers, quietly lobbying for an exemption to non-proliferation rules so it can legally import atomic material, according to documents made available Tuesday to The Associated Press.

The move is sure to raise concerns among Arab nations already considering their neighbor the region's atomic arms threat. Israel has never publicly acknowledged having nuclear weapons but is generally considered to possess them.

The new push is reflected in papers Israel presented earlier this year to the "Nuclear Suppliers' Group" _ 45 nations that export nuclear fuel and technology under strict rules meant to lessen the dangers of proliferation and trafficking in materials that could be used for a weapons program. MORE

Can We End the American Empire Before It Ends Us?

In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances and destroyed our reputation in the world. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.

According to a 2007 NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, some 78 percent of Americans believe their country to be headed in the wrong direction. Only 22 percent think the Bush administration’s policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term -- and lost. What people don’t agree on are the reasons for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy -- or remedies -- ought to be.
The range of opinions on this is immense. Even though large numbers of voters vaguely suspect that the failings of the political system itself led the country into its current crisis, most evidently expect the system to perform a course correction more or less automatically. According to the New York Times, by the end of March 2007, at least 280,000 American citizens had already contributed some $113.6 million to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, or John McCain.
If these people actually believe a presidential election a year-and-a-half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, puts it: “None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances. . . .

The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them.” [Let me add a note. The author of these remarks is a West Point graduate, a retired Army colonel, and a professor of International Relations at Boston University. On May 15, we read in the New York Times’s casualty lists that his son, First Lieutenant Andrew Bacevich, twenty-seven, of the First Cavalry Division, was killed in Iraq. To say that he is bitter is an understatement.] MORE

Examiner Exclusive: Bush quietly advising Hillary Clinton, top Democrats

President Bush is quietly providing back-channel advice to Hillary Rodham Clinton, urging her to modulate her rhetoric so she can effectively prosecute the war in Iraq if elected president.

In an interview for the new book “The Evangelical President,” White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten said Bush has “been urging candidates: ‘Don’t get yourself too locked in where you stand right now. If you end up sitting where I sit, things could change dramatically.’ ”

Bolten said Bush wants enough continuity in his Iraq policy that “even a Democratic president would be in a position to sustain a legitimate presence there.” The Examiner

US plans to disintegrate Iraq

The US Senate is planning to vote on a proposal backed by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden to divide war-torn Iraq based on ethnic lines.

Advocates of the plan, which is to be voted as soon as Tuesday, claim that the plan would allow US troops to eventually go home without leaving chaos behind.

The Plan, which calls for an autonomous federation of Kurdish, Shia and Sunni regions has come under fire by critics, who say Iraq's ethnic groups who live side-by-side in cities and inter-marry are not divided by lines on a map. Press TV

JFK Quotes You Probably Haven't Heard

Here are some JFK quotes that you've likely never heard. I would ask the question - when will we ever hear a President utter such words again?

Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war. September 25, 1961.

Our primary long-range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament -- designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. June 10, 1963 More...
Is our children learning?

Sarkozy calls for "arsenal" of sanctions against Iran

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday ruled out any imminent trip by his foreign minister to Iran and distanced himself from talk of an eventual war over Tehran's nuclear program.

In an interview with the New York Times, the French leader stressed his government's bottom line of "no nuclear weapon for Iran" and said he would press for "an arsenal of sanctions" to convince Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions.

But he took a step back from his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's position in media interviews one week ago, in which he said France was preparing for war as a worst-case scenario.

"For my part, I don't use the word 'war,'" Sarkozy told the Times. AFP

U.S. warships arrive in Russia for joint naval exercise

Two U.S. battleships have arrived in Russia's Far East port of Vladivostok to participate in a joint exercise with the Russian Navy.

The USS Lassen (DDG 82), an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer; and the USS Patriot (MCM 7), a minesweeper, will participate in the drill, to be held September 28-30. The exercise will include mine-sweeping and anti-submarine operations, the mock interception of a vessel trespassing in territorial waters and a sea-rescue operation.

"This is the third meeting of Russian and American sailors this year. There are two goals - the further development of naval cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, and the joint naval exercise Pacific Eagle 2007," a Russian Navy spokesman said.

Russia is represented by the Admiral Panteleyev, an Udaloy-class destroyer.

PLA eyes aircraft carriers with ballastic missiles

In the event of conflict in the Taiwan Strait, if the United States were to send an aircraft carrier to the scene, it would likely remain in an area 800-1,000 kilometers from the spot of engagement. This is what happened in 1999 when China sent a series of air sorties over the island and the United States sent two aircraft carriers to the area as a warning.

This distance poses very complicated and difficult challenges for detecting, positioning and tracking the target when aiming to strike the aircraft carrier with ballistic missiles.
China's DF-21 and DF-15 ballistic missiles use inertia plus gyroscope guidance at the middle course, and as a result the flight trajectories are quite inflexible. Even if new optical and radar image guidance technologies are applied at the terminal course, it is still extremely difficult to quickly adjust the direction when attacking a moving target. UPI

Bush Declares: Hillary Will Win Nomination; White House Calls Obama "Lazy"

President Bush, for the first time, is predicting that Barack Obama will be defeated in the Democratic presidential primaries by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“She's got a national presence and this is becoming a national primary,” Bush tells author Bill Sammon in the bombshell book, EVANGELICAL PRESIDENT, set for release Monday. “And therefore the person with the national presence, who has got the ability to raise enough money to sustain an effort in a multiplicity of sites, has got a good chance to be nominated.”

Breaking his vow not to play “pundit-in-chief” in the 2008 presidential race, Bush tells Sammon that Clinton ultimately will be defeated in the general election by the Republican nominee.

“I think our candidate can beat her, but it's going to be a tough race,” the president predicted in an Oval Office interview. “I will work to see to it that a Republican wins, and therefore don't accept the premise that a Democrat will win. I truly think the Republicans will hold the White House.” Drudge Report

Iraq fiasco creeps into NSA surveillance controversy

The battle over domestic electronic surveillance returned to prominence last week with fresh hearings in Congress and the usual Cheney administration demagoguery. In a clear attempt to shape the debate, on Wednesday the President took to the bully pulpit at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade to demand that Congress stop pussy-footing around and make the six month FISA statute passed in August permanent. Chop, chop.

New revelations about NSA snooping, however, would seem to make quick passage of such legislation impossible. After all, the whole point of the six month sunset provision was to provide for six months of debate, not to just delay the vote until Congress had the chance to enjoy a month-long break, and then rubber stamp it like the good old days. The Register

Britain has enough plutonium for 1000s of Nagasakis: report

Britain has stockpiled enough plutonium to replicate the nuclear bomb attacks on Japan in 1945 thousands of times over, the country's top science academy said Friday.

The Royal Society said the amount of separated plutonium, most of which is the by-product of reprocessed spent fuel from nuclear power stations, has almost doubled in the last 10 years to more than 100 tonnes.

But the eminent body, which was founded in 1660 and whose previous members include Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, said the government lacked any coherent strategy for either its long-term use or disposal. AFP

Mainstream Media is Selling Another War

Now they are selling a war on Iran. Mainstream media is helping sell another illegal war. The way they do this is mainly by not reporting things or under-reporting things. So important facts don't reach the majority of the American people.

Most people are are relying on the mainstream media to learn what is going on in the world. Most people rely on TV news and TV news is not telling them what they need to know. Most people don't hunt around the internet for vital information, most people aren't learning about Dr. ElBaradi's recent statements. Dr. ElBaradei is the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and he recently said "we have not seen any undeclared facilities operating in Iran". Did you know Iran is permitted under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to have facilities for civilian nuclear power? It's their right. Here is something else the most people are not hearing from the mainstream media: The U.S. is in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Department of Veterans Affairs Reports 73 Thousand U.S. Gulf War Deaths

More Gulf War Veterans have died than Vietnam Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs, May 2007, Gulf War Veterans Information System reports the following:

Total U.S. Military Gulf War Deaths: 73,846
– Deaths amongst Deployed: 17,847
– Deaths amongst Non-Deployed: 55,999
Total “Undiagnosed Illness” (UDX) claims: 14,874
Total number of disability claims filed: 1,620,906
- Disability Claims amongst Deployed: 407,911
- Disability Claims amongst Non-Deployed: 1,212,995

Percentage of combat troops that filed Disability Claims 36%

-Source: http://www1.va.gov/rac-gwvi/docs/GWVIS_May2007.pdf
How come the government numbers of 3,777 as of 9/7/7 are so low? The answer is simple, the government does not want the 73,000 dead to be compared to the 55,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Vietnam Iraq = Vietnam. What the government is doing is only counting the soldiers that die in action before they can get them into a helicopter or ambulance. Any soldier who is shot but they get into a helicopter before he dies is not counted.

73,000 dead amongst the U.S. soldiers for this scale operation using weapons of mass destruction is not high - we expect the great majority of U.S. soldiers who took part in the invasion of Iraq to die of uranium poisoning, which can take decades to kill.

From a victors perspective, above any major war in history, The Gulf War has taken the severest toll on soldiers. More here

Sure we'd invite Hitler to speak, says Columbia dean

Details of torture coverup

Learn What Happened to the Man Who Exposed the Army Iraq Torture Scandal

Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford at Fort Lewis Army base, in Washington, before his deployment to Iraq.

A veteran sergeant who told his commanding officers that he witnessed his colleagues torturing Iraqi detainees was strapped to a gurney and flown out of Iraq -- even though there was nothing wrong with him.

David DeBatto
Salon.com
December 8, 2004

On June 15, 2003, Sgt. Frank "Greg" Ford, a counterintelligence agent in the California National Guard's 223rd Military Intelligence (M.I.) Battalion stationed in Samarra, Iraq, told his commanding officer, Capt. Victor Artiga, that he had witnessed five incidents of torture and abuse of Iraqi detainees at his base, and requested a formal investigation. Thirty-six hours later, Ford, a 49-year-old with over 30 years of military service in the Coast Guard, Army and Navy, was ordered by U.S. Army medical personnel to lie down on a gurney, was then strapped down, loaded onto a military plane and medevac'd to a military medical center outside the country.

Although no "medevac" order appears to have been written, in violation of Army policy, Ford was clearly shipped out because of a diagnosis that he was suffering from combat stress. After Ford raised the torture allegations, Artiga immediately said Ford was "delusional" and ordered a psychiatric examination, according to Ford. But that examination, carried out by an Army psychiatrist, diagnosed him as "completely normal." More...

Iran promises missiles will fly if US attacks

Iran has threatened to retaliate with missile attacks if Western forces launch raids against the Islamic state's nuclear programme — putting on a defiant show of military force to back up the message.

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressed a military parade in Teheran and mocked threats from the United States, while the head of the Revolutionary Guards said Iran would "pull the trigger" if attacked.

Their bellicose intervention came as officials in Washington warned that time was running out for the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, to "get a result" from diplomacy or hand the initiative to White House hawks who want military action.

Mr Ahmadinejad spoke out as he led a parade to mark Iran's war with Iraq, which included a flypast by three Saegheh jet fighters and armoured vehicles, one of which bore the slogan "Death to America".

In a message directed at Western diplomats, he told the crowds: "Those who think that by using such decayed tools as psychological warfare and economic sanctions, they can stop the Iranian nation's progress are making a mistake." London Telegraph

Secret US air force team to perfect plan for Iran strike

THE United States Air Force has set up a highly confidential strategic planning group tasked with “fighting the next war” as tensions rise with Iran.

Project Checkmate, a successor to the group that planned the 1991 Gulf War’s air campaign, was quietly reestablished at the Pentagon in June.

It reports directly to General Michael Moseley, the US Air Force chief, and consists of 20-30 top air force officers and defence and cyberspace experts with ready access to the White House, the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

Detailed contingency planning for a possible attack on Iran has been carried out for more than two years by Centcom (US central command), according to defence sources.

Checkmate’s job is to add a dash of brilliance to Air Force thinking by countering the military’s tendency to “fight the last war” and by providing innovative strategies for warfighting and assessing future needs for air, space and cyberwarfare. London Times

Kissinger Admits Iran Attack Is About Oil

"So what?, we need the oil," sneer deluded Neo-Cons as oil prices explode due to orchestrated artificial scarcity

In a new op-ed, Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger admits that U.S. hostility against Iran is not about the threat of nuclear proliferation, but as part of a larger agenda to seize Iranian oil supplies. But the true meaning behind this is lost on Neo-Cons, who are still deluded into thinking that Americans benefit from the imperial looting of natural resources in the middle east.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Former US Secretary of State Kissinger comes clean on the true motives behind the planned military assault on Iran.

"An Iran that practices subversion and seeks regional hegemony - which appears to be the current trend - must be faced with lines it will not be permitted to cross. The industrial nations cannot accept radical forces dominating a region on which their economies depend," writes Kissinger.

As blogger Robert Weissman points out, the "legitimate aspirations" that Kissinger affords Iran later in the piece "do not include control over the oil that the United States and other industrial countries need."

According to the CIA's world factbook, Iran has the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil at 133 gigabarrels. Adding non-conventional oil, Iran holds 10% of the global oil supply.

Kissinger's admission that U.S. control of Iranian oil supplies is the real agenda behind hostility towards Iran would raise eyebrows and bring condemnation from many, but there are a hard core of Neo-Con cheerleaders who would support such an agenda even if it is openly accepted that nuclear proliferation is just a smokescreen for looting more middle east oil.

That is because they are still deluded into thinking that foreign wars of aggression to monopolize natural resources make America, and as a consequence make them, richer and more prosperous - when nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact that the Iraq invasion was about oil is a familiar cliche that was even acknowledged by Alan Greenspan last week.

"So what? We need that oil," the Neo-Cons sneer.

Americans don't benefit from the Globalists' control of Iraqi oil because the agenda is to artificially restrict global oil supplies in order to jack up prices and reduce the living standards of industrial countries.

The oil flowing out of Iraq has never recovered to pre-invasion levels and still stands at a measly 0.5 gigabarrels a year, a huge chunk of which is piped directly to Israel.

This artificial scarcity is the stated goal of Bilderberg luminaries like Kissinger and José Manuel Barroso, who have sworn to inflate prices up to $200 dollars a barrel and spark the onset of a "post-industrial revolution", which translates as another economic depression and a wholesale "correction" of living standards that will all but obliterate the middle class.

Neo-Cons who trumpet the ethnic cleansing of the middle east using the twisted logic that it benefits Americans as their dollar sinks to peso level and gas prices explode while the cost of living becomes unaffordable are living in a complete fantasy world, but when the wake up call arrives the consequences of their ignorance are going to reap a hellish revenge.
infowars.com

Carter: Iran No Threat to Israel Now

Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that it was almost inconceivable that Iran would "commit suicide" by launching missiles at Israel.

Speaking at Emory University, Carter, who brokered the 1979 Camp David peace accord between Israel and Egypt, said Israel's superior military power and distance from Iran likely are enough to discourage an actual attack.

"Iran is quite distant from Israel," said Carter, 83. "I think it would be almost inconceivable that Iran would commit suicide by launching one or two missiles of any kind against the nation of Israel."

Iran's deputy air force commander said Wednesday that Israel is within range of Iran's medium-range missiles and bombers and that Tehran would strike back if Israel "makes a silly mistake."

The White House said the comments almost sound geared toward provoking a fight and Israeli officials said they take the threats seriously.

Carter did not dismiss the idea that Iran might want to attack Israel, noting Iran's refusal to suspend uranium enrichment production despite two United Nations resolutions imposing sanctions on the country. Tehran insists its nuclear program is aimed at producing energy for civilian use but the U.S., its European allies and many others fear the program's real aim is to produce nuclear weapons.

"Obviously, we all hope we can do whatever we can to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power," Carter said.

Carter said unease between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank is a far greater threat to Israel's security than Iran. He criticized the Bush administration for not doing enough to broker peace in the region.

http://www.cartercenter.org

Russian strategic bombers to conduct exercises this week

Russian strategic bombers will conduct a series of long-range training flights, with aerial refueling during the exercises, scheduled for September 18-21, an Air Force spokesman said Monday.

"During the exercise on September 18-21, Russian strategic bombers Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22M3, and Il-78 aerial tankers will conduct long-duration daytime and night flights with mid-air refueling," Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky said.

Major-General Pavel Androsov, the commander of the Russian Air Force's strategic aviation, will supervise the exercise.

Moscow announced in mid-August that routine flights by strategic bombers had been resumed, and would continue on a permanent basis, with patrol areas including commercial shipping and economic production zones.

According to various sources, the Russian Air Force currently deploys 141 Tu-22M3 bombers, 40 Tu-95MS bombers, and 14 Tu-160 planes . RIA Novosti

Iran attacks 'American' French after war warning

Iran's official media launched a blistering attack on France on Monday after its foreign minister warned the world to brace for war, accusing Paris of taking an even harder line than Washington.
"The new occupants of the Elysees want to copy the White House," the state-run IRNA news agency wrote in an editorial, referring to the French presidential palace.

It said that since Nicolas Sarkozy took over as president from Jacques Chirac and promoted closer ties with the United States, "he has taken on an American skin".

"The French people will never forget the era when a non-European moved into the Elysees," it said.

The withering comments came after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the world should brace for a possible war over Iran's nuclear drive, which has already been the target of two sets of UN sanctions. AFP

France warning of war with Iran

Mr Kouchner has sounded the alarm over Iran's nuclear programme

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.

He was speaking ahead of a visit to Russia on Monday, during which Iran is likely to feature prominently.

Iran's nuclear programme will also be one of the main issues for the UN nuclear watchdog's annual conference, starting in Vienna on Monday.

BBC

Russia, Italy warn against US attack on Iran

Russian and Italian officials have warned against any US military intervention in Iran over the country's nuclear standoff.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov warned of the catastrophic consequences of any US attack on Iran.

"Generally speaking, bombings of Iran would be a bad move that would end with catastrophic consequences," Losyukov told the daily Vremya Novosti.

"We are convinced that there is no military solution to the Iranian problem. It's impossible. Besides, it is quite clear that there is no military solution to the Iraq problem either," he said. Press TV

War with Iran 'the worst that could happen': French FM

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said after talks here Tuesday that war with Iran was "the worst that could happen," but called for "negotiations without cease" over Tehran's nuclear programme.

"I've said that war is the worst that could happen," he said. "Everything should be done to avoid war. We have to negotiate, negotiate, negotiate -- without cease, without rebuff." AFP

China says it opposes threatening Iran with war

China is opposed to threatening Iran with war over its nuclear program and stands for a diplomatic solution, a government spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

The United States, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China have backed two rounds of U.N. sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment and other sensitive work that could be used to make nuclear weapons.

"We believe the best option is to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiations, which is in the common interests of the international community," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a regular briefing.

"We do not approve of easily resorting to threatening use of force in international affairs," Jiang said when asked to comment on remarks by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner raising the prospect of war with Iran. Reuters

Blackwater security firm banned from Iraq

Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, an American security firm (Read Mercenaries agency) whose contractors (Mercenaries) are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead. The U.S. State Department said it plans to investigate what it calls a "terrible incident."

In addition to the fatalities, 14 people were wounded, most of them civilians, an Iraqi official said.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has expressed regret for the weekend killings, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office said late Monday. Sunday's firefight took place near Nusoor Square, an area that straddles the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Mansour and Yarmouk.

"We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby," Hussein Abdul-Abbas, owner of a mobile phone store in the area, told the AP. "One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately." CNN

I Spy

Spy chief: China, Russia spying on U.S.
China and Russia are spying on the United States nearly as much as they did during the Cold War, according to the top U.S. intelligence official.

Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, says in testimony prepared for a Tuesday congressional hearing that a law passed last month expanding the U.S. government's eavesdropping power is needed to protect not just against terrorists but also against more traditional potential adversaries, such as those two Cold War foes. AP

Spy Chief Seeks More Eavesdropping Power
The top U.S. intelligence official is asking Congress for even more changes to a law that he says limited the government's ability to eavesdrop, not just on terrorists but also on more traditional potential adversaries. AP

What AP won't tell you: It turns out that Israel has had a potential wiretap on every phone in America for years, along with the ability to monitor and record who any person is calling, anywhere in America; information of great value even if one does not listen to the calls themselves. Amdocs, Inc., the company which subcontracts billing and directory services for phone companies around the world, including 90 percent of American phone companies, is owned by Israeli interests. Yet another company, Comverse Infosys, is suspected of having built a “back door” into the equipment permanently installed into the phone system that allows instant eavesdropping by law enforcement agencies on any phone in America. This includes yours. It's Antisemitec to say anything about Israeli Spying.

Syrian paper warns nuclear rumors may be prelude to US attack

U.S. intimations of Syrian nuclear cooperation with North Korea might be a prelude to an attack on Syria, a state-run newspaper said Sunday.

The comment published in an editorial in one of the largest state-owned dailies, al-Thawra, came two days after a senior U.S. nuclear official said the North Koreans were in Syria and that Damascus may have had contacts with "secret suppliers" to obtain nuclear equipment.

Al-Thawra predicted Sunday there more accusations could well be on their way.

"The magnitude of these false accusations might be a prelude to a new aggression against Syria," al-Thawra daily said.

The newspaper called the suggestions of atomic cooperation "a flagrant lie" and said Syria has repeatedly asked the international community to disarm Israel of its nuclear weapons and called for a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction. The Associated Press

Did Military Leak Foil Attempt To Bomb Iran?

Critically exploring whether or not there was a covert attempt to instigate a catastrophic nuclear war against Iran is illuminated through an introduction using the recent B-52 Incident.

On August 30, a B-52 bomber armed with five nuclear-tipped Advanced Cruise missiles travelled from Minot Air Force base, North Dakota, to Barksdale Air Force base, Louisiana, in the United States. Each missile had an adjustable yield between five and 150 kilotons of TNT which is at the lower end of the destructive capacities of U.S. nuclear weapons.

For example, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13 kilotons, while the Bravo Hydrogen bomb test of 1954 had a yield of 15,000 kilotons. The B-52 story was first covered in the Army Times on 5 September after the nuclear armed aircraft was discovered by Airmen. http://www.armytimes.com/news/2007/09/marine_nuclear_B52_070904w/

Israeli raid was a dry run for attack on Iran

Mystery surrounds last week's air foray into Syrian territory. The Observer's Foreign Affairs Editor attempts to unravel the truth behind Operation Orchard and allegations of nuclear subterfuge.

The head of Israel's airforce, Major-General Eliezer Shkedi, was visiting a base in the coastal city of Herziliya last week. For the 50-year-old general, also the head of Israel's Iran Command, which would fight a war with Tehran if ordered, it was a morale-boosting affair, a meet-and-greet with pilots and navigators who had flown during last summer's month-long war against Lebanon. The journalists who had turned out in large numbers were there for another reason: to question Shkedi about a mysterious air raid that happened this month, codenamed 'Orchard', carried out deep in Syrian territory by his pilots.

Shkedi ignored all questions. It set a pattern for the days to follow as he and Israel's politicians and officials maintained a steely silence, even when the questions came from the visiting French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner. Those journalists who thought of reporting the story were discouraged by the threat of Israel's military censor.

But the rumours were in circulation, not just in Israel but in Washington and elsewhere. In the days that followed, the sketchy details of the raid were accompanied by contradictory claims even as US and British officials admitted knowledge of the raid. The New York Times described the target of the raid as a nuclear site being run in collaboration with North Korean technicians. Others reported that the jets had hit either a Hizbollah convoy, a missile facility or a terrorist camp.

Amid the confusion there were troubling details that chimed uncomfortably with the known facts. Two detachable tanks from an Israeli fighter were found just over the Turkish border. According to Turkish military sources, they belonged to a Raam F15I - the newest generation of Israeli long-range bomber, which has a combat range of over 2,000km when equipped with the drop tanks. This would enable them to reach targets in Iran, leading to speculation that it was an 'operation rehearsal' for a raid on Tehran's nuclear facilities.

Finally, however, at the week's end, the first few tangible details were beginning to emerge about Operation Orchard from a source involved in the Israeli operation.

They were sketchy, but one thing was absolutely clear. Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft.

What was becoming clear by this weekend amid much scepticism, largely from sources connected with the administration of President George Bush, was the nature of the allegation, if not the facts.

In a series of piecemeal leaks from US officials that gave the impression of being co-ordinated, a narrative was laid out that combined nuclear skulduggery and the surviving members of the 'axis of evil': Iran, North Korea and Syria.

It also combined a series of neoconservative foreign policy concerns: that North Korea was not being properly monitored in the deal struck for its nuclear disarmament and was off-loading its material to Iran and Syria, both of which in turn were helping to rearm Hizbollah.

Underlying all the accusations was a suggestion that recalled the bogus intelligence claims that led to the war against Iraq: that the three countries might be collaborating to supply an unconventional weapon to Hizbollah.

It is not only the raid that is odd but also, ironically, the deliberate air of mystery surrounding it, given Israel's past history of bragging about similar raids, including an attack on an Iraqi reactor. It was a secrecy so tight, in fact, that even as the Israeli aircrew climbed into the cockpits of their planes they were not told the nature of the target they were being ordered to attack.

According to an intelligence expert quoted in the Washington Post who spoke to aircrew involved in the raid, the target of the attack, revealed only to the pilots while they were in the air, was a northern Syrian facility that was labelled as an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river, close to the Turkish border.

According to this version of events, a North Korean ship, officially carrying a cargo of cement, docked three days before the raid in the Syrian port of Tartus. That ship was also alleged to be carrying nuclear equipment.

It is an angle that has been pushed hardest by the neoconservative hawk and former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. But others have entered the fray, among them the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who, without mentioning Syria by name, suggested to Fox television that the raid was linked to stopping unconventional weapons proliferation.

Most explicit of all was Andrew Semmel, acting deputy assistant Secretary of State for nuclear non-proliferation policy, who, speaking in Rome yesterday, insisted that 'North Koreans were in Syria' and that Damascus may have had contacts with 'secret suppliers' to obtain nuclear equipment.

'There are indicators that they do have something going on there,' he said. 'We do know that there are a number of foreign technicians that have been in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment. Whether anything transpired remains to be seen.

'So good foreign policy, good national security policy, would suggest that we pay very close attention to that,' he said. 'We're watching very closely. Obviously, the Israelis were watching very closely.'

But despite the heavy inference, no official so far has offered an outright accusation. Instead they have hedged their claims in ifs and buts, assiduously avoiding the term 'weapons of mass destruction'.

There has also been deep scepticism about the claims from other officials and former officials familiar with both Syria and North Korea. They have pointed out that an almost bankrupt Syria has neither the economic nor the industrial base to support the kind of nuclear programme described, adding that Syria has long rejected going down the nuclear route.

Others have pointed out that North Korea and Syria in any case have also had a long history of close links - making meaningless the claim that the North Koreans are in Syria.

The scepticism was reflected by Bruce Reidel, a former intelligence official at the Brookings Institution's Saban Centre, quoted in the Post. 'It was a substantial Israeli operation, but I can't get a good fix on whether the target was a nuclear thing,' adding that there was 'a great deal of scepticism that there's any nuclear angle here' and instead the facility could have been related to chemical or biological weapons.

The opaqueness surrounding the nature of what may have been hit in Operation Orchard has been compounded by claims that US knowledge over the alleged 'agricultural site' has come not from its own intelligence and satellite imaging, but from material supplied to Washington from Tel Aviv over the last six months, material that has been restricted to just a few senior officials under the instructions of national security adviser Stephen Hadley, leaving many in the intelligence community uncertain of its veracity.

Whatever the truth of the allegations against Syria - and Israel has a long history of employing complex deceptions in its operations - the message being delivered from Tel Aviv is clear: if Syria's ally, Iran, comes close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, and the world fails to prevent it, either through diplomatic or military means, then Israel will stop it on its own.

So Operation Orchard can be seen as a dry run, a raid using the same heavily modified long-range aircraft, procured specifically from the US with Iran's nuclear sites in mind. It reminds both Iran and Syria of the supremacy of its aircraft and appears to be designed to deter Syria from getting involved in the event of a raid on Iran - a reminder, if it were required, that if Israel's ground forces were humiliated in the second Lebanese war its airforce remains potent, powerful and unchallenged.

And, critically, the raid on Syria has come as speculation about a war against Iran has begun to re-emerge after a relatively quiet summer.

With the US keen to push for a third UN Security Council resolution authorising a further tranche of sanctions against Iran, both London and Washington have increased the heat by alleging that they are already fighting 'a proxy war' with Tehran in Iraq.

Perhaps more worrying are the well-sourced claims from conservative thinktanks in the US that there have been 'instructions' by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney to roll out support for a war against Iran.

In the end there is no mystery. Only a frightening reminder. In a world of proxy threats and proxy actions, the threat of military action against Iran has far from disappeared from the agenda.

The Observer

Bush rallies troops to avert revolt in Congress

President George Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney yesterday visited troops at US military bases in a public relations roadshow intended to stay a revolt in Congress against an "enduring relationship" with Iraq.

Hours after a televised address in which Mr Bush offered the American public updated reasons for a prolonged military commitment in Iraq, the president took to the road to try to build support for a plan that will pass on the responsibility of the war to the next US president.

Mr Bush inadvertently acknowledged it would be a hard sell. After having lunch with marines and their families in Quantico, Virginia, he said: "We, I, fully understand that if we were to be driven out of Iraq the Middle East would be in chaos."

The switch in pronouns was telling as the Democratic leaders in Congress turned on the White House. "The president failed to provide either a plan to successfully end the war or a convincing rationale to continue it," Jack Reed, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, said in the official response to Mr Bush's address. The Guardian

U.S. develops 14-ton super bomb, bigger than Russian vacuum bomb

The U.S. has a 14-ton super bomb more destructive than the vacuum bomb just tested by Russia, a U.S. general said Wednesday.

The statement was made by retired Lt. General McInerney, chairman of the Iran Policy Committee, and former Assistant Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

McInerney said the U.S. has "a new massive ordnance penetrator that's 30,000 pounds, that really penetrates ... Ahmadinejad has nothing in Iran that we can't penetrate."

He also said the new Russian bomb was not a "penetrator."

On Tuesday, the Fox News television channel said: "A recent decision by German officials to withhold support for any new sanctions against Iran has pushed a broad spectrum of officials in Washington to develop potential scenarios for a military attack on the Islamic regime.".

Commenting on the report, McInerney said: "Since Germany has backed out of helping economically, we do not have any other choice. ... They've forced us into the military option." More...

Proxy war could soon turn to direct conflict, analysts warn

The growing US focus on confronting Iran in a proxy war inside Iraq risks triggering a direct conflict in the next few months, regional analysts are warning.

US-Iranian tensions have mounted significantly in the past few days, with heightened rhetoric on both sides and the US decision to establish a military base in Iraq less than five miles from the Iranian border to block the smuggling of Iranian arms to Shia militias.

The involvement of a few hundred British troops in the anti-smuggling operation also raises the risk of their involvement in a cross-border clash.

US officers have alleged that an advanced Iranian-made missile had been fired at an American base from a Shia area, which if confirmed would be a significant escalation in the "proxy war" referred to this week by General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq.

"The proxy war that has been going on in Iraq may now cross the border. This is a very dangerous period," Patrick Cronin, the director of studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said. The Guardian