Happy New Years Iraq!

Since 2008 began the U.S. has dropped some 90,000 pounds of bombs on six provinces in central Iraq, or an average of 9,000 pounds a day, according to today's L.A. Times. This is already at twice the rate of December. So the 'surge' is working, we hear it from all sides. Violence is down, especially since we don't count B-1 and F-16 strikes as 'violence.'

The nearly 50,000 pounds dropped on Diyala province on Thursday are of particular note. I submit that there is a back story here that can only be obtained by reading between the lines.

You see on Wednesday 6 American occupation soldiers were blown up after they invaded a booby-trapped house. So I have no doubt that the air strikes by strategic bombers on the same area the next day, strikes that almost certainly involved the wanton slaughter of civilians, was the usual revenge/terror response that I spoke of when Blackwater mercenaries murdered seventeen civilians in response to one resistance fighters sniper fire. Again, the chances of finding the people who actually booby-trapped the house are slim and none. So what's an occupation army to do? Make them pay! Show them what real terror is! Call in the B-1s.

Sunday, we will put out flag draped coffins for the six U.S. soldiers that found what they were looking for. And of those murdered in revenge? We don't even know how many, let alone their names.

The Jerusalem Post Lies

I went to the Jerusalem Post looking for the story that said that Al Jazeera said that it was the USAF that bombed Syria September 6th. I got sidetracked by this article:

Preventing World War III

In it columnist Caroline Glick claims that in 2005 elBaradei said that Iran could produce a nuclear bomb in "a few months." I was struck by that claim and decided to follow it up. I have quoted the relevant part of her article below.

Take for example the head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency Muhammad elBaradei's recent remarks on the subject. Speaking to ,i>Le Monde on Monday, elBaradei asserted that it will take Iran between three to eight years to acquire a nuclear arsenal. Consequently, he argued, there is no reason to consider conducting a military strike against Teheran's program. There is still plenty of time for diplomacy, or sanctions or even incentives for the ayatollahs, he said.

ElBaradei's statement is only interesting when it is compared to a statement he made in December 2005 to the Independent. Back then Baradei's view was that Iran was just "a few months" away from producing atomic bombs. But then too he saw no reason to attack. As he put it when he warned that Iran was on the precipice of nuclear weapons, using force would just "open Pandora's box." "There would be efforts to isolate Iran; Iran would retaliate, and at the end of the day, you have to go back to the negotiation table to find the solution," elBaradei warned.

The Jerusalem Post 25 October 2007

No doubt this is an excerpt from The Independent article to which she refers:

But he warned that if Iran carries out a threat to reopen its mothballed Natanz underground enrichment plant, a dangerous escalation will ensue, and raise fresh questions about Iran's insistence that its nuclear intentions are peaceful. "If they start enriching this is a major issue and a serious concern for the international community," he said.

Although IAEA officials have said it would take at least two years for Natanz to become fully operational, Mr ElBaradei believes that once the facility is up and running, the Iranians could be "a few months" away from a nuclear weapon. "That's why there is the concern of the international community about Iran," he said, "because lots of people feel it could be a dual purpose programme".

The Independent, 05 December 2005


So what elBaradei really said was that if the Iranians opened a closed enrichment plant, and ran it for at least two years, they would be "a few months" away from a nuclear weapon. In other words, in December 2005 elBaradei said that the Iranian were at least two years and a few months away from a bomb on a clock that hadn't even started running yet and this the Jerusalem Post represents as him saying that the Iranian were, two years ago, only a few months from the bomb on a clock that was already running.

This is a complete misrepresentation of what elBaradei told The Independent, in short it is a lie. A falsehood like this shows a complete lack of journalist ethics on the part of the the Jerusalem Post. That would be true and bad enough if done on any subject, but this lie is much, much worst because it is being done to promote a war and the mass murder of Iranians.

If we can't trust the Jerusalem Post to accurately represent easily checked [by English readers] articles from The Independent, how much creditability can we give to their presentation of something from an Arabic only website?

[This Week: Sen. John McCain] These Guys Are Nuts!

This Sunday on ABC News This Week Presidential candidate Senator John McCain told George Stephanopoulos his take on Bush's most recent threats against Iran. He said

"If you make threats, you have to make sure you carry them out."

Bush threatens World War III and McCain wants to start it!!! These guys are nuts! They are looking for the rapture. God help us if we leave them in power.

BENT SPEAR: Were Missing Nukes Head for Iran

According to Wayne Madsen the story about six Air Force nukes that went 'missing' on Aug. 30th, the story first broke by Military Times here and discussed on the Daily Kos here, the so-called BENT SPEAR story, is just the tip of a very chilling conspiracy. According to WMR these nukes were headed for Iran. They were to be used in a massive U.S. air strike against Iran set to coincide with the September 6th Israeli air strike on Syria. The U.S. part in these plans was derailed by push back with in the Air Force and the U.S. Intelligence community, the BENT SPEAR story is just what bubbled to the surface in the Media. Wayne Madsen writes:

Air Force refused to fly weapons (nukes) to Middle East theater [FREE]
By Wayne Madsen Sept. 24, 2007 Author's website

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 ...

Bill O'Reilly on the Fascist DailyKos [Video]

FYI: On Monday's Talking Points Fox News Billy O'Reilly starts out talking about the fascist Ahmadinejad and ends up talking about the fascist Daily Kos. Obviously Ahmadinejad is a fascist because Bush needs to attack Iran next and what better way to vilify the leader of a country you want to make war on than to compare him to Hitler? But what makes the Daily Kos fascist? Is it just because everyone is not signing up for the next war?

I also love the hypocrisy of O'Reilly and these other right wing nuts when they jump on Ahmadinejad for his homophobic denial and in the same commentary they jump on Bollinger for not letting ROTC on Columbia's campus, never mentioning that it's ROTC's homophobic attitudes that are keeping it off the campus.