Perle admits invasion was illegal: Say what?

[November 20, 2003]

As of this writing, the geurilla war in Iraq is only getting worse. Massive car bombs with many deaths, including over the last week several suicide car bomb attacks in Turkey.

This week GW Bush is making a "State Visit" to Britain. This is said to be the first State Visit by a U.S. President to Britain for a long time (if ever). A "State Visit" is when the Queen makes the invitation, and hosts the guest, rather than the it being the Prime Minister.

As can be expected, given the massive NO WAR protests in Britain last spring, leading up to the war, there are massive protests against GW Bush's visit this week.

Among the meetings and speeches made is one containing an astonishing set of statements from Daniel Perle. He is a leader of the NeoCon's ensconsced in the Defense Department.

[November 20, 2003; The Guardian (UK); http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1089158,00.html]

War critics astonished as US hawk admits invasion was illegal

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. ... Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

Uhm, what's this? The U.S. is a nation of Laws, as GHW Bush was proclaiming leading up to the prior war with Iraq, but in this war with Iraq we're going to ignore the law?

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq ... or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, ... "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

Here's one of the points of the article, that Perle is diverging somewhat from the party line. The administrations formal line is that UN Security Council Resolution 1441 gave the authority. Perle is going further that the U.S. has the right to ignore international law? That it's morally correct to ignore international law? Just how is ignoring the law moral?

Oh yeah, these were the people that lied through their teeth to create this war in the first place. They must not know what morality is anyway?

"They're just not interested in international law, are they?" said Linda Hugl, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which launched a high court challenge to the war's legality last year. "It's only when the law suits them that they want to use it."

... The Pentagon adviser's views, he added, underlined "a divergence of view between the British govern ment and some senior voices in American public life [who] have expressed the view that, well, if it's the case that international law doesn't permit unilateral pre-emptive action without the authority of the UN, then the defect is in international law".

... On the night bombing began, in March, Mr Bush reiterated America's "sovereign authority to use force" to defeat the threat from Baghdad.

The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, has questioned that justification, arguing that the security council would have to rule on whether the US and its allies were under imminent threat.

What we have here is a strange view of when it's morally correct to launch war. That pre-emptive action (war) can be taken at will?

Democracy & Voting

Obviously a core feature that Democratic governments depend on is their ability to gaurantee free and fair elections to their citizens. If the citizens will is thwarted because the voting system is rigged, then it's not a democracy is it?

The year 2000 elections ended with a voting fiasco. At the surface the election results were "too close to call" in many races, most specifically the Presidential election. If ever there were a demonstration of your vote always counts, the 500 or so vote margin in the Florida Presidential election results is it. If only a few hundred more voters showed up, the election could have gone a different way.

Part of the fiasco was the recount. Many Florida counties relied on a punch card system which was probably the Cool New Thing when it was first unveiled, but in todays Internet Age they are so 60's it's pathetic. The issue in Florida is that the chad's don't always come off cleanly, which left the recount workers struggling to determine the will of the voter based on the condition of those chads.

Across the country an effort was made to replace older styles of voting systems with newer ones. A prominent suggestion was

Touch Screen Voting

These are a kiosk through which to vote. It has a computer screen, easy to use computerized menus, and you interact by touching the screen. What could be more Cool New Thing than that, I ask you?

[November 1, 2004; During the 2000 election Ralph Nader strongly promoted "instant runoff" voting. Instant runoff voting would have made for a different way to solve the 2000 election fiasco than the "touch screen voting" system examined on this page.]

Touch screen voting has the potential to be great, but for the security issues. The design they have rolled out has no paper trail. The obvious question being begged is, what if someone were to rig the machines? If there's no paper trail, there's no way to independantly verify anything. Any election with the possibility of impropriety, well, we have the experience of Florida in 2000 to guide us. That was a difficult time, with two candidates who believed they had been elected, both demanding a fair count, and the fair count being fraught with error. Wind ourselves a few years into the future, with no paper trail and the possibility of election fraud, and what would happen?

[Oct 13, 2003; Wired News; wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00.html] Did E-Vote Firm Patch Election? Diebold Election Systems has had a tumultuous year, and it doesn't look like it's getting any better.

... Now a former worker in Diebold's Georgia warehouse says the company installed patches on its machines before the state's 2002 gubernatorial election that were never certified by independent testing authorities or cleared with Georgia election officials.

If the charges are true, Diebold could be in violation of federal and state election-certification rules. The charges also raise questions about the integrity of the Georgia election results and any other election that uses patched Diebold systems that have not been re-certified.

The article goes on for three pages, and has these points to make:

• A former worker is alleging that Deibold patched the voting machines just before the election.
• The Republican won the race in a result that went far against the predicted outcome from polling. Further it is the first Republican win for the Georgia Governors seat in over 150 years, and a rare time when a Democratic Governor lost his bid for a second term.
• The former worker claimed that 25-30 percent of the voting machines were malfunctioning, and the patches were needed to make them reliable.
• Patches were applied without recertifying the machines. The patches were applied 1 month before the election, and recertification would take 6 months.
• The former worker alleges being in meetings where Deibold employees debated how much truth to tell the Georgia officials.
• Both Deibold and Georgia officials either deny the allegations, or refuse to comment.

Obviously a computer system needs to be updated as bugs are found. However for something as sensitive as an election, you must tread very carefully around these issues.

That the machines were not recertified after patching is troublesome. Presumably the certification process is thorough enough to prevent fraud by anybody. But any time you update (patch) a computer system not only can the beneficial code be added, the code can be harmful. The patch could be any software, and doesn't have to be just the changes needed to fix a bug. Hence, someone could sneak a back door into the voting systems to rig the outcome of the election. That is, unless the machines are formerly certified and software changes rigorously controlled.

But, that's only because there is no paper trail.

If the machines produced an easily verifiable piece of paper, then the machines couldn't be a source of election fraud. And it wouldn't be all that hard, and it could still be a Cool touch screen voting machine. Here's what you would have to do:

• Touch screen voting machine lets voter pick their candidates with great ease.
• The voting machine has no wires, or other network connectivity, other than a power cable.
• When the user is done voting, the machine prints out a summary sheet listing their vote.
• The summary sheet is printed with a controlled text font making it both easy to scan using an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) computer, and easy to read by humans.
• The person voting reviews what's printed on the sheet, and then carries it to the poll worker who puts it in a box as is currently done.
• The elections commission has OCR computers to scan all the vote printouts. If there's a misfeed, it's trivial to check what the intended vote was and could be a normal part of the process to manually enter any votes that misfeed.
• If the election results are called into question, the election officials can easily read what the intended vote is.

The Man who Knew: More about the Lies

[2003 October 15]

The story is still the same as the previous reports; the War in Iraq is still struggling, there is still daily geurilla attacks, nearly daily deaths of American soldiers, and still no proof for any of the claims used to create this war.

In todays news is an interview with several former U.S. Intelligence officials who are aghast at the misrepresentations used to create this war.

[Oct. 15, 2003; CBS News; cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/] The Man Who Knew In the run-up to the war in Iraq, one moment seemed to be a turning point: the day Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the case for the invasion.

I covered the evidence he presented on this page: The "case" for War
The article interviews the following people:

• Greg Thielmann, a former expert on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. ... Thielmann's last job at the State Department was director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs, which was responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Secretary Powell.
• Houston Wood was a consultant who worked on the Oak Ridge analysis of the tubes. [The aluminum tubes claimed to be for centrifuging Uranium.]
• Steve Allinson, a U.N. inspector in Iraq in the months leading up to war.

The first interesting thing is the range of reactions these Intelligence officials had to Powell's testimony to the U.N. in Feb 2003. This testimony was intended to lay a serious and believable case to justify war. So how did these high ranking Intelligence officials react?

“I had a couple of initial reactions. Then I had a more mature reaction,” says Thielmann, commenting on Powell's presentation to the United Nations. “I think my conclusion now is that it's probably one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation.”
“I guess I was angry, that’s the best way to describe my emotions. I was angry at that,” says Wood, who is among the world’s authorities on uranium enrichment by centrifuge. He found the tubes couldn’t be what the CIA thought they were. They were too heavy, three times too thick and certain to leak.

Allinson watched Powell’s speech in Iraq with a dozen U.N. inspectors. There was great anticipation in the room. Like waiting for the Super Bowl, they always suspected the U.S. was holding back its most damning evidence for this moment. What was the reaction among the inspectors as they watched the speech? “Various people would laugh at various times because the information he was presenting was just, you know, didn't mean anything, had no meaning,” says Allinson.

Hardly encouraging, is it?

As Powell said at the time:

“The gravity of this moment is matched by the gravity of the threat that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction pose to the world,” said Powell.

Yes, it was a very grave moment. The steps to create a war are ones which ought to be taken carefully, because people will be dieing as a result of your decision. Thousands of people have died since the decision to launch this war. I would wish that the claims he made that day were true, and that I did not have to be writing this. I would rather know that those people had died in a just cause, not a misbegotten lie.

But Thielmann also says that he believes the decision to go to war was made first, and then the intelligence was interpreted to fit that conclusion. For example, he points to the evidence behind Powell’s charge that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to use in a program to build nuclear weapons.

... Intelligence agents intercepted the tubes in 2001, and the CIA said they were parts for a centrifuge to enrich uranium - fuel for an atom bomb. But Thielmann wasn’t so sure. Experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the scientists who enriched uranium for American bombs, advised that the tubes were all wrong for a bomb program. At about the same time, Thielmann’s office was working on another explanation. It turned out the tubes' dimensions perfectly matched an Iraqi conventional rocket.

“The aluminum was exactly, I think, what the Iraqis wanted for artillery,” recalls Thielmann, who says he sent that word up to the Secretary of State months before.

It wasn't just the fateful 16 words everybody points at, the ones claiming that Iraq was seeking Uranium when the administration knew very well Iraq was doing no such thing. The administration also knew the tubes could not be used for centrifuging Uranium, the Uranium the administration knew didn't exist, but were instead rocket parts.

“Science was not pushing this forward. Scientists had made their determination their evaluation and now we didn’t know what was happening,” says Wood.

In his U.N. speech, Secretary Powell acknowledged there was disagreement about the tubes, but he said most experts agreed with the nuclear theory.

“There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium,” said Powell.
“Most experts are located at Oak Ridge and that was not the position there,” says Wood, who claims he doesn’t know anyone in academia or foreign government who would disagree with his appraisal. “I don’t know a single one anywhere.”

Colin Powell also gave an interview with a BBC reporter, in which he gave a rebuttal to the above claims.

It's Official - No WMD Found

To readers of the other sections of these reports on the war in Iraq, it should not be surprising to learn of an interim report stating that no Weapons of Mass Destruction had been found. This week the leader of the inspection team, David Kay, made just that report to Congress.

[Oct 2, 2003; CNN; cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/02/kay.report/] Text of David Kay's unclassified statement ... The text of his testimony to congress.

There's too much in his testimony to adequately quote and stay within fair use. So I'll summarize, and point out at the offset that the following articles in the press are not reporting the full story.

First, as is obvious, no existing and immediately usable WMD's (chemical, biological or nuclear) were found in Iraq. If they had existed, perhaps the defenders would have used them during the U.S. invasion.

Next, as to programs to produce such weapons. He gives a number of excuses such as the massive looting after the invasion (true) and the small size of the things being searched for (also true). What's interesting is their discovery of a range of programs previously undeclared to the U.N. and which, at the least, were preserving the skeleton of WMD programs.

• A clandestine network of laboratories run by the IIS (secret service).
• A prison laboratory complex "possibly" used for biological weapons testing on the prisoners.
• Preserved "reference strains" of biological agents, from which weapons could be regrown later.
• Plans for missiles with 1000km range, well beyond the allowed 150km under the UN sanctions. Further, talks with North Korea about supplying missiles to Iraq.
• Unmanned aircraft (UAV) with ranges well beyond the allowed maximum.

Everything discussed was more ambition than in a stage of producing results.

[Oct 3, 2003; The Independant (London); news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=449413] 1,200 weapons inspectors spent 90 days in Iraq. The exercise cost $300m. And the number of weapons found? 0 Five months after the end of the war in Iraq, a CIA adviser has admitted that his 1,200-strong team of inspectors has discovered none of Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

"We have not yet found stocks of weapons," David Kay, the head of the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group ... 90 days after the arrival of his group in Iraq. Mr Kay insisted that lines of inquiry on which the group were working might yet yield concrete proof. He hoped to "draw a line" under his work in six to nine months. In the report he argued that the bulkiest material that inspectors were searching for could be hidden in spaces little larger than a two-car garage. ...

He said: "Much evidence is irretrievably lost." He also blamed the slow progress on the way Iraq had arranged its WMD activities, the widespread destruction of materials and documents before the war, and looting of suspect sites afterwards.

[Oct 3, 2003; The Independant (London); news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=449410] 'We found nothing, despite Saddam's ambitions' The interim report of America's chief weapons inspector is a damning blow to those who argued the case for war against Iraq based on the imminent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's regime.

... While there was some evidence that Iraq had retained the template of a weapons programme, in all the areas in which the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) has been looking ? biological, chemical and nuclear ? Mr Kay conceded that his staff had found nothing that proved Saddam ever actually possessed such weapons. He also admitted that the pre-war intelligence on Iraq had proved to be in sharp contrast to the reality on the ground.

... Mr Kay said: "We have not yet found stocks of weapons but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapons stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone." He laid out six reasons for his team's failure to find proof of WMD, ranging from "WMD personnel" crossing borders before and after the conflict, to the relatively small size of any such weapons in contrast to Saddam's conventional weapons.

In regard to biological weapons (BW), Mr Kay claimed his team had uncovered "significant information" pointing towards the development of "BW-applicable organisms". Yet he said the team was still working to ascertain what these represented. The report said teams have discovered a network of clandestine laboratories and found live botulinum toxin ? which could be used to make biological weapons ? at an Iraqi scientist's home.

[Oct 2, 2003; Financial Times; http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer] Iraq team finds no illegal weapons "We have not found at this point actual weapons," David Kay said after briefing members of Congress on his three-month investigation. "We have found substantial evidence of an intent of senior level Iraqi officials, including Saddam, to continue production at some future point in time of weapons of mass destruction."

Saddam Hussein's regime held high-level talks about gaining long-range missile technology from North Korea as recently as October 2000, Mr Kay's interim report states.

The Iraq Survey Group, the US-led team looking for Iraq's WMD, said Iraq and North Korea discussed missile technology, probably related to North Korea's long-range No Dong missile. The missile has a range of 1,300km, which would have provided Baghdad with strike power beyond the 150km limit set by the United Nations.

Nothing found, unsurprisingly. But they were in talks with North Korea? Hmmm... Not good, especially given that North Korea is currently heading towards nuclear weapon ownership given the U.S. distraction with Iraq.

[Oct 3, 2003; The Independant (London); news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=449407] Survey chief led calls to oust Iraqi dictator When the Bush administration was searching for someone to lead the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the name of David Kay quickly surfaced. He seemed the perfect candidate. He had experience in Iraq and, best of all, he was completely in tune with White House thinking.

... What appealed to the White House was not just Mr Kay's experience, but his distrust of the Saddam Hussein regime. And he had long given up on the UN inspection body, Unscom. Even in 1994, after he had left the IAEA, Mr Kay was making arguments the Bush administration used to justify the war

"There is no ultimate success that involves Unscom. It's got to be a change of regime. It's got to be a change of Saddam," Mr Kay wrote at the time.

It should not be surprising that the person selected to head the inspection team turns out to be biased against Saddam Hussein's regime. On the other hand, that just serves to emphasize the result, that no WMD's have been found.

Selling America's Image in the World

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks a program was launched. A high powered advertising executive from New York City was hired to lead an advertising campaign to "brand" America, to project a positive image of America to the world, and specifically the Middle East.

The unspoken assumption must have been "they attacked us because they have a wrong impression of us, so let's change their perception of the U.S.". Denial takes many forms, doesn't it? In my view that attack wasn't an attack specifically on the U.S., but on Globalization, the World Trade Center having been seen as a major symbol of globalization, and it's effective headquarters. For someone to make such an attack, yes, there is an issue of their perception of the ones they are attacking, but is the message to the recipient soley that the other party is at fault? Or should the recipient of the attack also question themselves, look to themselves to see what's inside them which could have instigated the attack, and worked to change those things as well?

In any case, here's an interview of the authors of the book "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq", covering this propoganda campaign launched by the U.S. to sway opinion in the Middle East. The campaign failed miserably.

[Sep 29, 2003; Salon.COM; salon.com/news/feature/2003/09/30/deception/index.html] War is peace! It seemed like an auspicious debut: The new magazine Hi was just off the presses and it generated heavy buzz. It was glossy. It was young. It was fresh and hip and just a little bit sexy. The multimillion-dollar launch across 14 countries got headlines worldwide. And for the U.S. State Department that seemed to be good news, because Hi is a government publication issued to win hearts and minds in the Arab and Muslim world.

... In "Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War in Iraq," co-authors Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain why efforts like Hi have almost inevitably failed. "The United States lost the propaganda war a long time ago," Rampton told Salon, citing the wisdom of an Arab-American news executive. "They could have the prophet Mohammed doing their public relations, and it wouldn't help."

... "Weapons of Mass Deception" is a readable, witty, fact-filled catalog of the U.S. government's attempts to counter the tide of anti-U.S. sentiment that the Bush administration abruptly discovered in the Muslim world after Sept. 11, 2001. It starts with the story of Charlotte Beers, former chairwoman and CEO of two of the world's top ad agencies, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy & Mather. She was hired after 9/11, as Colin Powell explained, "to change from just selling the U.S. ... to really branding foreign policy."

Efforts like these eventually cost $1 billion a year. Where did the money go?

... "Branding America"? What does "branding" mean, in regards to a country?

Rampton: Charlotte Beers was an expert in "brand management." Branding, in general, is the idea of getting people to associate emotional values with the product or idea you're trying to sell.

This is what advertisers are always saying in one form or another. "Sell the sizzle, not the steak." They try to get you to buy an automobile, not because it is a form of transportation, but because it makes you feel powerful. Or it makes you feel sexy. They try to sell things on the basis of these emotional reactions that they're trying to get you to develop.

... One of the ironies here is that a critical reader, a critical thinker, someone who really wants to see what's going on here -- reading mainstream sources like the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Guardian, and listening to the BBC -- could come to the same conclusions that we did. But that's not where most Americans get their news. Most Americans get their news from television, which is probably the worst single source for providing factual information and analysis.

Mad-Hatters Tea Party in Iraq

[Sep 18, 2003; San Jose Mercury News; Perspective by Joseph Wilson; http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/editorial/6778084.htm] Seeking honesty in U.S. policy President Bush's speech last Sunday was just the latest example of the administration's concerted efforts to misrepresent reality -- and rewrite history -- to mask its mistakes. The president said Iraq is now the center of our battle against terrorism. But we did not go to Iraq to fight Al-Qaida, which remains perhaps our deadliest foe, and we will not defeat it there.

By trying to justify the current fight in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, the administration has done two frightening things. It has tried to divert attention from Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the wave of terrorist attacks against American interests from New York and Washington to Yemen, and who reappeared in rugged terrain in a video broadcast last week. ...

... We are now also beginning to face terrorists there, but it is our own doing. Our attack on Iraq -- and our bungling of the peace -- led to the guerrilla insurgency that is drawing jihadists from around the Muslim world. The ``shock and awe'' campaign so vividly shown on our television screens has galvanized historic Arab envy, jealousy and resentment of the United States into white-hot hatred of America.

Where once there were thousands, now there are potentially millions of terrorists and sympathizers who will be drawn into this campaign.

We've seen other examples of the kind of insurgency we're now facing. One was in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, and we all should know the end of that story by now. Bin Laden was one of the outside jihadists drawn into that battle; he emerged as the head of a group of hardened soldiers he called Al-Qaida.

[Sep 17, 2003; New York Times; nytimes.com/2003/09/18/national/18BUSH.html] Bush Reports No Evidence of Hussein Tie to 9/11 President Bush said today that he had seen no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, as the White House tried to correct an assertion that Vice President Dick Cheney left extremely murky on Sunday. ... "I think it's not surprising that people make that connection," said Mr. Cheney, who leads the hawkish wing of the Bush administration. Asked whether the connection existed, Mr. Cheney said, "We don't know." He described Mr. Hussein's reported connections to Al Qaeda, connections that American intelligence analysts say were not very deep. Mr. Bush, asked by a reporter today about that statement, said, "No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," a far more definitive statement than the vice president's. ...

[Sep 17, 2003; BBC Online; news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3118262.stm] Bush rejects Saddam 9/11 link

[Sep 16, 2003; Wired News; wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp] Hans Blix: Iraq Destroyed WMD 10 Years Ago

[Sep 18, 2003; CNN; http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/18/sprj.irq.blix.bush/] Blix attacks Iraq weapons 'spin'

[Sep 18, 2003; MSNBC; msnbc.com/news/968663.asp] U.S. team finds no smallpox in Iraq

[Sep 21, 2003; BBC; news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3126522.stm] Iraq adopts sweeping reforms The American-backed administration in Iraq has announced sweeping economic reforms, including the sale of all state industries except for oil. The surprise announcement by Iraqi Finance Minister Kamel al-Kilani dominated the second day of meetings organised by the International Monetary Fund in Dubai. ... Mr Kilani said liberalisation of foreign investment, the banking sector, taxes and tariffs would "significantly advance efforts to build a free and open market economy in Iraq". ... The most lucrative part of the Iraqi economy - oil - is not included in the reforms. Natural resources are exempt from the changes, excluding current outside participation in Iraq's oil reserves. There is widespread belief in the Arab world that the US military action in Iraq earlier this year was motivated by a desire to control Iraq's substantial oil reserves.

These "reforms" sound suspiciously like the standard IMF & World Bank plan as detailed by George Palast in his book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". While it appears the oil industry will not be directly controlled by the Globalist forces, the rest of the economy there will be Globalist controlled.

Best Democracy Money Can Buy : The Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters -- Expanded Election Edition Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the Rev.Ed. Best Democracy Money Can Buy, the - Abridged CDs The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth about Corporate Cons, Globalization, and High-Finance Fraudsters

Next: Iran?

In the Gulf War II Background Material page I note that the neo-conservatives (Wolfowitz, Rumsfield and the rest) were planning exactly that war since at least 1992. The theory presented is that the U.S. is now the sole super-power, with the fall of the Soviet Union, and we've got the high ground, and must assert our superiority.

In the days following the Sep 11, 2001 attacks those same neo-conservatives pushed hard for an immediate attack on Iraq. Why Iraq? The attack was supposed to have been launched by al Queda, located in Afghanistan, and an organization with little connection to Iraq. Yet, they insisted on Iraq as the target, and have eventually gotten it. As detailed in other of the Gulf War II pages, the justification for the war was a total fraud, none of the claimed for evidence has been found in Iraq, and as of this writing (Sep 19, 2003) the situation there is a bloody mess.

At the same time the uber-plan schemed by the neo-conservatives was for Iraq to be the first step. The following step was to be the overthrow of either Syria or Iran.

The goal is said to be that by establishing "moderate democracies" in the center of the Middle East, that we could turn the whole tenor of the Middle East. As I said, as of this writing the whole situation is a mess, and in particular the response is anything but being welcomed with open arms (as promised) but instead a bloody guerilla war. Much as extremists from all over the Middle East converged on Afghanistan when Russia invaded that country, they are converging on Iraq now that the U.S. has invaded.

Therefore it is worth following news about Iran to track the rhetoric and determine whether we are actually being steered towards a war there. In the Gulf War II pages you will find a few references to this issue, primarily on the "is Syria next" page.

Two issues have been building in general

1. Nuclear capability: For a few months there has been growing awareness and concern about development of nuclear capability in Iran. Supposedly they have a nuclear plant capable of reprocessing Uranium from which to make nuclear bombs. Now, if this is true, it is of grave concern, especially as Iran is denying the claim and is resisting Atomic Energy Commission inspections. On the other hand, given the track record of the U.S. administration they may well be lying through their teeth, again.
2. Promoting geurilla activities in Iraq: Certainly little love is lost between the U.S. and Iran. This isn't the old days of the Shah when Iran was our best buddy, but instead the days of the Ayatollah's and their hatred of the U.S. So, who knows, they could well be wanting to undermine U.S. activities in Iraq.

News Articles

[Sep 30, 2003; CNN; cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/09/30/iran.nuclear.elbaradei.reut/index.html] U.N. needs 'full Iran N-access' VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) -- The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief has said he will need full and unlimited cooperation from Iran to verify Tehran's insistence that it has no secret atomic weapons programme. Iran said on Monday it would limit the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) access to declared nuclear sites when inspectors arrive this week ahead of an October 31 deadline for Iran to show it has no nuclear weapons programme. However, to verify Iran's claims about its controversial uranium-enrichment programme and other aspects of Iran's atomic activities, the IAEA needs access to facilities that have not been officially declared as nuclear sites. "If we cannot have full cooperation, full disclosure, unfortunately I'll have to say that I am not able to verify the Iranian statements (that their nuclear programme is purely peaceful)," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters Tuesday.

[Sep 22, 2003; Reuters; http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3486523] Iran Shows Off Missile Might Amid Nuclear Fears Iran, under pressure to dispel fears it is developing nuclear arms, Monday paraded six of its newly deployed medium-range missiles, which military analysts say could reach Israel or U.S. bases in the Gulf. ... Iran's reformist President Mohammad Khatami said the show of strength should not be read as saber-rattling. "The Islamic Republic of Iran's policy is based on detente," he said at the parade led by disabled war veterans. "We are opposed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons but we insist on our absolute right to be powerful in the scientific and technological arena." ... "The (Shahab's) increased range covers the whole of Israel, north to south, from deployment areas deep within Iran, and thus increases concern as to what would happen if such missiles were armed with WMD warheads," he told Reuters. Television pictures showed one of the missile carriers displayed a defiant message in bold letters on a giant yellow banner facing Khatami. "We will stamp on America," it read. ... Iran insists its nuclear scientists are not working on a weapons program but trying to meet soaring electricity demand.

If their intent was truly to decrease tensions, then why would they parade missiles bearing provocative messages? Obviously the baiting is going both directions.

[Sep 19, 2003; Haaretz; haaretz.com/hasen/spages/341947.html] U.S. official: Iran can arm missiles with biological warheads Iran has the capability of arming ballistic missiles with biological warheads, ...

This is the first time that an official claim of Iran's ability to launch biological warheads has been made.

Intelligence sources said that such an ability indicates sophisticated technological capabilities, since biological warheads are considered much harder to use than other types. ...
DeSutter's testimony was delivered at a joint session that included Israeli Knesset members as well as members of both houses of Congress. The meeting, part of an ongoing initiative to hold periodic joint sessions of the Congress and Knesset, was attended by [various] Senators ...

DeSutter told the committee that Iran is in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and has been working to acquire secretly nonconventional weapons of all kinds. ... is a genuine threat to both the Middle East and the U.S., since the Iranians are constantly working to expand the range of their missiles. America's current strategy for dealing with the problem is to push for a decision by the International Atomic Energy Agency, formally declaring Iran in violation of the NPT, she added.

The biological weapon angle is new, as the article says. The combination of nuclear allegations, actively seeking weapons, and actively working to extend the range of the missiles, well, we heard those exact complaints about Iraq. We've seen how accurate they were with Iraq, so can we trust the government again?

The fact that I can so easily express doubt about the government is the exact reason why their lies are impeachable offenses. As citizens we need to be able to trust that we are being told the truth, and if we catch the administration in a huge lie then how can we ever trust them?

The other interesting thing here is the joint session between Knesset and the U.S. Congress. Does the U.S. Congress regularly hold joint sessions with parlaiments or legislatures of other countries? Is Israel getting special treatment here? If so, why?

[Sep 18, 2003; The Economist; economist.com/world/africa/displayStory.cfm] It's all gone dreadfully wrong: Even the European Union has lost patience with Iran WHEN confronted with difficult questions about its nuclear programme, Iran's strategy has been to play for time. That approach backfired badly last week when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) expressed its collective exasperation with Iran's evasive attitude. Instead of buying more time, Iran now faces a deadline of October 31st to dispel doubts about its nuclear ambitions.

[Sep 19, 2003; The Telegraph; telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml] US troops killed as Bremer accuses Iran At least three American soldiers died in attacks in Iraq yesterday as the US pro-consul in Baghdad gave warning that Iran should halt its plots to destabilise the country.

... In an interview with The Telegraph he claimed that Iranian intelligence agents were working to destabilise the reconstruction process.

IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) page on Iran: http://www.iaea.org/worldatom/Press/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml

IAEA 2002 report on Iran's Nuclear Power situation: iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/cnpp2002/Documents/Documents/Islamic%20Republic%20of%20Iran%202002.pdf