Nuclear Scaremongering about Iran from Clinton

[Toonpack 9478]

come on man- why do they need centrifuges? Why are they hiding stuff under mountains and not telling anyone??

 

If I was Iranian I'd be building a bomb for sure - why don't they just admit it??

 

Why don't Israel?

 

Why should Israel?

Don't you think a lot of the anti-West feeling in the Muslim world stems from the perception (shared by many in the West, including a lot of Jews tbf) that it's one rule for Israel and one rule for everyone else?

 

 

There is one rule for Israel and one for everyone else, but that has a lot to do with a large number of the "everyone else" in question wishing to wipe Israel off the map - as they tried several times militarily until Israel became (or proved to be) the biggest kid on the block.

 

As such, them remaining in a militarily supreme position is acceptable IMO.

[Toonpack 9478]

come on man- why do they need centrifuges? Why are they hiding stuff under mountains and not telling anyone??

 

If I was Iranian I'd be building a bomb for sure - why don't they just admit it??

 

Why don't Israel?

 

Why should Israel?

 

Why should Iran?

 

 

Because the UN says so, and it happens to be a really nutfilled regime, , would you be happy for Iran to have the bomb??

[Park Life 71]

come on man- why do they need centrifuges? Why are they hiding stuff under mountains and not telling anyone??

 

If I was Iranian I'd be building a bomb for sure - why don't they just admit it??

 

Why don't Israel?

 

Why should Israel?

 

Why should Iran?

 

 

Because the UN says so, and it happens to be a really nutfilled regime, , would you be happy for Iran to have the bomb??

 

The UN is a joke.

[Guest alex]

come on man- why do they need centrifuges? Why are they hiding stuff under mountains and not telling anyone??

 

If I was Iranian I'd be building a bomb for sure - why don't they just admit it??

 

Why don't Israel?

 

Why should Israel?

Don't you think a lot of the anti-West feeling in the Muslim world stems from the perception (shared by many in the West, including a lot of Jews tbf) that it's one rule for Israel and one rule for everyone else?

 

 

There is one rule for Israel and one for everyone else, but that has a lot to do with a large number of the "everyone else" in question wishing to wipe Israel off the map - as they tried several times militarily until Israel became (or proved to be) the biggest kid on the block.

 

As such, them remaining in a militarily supreme position is acceptable IMO.

I accept the historical argument in part but I think it creates a lot of hatred too. You can't really believe Israel behaves in an acceptable way towards Palestine for example, can you? But their military superiority along with being propped up by Western (US) aid allows them to behave pretty much as they wish. This in turn creates the situatuation I'm alluding too. The only way forward is for a more even-handed approach. I think this is possible whilst still seeing Israel as a 'special case', given its neighbours.

[Happy Face 29]

come on man- why do they need centrifuges? Why are they hiding stuff under mountains and not telling anyone??

 

If I was Iranian I'd be building a bomb for sure - why don't they just admit it??

 

Why don't Israel?

 

Why should Israel?

 

Why should Iran?

 

 

Because the UN says so, and it happens to be a really nutfilled regime, ,

 

You fall into the trap too easily grasshopper.

 

Iran are NPT compliant.

 

Israel are not.

 

In a letter made available Wednesday, Yukiya Amano asked foreign ministers of the International Atomic Energy Agency's 151 member states to share views on how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel accede to the Nonproliferation Treaty and throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defe...ksEnabled=false

 

would you be happy for Iran to have the bomb??

 

I wouldn't be any less happy than i am to see Israel with it. They wouldn't use it if they had one... and they'd be unlikely to hand them over to anyone else to use.....less likely than Israel as this weeks news shows.

 

Since Iran does not have a bomb in the first place and likely couldn’t have one for a decade or more even if it were trying, (which as far as US intelligence can tell, it isn’t.) I don't see why it's a question that needs answering.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Happy Face

[Happy Face 29]

There is one rule for Israel and one for everyone else, but that has a lot to do with a large number of the "everyone else" in question wishing to wipe Israel off the map - as they tried several times militarily until Israel became (or proved to be) the biggest kid on the block.

 

As such, them remaining in a militarily supreme position is acceptable IMO.

 

No-one's advocating (or has advocated) that.

 

In fact, Israel die-hard refuse a two state solution and continue to settle on Palestinian land.

 

Your warped reversal of the actual situation ("Israel are entitled to wipe out palestine because palestinians secretly want to wipe out Israel - without saying they do") is a make believe fairy tale used to justify the invasion.

Edited May 26, 2010 by Happy Face

[Guest alex]

Somewhere in the middle tbf. That 'quote' is often misused (and deliberately misinterpreted) but I think TP was more on about the amount of neighbours that have started wars with Israel since its formation.

Edited May 26, 2010 by alex

[NJS 4389]

I always took the "wiped off the map" to be more conceptual than literal - though accept the latter view is probably held by some.

 

 

Also the "continual invasions" number 2 as far as I can remember - 67 and 73.

[Park Life 71]

I always took the "wiped off the map" to be more conceptual than literal - though accept the latter view is probably held by some.

 

 

Also the "continual invasions" number 2 as far as I can remember - 67 and 73.

 

 

Don't foget the holocaust mate.

[Rob W 0]

Lets see

 

47 - Arabs threatened to invade - Israel knocked them back

 

56 - Israel, British & Frogs invaded Egypt

 

66 - Israel got their retaliation in first - probably justified

 

73- Egyptians struck first

 

82 - Israel invaded Lebanon

 

all sides have continued to shot and bomb each other throughout

 

A plague on both their houses

[Toonpack 9478]

Somewhere in the middle tbf. That 'quote' is often misused (and deliberately misinterpreted) but I think TP was more on about the amount of neighbours that have started wars with Israel since its formation.

 

Yep

[Happy Face 29]

In one video Dr. Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist, maintains that he was kidnapped while on pilgrimage to Mecca and is being held against his will in Arizona (an irony, since he would then be an involuntary illegal alien in a state that seems to mind the latter). The second video, also put up at YouTube, contradicts the allegations of the first.

 

WaPo cites retired CIA sources who allege that it is not US practice to kidnap people. But there is such a practice, and it is called rendition, and some allies such as Italy are angered that we do it on their soil. Another CIA source says that if Amiri were imprisoned by the US in Tucson, he wouldn’t be free to contact people by video.

 

There are many scenarios that can explain this odd turn of events.

 

1. The first video alleging kidnapping is an Iranian government forgery

 

2. The first video is valid but the second one is a US government operation

 

Possibility no. 2 could work like this: The US practices rendition on Amiri with the help of Saudi intelligence while he is in Medina. He is interrogated on film about Iran’s nuclear program, and he and breaks down and talks about the new Fardo enrichment facility near Qom. (Because of fatigue or fear or disenchantment with the regime).

 

The US authorities now have something to blackmail him with. They offer to let him stay in the US if he is afraid to go back to Iran after having spilled the beans. He reluctantly agrees.

 

Anyone who watches the USA cable television channel’s “In Plain Sight” can speculate on what has happened next. Amiri was possibly put in the federal Witness Protection Program, which involves a sort of social death (you are cut off from all former friends and from all family in you past so as to keep you safe from assassination). As with many of the characters in “In Plain Sight,” Amiri may have become bored and dissatisfied with Witness Protection, and he may have skyped an old acquaintance who recorded his plea for help. But then no doubt the federal marshals would have reminded him that he had thereby put his life in danger, and so perhaps he rethought and put up the second video, a disavowal of the first.

 

If Amiri went into Witness Protection, it would explain how he could use a program such as skype to contact an old friend. If he was despondent, lonely and missed Iran, claiming to have been kidnapped is the only plausible way to avoid being charged with treason. Or perhaps he really was a victim of rendition.

 

All this is just speculation. But if it is true that Amiri was a victim of rendition and then “aggressively” interrogated, there is every possibility that he lied and told the Americans what he though they wanted to hear. And if that were the case, then whatever “intelligence” the US gleaned from the hapless scientist could be highly compromised.

 

The US started saying Iran had a secret nuclear enrichment site at Fardo. But the then head of the International Atomic Energy Agency went to the facility and inspected it, finding it just a hole in the side of a mountain, with no centrifuges yet installed. But the US began by insisting it was a hidden operating facility. It is almost as though someone told them about Fardo but then vastly exaggerated what it is. (In actuality, it is probably just an attempt to ensure that Israel cannot bomb Iran’s civilian nuclear weapons program out of existence).

 

US officials are always saying something weird about Iran. You wonder if they tortured it out of rendition subjects.

 

http://www.juancole.com/2010/06/mystery-of...ube-videos.html

[Christmas Tree 4729]

So the UN has passed sanctions against Iran and Fox News has a "will the sanctions work" poll running on their website.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/06/09/...-way-deal-iran/

 

 

Are New Sanctions the Best Way to Deal With Iran?

 

After 10,000 votes......

 

 

Yes, this is the appropriate next step 14.3%

 

No, time to bomb Iranian nuclear sites 74.4%

 

No, time to invade the country 3.2%

 

No do nothing and the regime will crumble on its own 6.2%

 

Other 1.9%

[Park Life 71]

Being tied up in Afg and Iraq and also border hijinx in Korea, I really don't think the US has enought logistics to start on Iran right now.

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Being tied up in Afg and Iraq and also border hijinx in Korea, I really don't think the US has enought logistics to start on Iran right now.

 

 

Maybe their thinking is that Iraq is a nice logistical base

[Park Life 71]

Being tied up in Afg and Iraq and also border hijinx in Korea, I really don't think the US has enought logistics to start on Iran right now.

 

 

Maybe their thinking is that Iraq is a nice logistical base

 

The US army is having recuruiting problems.

[Happy Face 29]

Fox News has a "will the sanctions work" poll running on their website.

 

Cable news polls don't reflect public opinion so much as the ability of viewers to repeat the ideas they just heard.

[Guest alex]

Surprised it was only 74%.

[Happy Face 29]

The saga of Shahram Amiri points to a real danger for world peace and prosperity, with the disturbing possibility now emerging that he was a double agent. He implausibly maintains that he was kidnapped by the CIA in Mecca and held in the US against his will. US sources say that he was a walk-in, that he contacted the CIA and offered to deflect, for which he was offered $5 million and a new identity. The US government has a program of encouraging Iranian nuclear physicists to defect by offering them large sums of money, and it is rumored that they have had several takers.

 

Amiri’s behavior, however, is so erratic that it raises alarms. He never collected his reward money, and in past months he started releasing YouTube videos complaining about having been kidnapped. He showed up in the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy this week and then flew back to Iran via Dubai.

 

This story, with the walk-in Iranian physicist who shows no interest in the reward money to be doled out over his lifetime, who proves inconstant and toward the end tries to embarrass his host, has raised alarums among observers of the intelligence scene that Amiri was a double agent.

 

I am disturbed by this possibility because Amiri may have given false information to Washington. And the false information may have exaggerated Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

 

For instance, someone appears to have told Washington that the Fardo facility in a cave near Qom was a nuclear weapons lab. But the Iranians llowed a UN International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, which found it just a ‘hole in the side of the mountain’ with no nuclear material onsite.

 

Why would Amiri lie about Iran’s nuclear research? The scenario that haunts me is what might be called Saddam’s Dilemma.

 

A second-tier country is in little danger of invasion or occupation on the part of the Great Powers in the 21st century if it only has conventional weapons. Thus, the junta in Burma or the populist Venezuela of Huga Chavez may be thorns in the side of Washington and its allies, but they have not moved against these states in any practical military way, in part because they pose only a small threat to those powers’ interests.

 

Fully nuclear-armed second-tier powers are also safe from invasion and occupation, since they already have a nuclear weapon. Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea fall in this category. North Korea has committed a number of acts that would qualify as casus belli or a legal grounds for war, but it has never been attacked. Nervousness pervades the halls of power among the Great Powers about Pakistan, but they appear to dare not act on that anxiety. Israel, as a close ally of the primary superpower, the United States, is in any case in no danger of attack by one of the Security Council dominant nations. But when Israel receives what its leaders think is undue pressure from the US or the others, it can deploy its nuclear arsenal to coerce the US. It did this in 1973 when Golda Meir demanded an airlift of munitions to fight Egypt, saying the alternative would be an Israeli nuclear strike on Cairo; and again since the Obama administration came into office, when Israel has used the threat of bombing Iran to extract commitments that the Security Council plus Germany will put the screws to Tehran with increasing sanctions.

 

But where countries are seen as rogue states that act against the interests of the Great Powers and their allies, and where those rogue states appear to go for broke in constructing a nuclear weapon, they become vulnerable to direct military intervention by one of the Great Powers. The major case here is Iraq.

 

Iraq had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs in the 1980s, which were dismantled in the 1990s by United Nations weapons insprectors. But strong suspicions were voiced in the US and Western Europe that Iraq had reconstituted its weapons programs by the late 1990s. It is in that twilight between not having a bomb and being close to having one that war becomes most likely. In fact, hawks argue that war is actually more urgent in such a situation, to forestall imminent nuclear proliferation.

 

CIA director Leon Panetta, for instance, has spoken of a time window, within which Iran may become nuclear-capable, and the dilemma (attack? don’t attack?) this timetable poses for the US. The implication is that the US have to decide what to do about Iran within two years, thus setting a ticking, Hitchcockian clock.

 

States that are near to developing a nuclear weapons capability can fend off the Great Powers in one of three ways. They can give up their nuclear arms programs or aspirations (Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Libya). They can go for broke and hope they can go nuclear before the US can invade. Or they can try to fool the international community by claiming to have a much more developed weapons program than had been suspected. In short, it could attempt to convince the Powers that it was so close to having a bomb that that initiating hostilities was unwise.

 

This step is what I call Saddam’s Dilemma. If he had convincingly document his lack of WMD to the public and world community, he felt, he would have risked attack by Iran or its Iraqi allies. So he lied about his country’s having destroyed most WMD by that point

 

Charles Duelfer’s long experience in Iraq gives us some analogies for this situation.

 

‘ It was difficult to understand that Saddam would do things for irrational reasons; he would do things that were at cross-purposes. He would say he had no WMDs to some and say that he did to others. When I sat in on the debriefing, he told us that he had multiple audiences and was worried about the Iranians and others.’

 

So I ask myself, what if the Iranians are doing now what Saddam did? What if they sent Amiri to give the US the impression that Iran is very near to having a bomb, to scare them off? And what if the Iranians fail to scare the US but rather spook the Obama administration into confrontation?

 

Duelfer notes,

 

‘ We lost a lot by not having an embassy in Baghdad. I was one of the only senior U.S. officials going in and out of Baghdad in the late 1990s, even though I had my U.N. hat on. And I never realized until later how unique my knowledge of Iraq was. You’d think that understanding Iraq was as easy as understanding what was going on in the head of one guy. Now, that one guy was a pretty weird guy. The people in Washington knew little about Baghdad and had a cartoon view of what was going on. I fear that we have the same view of Tehran and North Korea now.’

 

The US has no embassy in Tehran.

 

http://www.juancole.com/2010/07/was-amiri-...ukes-to-dc.html

 

Sad that the US might act on local posturing rather than any actual evidence.

Edited July 16, 2010 by Happy Face

[Guest Gordon McKeag]

[Rob W 0]

WTF????

[Happy Face 29]

Jeffrey Goldberg, in the new cover story in The Atlantic, on an Israeli attack on Iran:

 

Israel has twice before successfully attacked and destroyed an enemy's nuclear program. In 1981, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iraqi reactor at Osirak, halting -- forever, as it turned out -- Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions; and in 2007, Israeli planes destroyed a North Korean-built reactor in Syria. An attack on Iran, then, would be unprecedented only in scope and complexity.

 

Good news! Israel can successfully end a country's nuclear program by bombing them, as proven by its 1981 attack on Iraq, which, says Goldberg, halted "forever, as it turned out -- Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions."

 

Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker, 2002, trying to convince Americans to fear Iraq:

 

Saddam Hussein never gave up his hope of turning Iraq into a nuclear power. After the Osirak attack, he rebuilt, redoubled his efforts, and dispersed his facilities. Those who have followed Saddam's progress believe that no single strike today would eradicate his nuclear program.

 

When it suited him back then, Goldberg made the exact opposite claim, literally, of the one he makes today. Back then, Goldberg wouldn't possibly claim what he claims now -- that the 1981 strike permanently halted Saddam's "nuclear ambitions" -- because, back then, his goal was to scare Americans about The Threat of Saddam. So in 2002, Goldberg warned Americans that Saddam had "redoubled" his efforts to turn Iraq into a nuclear power after the Israeli attack, i.e., that Saddam had a scarier nuclear program than ever before after the 1981 bombing raid. But now, Goldberg has a different goal: to convince Americans of the efficacy of bombing Iran, and thus, without batting an eye, he simply asserts the exact opposite factual premise: that the Israelis successfully and permanently ended Saddam's nuclear ambition back in 1981 by bombing it out of existence (and, therefore, we can do something similar now to Iran).

 

 

The yank war propagandists have no shame.

[Christmas Tree 4729]

Looks like this is all building up to a nasty crescendo.

 

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16170272

 

Covert Bombings, nuclear fuel ceremonies.

[Happy Face 29]

A group of Washington insiders including Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, Michael Mukasey, Ed Rendell, Andy Card, Lee Hamilton, Tom Ridge, Bill Richardson, Wesley Clark, Michael Hayden, John Bolton, Louis Freeh and Fran Townsend are under investigation for providing material support to an Iranian Terrorist organisation.

 

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/12/washingtons_high_powered_terrorist_supporters/singleton/

 

 

Shame they won't get the jail time they push on others.

[CleeToonFan 1]

Nucular! Its pronounced nucular