The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

Reuters reports in:

U.S. escalating covert operations against Iran - report

that

U.S. congressional leaders agreed late last year to President George W. Bush’s funding request for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran aimed at destabilizing its leadership, according to a report in The New Yorker magazine published online on Sunday.

The article by reporter Seymour Hersh, from the magazine’s July 7 and 14 issue, centers around a highly classified Presidential Finding signed by Bush which by U.S. law must be made known to Democratic and Republican House and Senate leaders and ranking members of the intelligence committees.

All that fun stuff about us trying to provoke an armed response against Iranian national entities that actually may be connected to al Qaeda as flimsy pretext to invade Iran ‘in their defense’ aside, I find it odd that Reuters did not link to the New Yorker article it was reporting on.

You can find the whole Seymour M. Hersh article on Iran here.

Who knows, Iran may yet become a military four letter work here in the U.S. I hope not.

SEN. CARL LEVIN: On October 2, 2002, a week after John Rizzo, the acting CIA general counsel, visited Gitmo, a second senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Fredman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, went to Guantanamo, attended a meeting of Gitmo staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from Gitmo, who a couple of weeks earlier had attended that training given at Fort Bragg by instructors by the SERE school.

While the training—excuse me, while the memo remains classified, minutes from the meeting where it was discussed are not. Those minutes clearly show that the focus of the discussion was aggressive techniques for use against detainees.When the Gitmo chief of staff suggested at the meeting that Gitmo “can’t do sleep deprivation,” Lieutenant Colonel Beaver, Gitmo’s senior lawyer, responded, “Yes, we can—with approval.” Lieutenant Beaver added that Gitmo, quote, “may need to curb the harsher operations while the International Committee of the Red Cross is around.”

Mr. Fredman, the senior CIA lawyer, suggested that it’s, quote, “very effective to identify detainee phobias and to use them” and described for the group the so-called “wet towel” technique, which we know as waterboarding. Mr. Fredman said, quote, “It can feel like you’re drowning. The lymphatic system will react as if you’re suffocating, but your body will not cease to function,” close-quote.

And Mr. Fredman presented the following disturbing perspective of our legal obligations under our anti-torture laws, saying, quote, “It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” How on earth did we get to the point where a senior US government lawyer would say that whether or not an interrogation technique is torture is, quote, “subject to perception” and that if, quote, “the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong”? The Gitmo senior JAG officer Lieutenant Colonel Beaver’s response was: “We will need documentation to protect us.”

Once again the DemocracyNow!  bitches have scooped Western Civilization’s media on this subject.

On another note I like to harp about, Barak Hussein Obama Yomamadroid has done something weird (an my spellcheck only likes the Hussein part of his name. hmm.) with his presidential campaign - observe:

…by showing that he could raise large sums from small donors — 47 percent of the $263 million Mr. Obama received has come in amounts of $200 or less — Mr. Obama has made the argument that he has achieved online what the public finance system has been unable to do. And he has been freed from the necessity of spending countless hours fund-raising.

…the use of the Internet to raise campaign money at least plays into the spirit of campaign finance reform, some analysts said, and possibly does more to rein in the influence of big donors and special interests than 30 years of restrictions imposed by federal law.

If you look at the graphic on that NYT article, you’ll see that if you put the bar at $500 donation the percent jumps to 55%. McCain on the other hand only has 31% donating $500 or less - which candidate is more likely to support YOU, majority America who has less than $200 to spare for anything right now? Of course, back on DemNow!, you’ll find Nader talking trash on Obama AND McCain - and unlike both of them, he doesn’t take a penny of corporate or PAC money.  Obama is so crazy-sauce popular, he could probably dump all the PAC and Corp money and still win for President - however, that would be a bad idea - look where it gets Nader. I’m not saying it’s not honorable and the actual right thing to do, however he should do it after he wins office. Think about this for a second - sure, that’s a lot of money he wouldn’t have to campaign with, but those PACs and Corps currently supporting or at least hedging their bets with some support for Obama in hopes for future kindness might take the return of the money as a signal that he will be ‘against’ him and take that money to McCain or otherwise turn it against Obama. What would really be great is taking the Corp/PAC sums and giving them to African aids charities or support for orphan Iraqi children etc.

Nader is probably the only candidate I’ve heard in any of my readings both mentioning and quoting the US Constitution [and isn’t that a word fraught with meanings]:

Doesn’t the Constitution start with “We the people”? 

Nader criticizes Obama yet praises two possible VP picks for the Obaminator.

Barack Obama really now has to be examined very carefully. He has worn out the word “change.” We now want to know what change is involved. And it’s quite clear that he is a corporate candidate from A to Z. In his voting record, he voted against reform of the Mining Act of 1872, which gives away our hard rock minerals. He voted for a terrible class-action restriction law that the corporations wanted him to vote for. He, in many ways, has disappointed people who had greater hopes for him. He’s voted for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. He refuses to even discuss—he’s vigorously against impeachment of Bush and Cheney. He won’t even support his colleague Senator Russ Feingold motion to censure the Bush administration for systemic repeated illegal wiretaps. He—you know, he’s letting the corporate-dominated city of Washington, the corporations who actually rule us now in Washington, determine his agenda. And that does not augur well.

AMY GOODMAN: What do think of Chuck Hagel as a vice-presidential running mate—yes, the Republican senator—for Barack Obama, one of the names that’s being bandied about?

RALPH NADER: Well, he thinks for himself. And that’s about the best you can expect of a politician these days. Senator Jim Webb, Senator Chuck Hagel, they think for themselves. They’re not robotic minds. They’re not completely monetized minds. And they’re Vietnam veterans. So, in today’s politics, that puts them forward.

Nader is also the only one talking sense on Iran that I’ve seen.

Iran has not invaded anybody in 250 years. Yet it’s obviously frightened. It’s surrounded by the US military west, south, east. It’s been labeled “Axis of Evil” by Bush, who invaded Iraq after he labeled them “Axis of Evil.” We have Special Forces, according to Sy Hersh, that go in and out of Iran. What are they going to do? They talk very belligerently nationally, but they’re really scared. I mean, we supported Saddam Hussein, logistically and with materiel, in invading Iran, which took a half a million Iranian lives. They remember the shooting down of their civilian airliner years ago.

I guess if your choice is still Giant Douche or Shit Sandwich, you might as well reach for a cookie even if you fail. Good stuff. After reading his positions, I’ll vote Nader.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton warned Tehran on Tuesday that if she were president, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.

DO NOT WANT. I couldn’t vote for her in the primaries, as I am not a registered Democrat, but if it’s her against McCain I’m voting for Al Gore again.

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle against fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in hopes that this warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state.

Repeat after me: Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Iran is not trying to make nuclear weapons. If we keep threatening them, Iran may decide to get nuclear weapons. If you go down the street and start threatening to shoot neighbor A if they shoot neighbor B, whom they don’t like, but so far neighbor A doesn’t have a gun and claims to not want one, well, threatening to shoot neighbor A enough will certainly encourage them go get a gun in case you come back with yours.

Iran has attacked how many countries in the recent past? Israel has attacked how many countries in the recent past? And which one of them actually has nukes?

These senators, well-known war skeptics, could find allies in lawmakers who support Bush’s current Iraq policies. In hearings last week, Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates whether Baghdad should start paying some U.S. combat costs, and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., raised the possibility that an anticipated Iraqi budget surplus this year could be used to help Afghanistan, whose $700 million in annual revenue represents a small fraction of Iraq’s $46.8 billion budget.

So we want Iraq… to pay for Afghanistan now? Because we… invaded them, and now… they… owe?.. us for it? Does this mean if Afghanistan had oil and had not only been making money from selling poppies that we would be asking them to help us pay for Iraq, or maybe help us fund a build-up to invading Iran? How about paying us to leave? Why are we saying what they should be doing anyway? They have a democratically elected government now. Much like Iran and Israel they should be left alone.

“In 1972, nine countries had ballistic missiles,” Cheney said. “Today, it is at least 27. And that includes hostile regimes that oppress their own people, seek to intimidate and dominate their neighbors and actively support terrorist groups.”

What, like us?  Though we don’t really repress our own people, unless of course you count economic repression. We have supported terrorist groups.

“Tehran continues to develop technologies that could lead to its building an ICBM capable of striking the United States, perhaps as soon as late in the next decade,” Cheney said. “Given all that we do about the Iranian regime’s hatred of America, its vow to destroy Israel and its ongoing efforts to develop the technology that could be used for a nuclear weapon, that is a danger every one of us must take seriously.”

Same old story we’ve heard before. The above is from an AP story posted today. Below is from the Washington Post in 2005.

A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.

The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that “all options are on the table.”

The Washington Post Story can be forgiven because it’s 2 years old. However…

Iran halted work toward a nuclear weapon under international scrutiny in 2003 and is unlikely to be able to produce enough enriched uranium for a bomb until 2010 to 2015, a U.S. intelligence report says.

A declassified summary of the latest National Intelligence Estimate found with “high confidence” that the Islamic republic stopped an effort to develop nuclear weapons in the fall of 2003.

The estimate is less severe than a 2005 report that judged the Iranian leadership was “determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.”

But the latest report says Iran — which declared its ability to produce enriched uranium for a civilian energy program in 2006 — could reverse that decision and eventually produce a nuclear weapon if it wanted to do so.

Why are we so intent on giving them a reason to want to do so?

The Iranian paper offered “full transparency for security that there are no Iranian endeavours to develop or possess WMD [and] full cooperation with the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] based on Iranian adoption of all relevant instruments.”

The Iranians also offered support for “the establishment of democratic institutions and a nonreligious government” in Iraq; full cooperation against terrorists (including “above all, Al-Qaeda”); and an end to material support to Palestinian groups such as Hamas. In return, they asked that their country not be on the terrorism list or designated part of the “axis of evil”; that all sanctions end; that America support Iran’s claims for reparations for the Iran–Iraq war as part of the overall settlement of the Iraqi debt; that they have access to peaceful nuclear technology; and that America pursue antiIranian terrorists.

We could have had it all. But really, why, when it’s so much more satisfactory to give them the finger and then threaten them with guns when they get pissed off.

coordinated bombings blamed on al Qaeda…

the bombing was the work of al Qaeda in Iraq and that it knew the cell leader who was responsible.

rebel against Sunni Islamist al Qaeda…

So, wait, who are they again?

 On Monday, two blasts in central and eastern Baghdad killed 19 people despite tightened security for the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But I thought everything was quiet during Ahmadinejad’s visit, at least according to the articles from the other day.

Oh well, have some history of the violence in Islam that al Qaeda crib their notes from.

Odierno also said he was not surprised Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was able to move around without security problems during his two-day visit to Baghdad as the groups that often target high-profile visitors are Iranian-backed.

“Over the last 12 months, every time a visitor would come from the United States, we’d either foil a rocket attack or the rocket attack happened. And guess what? That’s because it was being done by Iranian surrogates,” Odierno said.

Bullshit. Bullshitbullshitbullshit. It’s because WE FUCKING INVADED AND RUINED THEIR COUNTRY AND IRAN DID NOT! When we can’t get conditions better than Saddam, an ‘evil’ dictator, had things 5 years after we’ve hung him, we serious fucked up, and the fact that Americans are hated their and Iranians, who have never invaded Iraq (in fact, the opposite happened a while back), are not hated there.

Shocking, I know.

Update: Should have read the whole article first. Found more factual slants.

Ahmadinejad’s visit was the first to Iraq by an Iranian president since the two countries fought an eight-year war in the 1980s in which 1 million people were killed.

Since Saddam’s US-backed invasion and Iran’s US-backed counter to that. The US backing, of course, they lied about. They also used banned chemical weapons, made with knowledge we partially supplied, along with other countries we favor.

He also said U.S. forces in Iraq continued to find many deadly armor-piercing munitions which the U.S. military says come from Iran, but he could not tell whether Iran had slowed the flow of those weapons.

Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, said the United States expected Iraqi leaders to convey to Ahmadinejad “the necessity of stopping this lethal flow of equipment”.

What about all the weapons and ammo we have ‘lost’ in Iraq?

Now I know.

The book chronicles the CIA-backed 1953 overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government after Iran nationalized its oil industry.

Our oil thirst pretty much created terrorism. Actually, Britain’s. The company, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, that later became BP was the one stealing all of Iran’s oil and paying them a pittance. They said “Hey, we are a wretched nation! We need that money!” So they took it back. The we overthrew their democracy and re-instated a dictator. Then they overthrew our dictator and since then we’ve branded them a terrorist nation.

Actually, it was at this time that Aramco, the Arab American Oil Company, came into Saudi Arabian, and their deal was a fifty-fifty split, so 50 percent for the country that has the oil and 50 percent for the company that comes in and builds the refinery. That had the air of fairness that ordinary people could understand, but the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company would not give in one inch. And that just made the Iranians more and more radical.

They imposed a crushing economic embargo on Iran. They required all their oil technicians to leave. Many of them wanted to stay in Iran and work for the nationalized company. The British wouldn’t allow this. So, since they had been very careful not to train anyone how to run the oil refinery, any Iranians, that was the end of the possibility of oil refining. Just in case the Iranians could figure out how to extract any oil, the British imposed a naval embargo around the port, where oil is exported from in Iran. The British took Mosaddeq to the United Nations, they took him to the World Court, both unsuccessfully. The British were arguing that the Iranian oil industry was their private property and that Mosaddeq had stolen it from them. That was their complaint, but they failed to get any redress in international fora.

So then, the only thing that Prime Minister Churchill could think of to do was to ask Harry Truman, the American president, to do this job for us: Can you please overthrow Mosaddeq, because we don’t have anyone in Iran now that can do it? And Truman said no. Truman believed that the CIA could be a covert action and intelligence-gathering agency, but he never wanted it to get involved in overthrowing governments.[!]

Too bad we have a “democracy.” The next POTUS, well, actually, one of his un-elected cronies, was the mastermind of the US coup of Iran.

Dwight Eisenhower took office. John Foster Dulles became his secretary of state. And Dulles had spent his whole adult life working as a lawyer for giant international corporations. And the idea that a country should be able to get away with nationalizing such a big company, such a big corporate resource, was, as Dulles very well understood, a great threat to the system that he had been representing all his life, the system of multinational enterprise. And he realized that it was in the interest of the United States, as he saw them, to make sure that no such example could be set. So the new administration, the Eisenhower administration, reversed the policy of the Truman administration. They agreed to send a CIA agent, Kermit Roosevelt, to Iran in the summer of 1953.

Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy Roosevelt.

Just very briefly, so we placed the Shah back on his peacock throne. The Shah ruled with increasing repression for twenty-five years. His repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, what we call the Islamic Revolution. That revolution brought to power a clique of fanatically anti-American mullahs. That revolution also inspired radicals in other countries, like next-door Afghanistan, where the Taliban came to power and gave shelter to al-Qaeda with results we all know. That instability in Iran that followed that revolution also led Iran’s great enemy next door, Saddam Hussein, to invade Iran. That not only set off an eight-year war between Iran and Iraq, but it also brought the United States into its death embrace with Saddam. We were the military allies of Saddam during the Iran-Iraq War, and we were supplying Saddam with military intelligence, with Bell helicopters that he used to spray gas on Iranian positions. President Reagan sent a special envoy twice to Baghdad to negotiate with Saddam and ask him how we could help him. And, of course, that envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. So that instability set off by that revolution also led the United States into the spiral in Iraq that brought us to the point where we are now.

Lesson learned? Nah, we’ll probably do it again, and less peacefully than a coup, this time we’ll roll in with bombs. If you read the article you’ll find out that the CIA and Mossad (Israeli CIA) were involved with the Iranian secret police that brutalized the country in between our coup and the second overthrow of the Shah in ‘79.

Al-Qaida’s embrace of violence may be undermining the terrorist group’s support in the Muslim world, the nation’s top intelligence official said Thursday.

All we have to do to take advantage of this is to stop invading muslim countries. Gonna happen? I hope.