From Chris Floyd

Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran

...

Bush indeed has a history. He has a history of launching military aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression on the basis of manufactured threats. He has a history of launching military aggression without the agreement of allies abroad. He has a history of launching military aggression against the advice of "military skeptics," whom he either "retires" or sidelines or ignores when he launches the aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression regardless of the strain it puts on the armed forces or the national treasury.

And he does not need "political support at home" to launch another act of military aggression, if by "political support" Powers means popular backing from the public. Bush is not facing re-election, and never will again. And he has already been given full support from the Democratic-controlled Congress in a series of measures which fully embrace Bush's bellicose stance toward Iran, as well as the specious casus belli he has advanced.

Robert Fisk's World: Why do we keep letting the politicians get away with lies?

Saturday, 30 August 2008

How on earth do they get away with it? Let's start with war between Hizbollah and Israel – past and future war, that is.

Back in 2006, Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers from their side of the Lebanese frontier and dragged them, mortally wounded, into Lebanon. The Israelis immediately launched a massive air bombardment against all of Lebanon, publicly declaring Beirut's democratically-elected and US-backed – but extremely weak – government must be held to account for what Hizbollah does. Taking the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese, almost all civilians, Israel unleashed its air power against the entire infrastructure of the rebuilt Lebanon, smashing highways, viaducts, electric grids, factories, lighthouses, totally erasing dozens of villages and half-destroying hundreds more before bathing the south of the country in three million cluster bomblets.

After firing thousands of old but nonetheless lethal rockets into Israel – where the total death toll was less than 200, more than half of them soldiers – Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's leader, told a lie: if he had known what Israel would do in revenge for the capture of two soldiers, he announced, he would never have agreed to Hizbollah's operation.

But now here comes Israel's environment minister, Gideon Ezra, with an equally huge whopper as he warns of an even bigger, more terrible war should Hizbollah attack Israel again. "During the (2006) war, we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon's infrastructure but we never (sic) resorted to this option, because we thought at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hizbollah attacks... At that time, we had Hizbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hizbollah do not live on the moon, and some (sic) infrastructure was hit." This was a brazen lie. Yet the Americans, who arm Israel, said nothing. The European Union said nothing. No journalistic column pointed out this absolute dishonesty.

see toon at top and read more at The Independent

September 19, 2008
Iran’s President Denies Hostility to Israelis
By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN — The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took the unusual step on Thursday of explaining that while he strongly opposed the state of Israel, his hostility did not extend to the Israeli people.

“We have no problem with people and nations,” he said. “Of course, we do not recognize a government or a nation for the Zionist regime.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad has long been seen as a threat to Israel, especially since he angered the West and Jews worldwide in 2005 when he repeated a slogan from the early days of the revolution, saying, “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

But on Thursday, he defended his vice president for tourism, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who created a storm of protest among legislators and senior clerics over the summer when he said that Iran was a friend of the Israeli people. Analysts viewed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s public support for Mr. Mashai’s remarks as a sign that Iran might be softening its position amid increasing pressure by the West over its nuclear program.

“It looks like the remarks are a policy,” said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst in Tehran. “Despite the opposition, they were repeated, no apology was made and the president supported it today.”

In mid-July, Mr. Mashai was quoted as saying that Iran was “a friend of Israeli people.” He then repeated the comment in August, saying there was “no hostility toward the Israeli people.”

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see toon at top.

Iran's president has inaugurated the country's first nuclear fuel production plant, making what correspondents say was a defiant speech.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was open to an offer of fresh talks with world powers, but only if they were based on "justice" and "respect".

Once operational, the new plant could produce sufficient plutonium for two nuclear weapons a year, analysts say.

Iran denies Western claims that it aims to build a nuclear bomb.

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By our simple calculation extrapolated from this fear, France, Russian, the US would be able to make about 10,000 atomic bombs per year, altogether. Thus if having a nuclear power station in Iran is bad, there is no point pursuing nuke energy worldwide, is there? See toon at top...

On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating the drum for preventive war on Iraq, lest we wake up to "a mushroom cloud over an American city," The Wall Street Journal introduced an eminent voice to confirm that, yes, Saddam was driving straight for an atomic bomb.

"This is a dictator who is ... feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons," wrote Bibi Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel.

"Saddam's nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country - and Iraq is a very big country. Even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death. ...

"(I)f action is not taken now, we will all be threatened by a much greater peril ... (for) no gas mask and no vaccine can protect against nuclear weapons."

This was horse manure of a high grade, as high as that which Richard Perle deposited on the podium of the Foreign Policy Research Institute a year earlier, when he informed a stunned audience that Saddam "is busily at work on a nuclear weapon."

http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan111.html

From Chris Floyd

Dear New York Times,
OK, OK, we get the picture: you want the United States to attack Iran. Why don't you go ahead and put a permanent banner across the top of the front page with the Cato-like adjuration: "Iran Must Be Destroyed!" Or maybe you could just tack it on to every single story: "Yankees Trade to Bolster Outfield; Iran Must Be Destroyed." "Mixed Results for Apple I-Pad; Iran Must Be Destroyed." "Markets Anxious Over Health Care Vote; Iran Must Be Destroyed." "New Bistro Revels in Bohemian Ambience; Iran Must Be Destroyed."

After all, hardly a week goes by now without some big juicy piece of Times scaremongery about Iran's nuclear program, usually with the same image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a lab coat looking blankly at metal tubes. The thrust of these stories is always the same: Iran is galloping toward nuclear weaponhood -- a "global threat" that "cannot be allowed to stand." Last week, it was Bill Broad, goosing the rubes with this little number, a supposed "science" piece: For Iran, Enriching Uranium Only Gets Easier.

For a moment, let's put aside the fact of Iran's persistent denials of a desire for nuclear weapons -- including the explicit, repeated statements of the theocracy's supreme religious and political leader that such weapons are anathema. And let's put aside the fact that despite the most extensive and intrusive inspection regime in the history of atomic energy development, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is not doing exactly what it says it is doing: developing non-weaponized nuclear power for peaceful purposes. These are just facts, after all -- and facts, as the sainted Ronald Reagan once told us, are stupid things.

But even if we were to grant the fevered fantasies of our masturbatory militarists the slightest tincture of credibility -- or even take their brazen propaganda as gospel truth -- they have never yet explained exactly why Iran's possession of nuclear weapons would be a greater "global threat" than, say, the bristling arsenals produced by the illegal, covert, crimeful programs in Israel, India and Pakistan. Nor are we told why an ill-gotten Iranian bomb would be worse than the vast "legal" nuclear arsenals of Russia, China, France, Great Britain and, of course, the only nation in the history of the world that has actually used nuclear weapons to slaughter hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians, the United States of America.

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see toon at top and read more at the empire burlesque.....

http://www.chris-floyd.com

What else can be said in that above article?  It says it all - logic - thinking - and common sense.

Perhaps for the first time since Vietnam and Iraq - our people might yet again realise that we support terrorism.

If you lay down with dogs you'll get up with fleas.

Welcome to the flea circus.

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

from Jonathan Marcus

BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

The passage of two Iranian naval vessels through the Suez Canal represents yet another clear sign of Tehran's widening strategic horizons. And for Israel and its main ally - the US - it sends multiple signals.

It underscores that if a significant number of Western warships can operate in the Gulf - what Iran sees as its maritime backyard, then Iran too can deploy vessels to the Mediterranean - what Nato countries would regard as their maritime backyard.

The Iranian ships are to be based at a Syrian port, thus solidifying and symbolising the close ties between Damascus and Tehran.

And coming at a time of significant turmoil in the region, the deployment illustrates that Iran is eager to secure its widening strategic interests. If this annoys the Israelis or the Americans, then so much the better.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12533803