Obama drops pledge on Iraq

Obama drops pledge on Iraq
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Seventeen months after President Barack Obama pledged to withdraw all combat brigades from Iraq by September 1, 2010, he quietly abandoned that pledge on Monday, admitting implicitly that such combat brigades would remain until the end of 2011.

Obama declared in a speech to disabled US veterans in Atlanta that "America's combat mission in Iraq" would end by the end of August, to be replaced by a mission of "supporting and training Iraqi security forces".

That statement was in line with the pledge he had made on February 27, 2009, when he said, "Let me say this as plainly as I can: by August 31, 2010, our combat mission in Iraq will end."

In the sentence preceding that pledge, however, he had said, "I have chosen a timeline that will remove our combat brigades over the next 18 months." Obama said nothing in his speech on Monday about withdrawing "combat brigades" or "combat troops" from Iraq until the end of 2011.

Even the concept of "ending the US combat mission" may be highly misleading, much like the concept of "withdrawing US combat brigades" was in 2009.

Under the administration's definition of the concept, combat operations will continue after August 2010, but will be defined as the secondary role of US forces in Iraq. The primary role will be to "advise and assist" Iraqi forces.

An official who spoke with Inter Press Service (IPS) on condition that his statements would be attributed to a "senior administration official" acknowledged that the 50,000 US troops remaining in Iraq beyond the deadline would have the same combat capabilities as the combat brigades that have been withdrawn.

The official also acknowledged that the troops would engage in some combat but suggested that the combat would be "mostly" for defensive purposes. That language implied that there might be circumstances in which US forces would carry out offensive operations as well.

IPS has learned, in fact, that the question of what kind of combat US troops might become involved in depends in part on the Iraqi government, which will still be able to request offensive military actions by US troops if it feels it necessary.

Obama's jettisoning of one of his key campaign promises and of a high-profile pledge early in his administration without explicit acknowledgement highlights the way in which language on national security policy can be manipulated for political benefit with the acquiescence of the news media.

Obama's apparent pledge of withdrawal of combat troops by the September 1 deadline in his February 27, 2009, speech generated headlines across the commercial news media. That allowed the administration to satisfy its anti-war Democratic Party base on a pivotal national security policy issue.

At the same time, however, it allowed Obama to back away from his campaign promise on Iraq withdrawal, and to signal to those political and bureaucratic forces backing a long-term military presence in Iraq that he had no intention of pulling out all combat troops at least until the end of 2011.

He could do so because the news media were inclined to let the apparent Obama withdrawal pledge stand as the dominant narrative line, even though the evidence indicated it was a falsehood.

Only a few days after the Obama speech, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was more forthright about the policy. In an appearance on Meet the Press on March 1, 2009, Gates said the "transition force" remaining after August 31, 2010, would have "a very different kind of mission", and that the units remaining in Iraq "will be characterized differently".

"They will be called advisory and assistance brigades," said Gates. "They won't be called combat brigades."

But "advisory and assistance brigades" were configured with the same combat capabilities as the "combat brigade teams" which had been the basic US military unit of combat organization for six years, as IPS reported in March 2009.

Gates was thus signaling that the military solution to the problem of Obama's combat troop withdrawal pledge had been accepted by the White House.

That plan had been developed in late 2008 by General David Petraeus, the Central Command chief, and General Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who were determined to get Obama to abandon his pledge to withdraw all US combat brigades from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

They came up with the idea of "remissioning" - sticking a non-combat label on the combat brigade teams - as a way for Obama to appear to be delivering on his campaign pledge while actually abandoning it.

The "remissioning" scheme was then presented to Obama by Gates and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen in Chicago on December 15, 2008, according a report in the New York Times three days later.

It was hardly a secret that the Obama administration was using the "remissioning" ploy to get around the political problem created by his acceding to military demands to maintain combat troops in Iraq for nearly three more years.

Despite the fact that the disparity between Obama's public declaration and the reality of the policy was an obvious and major political story, however, the news media - including the New York Times, which had carried multiple stories about the military's "remissioning" scheme - failed to report on it.

The "senior administration official" told IPS that Obama is still "committed to withdrawal of all US forces by the end of 2011". That is the withdrawal deadline in the US-Iraq withdrawal agreement of November 2008.

But the same military and Pentagon officials who prevailed on Obama to back down on his withdrawal pledge also have pressed in the past for continued US military presence in Iraq beyond 2011, regardless of the US withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government.

In November 2008, after Obama's election, Odierno was asked by Washington Post correspondent Tom Ricks "what the US military presence would look like around 2014 or 2015". Odierno said he "would like to see a force probably around 30,000 or so, 35,000", which would still be carrying out combat operations.

Last February, Odierno requested that a combat brigade be stationed in Kirkuk to avoid an outbreak of war involving Kurdish and Iraqi forces vying for the region's oil resources - and that it be openly labeled as such - according to Ricks.

In light of the fact that Obama had already agreed to Odierno's "remissioning" dodge, the only reason for such a request would be to lay the groundwork for keeping a brigade there beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline.

Obama brushed off the proposal, according to Ricks, but it was unclear whether the reason was that Iraqi political negotiations over a new government were still ongoing.

In July, Odierno suggested that a United Nations peacekeeping force might be needed in Kirkuk after 2011, along with a hint that a continued US presence there might be requested by the Iraqi government.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy.

U.S. hypocrisy on nuclear weapons proliferation -- when Washington looked the other way as other nations pursued nukes

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2010/08/04/a-cakewalk-against-iran/

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/080410b.html

August , 2010 -- U.S. hypocrisy on nuclear weapons proliferation -- when Washington looked the other way as other nations pursued nukes....

http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2010/07/13/secret-document-affirms-us-israel-nuclear-partnership/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheMediaFreedomFoundation+%28The+Media+Freedom+Foundation%29

If Israel ever admits it has nuclear weapons, and not adhering to the Non Proliferation Treaty, then all US aid (military or not) will be rendered illegal per articles 101 and 102 of the US Arms Export Control Act . Ever heard of the "Symington Amendment"? ..... You will better understand the reasoning behind this "ambiguity"... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symington_Amendment

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=14229

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, revealed on "Meet the Press" on August 1 that the United States has on the table a military strike plan for Iran and strongly indicated that the Obama administration is prepared to use force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons...

When the Barbaric Americans used Nuclear Weapons against Japan, they were the only nation in the world that had them … and were therefore immune to nuclear retaliation....

In today’s world, investing billions of dollars to build and maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons is about as effective as impressing or scaring a veteran hooker with a big dick....

However, the United States was not always so bellicose when a regime with which it had strategic and political links had secretly developed a nuclear weapons capacity.

After the fall of successive right-wing Argentine military regimes in 1983, the CIA revealed in a Secret report that Argentina stood on the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon by the end of 1984. The Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, which, respectively, backed a series of Argentine right-wing presidents and dictators, including Alejandro Lanusse, Juan Peron, Isabel Martinez de Peron, Jorge Videla, Roberto Viola, Leopoldo Galtieri, and Reynaldo Bignone, before Raul Alfonsin became the president of the center-left government in 1983, stood by idly as Argentina pursued nuclear weapons. The CIA's Secret report on Argentina's nuclear weapons capability was revealed by Jack Anderson in the Washington Post on December 12, 1983.

The CIA feigned surprise in 1983 when Admiral Carlos Castro Madero, the long-serving head of Argentina's National Atomic Energy Commission, announced that Argentina possessed the technology to enrich uranium. Iran's similar capabilities have been used by the Bush and Obama administrations to suggest that Iran is close to developing nuclear weapons. Yet, in 1983, there was hardly a peep about Argentina's nuclear weapons potential....

Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford, was cooperating with Buenos Aires in Operation Condor, a covert Latin American intelligence sharing network aimed at tracking down and assassinating leftists and supporters of Chilean President Salvador Allende, who was killed in a CIA-inspired coup on September 11, 1973.

Rumors of Argentina's secret nuclear weapons program prompted Alfosin to state publicly during his 1983 election campaign to immediately dismantle a nuclear weapon if one was discovered to be in the possession of the Argentine military.

Unlike Iran, Argentina had not ratified the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). In addition, it failed to ratify the Treaty of Tlateloco, which bans nuclear weapons in Latin America.

In 1983, the CIA "discovered" that Argentina likely had hidden weapons-grade plutonium, despite trade restrictions forbidding them from using imported nuclear fuel rods to reprocess them into plutonium. It was also believed that Argentina had secretly reprocessed or was on the verge of reprocessing fuel rods at the Ezeiza nuclear power plant.

In late 1983, a Reagan administration intelligence official denied Argentina had a nuclear weapons potential because it lacked a program to enrich uranium for weapons. Leading hawks in the Reagan administration, upset with President Jimmy Carter's commitment to human rights in Latin America, did not want to criticize Latin American dictatorships they saw as bulwarks against the Soviet Union and Cuba. Chief among Argentina's supporters was Jeane Kirkpatrick, Reagan's ambassador to the United Nations, who even sided with Argentina against the United Kingdom during the 1982 Falklands War.

However, the National Security Agency's (NSA) intercepts of Argentina's military, intelligence, and diplomatic communications, on behalf of its British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) colleagues during the Falklands War yielded the intelligence on Argentina's nuclear weapons program. NSA's surveillance was conducted clandestinely from a NASA tracking station at Peldehue, just north of Santiago, the Chilean capital and from a classified listening post inside the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires....

Perhaps one main reason for the Argentine nuclear program not being viewed with hostility by Washington was the fact that the secret Argentine financing and procurement program was conducted through the aegis of the Italian right-wing network, the P-2 secret Masonic lodge and the Banco Ambrosiano,, for which the Vatican Bank was the major shareholder. Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Ambrosiano, was heavily involved in financing CIA covert operations in Latin America by supporting the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua and, following its overthrow by the Sandinistas, the Nicaraguan contras. The covert network that provided military technology, including nuclear know-how, to Argentina also involved P-2's Worshipful Master, Licio Gelli, and his affiliated P-2 lodge in Buenos Aires.

Calvi was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London on June 8, 1982, in what many suspected was a ritualistic murder conducted by the Freemasons. His personal secretary, Graziella Corrocher, allegedly jumped from her fourth floor Milan office window to her death after penning a suicide note in which she denounced Calvi. Before the suspicious deaths of Calvi and Corrocher, Gerard Soisson, the manager of the Luxembourg-based Clearstream transaction clearinghouse, was found dead in Corsica....courtesy of the DGSE thugs. In April 1982, Ambrosiano's deputy chairman, Roberto Rosone, narrowly escaped death from an assassin's bullet in Milan. His would-be assassin was shot by police and later identified as a member of Rome's leading Mafia syndicate.

Clearstream would later be at the center of a scandal involving covert payments to Nicolas Sarkozy's political campaigns. Soisson was responsible for moving Ambrosiano money to the bank's branch in Lima, Peru, Banco Andino, which was actually a brass plate operation, along with another branch in Nassau, Bahamas, that conducted their business in Luxembourg and Switzerland. Argentine covert weapons procurement was also facilitated by Banco Ambrosiano de America del Sud, based in Buenos Aires.

After Ambrosiano's collapse, some $1.2 billion was found to be missing. In 1978, Pope John Paul I, who had been pontiff for only 33 days, was found dead in a sitting position in his bed in Vatican City. John Paul I had been trying to clean up Vatican finances and had stumbled upon the P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano's CIA covert operations. It is believed by many that John Paul I was murdered by CIA/P-2 operatives intent on keeping the lodge's and bank's operations secret. No autopsy was ever performed on John Paul I......

Loans for Argentina's covert weapons procurement program were funded from a $250 million loan from the Vatican's Instituto per di Religione (IOR), or the Institute of Religious Works, the Vatican Bank. In addition, Gelli was a close friend of Juan Peron and top Argentine military officials. The Vatican's financing of Argentina's weapons program was also facilitated by the Banco Central Riserva, the Central Reserve Bank, of Peru. Calvi was also, conveniently, a personal friend of Peru's Finance Minister, Silva Rueta.

The fallout from the P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano scandal may have been involved in the 1981 attempted assassination of John Paul's successor, John Paul II. The convicted attempted assassin, Turkish national Mehmet Ali Agca, was affiliated with the Turkish Grey Wolves, which had close links with the CIA's stay-behind Gladio network in Turkey which, in turn, has morphed into the Ergenekon network. In 2005, Agca revealed that he had accomplices within the Vatican hierarchy and that one of them was Archbishop Paul CIA Marcinkus, the Vatican Bank (IOR) president from Chicago who was deeply involved with P-2 and Banco Ambrosiano, and who was also implicated in the murder of Pope John Paul I. The CIA and P-2 ally Michael CIA Ledeen, a notorious neo-conservative who supported Italian fascist causes and MOSSAD's while in Italy in the 1970s, attempted to link the attempted assassination of John Paul II to the KGB and Bulgarians.

CIA files contain an interesting WRC NBC-4 Washington news transcript dated February 6, 1983, as investigations of Banco Ambrosiano, the Vatican Bank, and their links to Latin America were well underway in Italy, the UK, Italy, Switzerland, the Bahamas, Luxembourg, and Peru. The covert U.S. support for the Nicaraguan contras and the "discovery" of the Vatican covert financial support for Argentina's nuclear program were also ongoing. The WRC report stated: "BARBARA HARRISON: NBC News reports tonight that Vice President George Bush's visit to Rome includes a secret mission regarding the attempted murder of Pope John Paul II." The report states that Bush had "other orders from the White House" and that he was pushing for an Italian investigation into the Pope's attempted assassination "even if the trial leads directly to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov." The NBC report also stated that the CIA was leaking information on the Italian investigation of the attempted assassination in order to "discourage" the probe, adding, "reports of leaks from CIA officials flooded U.S. newspapers during the past week."

The Kremlin connection to the assassination attempt was later found to have been a CIA propaganda ploy crafted by Ledeen; Claire Sterling, author of a CIA- inspired propaganda book titled "The Terror Network" that blamed the USSR for most of the world's terrorist attacks; and Arnaud de Borchgrave, who later became the editor of the right-wing and Sun Myung Moon-funded Washington Times, a leading proponent of military aid to the Nicaraguan contras and other guerrilla groups around the world.

When nuclear proliferation benefited U.S.-backed dictatorships in Argentina and Pakistan, as well as Israel, the United States either turned a blind eye toward or aided and abetted in nuclear technology smuggling. With Argentina, the United States was implicated in a network run out of the Vatican that also supplied weapons to the contras. In Pakistan, the United States gave a "wink and a nod" to the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network so as to not jeopardize the CIA's arms pipeline to the Afghan mujaheddin during their war with the Soviets. Beginning with the Lyndon Johnson administration, the United States actively allowed Israel to steal and smuggle nuclear weapons components to ensure Jewish votes, covert CIA/MOSSAD operations worldwide, extra-judicial assassinations in the Levant by the odious White House Murder INC, and tons of campaign contributions for incumbent administrations. In the case of Iran, the United States is willing to plunge the world into a major war in order to prevent a new member of the nuclear club....

If Israel ever admits it has nuclear weapons, and not adhering to the Non Proliferation Treaty, then all US aid (military or not) will be rendered illegal per articles 101 and 102 of the US Arms Export Control Act . Ever heard of the "Symington Amendment"? ..... You will better understand the reasoning behind this "ambiguity"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symington_Amendment

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gsmith.php?articleid=14229

As a follow up to the story below on George W. Bush's senior staff meeting discussing Pakistani nuclear scientist and smuggler A Q Khan, Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and the Turks, it is important to note some of WMR's past articles on the subject of Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement with interests involved in the nuclear black market.

This was reported by WMR on July 31, 2005: "U.S. intelligence insiders have pointed out that the White House is using 'Rovegate' and 'Who in the White House said what to whom?' as a smoke screen to divert attention away from the actual counter-proliferation work Mrs. Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates team were engaged in. The arrival of Timothy Flanigan as Patrick J. Fitzgerald's boss is likely related to the mountains of evidence Fitzgerald has now collected to indict senior White House officials, particularly, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, for criminal conspiracy in exposing a sensitive U.S. intelligence operation that was targeting some of their closest political and business associates. Libby, it will be recalled, was the attorney for fugitive global smuggler and Clinton-pardoned multi-billionaire Marc Rich, someone who has close ties to the Sharon government and Israeli intelligence. It is no coincidence that FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds uncovered nuclear material and narcotics trafficking involving Turkish intermediaries with ties to Israel at the same time Brewster Jennings and the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division was hot on the trail of nuclear proliferators tied to the Israeli government of Ariel Sharon and the A. Q. Khan network of Pakistan.

An arrest in early 2004 points to the links between Israeli agents and Islamist groups bent on producing weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. According to intelligence sources, this was a network that was a major focus of Edmonds' and Valerie Plame Wilson's work. In January 2004, FBI and U.S. Customs agents arrested Asher Karni, a Hungarian-born Orthodox Jew, Israeli citizen, and resident of Cape Town, South Africa, at Denver International Airport for illegally exporting 200 electrically triggered spark gaps -- devices that send synchronized electrical pulses and are used in nuclear weapons -- to Pakistan via a New Jersey export company named Giza Technologies of Secaucus (owned by Zeki Bilmen -- whom the FBI has identified as a Turkish Jew who was already under surveillance by the CIA team). The cargo manifest listed the equipment as electronics gear [lithotripters used to break up kidney stones] for the Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa. However, the initial shipment of 66 triggers did not go to the hospital but to Karni’s Top-Cape Technology of Cape Town, South Africa. Top Cape, in turn, sent the triggers to AJKMC Lithography Aid Society in Islamabad, Pakistan through Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Top-Cape 'officially' traded in military and aviation electronics equipment. It was during the summer of 2003, when Valerie Plame and her team -- at a critical stage of their investigation of the A. Q. Khan network -- were outed by White House officials Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and at least one other individual (possibly Elliot Abrams), that Karni received an e-mail from his long time Pakistani associate Humayun Khan (no relation to A. Q. Khan) asking for 200 triggers to be sent to his Islamabad-based company, Pakland PME.

After initially attempting to purchase the devices from a sale agent in France -- an attempt that proved unsuccessful when the French agent demanded a U.S. export license for the triggers because the end destination was Pakistan -- Karni managed to obtain the triggers from Perkin-Elmer's manufacturing plant in Massachusetts through Giza Technologies. Karni's e-mail traffic to and from Khan was being intercepted by a covert agent in South Africa and being forwarded to U.S. authorities. It is not known whether the covert agent was a Brewster Jennings' asset but it would not be surprising considering Karni was an important link in the A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network. By the time the initial shipment of 66 triggers were sent to Karni's Cape Town office, U.S. and South African intelligence were already closely monitoring the transaction and the key players involved. It is also noteworthy that Karni previously worked for a Cape Town electronic import firm called Eagle Technology but was fired after it was discovered by his boss that he was making secret deals to ship nuclear components to Israel, India, Pakistan, and possibly, North Korea. Karni had been in South Africa for 20 years after arriving from Israel. His time in South Africa coincided with the apartheid government's rapid development of its own (since disestablished) nuclear weapons program and very close military ties between South Africa and Israel.

As for Humayun Khan, the Los Angeles Times discovered that the Pakistani "businessman" had been involved in nuclear weapons smuggling since 1975 when he was engaged in business with a former Nazi named Alfred Hempel, who was the kingpin in a global nuclear smuggling network active throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Hempel died in 1989. In an interview aired by PBS's Frontline on July 26, Humayun Khan said he never realized Karni was Jewish, stating that the Israeli masqueraded as a Muslim. However, what is clear is that an Israeli-based network, involving key neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, were attempting to speed up the clock on the delivery by the A. Q. Khan network of prohibited nuclear material to countries like Iran, thereby justifying a pre-emptive U.S. (and Israeli-supported) attack on Iranian nuclear installations. It was this network that attracted the attention of the CIA and when it realized some of the "men behind the curtain" were in the Pentagon, they had their smoking gun evidence of double dealing by Bush administration officials and their compatriots in the Sharon government.

Although AJKMC, the Pakistani company, said it merely printed copies of the Koran, U.S. investigators pointed out the initials also stand for the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference, an Islamist opposition party that supports groups allied to Al Qaeda in Kashmir. Some anti-terrorism experts believe that Osama Bin Laden may be hiding in Kashmir.A Malaysian link was also discovered in Karni’s network, which is significant in light of developments involving Brewster Jennings' exposure by Rove and Libby. A Swiss citizen named. According to FBI insiders', 'wiretaps of phone calls in the Giza-Bilmen-Karni smuggling ring yielded the name Douglas Feith', 'the Undersecretary of Defense for Plans and Policy and one of Donald Rumsfeld’s chief advisers', 'and Turkish MIT intelligence members of the American Turkish Council', 'a lobbying group which represents some of America's largest defense and private military contractors. Urs Tinner was arrested by German authorities in October 2004. Tinner was accused of supervising the manfucture of centrifuge components in Malaysia. The United States demanded Tinner’s release, which led to speculation that Tinner was a U.S. intelligence asset who penetrated the A.Q. Khan network and may have been part of the Brewster Jennings operation.According to FBI insiders, wiretaps of phone calls in the Giza-Bilmen-Karni smuggling ring yielded the name Douglas Feith, the Undersecretary of Defense for Plans and Policy and one of Donald Rumsfeld’s chief advisers, and Turkish MIT intelligence members of the American Turkish Council, a lobbying group which represents some of America's largest defense and private military contractors.

In May 2005, Der Spiegel magazine reported that Tinner was, in fact, a CIA agent. Germany announced that Tinner would be extradited to Switzerland, something that Der Spiegel reported was the result of a “deal” cut between Germany and the United States. A February 2004 Malaysian police report named both Urs Tinner and his father, Friedrich, as principal engineers in overseeing the machining of uranium-enrichment centrifuge components at a Scomi Precision Engineering (Scope) plant in Malaysia. Friedrich Tinner, owner of a Swiss firm named PhiTec AG, was named in an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report as one of many Swiss individuals involved in shipping nuclear components to Libya and Iran. Swiss authorities had previously cleared Friedrich Tinner of charges that he shipped centrifuges to Iraq. Friedrich Tinner’s other son, Marco, owned a firm called Traco that was also reported as a supplier of equipment and services to Scomi.

If the Tinners were working for the CIA, one subject of interest for them was a Sri Lankan businessman named B.S.A. Tahir who arrived in Malaysia via Dubai in the mid-1990s. In a February 2004 speech at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, President Bush stated that Tahir was A. Q. Khan’s “chief financial officer and money launderer.” Investigators discovered that Tahir made several trips to Germany and Turkey, the native country of Karni's spark trigger supplier Bilmen, to meet with suppliers for the Khan network.

WMR reported the following on Nov. 5, 2005:

"Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Plans Eric Edelman has been identified as then 'then Principal Deputy' to Vice President Dick Cheney's recently indicted Chief of Staff Lewis Libby. Edelman replaced Douglas Feith, the chief architect of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, as Undersecretary after he was given a recess appointment by President Bush to the Pentagon post. Edelman left the Vice President's office in June 2003 to take up his post as ambassador to Turkey. However, the indictment indicates that Edelman continued to be involved in discussions with Libby after beginning Turkish language training.

According to FBI sources, Edelman used his position as ambassador to Turkey to cement a triad of weapons and drug smuggling and money laundering involving Turks, Israelis, and Americans. The CIA and US Customs Service busted one nuclear smuggling ring involving South African-Israeli national Asher Karni, a Pakistani businessman named Humayun Khan, and a Turkish Jew with strong Israeli ties named Zeki Bilmen. The smuggling network involved companies in Cape Town; Secaucus, New Jersey; and Islamabad, Pakistan. Karni was convicted by a US court for smuggling nuclear triggers to Pakistan via South Africa. The identification of Edelman in the Libby indictment as one of those possibly involved in the outing of a CIA agent and a covert company bears directly on the use of Turkey as a major facilitator in the trafficking of WMD components, particularly to the AQ Khan network in Pakistan.

An informed government insider revealed that this smuggling network and the outing of Valerie Plame and Brewster Jennings directly involved the fact that the CIA's counter-proliferation network had accumulated a great deal of intelligence on Douglas Feith's and Richard Perle's International Advisors, Inc. (IAI), registered foreign agents for the government of Turkey; former House Speaker Bob Livingston's lobbying activities on behalf of Turkey and the Cayman Islands; the lobbying activities and Pentagon ties of the American Turkish Council; House Speaker Dennis Hastert's receipt of Turkish-Russian-Israeli heroin and nuclear smuggling proceeds in the form of campaign contributions; and nuclear smuggling money laundering in Cyprus, Dubai, and the Cayman Islands.

On Nov. 11, 2005, WMR reported the following: "New aspect of Valerie Plame/Brewster Jennings exposure revealed. According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network.

In fact, U.S. intelligence sources report that the first shipment of VX nerve gas to Saddam Hussein was carried out between 1988 and 1989. The gas was shipped to Iraq by a U.S. company that was established in 1987 -- The Carlyle Group."

On Feb. 4, 2006, WMR reported, "The Bush administration's WMD claims, the original basis for invading Iraq, were discovered to have been without merit. However, Cheney and his staff, including indicted Chief of Staff Lewis 'Scooter' Libby engaged in what the Vice President called a 'work up' on Joe Wilson. That 'work up' also saw Wilson's wife, a covert CIA officer who worked on WMD proliferation issues, outed by the White House along with her entire Brewster Jennings & Associates cover company network."

On Feb. 25, 2006, WMR reported, "The White House turned over to CIA Leakgate Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald some 250 pages of e-mails from 2003 that it originally claimed were somehow deleted or lost. The e-mails reportedly demonstrate that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff were squarely behind and coordinated efforts to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson and reveal the identity of his covert CIA agent wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, to the media. The e-mails are said to implicate Cheney and his key staffers in potential criminal wrongdoing involving the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's identity and those of her Brewster Jennings & Associates covert colleagues.

The White House said it 'discovered' the missing e-mails two weeks ago and turned them over to Fitzgerald. However, three and a half weeks ago, WMR was contacted by an anonymous source who claimed to have intimate knowledge of how the 'EOP' (Executive Office of the President) archived older e-mail and other documents. The source said that it is EOP policy to send archival documents to an underground Federal Support Center at 5321 Riggs Road in Olney, Maryland for safekeeping.

WMR passed this 'tip' on to those who have 'back channel' communications with Fitzgerald's office with an emphasis that the anonymous source appeared to have a very good working knowledge of White House document handling and archival procedures. The anonymous source suggested that Fitzgerald and a team of FBI agents show up unannounced at the Olney facility and simply seize the e-mails in question. WMR held the information on the possible whereabouts of the missing e-mails so not to alert the White House political operatives of their existence and location.

In any event, except for some e-mails for which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is claiming executive privilege, most of the the 'missing' 2003 smoking gun e-mails involving Cheney's office have been found and these may prove to be as politically damaging to the Bush White House as the Watergate tapes proved to be for Richard Nixon."

On March 30, 2006, WMR reported, "Speaking at the American Turkish Council (ATC) meeting this week in Washington, the American Enterprise Institute's Danielle Pletka speculated that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, its western neighbors are likely to follow. She said, with 'a nuclear Iran . . . Saudi Arabia, Turkey will think about nuclear weapons, along with the smaller emirates.' Although former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman said he favored coupling the nuclear Iran issue to NATO, with, he said, 'an Israel relationship,' Prof. Ilter Turan of Istanbul Bilgi University contended, 'Turkey does not fear a nuclear Iran.' Turan emphasized that Turkey has stable relations with Iran.

In its latest edition, the German magazine Cicero is reporting that Saudi Arabia has been secretly working on a nuclear program with help from Pakistani scientists who posed at Hajj pilgrims to surreptitiously enter Saudi Arabia on Saudi-supplied aircraft between October 2004 and January 2005. The magazine also reported that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have jointly worked on nuclear weapons since the mid-1990s and that Saudi scientists worked alongside Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer (AQ) Khan in jointly developing Pakistan's nuclear weapons program and Saudi Arabia's nascent program. It was Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA Brewster Jennings counter-proliferation operation that was tracking the Pakistani, Saudi, and Iranian nuclear programs, including the involvement of Turkish, Emirati, and Israeli nationals in the proliferation of nuclear components. Other news reports point to Pakistan continuing to be a nuclear proliferation hub, even after the house arrest of AQ Khan.

The allegations at the ATC conference about embryonic Saudi, Turkish, and Emirati nuclear programs appear to have been confirmed by the German magazine article."

On April 22, 2006, WMR reported:

In another development, the exposure of the Brewster Jennings team is continuing to have devastating effects on various informants involved in the A Q Khan nuclear smuggling network. One Turkish player in the network, Gunes Cire, head of Eti Elektronik, died suddenly in 2004 after his company was implicated by the Turkish Directorate General of Customs Control in the export of nuclear materials to Gulf Technical Industries in Dubai either directly or via Malaysia. From Dubai the materials were shipped to Pakistan and Libya. Another Turk, Selim Alguadish, head of EKA Elektronik and 3E Endustriyel Sanayi, was arrested in Germany for extradition to Turkey. Alguadish was linked to Urs Tinner, who was reportedly working with the CIA to provide faulty nuclear components to the Malaysian front for the A Q Khan network, Scomi Precision Engineering. Another Turk who was the focus of U.S. intelligence was Zeki Bilmen, the owner of Giza Technologies of Secaucus, New Jersey. Bilmen provided nuclear trigger spark gaps via a South African-Israeli named Asher Karni, the owner of South Africa-based Top-Cape, who then sent them to the A Q Khan network in Pakistan. With respect to Bilmen and Karni, when it was discovered that the A Q Khan network that was supplying nuclear components to Iran, North Korea, and, possibly, Saudi Arabia, had a potentially significant Israeli-connected component, the pursuit of that particular avenue by the CIA ground to a screeching halt. The CIA's counter-proliferation work has historically suffered from exposures and interference from all the Bush administrations. In 1989, one of Valerie Plame Wilson's predecessor's in the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division, Richard Barlow, was fired after he uncovered the involvement of the George H. W. Bush administration in facilitating the A Q Khan network and Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. The Bush administration did not want to alienate Pakistan, a key ally in the mujaheddin war against the Soviet Union. One of the individual's involved in muzzling and punishing Barlow was then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney's Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy -- Stephen Hadley.

On May 31, 2006, WMR reported:

"On May 26, Italian police discovered the badly decomposed body of Canadian diplomat Lewis B. Miskell in a Naples sewer. Miskell, 49, had been stabbed in the abdomen. Intelligence sources report that Miskell, who assigned to the Canadian embassy in Vienna, Austria, was the attache responsible for liaison to UN specialized agencies in Vienna. The most important UN agency in the Austrian capital is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the nexus for nuclear talks with Iran and a significant activity surrounding the activities of the defunct Brewster Jennings Associates, the covert weapons counter-proliferation front company outed by the Bush White House. The clampdown on information about Miskell by the pro-Bush Stephen Harper government in Canada indicates that Miskell may have had an intelligence function and was operating under 'official cover' at the Canadian embassy in Vienna. Miskell traveled from London to Naples on March 6 and was supposedly on vacation. He was due to return to London on March 14 but failed to show for his flight. There has been no explanation from Canada why Miskell, who was posted in Vienna, was traveling between Italy and London. There are direct flights between Vienna and Naples. Miskell was last spotted at the Naples train station. A Nigerian national named Desmond Anywi was later discovered with six of Miskell's credit cards, which he said he found on the floor of the Naples train station. Police have not charged Anywi for robbery and there has been no explanation from police why Miskell was found with his wristwatch and other personal effects. Computer records showed that Miskell made online inquiries about several hotels in Naples prior to his trip but did not reserve a room in them nor did he visit them. Miskell had a history of photographing "historical" sites in various countries. Suspiciously, unnamed "police" sources in Europe began spreading information that Miskell, who lived alone in Vienna, spent a lot of time on Internet chat rooms trying to meet people and stayed in the seediest parts of European cities, including the area in Naples where he was investigating hotels. Canada has been a source of tritium, a nuclear weapons component, for Iran. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) has been known to be lax for its sale of nuclear components to nations abroad. Miskell was posted at the Canadian embassy in Washington, DC during the mid-1990s. In what may be a related matter, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office has complained to the United States that the Bush administration has failed to cooperate with Switzerland's efforts to track the A Q Khan nuclear proliferation network. The Bush administration's multiple refusals to assist Switzerland in probing the Khan network, which was a major target of the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division, Brewster Jennings Associates, and Valerie Plame Wilson, was revealed by former UN weapons inspector David Albright. Switzerland arrested three members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich, Urs, and Marco -- for illegally supplying centrifuges from a Malaysian company to Libya. Urs Tinner has been rumored to have been a U.S. intelligence asset. Switzerland has received cooperation in its probe from Southeast Asian nations, including Malaysia and Thailand, and South Africa. All three are key transit points for nuclear materials involving Russian-Israeli Mafia assets who, in turn, are linked to top members of the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney." On June 13, 2006, WMR reported: "WMR has learned from informed sources of a link between those who "outed" CIA counter-proliferation covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm and convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The link centers around convicted Israeli-South African nuclear components smuggler Asher Karni, a former officer in the Israeli Defense Force and Orthodox Jew who illegally smuggled 66 U.S.-made triggered spark gap nuclear detonators, via Cape Town, South Africa, where his company was located, to the Pakistan-based network of Abdul Qadeer ('A Q') Khan, a major target of Plame Wilson's CIA team. The A Q Khan network sold nuclear materials to Libya, North Korea, and most importantly, Iran. Karni's end-user client for the nuclear triggers in Pakistan was Humayun Khan's import-export Pakland Corp. Humayun Khan is no relation to A Q Khan. In a inexplicable development, after his arrest in Denver on Jan. 1, 2004, Karni was granted, over federal prosecutors' objections, $100,000 bail by US District Judge for the District of Columbia Thomas Hogan. The government did not appeal Hogan's bail decision and Karni was released to the custody of the Hebrew Sheltering Home in Silver Spring, Maryland. After pleading guilty to smuggling charges, Karni was sentenced on August 4, 2005 to three years in prison by US Judge Ricardo Urbina. Karni's Turkish Jewish intermediary for the procurement of the nuclear triggers, Zeki Bilmen, owner of Giza Technologies of Secaucus, New Jersey, apparently died under suspicious circumstances in 2004 after Karni's arrest by Federal agents. However, Giza Technologies remains in operation to this day. WMR has learned of a link between Karni and Abramoff. Rabbi Herzel Kranz, the head of the Hebrew Sheltering Home in Silver Spring where Karni was housed after his bail, is also a colleague of Abramoff's. The January 12, 2006 issue of The Forward contained an article citing praise of Abramoff by Kranz. At the time, Abramoff had just pleaded guilty to federal fraud and racketeering charges. Kranz praised Abramoff for donating to Jewish projects and, referring to Abramoff's conviction, said, "people make mistakes." The Turkish nexus of the Karni-Bilmen-Humayun/A Q Khan smuggling network was of primary interest to both the CIA and FBI. It is also noteworthy that Judge Hogan, who dealt with the Karni case, was also the judge who ordered the FBI raid of Louisiana Democratic Representative William Jefferson's congressional office. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who has reportedly been under investigation for receiving Turkish campaign donations and his ties to Abramoff, strongly condemned the FBI raid of Jefferson's office. After Hastert's protests, the Justice Department leaked word to the media that the Abramoff scandal extended to include Hastert. Essentially, Abramoff money was being used by the Justice Department as a weapon against Bush administration critics. WMR has also learned that Abramoff's money was also used to blackmail other members of Congress who were investigating the Israeli connection to nuclear smuggling and the A Q Khan network. There is also evidence that some of the highly classified CIA information convicted Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin passed through American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman to Israeli agents attached to the Israeli embassy in Washington dealt with Iranian nuclear development and that CIA sensitive sources and methods not disclosed by the outing of Plame Wilson/Brewster Jennings were discovered in the leak of the CIA documents to AIPAC and the Israelis......"

Preparing for World War III, Targeting Iran

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/02/gordon-duff-false-flag-nuke-attack-on-u-s-justified-king-torah/

Preparing for World War III, Targeting Iran

Part I: Global Warfare

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/2/what-if-iran-already-has-the-bomb/print/

by Michel Chossudovsky

Memo To OBUSHMA FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

http://consortiumnews.com/Print/2010/080310c.html

Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. War preparations to attack Iran are in "an advanced state of readiness". Hi tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.

This military adventure has been on the Pentagon's drawing board since the mid-1990s. First Iraq, then Iran according to a declassified 1995 US Central Command document.

Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran, is the next target together with Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.....

Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America's NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems. The air defense systems of the US, NATO member countries and Israel are fully integrated.

This is a coordinated endeavor of the Pentagon, NATO, Israel's Defense Force (IDF), with the active military involvement of several non-NATO partner countries including the frontline Arab states (members of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative), Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, among others. (NATO consists of 28 NATO member states Another 21 countries are members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), The Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative include ten Arab countries plus Israel.)

The roles of Egypt, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia (within the extended military alliance) is of particular relevance. Egypt controls the transit of war ships and oil tankers through the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States occupy the South Western coastlines of the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. In early June, "Egypt reportedly allowed one Israeli and eleven U.S. ships to pass through the Suez Canal in ....an apparent signal to Iran. ... On June 12, regional press outlets reported that the Saudis had granted Israel the right to fly over its airspace..." (Muriel Mirak Weissbach, Israel’s Insane War on Iran Must Be Prevented., Global Research, July 31, 2010)

In post wall to wall inside job of 9/11 military doctrine, this massive deployment of military hardware has been defined as part of the so-called "Global War on Terrorism", targeting "non-State" terrorist organizations including al Qaeda and so-called "State sponsors of terrorism",. including Iran, Lebanon...., Sudan....

The setting up of new US military bases, the stockpiling of advanced weapons systems including tactical nuclear weapons, etc. were implemented as part of the pre-emptive defensive military doctrine under the umbrella of the "Global War on Al-CIAda Terrorism".

War and the Economic Crisis

The broader implications of a US-NATO Israel attack on Iran are far-reaching. The war and the economic crisis are intimately related. The war economy is financed by Wall Street, which stands as the creditor of the US administration. The US weapons producers are the recipients of the US Department of Defense multibillion dollar procurement contracts for advanced weapons systems. In turn, "the battle for oil" in the Middle East and Central Asia directly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants.

The US and its allies are "beating the drums of war" at the height of a Worldwide economic depression, not to mention the most serious environmental catastrophe in World history. In a bitter twist, one of the major players (BP) on the Middle East Central Asia geopolitical chessboard, formerly known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, is the instigator of the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Media Disinformation

Public opinion, swayed by media hype is tacitly supportive, indifferent or ignorant as to the likely impacts of what is upheld as an ad hoc "punitive" operation directed against Iran's nuclear facilities rather than an all out war. War preparations include the deployment of of US and Israeli produced nuclear weapons. In this context, the devastating consequences of a nuclear war are either trivialised or simply not mentioned. The "real crisis" threatening humanity, according to the media and the governments, is not war but global warming.

The war on Iran is presented to public opinion as an issue among others. It is not viewed as a threat to "Mother Earth" as in the case of global warming. It is not front-page news. The fact that an attack on Iran could lead to escalation and potentially unleash a "global war" is not a matter of concern.

The Cult of Killing and Destruction

The global killing machine is also sustained by an imbedded cult of killing and destruction which pervades Hollywood movies, not to mention the prime time war and crime TV series on network television. This cult of killing is endorsed by the CIA and the Pentagon which also support (finance) Hollywood productions as an instrument of war propaganda:

"Ex-CIA agent Bob Baer told us, "There’s a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood" and revealed that former CIA director George Tenet is currently, "out in Hollywood, talking to studios." (Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham, Lights, Camera… Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood, Global Research, January 31, 2009).

The killing machine is deployed at a global level, within the framework of the unified combat command structure. It is routinely upheld by the institutions of government, the corporate media and the mandarins and intellectuals of the New World Orders from within Washington's think tanks and strategic studies research institutes, as an unquestioned instrument of peace and global prosperity.

A culture of killing and violence has become imbedded in human consciousness.

War is broadly accepted as part of a societal process: The Homeland needs to be "defended" and protected.

"Legitimized violence" and extrajudicial killings directed against "terrorists" are upheld in western democracies, as necessary instruments of national security.

A "humanitarian war" is upheld by the so-called international community. It is not condemned as a criminal act. Its main architects are rewarded for their contributions to world peace.

With regard to Iran, what is unfolding is the outright legitimization of war in the name of an illusive notion of global security.

A "Pre-emptive" Aerial attack directed against Iran would lead to Escalation

At present there are three separate Middle East Central Asia war theaters: Iraq, Af-Pak, and Palestine.

Were Iran to be the object of a "pre-emptive" aerial attack by allied forces, the entire region, from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan, would flare up, leading us potentially into a World War III scenario.
The war would also extend into Lebanon .....

It is highly unlikely that the bombings, if they were to be implemented, would be circumscribed to Iran's nuclear facilities as claimed by US-NATO official statements. What is more probable is an all out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories, public buildings.

Iran, with an an estimated ten percent of global oil and gas reserves, ranks third after Saudi Arabia (25 %) and Iraq (11 %) in the size of its reserves. In comparison, the US possesses less than 2.8 % of global oil reserves. (See Eric Waddell, The Battle for Oil, Global Research, December 2004).

Of significance is the recent discovery in Iran of the second largest known reserves of natural gas at Soumar and Halgan estimated at 12.4 trillion cubic feet.

Targeting Iran consists not only in reclaiming Anglo-American control over Iran's oil and gas economy, including pipeline routes, it also challenges the presence and influence of China and Russia in the region.

The planned attack on Iran is part of a coordinated global military road map. It is part of the Pentagon's "long war", a profit driven war without borders, a project of World domination, a sequence of military operations.

US-NATO military planners have envisaged various scenarios of military escalation. They are also acutely aware of the geopolitical implications, namely that the war could extend beyond the Middle East Central Asia region. The economic impacts on the oil markets, etc. have also been analyzed.

While Iran, Sudan and Lebanon are the immediate targets, China, Russia, North Korea, not to mention Venezuela and Cuba are also the object of US threats.

At stake is the structure of military alliances. US-NATO-Israel military deployments including military exercises and drills conducted on Russia and China's immediate borders bear a direct relationship to the proposed war on Iran. These veiled threats, including their timing, constitute an obvious hint to the former powers of the Cold War era not to intervene in any way which could encroach upon a US-led attack on Iran.

Global Warfare

The medium term strategic objective is to target Iran and neutralize Iran's allies, through gunboat diplomacy. The longer term military objective is to directly target China and Russia.

While Iran is the immediate target, military deployment is by no means limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. A global military agenda has been formulated.

The deployment of coalition troops and advanced weapons systems by the US, NATO and its partners is occurring simultaneously in all major regions of the World.

The recent actions of the US military off the coast of North Korea including the conduct of war games are part of a global design.

Directed primarily against Russia and China, US, NATO and allied military exercises, war drills, weapons deployments, etc. are being conducted simultaneously in major geopolitical hotspots.

-The Korean Peninsula, the Sea of Japan, the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea threatening China,

-The deployment of Patriot missiles in Poland, the early warning center in the Czech republic threatening Russia,

-Naval deployments in Bulgaria, Romania on the Black sea, threatening Russia

- US and NATO troops deployments in Georgia,

- A formidable naval deployment in the Persian Gulf including Israeli submarines directed against Iran.

Concurrently the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caribbean, Central America and the Andean region of South America are areas of ongoing militarization. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the threats are directed against Venezuela and Cuba.

US "Military Aid"

In turn, large scale weapons transfers have been undertaken under the banner of US "military aid" to selected countries, including a 5 billion dollar arms deal with India which is intended to build India's capabilities directed against China. (Huge U.S.-India Arms Deal To Contain China, Global Times, July 13, 2010).

"[The] arms sales will improve ties between Washington and New Delhi, and, intentionally or not, will have the effect of containing China’s influence in the region.” quoted in Rick Rozoff, Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Global Research, July 16, 2010)

The US has military cooperation agreements with a number of South East Asian countries including Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, involving "military aid" as well as the participation in U.S.-led war games in the Pacific Rim (July -August 2010). These agreements are supportive of weapons deployments directed against The People's Republic of China. (See Rick Rozoff, Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Global Research, July 16, 2010).

Similarly and more directly related to the planned attack on Iran, the US is arming the Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates) with land-based interceptor missiles, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) as well as sea-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors installed on Aegis class warships in the Persian Gulf. (See Rick Rozoff, NATO’s Role In The Military Encirclement Of Iran, Global Research, February 10, 2010).

The Timetable of Military Stockpiling and Deployment

What is crucial in regards to US weapons transfers to partner countries and allies is the actual timing of delivery and deployment. The launch of a US sponsored military operation would normally occur once these weapons systems are in place, effectively deployed with the implementation of personnel training. (e.g India).

What we are dealing with is a carefully coordinated global military design controlled by the Pentagon, involving the combined armed forces of more than forty countries. This global multinational military deployment is by far the largest display of advanced weapons systems in World history.

In turn, the US and its allies have established new military bases in different parts of the world. "The Surface of the Earth is Structured as a Wide Battlefield". (See Jules Dufour, The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases , Global Research, July 1, 2007).

The Unified Command structure divided up into geographic Combatant Commands is predicated on a strategy of militarization at the global level. "The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide." (See Jules Dufour, The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases , Global Research, July 1, 2007

Source: DefenseLINK-Unified Command Plan

World War III Scenario

This military deployment is occurring in several regions simultaneously under the coordination of the regional US Commands, involving the stockpiling of US made weapons systems by America's allies, some of which are former enemies, including Vietnam and Japan.

The present context is characterised by a global military build-up controlled by one World superpower, which is using its numerous allies to trigger regional wars.

In contrast to the Second World War was a conjunction of separate regional war theaters. Given the communications technologies and weapons systems of the 1940s, there was no strategic "real time" coordination in military actions between broad geographic regions

Global warfare is based on the coordinated deployment of a single dominant military power, which oversees the actions of its allies and partners.

With the exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Second World War was characterized by the use of conventional weapons. The planning of a global war relies on the militarization of outer space. Were a war directed against iran to be launched, It would not only use nuclear weapons, the entire gamut of new advanced weapons systems, including electrometric weapons and environmental modification techniques (ENMOD) would be used.

The United Nations Security Council

The UN Security Council adopted in early June a fourth round of sweeping sanctions against The Islamic Republic of Iran, which included an expanded arms embargo as well "tougher financial controls". In a bitter irony, this resolution was passed within days of the United Nations Secrity Council's outright refusal to adopt a motion condemning Israel for its attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters.

Both China and Russia, pressured by the US, have endorsed the UNSC sanctions' regime, to their own detriment. Their decision within the UNSC contributes to weakening their own military alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation organization (SCO), in which Iran has observer status. The Security Council resolution freezes China and Russia's respective bilateral military cooperation and trade agreements with Iran. It has serious repercussions on Iran's air defense system which in part depends on Russian technology and expertise.

The Security Council resolution grants a de facto "green light" to wage a pre-emptive war against Iran.

The American Inquisition: Building a Political Consensus for War

In chorus, the Western media has branded Iran as a threat to global security in view of its alleged (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Echoing official statements, the media is now demanding the implementation of punitive bombings directed against Iran so as to safeguard Israel's security.

The Western media is beating the drums of war. The purpose is to tacitly instil, through repeated media reports, ad nauseam, within people's inner consciousness, the notion that the Iranian threat is real and that the Islamic Republic should be "taken out".

A consensus building process to wage war is similar to the Spanish inquisition. It requires and demands submission to the notion that war is a humanitarian endeavor.

Known and documented, the real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance, yet realities in an inquisitorial environment are turned upside down: the warmongers are committed to peace, the victims of war are presented as the protagonists of war. Whereas in 2006, almost two thirds of Americans were opposed to military action against Iran, a recent Reuter-Zogby February 2010 poll suggests that 56 % of Americans favor a US-NATO military action against Iran.

Building a political consensus which is based on an outright lie cannot, however, rely solely on the official position of those who are the source of the lie.

The antiwar movement in the US, which has in part been infiltrated and co-opted, has taken on a weak stance with regard to Iran. The antiwar movement is divided. The emphasis has been on wars which have already occurred (Afghanistan, Iraq) rather than forcefully opposing wars which are being prepared and which are currently on the Pentagon's drawing board. Since the inauguration of the Obama administration, the antiwar movement has lost some of its impetus.

Moreover, those who actively oppose the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, do not necessarily oppose the conduct of "punitive bombings" directed Iran, nor do they categorize these bombings as an act of war, which could potentially be a prelude to World War III.

The scale of antiwar protest in relation to Iran has been minimal in comparison to the mass demonstrations which preceded the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq.

The real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance.

The Iran operation is not being opposed in the diplomatic arena by China and Russia; it has the support of the governments of the frontline Arab states which are integrated into the NATO sponsored Mediterranean dialogue. It also has the tacit support of Western public opinion.

We call upon people across the land, in America, Western Europe, Israel, Turkey and around the world to rise up against this military project, against their governments which are supportive of military action against Iran, against the media which serves to camouflage the devastating implications of a war against Iran.

This war is sheer madness.

World War III is terminal. Albert Einstein understood the perils of nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth, which has already started with the radioactive contamination resulting from depleted uranium. “ I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

The media, the intellectuals, the scientists and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the untold truth, namely that war using nuclear warheads destroys humanity, and that this complex process of gradual destruction has already commenced.

When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.

When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor, Justice and the entire international legal system are turned upside down: pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. Opposing the war becomes a criminal act.

The Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.

It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.

It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.

It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.

It destroys internationalism.

Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

Let us reverse the tide.

Challenge the war criminals in high office.

Break the American inquisition.

Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.

Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.

Bring home the troops.

Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.

Part II of this essay will be published shortly.

Preparing for World War III. Nature and History of the Planned Military Operation against Iran

Includes analysis of the role if Israel

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.


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