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‘Alarmist’ Goldberg Iran piece promotes Israeli objectives

By Philip Weiss on August 13, 2010

Tony Karon at rootless cosmopolitan, and Stephen Walt and Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett at Foreign Policy– and all these writers concur that the Jeff Goldberg piece in the Atlantic is an argument for war and that it’s a war with a strong Israel interest. I find it amazing that such an Israelcentric argument can be put forward in establishment debate after a, Goldberg helped lead us into the Iraq war on a dubious basis without suffering much diminution of influence, and b, Goldberg himself admitted last year on Israeli television that when it came to Iran, Israeli interests and U.S. interests diverge, and he would be torn. Well, not that torn!

Here are excerpts from the three writers emphasizing the Israelcentric aspect of Goldberg’s argument. Karon says that “former IDF Corporal Jeffrey Goldberg” wrote an “alarmist screed” at the behest of his Israeli sources:

why call in Goldberg? Well, quite simply, because Goldberg is one of the most influential opinion-makers among hawkish Israel backers in the Democratic Party camp. Such are his pro-Israel hawk credentials that if Goldberg can be convinced, there’s a chance you can convince the likes of Lester Crown*. Not that Rahm succeeded, of course; that’s why Goldberg is pushing the line that Israel is going to do something crazy early next year.

Walt also says the piece serves an “alarmist” agenda:

a central purpose of this article is to mainstream the idea that an attack on Iran is likely to happen and savvy people-in-the-know should start getting accustomed to the idea.  In other words, a preemptive strike on Iran should be seen not as a remote or far-fetched possibility, but rather as something that is just “business-as-usual” in the Middle East strategic environment. If you talk about going to war often enough and for long enough, people get used to the idea and some will even begin to think if it is bound to happen sooner or later, than “better to be done quickly.” In an inside-the-Beltway culture where being “tough” is especially prized, it is easy for those who oppose “decisive” action to get worn down and marginalized.  If war with Iran comes to be seen as a “default” condition, then it will be increasingly difficult for cooler heads (including President Obama himself) to say no.

You’ll recall that a similar process of “mainstreaming” occurred over Iraq: What at first seemed like the far-fetched dream of a handful of out-of-power neoconservatives in 1998 had become a serious option by 2001. By 2003, aided in no small part by the efforts of journalists such as Goldberg, the idea had been embraced by liberals and others who should have known better.

Then Walt quotes his and John Mearsheimer’s book, The Israel Lobby, to identify the sources of Goldberg’s thinking:

If the United States does launch an attack, it will be doing so in part on Israel’s behalf, and the lobby will bear significant responsibility for having pushed this dangerous policy.”

Now the Leveretts. Goldberg is offering “the neoconservative case for attacking Iran,” they write here. And at FP, one of their themes is the Israelcentricness of Goldberg’s  argument.

Goldberg’s reporting also reveals that the case for attacking Iran — especially for America to attack so Israel won’t — is even flimsier than the case Goldberg helped make for invading Iraq in 2002, in a New Yorker article alleging that “the relationship between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda is far closer than previously thought.” Goldberg’s case for war on Iran starts with the Holocaust — and a view of the Islamic Republic as a latter-day Third Reich, under ideologically obsessed, anti-Semitic leadership to which “rational deterrence theory … might not apply.”…

Goldberg’s reporting on his conversations with Israeli generals, national-security policymakers, and politicians makes clear that, in fact, those at the top of Israel’s political order understand Iran’s nuclear program is not an “existential threat.” His interlocutors recognize Iran is unlikely to invite its own destruction by attacking Israel directly. Rather, they say, a nuclear Iran “will progressively undermine [Israel’s] ability to retain its most creative and productive citizens,” according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

“The real threat to Zionism is the dilution of quality,” Barak tells Goldberg. “Jews know that they can land on their feet in any corner of the world. … Our young people can consciously decide to go other places [and] stay out of here by choice.”

…In other words, Israeli elites want the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear program — with the potentially negative repercussions that Goldberg acknowledges — so that Israel will not experience “a dilution of quality” or “an accelerated brain drain.”…

[P]reventing “dilution of quality” or bolstering Israelis’ perceptions regarding their country’s raison d’être can never give an American president a just or strategically sound cause for initiating war. And make no mistake: Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would mean war.

…Israeli elites want to preserve a regional balance of power strongly tilted in Israel’s favor and what an Israeli general described to Goldberg as “freedom of action” –the freedom to use force unilaterally, anytime, for whatever purpose Israel wants. The problem with Iranian nuclear capability — not just weapons, but capability  — is that it might begin constraining Israel’s currently unconstrained “freedom of action.” In May, retired Israeli military officers, diplomats, and intelligence officials conducted a war game that assumed Iran had acquired “nuclear weapons capability.” Participants subsequently told Reuters that such capability does not pose an “existential threat” to Israel — but “would blunt Israel’s military autonomy.”One may appreciate Israel’s desire to maximize its military autonomy. But, in an already conflicted region, Israel’s assertion of military hegemony is itself a significant contributor to instability and the risk of conflict. Certainly, maximizing Israel’s freedom of unilateral military initiative is not a valid rationale for the United States to start a war with Iran. Just imagine how Obama would explain such reasoning to the American people.

* [prominent Chicago area Obama financial backer] – Aletho News

August 13, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Gas deal with Iran still on, EGL says

Press TV – August 11, 2010

The Swiss energy group EGL says its €18 billion gas contract with Iran is still on, despite the US threats of sanctions over the gas deal with Tehran.

In 2007, the Elektrizitaetsgesellschaft Laufenburg (EGL) signed a 25-year agreement with the National Iranian Gas Export Company (NIGEC) to import around 5.5 billion cubic meters of gas per year from Iran.

The €18 billion gas contract was criticized in the US Congress because of possible violations of US sanctions against firms active in Iran’s gas and oil sectors.

“We are not violating any regulations, and [we] follow rules; we feel we are not really deserving to come on the [sanctions] list,” the Jerusalem Post quoted EGL spokeswoman Lilly Frei as saying.

Frei added that EU sanctions were “evaluated by our advisers, [who said that] offtake of gas at the border would not fall under these sanctions.”

After the UN Security Council ratified a sanctions resolution against Iran in July, the United States and the European Union imposed unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program, mostly targeting the country’s energy and banking sectors.

Washington will deny access to US markets for companies that supply refined petroleum products to Iran.

The European Union measures target investment and technical assistance to Iran’s refining, liquefaction, and natural gas sectors. New investments in the energy sector are also banned. [War on oil]

August 11, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will

By Paul Woodward on August 11, 2010

There are those who would have us believe that:

[O]ne day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran — possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq’s airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft.

Worried about an Israeli attack on Iran? That’s the idea.

You must do what we can’t, because if you don’t, we will.

This is how some Israelis are trying to twist Washington’s arm to get the US to attack Iran.

A more honest way of making the argument would be to say this: If the US won’t attack Iran, then Israel will — even though it won’t accomplish its military objectives and it will open Pandora’s box. Desperate nations sometimes do desperate things. You have been warned.

Another name for this: blackmail.

It’s hard to counter an irrational argument when the irrationality is intentional. Such are the means by which someone like erstwhile Israeli army corporal and current Atlantic commentator, Jeffrey Goldberg, attempts to persuade his readers — not through cogent reasoning based on clear evidence, but by an insidious form of argument that has the clarity of slime.

Consider the way he tries to close his case for an attack on Iran — even while avoiding saying straight out that he supports such a course of action.

The United States must not take the risk of letting Israel attack Iran because if President Obama orders US forces to attack instead, this would be the most patriotic thing to do. Obama would not be serving Israel’s interests; he would be defending Western civilization.

Based on months of interviews, I have come to believe that the administration knows it is a near-certainty that Israel will act against Iran soon if nothing or no one else stops the nuclear program; and Obama knows — as his aides, and others in the State and Defense departments made clear to me — that a nuclear-armed Iran is a serious threat to the interests of the United States, which include his dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Earlier this year, I agreed with those, including many Israelis, Arabs — and Iranians — who believe there is no chance that Obama would ever resort to force to stop Iran; I still don’t believe there is a great chance he will take military action in the near future — for one thing, the Pentagon is notably unenthusiastic about the idea. But Obama is clearly seized by the issue. And understanding that perhaps the best way to obviate a military strike on Iran is to make the threat of a strike by the Americans seem real, the Obama administration seems to be purposefully raising the stakes. A few weeks ago, Denis McDonough, the chief of staff of the National Security Council, told me, “What you see in Iran is the intersection of a number of leading priorities of the president, who sees a serious threat to the global nonproliferation regime, a threat of cascading nuclear activities in a volatile region, and a threat to a close friend of the United States, Israel. I think you see the several streams coming together, which accounts for why it is so important to us.”

When I asked Peres what he thought of Netanyahu’s effort to make Israel’s case to the Obama administration, he responded, characteristically, with a parable, one that suggested his country should know its place, and that it was up to the American president, and only the American president, to decide in the end how best to safeguard the future of the West. The story was about his mentor, David Ben-Gurion.

“Shortly after John F. Kennedy was elected president, Ben-Gurion met him at the Waldorf-Astoria” in New York, Peres told me. “After the meeting, Kennedy accompanied Ben-Gurion to the elevator and said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I want to tell you, I was elected because of your people, so what can I do for you in return?’ Ben-Gurion was insulted by the question. He said, ‘What you can do is be a great president of the United States. You must understand that to have a great president of the United States is a great event.’”

Peres went on to explain what he saw as Israel’s true interest. “We don’t want to win over the president,” he said. “We want the president to win.”

Israel only wants what’s good for America — and we’re supposed to believe that, even while few if any Israelis could be persuaded that America only wants what’s good for Israel.

The truth is that everyone gets to define their own interests so let’s ignore the obsequious crap from Peres and consider Goldberg’s core claim: that Israel is gearing up to strike Iran.

Even if Goldberg is participating in a neocon game of bluff, the only kind of bluff worth engaging in is one that has credibility. To make a credible argument that Israel has the intention of going it alone, Goldberg would have to present the outline of a credible plan of attack. He doesn’t even try.

Israeli planes would fly low over Saudi Arabia, bomb their targets in Iran, and return to Israel by flying again over Saudi territory, possibly even landing in the Saudi desert for refueling—perhaps, if speculation rife in intelligence circles is to be believed, with secret Saudi cooperation.

And he prefaces this “plan” by saying Israel only gets one try. That’s not even a back-of-an-envelope war plan. It’s more like a Twitter war plan.

Five years ago Kenneth Pollack dismissed the idea that Israel could attack Iran on its own. I don’t see any reason to doubt that his analysis on the military logistics of an attack still remains sound. Indeed, there seem to be plenty of Israeli analysts who concede that Israel simply does not have the option of going it alone. Even Goldberg quotes an unnamed Israeli general who says: “This is too big for us.”

In The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America, Pollack wrote:

[T]he United States … should not count on Israel to conduct a counterproliferation strike for us. It is almost certainly the case that Israel would be willing to absorb the diplomatic costs of a strike, would be prepared to deal with Iran’s retaliation in the form of either terrorist attacks or missile strikes on Israel, and probably is not overly concerned about Iranian behavior in Iraq. The problem for Israel is much simpler: Iran is too far away. Most of the known Iranian nuclear facilities are around 1,000 miles away from Israel. Its Jericho II ballistic missiles could reach these targets, but they lack the payload, accuracy, and numbers to be able to significantly damage (let alone destroy) more than one or two of the large Iranian nuclear facilities, which leaves the matter to the Israeli Air Force. Even assuming that Israeli aircraft were to fly directly to Iran, overflying Jordan and Iraq, the only aircraft in its inventory that could reach Iran’s known nuclear sites are its 25 F-151 strike fighters. (Israel would need to set up aerial refueling stations at three to five locations between Israel and the Iranian targets for its roughly 350 F-16s to be able to participate, which would be practically impossible.) Because the F-151s would have to carry a considerable amount of fuel, they could not carry a great deal of ordinance. Given the size of the various Iranian nuclear facilities, it would not be possible for Israel to destroy all of them in a single raid as it did Osiraq. Nor would it be politically, militarily, or logistically possible for Israel to sustain multiple such strikes over the many days, if not weeks, it would take for all its F-151s to accomplish the job. [My emphasis.]

The neocon game of bluff will only box in the Obama administration if the Israeli “threats” are treated seriously. A more appropriate response would seem to be to focus on the limits of Israeli military action — unless that is one imagines that Israel would launch a nuclear attack on Iran, which to my mind is wildly implausible. (If Israel wants to permanently seal its global pariah status, the first offensive use of nuclear weapons since Nagasaki is a sure way.)

Goldberg reports, but apparently didn’t take seriously, the observations of some Israelis who given their positions of military command seem to merit close attention:

Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief of staff, is said by numerous sources to doubt the usefulness of an attack, and other generals I spoke with worry that talk of an “existential threat” is itself a kind of existential threat to the Zionist project, which was meant to preclude such threats against the Jewish people. “We don’t want politicians to put us in a bad position because of the word Shoah [Holocaust],” one general said. “We don’t want our neighbors to think that we are helpless against an Iran with a nuclear bomb, because Iran might have the bomb one day. There is no guarantee that Israel will do this, or that America will do this.”

The message Netanyahu, Goldberg and other panic-stricken Zionists are unintentionally sending out is that come the day Iran acquires a nuclear weapon, Israelis may as well back their bags and abandon the Jewish state.

That probably won’t happen because in such an event Israel will “discover” what many Israelis no doubt already think: that retired General John Abizaid was right when he said that the United States and its allies can “live with” a nuclear-armed Iran. “Let’s face it — we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with nuclear powers as well,” Abizaid told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

That was true in 2007 and it’s true now. It’s also true that spineless politicians remain the playthings of fear-mongers who are addicted to war.

August 11, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Details of Canadian Security Intelligence Service probe on foreign influence being withheld

Grace Batchoun | Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East | August 10, 2010

Montreal – The Harper government is still withholding the details of Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) investigations that prompted CSIS Director Richard Fadden to comment on foreign influence on Canadian politicians. The media have been focusing on China as one source of inappropriate influence. However, Fadden indicated that at least five countries, including China and Middle East nations were involved. He did not specify which Middle Eastern countries. The government’s secrecy may indicate that Israel – to which the Harper government has given resolute uncritical support – is among the Middle Eastern countries that CSIS investigations reveal are unduly influencing Canada’s politicians.

In his comments, Fadden talked about foreign influence exercised through university and social clubs. He noted “You pay [for] their trips and … when an event is occurring that is of particular interest to country ‘X,’ you call up and you ask the person to take a particular view,” Fadden said. Currently, Hillel Clubs operate on most Canadian campuses, and their mandates explicitly include “Israel advocacy” and promoting Jewish students’ identification with Israel. Opportunities for all-expenses-paid two-week trips to Israel are also made available to students. A similar process occurs with federal MPs and provincial legislators. The Canada-Israel Committee has been subsidizing trips to Israel for MPs and provincial legislators for decades.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East is concerned about the influence that Israel and the Canada-Israel Committee exercise on federal politicians through travel subsidies and possibly other means. “We urge the government to disclose now which countries CSIS found exercising undue influence, and the means by which they do so,” says CJPME President Thomas Woodley. As pointed out by veteran CBC journalist Brian Stewart, trips subsidized by foreign governments are “carefully planned, often by the host nation’s intelligence arm.” CJPME believes that Canadian policy should be moulded by respect for international law, and is concerned that Canadian Middle East policy could be skewed through the type of influence Fadden described.

According to the federal ethics commissioner, the Canada-Israel Committee paid over $160,000 for various one-week trips by 14 MPs to Israel in 2009 alone. The Canada-Israel Committee subsidized a July 2010 trip by seven MPs: Conservative MPs John Duncan, Jeff Watson, Edward Fast and Brent Rathgeber, Liberal MPs Scott Simms and Anthony Rota and NDP MP Glenn Thibeault. No other Middle East nation has hosted so many MPs on such frequent and expensive trips.

August 10, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The Myth of the US Military Aid to Lebanon

By Yusuf Fernandez | Al-Manar – TV | August 10, 2010
US weaponry laid entire Lebanese communities to waste in 2006 – Photo credit Amelia Opalinska

On August 4, US State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said that Lebanese armed forces firing on Israeli troops near the Israel-Lebanon border the previous day, which killed two Lebanese soldiers and one Lebanese journalist as well as one Israeli officer and seriously wounded another, was “totally unjustified and unwarranted.” Shortly before, Israeli Ambassador in Washington, Michel Oren, held talks with US senior officials to demand a harsh US response.

Some US congressmen warned Lebanon that the US could reassess its aid to the Lebanese Army. “To start shooting as they did -one person killed, one seriously injured– is a very serious move by the Lebanese army,” Florida Representative Ron Klein, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told The Jerusalem Post.“It certainly is going to come up in our conversations in the Congress about the continued support of the Lebanese Army,” he said. Klein ignored the three Lebanese victims and the Israeli actions that provoked the incident.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main organization of the Zionist lobby, reportedly circulated a memorandum claiming that the Lebanese Army was cooperating with Hezbollah, and stating that unless this stops, “Washington must reevaluate its relationship with the Beirut government and the Lebanese Armed Forces – the recipient of significant American military aid.” A State Department representative declined to respond to a Jerusalem Post question about whether the incident could affect American aid to Lebanon.

According the Israeli daily Haaretz, in the past five years, the Lebanese Army has been the second largest recipient of US military assistance per capita after Israel. A State Department press release from late 2008 noted that between 2006 and 2008, the Lebanese Army received 10 million rounds of ammunition, Humvees, spare parts for attack helicopters, vehicles for its Internal Security Forces “and the same frontline weapons that US military troops are currently using, including assault rifles, automatic grenade launchers, advanced sniper systems, anti-tank weapons and the most modern urban warfare bunker weapons.”

Since 2006, the US has provided Lebanon some 500 million dollars in military assistance. Last year, the US approved 100 million dollars in assistance to the Lebanese military. The Obama administration has requested the same levels for 2011, with small increases for anti-terror and military training programs.

However, the border incident of August 3 highlighted the fact that the US Administration does not consider that its military aid should be used to protect Lebanon against its only real enemy: Israel. “We have no indication that US equipment played any role in this incident earlier this week,” Crowley said. “In any US-origin equipment that has been provided to Lebanon, we have very strong end-use monitoring to make sure it is used appropriately.”

“Used appropriately” means that US aid must only be used against other Lebanese parties, especially the Resistance. According to Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper, in written testimony to Congress, Obama´s nominee to head the US Central Command, General James Matthis, claimed that the relationship between US Central Command and the Lebanese Army is focused on building the latter´s capabilities “to preserve internal stability”. US Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow, who has recently visited Beirut and the South of Lebanon, said that continued US aid and training to the Lebanese Army would allow it to “prevent militias and other nongovernmental organizations” from “undermining the government”.

One State Department spokesperson made the quid pro quo clearer: if the Lebanese Army hopes for equipment, even spare parts, it will have to first focus on “using its military to keep Hezbollah in check and to control southern Lebanon and Palestinian refugee camps in order to prevent them from being used as bases to attack Israel”. This point was underscored by US officials interviewed by International Crisis Group who “implied” that “the Lebanese must be trained and equipped to meet Hezbollah´s, not Israel´s, challenge.” Therefore, US military aid for Lebanon seeks to protect Israel, the real enemy of Lebanon, and the Lebanese Army should become a mercenary force to implement US and Israeli schemes in Lebanon and the Middle East. Significantly, the US has not given the Lebanese Army anti-aircraft, anti-tank or anti-ship missiles that could be used against Israel.

The second goal of US aid, according to the US Central Command, is to “protect borders”, which means to prevent the Resistance from receiving weapons from abroad in order to protect the country against the Israeli enemy. However, the Jerusalem Post complained, “the Lebanese Army has taken no actions to seal off that border from weapons transfers to Hezbollah” and has done “nothing while Syria and Iran have been arming Hezbollah´s army with tens of thousands of missiles.”

At a White House meeting in December 2009, President Barack Obama asked Lebanese President Michel Sleiman to stop the flow of weapons being allegedly sent to the south of Lebanon “that potentially serve as a threat to Israel”. He warned that a failure to do so could lead to another invasion by Israel. Vice President Joe Biden went further, telling Sleiman that Israel could invade Lebanon and go all the way to Beirut to destroy Hezbollah´s weapons if the government failed to rein in the organization.

Of course, massive US military aid to Israel, which includes all kind of weapons, including the most advanced ones in the US arsenal, is something normal and nobody has the right to question it. However, when Syria, Iran or Lebanon acquire any kind of weapons adequate to protect their countries against US or Israeli attacks or threats this becomes a universal scandal.

The US aid is not supposed be used to protect Lebanon from Israeli spies either. Recently, Los Angeles Times complained that the US-supported Lebanese Internal Security Forces had used US signals equipment to help Hezbollah “ferret out Israeli agents.” According to the Times, “a strengthening Lebanese government is helping Hezbollah bust alleged spy cells, sometimes using tools and tradecraft acquired from Western nations eager to build up Lebanon´s security forces as a counterweight to the Shiite group.” Once again, Hezbollah was the target, not Israel.

In this way, US and Israeli outrage is easy to understand. The Lebanese have not used US weapons to crush Hezbollah but to defend Lebanon and this is an unbearable reality for Israelis and pro-Zionist circles in Washington. For Washington and Tel Aviv, the truth is simple: the Lebanese Army is not supposed to protect Lebanon from Israeli violations of the Lebanese sovereignty and, thus, it shot at whom did not have to.

More and more Lebanese are now questioning the value of US aid that can only used in an internal conflict. Agriculture Minister Hussein al-Hajj Hasan has called for preventing the US from controlling the army through its ill-intentioned support, the National News Agency said. He claims that American military and security assistance does not benefit Lebanon.

SUPPORT FOR ISRAELI WARS ON LEBANON

Lebanese people also remember that the US role has gone much beyond trying to turn the Lebanese Army into an internally oppressive security force. Washington has been an accessory to all Israeli attacks and aggressions against Lebanon. For example, a great portion of the American equipment stored in Israel was used for combat in the 2006 July war in Lebanon. Moreover, the US sent Israel all kinds of weapons and ammunition during the conflict.

Moreover, Washington politically supported the Israeli assault and blocked all efforts for an immediate halt to a war that killed more than 1,300 Lebanese, wounded more than 4,000 and drove 900,000 from their homes. A third of the Lebanese dead were children under the age of 12.

This US stance outraged the Lebanese population. “We did not use to be against the Americans, but now we are. They are against us,” said Fatima Haider, a Lebanese who lived in the district of Ein el-Mreiseh in Beirut, to Reuters at that time. Her home was destroyed by US-made Israeli bombs. “It is clear America´s support for Israel during the 34 days of bombing will not be forgotten,” said Fawaz Gerges, a professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, to ABC News.

As the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star said: “American complicity in these (Israeli) plans is clear: the Lebanese middle class has witnessed the carnage and destruction of their country with US approval, and the killing of innocent women and children with advanced American weaponry that mutilated their bodies into pieces.” Even naïve Lebanese that had believed for a moment that the US Administration could have a sincere interest in promoting democracy in its country got indignant about American support for the Israeli aggression.

August 10, 2010 Posted by | Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

NY Times full-page ad demonstrates who is pushing for war against Iran

Also, the organizers say they’re actuated by fears of climate change, but why the Netanyahu quote and the emphasis on missiles?

And the NYTimes is still on message, Global Warming, Peak Oil and the War on Terror all seem to merge to support Zionism:

Letters to the International Herald Tribune – How to Fight Climate Change – NYTimes.com
The only way to effectively address climate change is for our leaders to make it an issue of national security: Emphasize the link between consumption of fossil fuels, especially foreign oil, and the rise of international terrorism. Once that link is clearly established, people will be willing to make an effort: The home-front will contribute to fighting against terrorism, which threatens every one of us. People will understand that there is no way to put a value on the lives of any of the nearly 3,000 people who perished in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that any effort is worth making to prevent recurrence of such a tragedy.

Update:

The Israel Lobby’s War on America’s Middle East Oil Dependence

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | October 26, 2012

See also:

US Jewish leaders push Obama to act on Iran

Jerusalem Post, September 10, 2009

Related efforts toward energy independence and war on Iran

August 9, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US, EU states fail to isolate Iran

Press TV – August 9, 2010

As the US and its European allies are trying to increase unilateral sanctions against Iran, other major states show bold resistance to the punitive measures.

“China, Russia, India and Turkey move into the lucrative void left by US and EU sanctions that aim to halt Iran’s nuclear program,” the Los Angeles Times wrote on Sunday.

On June 9, the UN Security Council imposed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran’s military and financial sectors over allegations that Tehran is following a military nuclear program.

In recent weeks, the US, the European Union, Australia, and Canada have added unilateral measures to the UNSC sanctions, targeting the energy rich country’s oil and gas industry. But China, Russia, India and Turkey rejected the unilateral US and EU sanctions aimed at Iran’s energy sector.

The countries “are making it very clear they are not going to go along with the new American and European efforts to ratchet up pressure on Iran,” Ben Rhode, an analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told the Times. China’s move to expand its business Iran “has been amazing,” said a senior European official on condition of anonymity, the American newspaper said.

Iran’s Deputy Oil Minister Hossein Noqrehkar Shirazi announced last week that China is investing 40 billion dollars in Iran’s oil and gas industry.

The unilateral sanctions also gave China and Russia an opportunity to sell more gasoline to Iran.

“These countries have long-term interests in the region,” Bloomberg quoted Gary Sick, a member of the US National Security Council under Presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan, as saying on Monday. China wants “to maintain relations with Iran for the sake of maintaining some access to the oil,” Sick said.

“Looking at the political situation, I’m not sure if Europe and the US were 100 percent sure about the possible responses from places like Russia and China,” said Alexander Poegl, an analyst at JBC Energy in Vienna. “Iran will find partners supplying them gasoline,” he added.

Last week China defended its economic ties with Iran after a senior US official called on Beijing to adopt the UN sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program.

“China’s trade with Iran is a normal business exchange, which will not harm the interests of other countries and the international community,” China Daily quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu as saying on Thursday.

“Sanctions will not hinder us in our joint cooperation,” Sergei Shmatko, Russia’s energy minister, said last month in Moscow after signing an agreement for a long-term energy partnership with his Iranian counterpart.

August 9, 2010 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

WIKILEAKS: AN INDO-ZIONIST CONSPIRACY?

By Brigadier Asif Haroon Raja | Pakalert* | August 5, 2010

The period of WikiLeaks revelations covers five years of George W. Bush from January 2004 till December 2008 and one year of Barack Obama from January to December 2009. Looking back in rear-view mirror, one sees that significant changes started to occur in American policy in Afghanistan after December 2009 and talk of reconciliation and negotiations with the Taliban gained currency. Pakistan also began to figure prominently and there was a noticeable change of attitude among US officials. Karzai too started leaning towards Pakistan. A sudden change of direction of wind was not to the liking of India, the Northern Alliance and the  Jewish lobby in USA since it ran counter to their designs against Pakistan.

This change occurred at a time when anti-Pakistan themes drafted by India had reached a maturing stage and had taken the shape of a proper charge sheet. The situation had ripened to put Pakistan on the mat. The USA and western countries drift towards Pakistan took the juice out of the regular supply of source reports furnished by RAW-RAAM agents who whetted the appetite of US military with concocted stories about the Pakistani Army and ISI. Fearing that what had been collated and disseminated may become outdated and get washed away in the humdrum of the final phase which was favorably inclined towards Pakistan, it was considered expedient to leak the classified information. Other than putting Pakistan and its premier institutions in the firing line, it was intended by master planners RAW and Mossad to tarnish the image of US military as well.

Soon after the publication of secret documents by WikiLeaks, an Afghanistan spokesman promptly gave his observations to the press asserting that the documents would help raise awareness on the sanctuaries Pakistan provides for militant groups. He gave this statement under the misplaced impression that the documents would surely help in indicting Pakistan on charges of terrorism. He didn’t realize that all those who were collectively digging a hole for Pakistan would themselves fall into it.

It may be noted that among the over 92,000 secret documents compiled in five years, there is not a single line written about India. The documents are silent about role of RAW, RAAM and Mossad in destabilizing Pakistan. Nobody in the USA or the entire western world has noticed these glaring oddities as to how come the role of three principal players is missing from the radar screen and US documents are blank. Have RAW agents in huge numbers present in every nook and corner of Afghanistan and moving up and down the Pakistan-Afghan border been grazing grass all these years? It indicates that not only did  Indian, Northern Alliance intelligence and Israeli officials have a hand in providing anti-Pakistan information but the trio had also provided copies of documents to WikiLeaks. These hands had a definite role in coloring the perceptions of US leaders against Pakistan. It also proves that the US has unjustly treated Israel and India as holy cows and Pakistan a suspect.

It is also a strange coincidence that the clock of leaked documents remained silent from the end of 2001 till December 2003 and suddenly started ticking from January 2004 onwards. The timing somehow coincided with the signing of the Indo-Pakistan peace treaty. It is a clear cut indication that Indian leaders inked the treaty with ill-motives and soon after gave a green signal to RAW to trigger covert operations against Pakistan using Afghan soil.

I had penned my thoughts on WikiLeaks in Wikileaks-US’s Afghan war diary 2004-2009

I seek answers to some queries related to the leaks.

  • Theft of 92,000 documents including videos and audios from safe vaults was not a day’s work. It must have taken the thief a considerable length of time to steal the desired documents. He must have been moving in and out of the store room umpteen times to lift folders containing incriminating documents about the conduct of the Afghan war. He could not have possibly done so singly but in connivance with some of the persons deputed to act as custodians of top secret documents. Does it imply that the sole super power and its premier institutions have no foolproof system of safety and security of classified documents or they are too careless and irresponsible?
  • There must have been a time lapse between the documents whisked away and their publication by WikiLeaks. Taking into account the fact that revealed documents cover the period up to December 2009 and not up to June 2010, one cannot rule out the possibility that after the theft during 2009 and January 2010, it took Julian Assange five months to be able to get it published through WikiLeaks. It is strange that none among the huge security apparatus learned about the theft until it was disclosed by WikiLeaks. If so, it implies there is no system in existence to carryout spot inspections by duty officers/security officers of files/folders locked up in vaults.
  • In any military unit/HQ of the armed forces, even loss of one classified document creates a massive stir and the concerned unit doesn’t rest till the missing document is traced and culprit punished.  Rationally, a red alert should have been sounded in the USA and all resources geared up to find out all possible details about this embarrassing scandal expeditiously. Oddly, all US officials are in a complacent mood and have adopted a laid-back approach, giving an impression to outsiders that the wardens were part of the crime and leak was intentional to corner Pakistan; or else the Pentagon wants to cover up its officials who were in league with Assange or Bradley Manning.
  • A government which is incapable of safeguarding its top secret documents having a bearing on security and reputation of the nation and its military, will it be able to safeguard its thousands of nuclear warheads and other deadly war munitions?
  • After such a gigantic theft of classified documents having grave ramifications for the US Military’s future conduct in Afghanistan, why has the sole super power not initiated actions to get hold of the thief, the network, insiders and the ones who masterminded the theft?
  • Julian or Bradley could not have possibly procured voluminous documents on a basis of friendship. Afghan National Security might have provided copies of Pakistan specific 180 reports free of cost. For the rest, they must have bribed the handlers of documents so heavily that they agreed to take such a huge risk. If so, who funded Julian/Bradley?
  • While lot of hue and cry has been made over 180 anti-Pakistan source reports, western media, think tanks and analysts are quiet about 91,820 reports, videos and audios portraying inhuman barbarities of American and coalition forces against people of Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are the champions of democracy and human rights tight lipped and why are US officials downplaying this security lapse as if nothing significant has happened?
  • Why have these documents came to light at a critical time when occupation forces in Afghanistan are in dire strait; war on terror has become highly unpopular; demand to end the war is surging; Taliban are carrying out daily attacks and inflicting deaths/ injuries to ISAF troops? July has been the worst month in which 66 ISAF fatalities took place. What is the hidden motive?
  • Is it that the real motive is to put the entire blame of US defeat in Afghanistan at the doorsteps of Pakistan? If so, what next?
  • Notwithstanding sinister designs of adversaries of Pakistan, 70% of revealed documents are uncorroborated and unverified, while the remaining 30% are also debatable and one-sided as claimed by US officials. However, 5-10% of the reports are based on hard facts, which cover in minute details the atrocities of US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. What if the still to be revealed 15,000 documents are also exposed which are more harmful for USA?

While it is a reality that no US think tank, newspaper or official has ever written a single sentence on an Indo-US-Israeli-Afghanistan nexus and their designs against Pakistan, Wikileaks has lifted the curtain. Although under US pressure the head of this website has attempted to minimize the damage by telling an Indian news reporter that all reports less the ones pertaining to Pakistan were unreliable, it cannot be denied that the US military has suffered the most from this disclosure. What is most worrisome for the US military operating in Afghanistan is the exposure of names of their Afghan informers and some within the Taliban ranks working as double agents. Their fate is sealed since the Taliban would never spare them. This factor will further shrink US battle intelligence capability, thereby compounding their problems during ongoing testing times.

Thanks to a few upright people in the USA and western countries as well as whistle blowing independent websites, the world is now getting more educated about the deepening mess in Afghanistan. Sooner or later, pieces would start falling in the right places and the real picture would emerge, which had been kept hidden all these years.

There have been occasional reports of use of excessive force by the ISAF in Afghanistan, about torture tales in Gitmo, Bagram Base and Abu Gharib jails, but none could imagine the scale and gruesome nature of atrocities against Afghans as disclosed by WikiLeaks. 150 bombing incidents on civilians killing mostly women and children had never been reported. There could be many more incidents purposely not recorded by the ones maintaining logs. Wedding ceremonies, funerals, children school buses and passenger buses have not been spared by trigger happy Yankees. Jets, gunship helicopters and drones have caused maximum casualties. Logs have also indicated the use of Blackwater to capture or kill marked Taliban. Hands of American civil and military leaders are dripping in the blood of innocent Iraqis and Afghans. Wikileaks has provided incriminating material for their trials for committing war crimes.

There were strong reasons for the sacked Gen McChrystal to restrain his swashbuckling cowboys from firing indiscriminately and causing large scale civilian fatalities. Hawks in then Obama Administration had constantly pushed him for quicker results without caring for human destruction. Irked by their haughty behavior, he decided to call it a day. Is there some connection between WikiLeaks-Rolling Stone-McChrystal? Moreover, is there a connection between the Times Square incident, the visit of three rasping top US leaders to Islamabad in July, the WikiLeaks revelations, Cameron’s derogatory remarks and Karzai’s diatribe?

WikiLeaks has inadvertently provided a golden opportunity to Pakistan to expose the hidden designs, subversive activities and black deeds of occupation forces in Afghanistan and to blunt their smear campaign. The world is now eagerly looking toward whistle blowing websites like WikiLeaks to throw light on following ambiguities:

  1. Other than the declared objectives of the USA, what was the hidden motivation to occupy Afghanistan?
  2. What was the purpose behind setting up a huge intelligence centre at Jabal-al Siraj near Kabul comprising six intelligence agencies?
  3. How did Osama bin Laden and the whole lot of Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders’ in Tora Bora slip out in December 2001, which subsequently became the key cause of US intractable troubles in Afghanistan?
  4. Is Osama dead or alive and if alive where is he located?
  5. How did the defeated, ousted fugitive Taliban manage to regroup so speedily and start hitting back at occupation forces from 2003 onwards?
  6. Details of harrowing atrocities committed by Northern Alliance warlords against captured Taliban and Pakistani prisoners after the fall of Taliban regime in December 2001.
  7. Details of $3 billion spent by CIA to win the loyalties of corrupt and ruthless Afghan warlords to help form a government in Kabul under puppet Hamid Karzai.
  8. Details of profits earned from illegal drug trade in Afghanistan and who all shared the profit to run covert operations against Pakistan and Iran.
  9. Particulars of tens of Pakistan specific training camps and intelligence setups of RAW and Mossad in Afghanistan and their methods of indoctrination of suicide bombers.
  10. Idea behind Af-Pak policy and why did it fail to kick off.
  11. How come 16,000 foreign troops coupled with 9,000 Afghan troops backed by jets, helicopters and artillery failed to overpower a few hundred ill-equipped Taliban in Marjah in February-March which has jeopardised the US offensive drive in southern and eastern Afghanistan?

The writer is a retired Brigadier who after retirement remained Honorary Colonel of the Battalion he commanded for eight years and also served as Director Education & Training KRL

* Additional editing for western English by Aletho News

August 7, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Weekly Standard Falsely Claims Iran Is Starting Proxy War With Israel

Ali Gharib | August 6th, 2010

It’s nothing unusual for the flagship neocon rag, the Weekly Standard, to try to start wars in the Middle East. But Gabriel Schoenfeld’s post today on the magazine’s blog was irresponsible even by the Standard’s… well, standards.

Schoenfeld, a fellow at the neocon Hudson Institute, fabricates the details of incidents at the southern and northern edges of Israel in order to connect the attacks to the Islamic Republic.

In his post, ominously titled “Are the Winds of War Blowing?,” Schoenfeld wonders aloud, “Are the ayatollahs preparing preemptive action of their own, taking the battle to the borders of the Zionist enemy?”

Just how are the Iranians attacking the borders of Israel? Through their proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, of course. As evidence of this menacing military campaign, Schoenfeld cites three encounters over the past week:

On July 30, after a prolonged interval without such attacks, Hamas lobbed a Grad rocket into a residential area in the Israeli city of Ashkelon.

On August 2, another Grad was fired from the Sinai Peninsula toward the Israeli resort city of Eilat; it landed in the neighboring Jordanian city of Aqaba, where it killed a taxi driver and wounded five people.

On August 3, Hezbollah initiated a gun battle against Israeli soldiers operating within Israel next to its border fence, killing an Israeli officer.

No links are provided for the first two incidents, so let me clarify a few things: A rocket from Gaza did indeed land in Ashkelon last week, but Hamas did not launch or “lob” it. Even Haaretz reported that:

The Israeli military believes that Hamas was not responsible for the [rocket] attack and that the Islamist organization which controls the Gaza Strip is not interested in escalating tensions in the area, Army Radio reported.

In the second incident, of the rocket apparently fired from the Sinai, Haaretz reports that, “No group has yet taken responsibility for the attack.” Egypt, for its part, only blamed “Palestinian factions,” initially denying that the rockets had come from the Sinai at all, and failing to specify a group. (Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned in Egypt, so presumably the authorities would have little problem blaming the group if they suspected their involvement.)

For the third incident, Schoenfeld does provide a link. But if he bothered to read through the BBC article he chose, he would see that the clash on Israel’s northern border was with the Lebanese Army, not the Shia militia, Hezbollah, as Schoenfeld breathlessly states by claiming “Hezbollah initiated a gun battle against Israeli soldiers.”

Yes, both Hezbollah and Hamas are supported by the Islamic Republic as part of a far-reaching PR campaign by Iran to increase its regional clout (which is only aided by the festering Israeli-Palestinian conflict). But this does not, by default, mean that Iran is behind every clash in the region.

While the origins of the first two attacks remain in the dark, Schoenfeld is ready to proclaim Hamas the culprits with zero evidence. On the third score, he simply doesn’t know what’s going on or fabricates the events to blame another Iranian proxy.

All this winds up with him, perhaps in a case of projection, suggesting that Iran is starting a war with Israel, no doubt aiming to rile up U.S.-based support for taking Israel’s side in said war.

And this from a guy who wrote a piece last month for the Wall Street Journal titled “Avoiding Another Intelligence Failure on Iran.”

Before making his fact-free claims, however, Schoenfeld writes, “As Iran makes its way into the endgame of its nuclear-bomb making program, it may be growing more worried about the prospect of a preemptive Israeli strike.” Leaving aside his evidence-free assertions about the advancement of Iran’s nuclear program, Schoenfeld does cite here the more likely scenario, with Israel cast as the aggressor.

August 6, 2010 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Attacking Iran: US options

By GWYNNE DYER | ARAB NEWS | August 5, 2010

When Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the highest-ranking American officer, was asked recently on NBC’s Meet The Press show whether the United States has a military plan for an attack on Iran, he replied simply: “We do.”

General staffs are supposed to plan for even the most unlikely future contingencies. Right down to the 1930s, for example, the United States maintained and annually updated plans for the invasion of Canada — and the Canadian military made plans to pre-empt the invasion. But what the planning process will have revealed, in this case, is that there is no way for the United States to win a nonnuclear war with Iran.

The US could “win” by dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons on Iran’s military bases, nuclear facilities and industrial centers (i.e. cities) and killing five to 10 million people, but short of that, nothing works. On this we have the word of Richard Clarke, counterterrorism adviser in the White House under three administrations.

In the early 1990s, Clarke revealed in an interview with the New York Times four years ago, the Clinton administration had seriously considered a bombing campaign against Iran, but the military professionals told them not to do it.

“After a long debate, the highest levels of the military could not forecast a way in which things would end favorably for the United States,” he said. The Pentagon’s planners have war-gamed an attack on Iran several times in the past 15 years, and they just can’t make it come out as a US victory.

It’s not the fear of Iranian nuclear weapons that makes the US Joint Chiefs of Staff so reluctant to get involved in a war with Iran. Those weapons don’t exist, and the whole justification for the war would be to make sure that they never do.

The problem is that there’s nothing the US can do to Iran, short of nuking the place, that would really force Tehran to kneel and beg for mercy.

It can bomb Iran’s nuclear sites and military installations to its heart’s content, but everything it destroys can be rebuilt in a few years. And there is no way that the United States could actually invade Iran.

There are some 80 million people in Iran, and although many of them don’t like the present regime they are almost all fervent patriots who would resist a foreign invasion. Iran is a mountainous country, and very big: Four times the size of Iraq. The Iranian Army currently numbers about 450,000 men, slightly smaller than the US Army — but unlike the US Army, it does not have its troops scattered across literally dozens of countries.

If the White House were to propose anything larger than minor military incursions along Iran’s south coast, senior American generals would resign in protest. Without the option of a land war, the only lever the United States would have on Iranian policy is the threat of yet more bombs — but if they aren’t nuclear, then they aren’t very persuasive. Whereas Iran would have lots of options for bringing pressure on the United States.

Just stopping Iran’s own oil exports would drive the oil price sky-high in a tight market: Iran accounts for around seven percent of internationally traded oil. But it could also block another 40 percent of global oil exports just by sinking tankers coming from Iraq, and the Arab Gulf states with its lethal Noor anti-ship missiles.

The Noor anti-ship missile is a locally built version of the Chinese YJ-82. It has a 200-km. (140-mile) range, enough to cover all the major choke points in the Gulf. It flies at twice the speed of sound just meters above the sea’s surface, and it has a tiny radar profile. Its single-shot kill probability has been put as high as 98 percent.

Iran’s mountainous coastline extends along the whole northern side of the Gulf, and these missiles have easily concealed mobile launchers. They would sink tankers with ease, and in a few days insurance rates for tankers planning to enter the Gulf would become prohibitive, effectively shutting down the region’s oil exports completely.

Meanwhile Iran would start supplying modern surface-to-air missiles to the Taleban in Afghanistan, and that would soon shut down the US military effort there. (It was the arrival of US-supplied Stinger missiles in Afghanistan in the late 1980s that drove Russian helicopters from the sky and ultimately doomed the whole Soviet intervention there.)

Iranian ballistic missiles would strike US bases on the southern side of the Gulf, and Iran’s Hezbollah allies in Beirut would start dropping missiles on Israel. The United States would have no options for escalation other than the nuclear one, and pressure on it to stop the war would mount by the day as the world’s industries and transport ground to a halt.

The end would be an embarrassing retreat by the United States, and the definitive establishment of Iran as the dominant power of the Gulf region.

That was the outcome of every war-game the Pentagon played, and Mike Mullen knows it. So there is a plan for an attack on Iran, but he would probably rather resign than put it into action. It is all bluff. It always was.

— Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist.

August 5, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Daniel Pipes: Netanyahu Should Threaten To Nuke Iran

By Matt Duss | ThinkProgress | July 25,  2010

Pipes: To Get Obama To Act, Netanyahu Should Threaten To Nuke Iran by Barrybar.

In a recent interview with the right-wing Christian Zionist Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, neoconservative pundit Daniel Pipes shared his view that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should threaten to use nuclear weapons against Iran as a means of “applying pressure” on the United States.

“I think it’s realistic for the Israelis to attack and do real damage,” Pipes said. “Now, what constitutes success, I’m not exactly sure. There are many, many questions” :

PIPES: If I were [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, I would say to [U.S. President Barack] Obama, “Why don’t you take out the Iranian nukes? Or else we will. And we will not do it by trying to fly planes across Turkey and Syria or Jordan or Saudi Arabia. We will do it from submarine-based, tactical nuclear weapons. You don’t want that; we don’t want that; but that’s the way we can do this job for sure. You do it your way so we don’t have to escalate to that.” That would be a way of applying pressure. There are so many details which I’m not privy to. But that would be my kind of approach if I were the Israelis.

Neoconservatives have long desired a war with Iran, even though U.S. officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen have stated that such a war would have disastrous consequences for U.S. troops and interests in the region.

Ignoring these views, the neocons have recently begun to openly exhort Israel to attack Iran as a means of spurring American action. Pipes’ suggestion that Israel should threaten to nuke Iran represents a significant escalation in their rhetoric.

Photo credit – Flikr

August 3, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel-Lebanon border clash kills five

Press TV – August 3, 2010

At least three Lebanese soldiers and one senior Israeli army officer have been killed after the two sides exchanged fire along their border. Several other Lebanese and Israeli soldiers were also injured in the fighting on Tuesday, according to Lebanese media.

The violence broke out after Israeli troops entered Lebanon’s territory, officials in Beirut said. Israel has reportedly used phosphorus bombs in the attack.

An unnamed source reported that Israeli warplanes fired two rockets on the hills of Adissyeh.

A Lebanese journalist from al-Akhbar newspaper was also killed in the fighting, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry claimed in a statement it held the Lebanese government responsible for the “serious incident,” warning of possible consequences if the violence continued.

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s President Michel Sleiman emphasized that any violation ot the Lebanese territory by the Tel Aviv regime is a breach of the UN Resolution 1701, which ended Israel’s war on Lebanon in 2006.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri also condemned the violation of Lebanese sovereignty.

“The United Nations and the international community bear their responsibilities and pressure Israel to stop its aggression,” a statement from Hariri’s office said.

Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri also issued a statement, calling on the government to urgently file a complaint to the UN Security Council over the violation.

August 3, 2010 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

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