Follow on TwitterMossad Frames The C.I.A. For Terrorist Attacks In Iran, As Israel Drags The U.S. Into War
Despite what has been described as a full-court press by the Obama Administration to convince Israel not to attack Iran, the Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. is now in fact preparing for such an attack.
The Administration fears a range of possible Iranian reprisals directed at American targets, including “assaults by pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Iraq against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, according to U.S. officials.”
As a deterrence, the U.S. has deployed 15,000 troops to Kuwait, and has now ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Persian Gulf.
The Obama Administration had most recently begun to engage in a more diplomatic tact with Iran, hoping to diffuse the situation:
The U.S. and Iran, however, have taken steps in recent days apparently designed to ease tensions. Iran has agreed to host a delegation of United Nations nuclear inspectors this month. The U.S., meanwhile, has twice this month rescued Iranian sailors in the region’s seas.
But today, The Guardian reports that Iran’s Foreign Ministry sent a diplomatic letter to the Obama Administration citing “evidence and reliable information” that C.I.A. agents provided “guidance, support and planning” to those who lobbed a magnetic bomb at the car of 32-year old Iranian nuclear scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, killing him in Wednesday morning’s rush-hour traffic.
The U.S. not only denies the charges, it has forcefully condemned the civilian assassination:
The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity. The statements by the United States appeared to reflect serious concern about the growing number of lethal attacks, which some experts believe could backfire by undercutting future negotiations and prompting Iran to redouble what the West suspects is a quest for a nuclear capacity.
“The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday’s killing, “categorically” denying “any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”
“We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community,” Mrs. Clinton said.
The Israelis have not denied their own involvement. The Israeli Defense Force Spokesman stated on Facebook, as reported by ABC: ”I don’t know who settled the score with the Iranian Scientist, but I am certainly not shedding a tear.”
A bombshell story broke yesterday, written by Mark Perry for Foreign Policy Magazine, which appears to shed light on these assassinations, as well as the Iranians’ insistence the C.I.A. was involved.
It reveals that the Israeli Mossad, has been engaged in a false-flag operation, in which they posed as C.I.A. agents right “under the nose of U.S. intelligence officers, most notably in London,” and recruited members of the anti-Iran militant group, Jundallah, to commit terrorist attacks against the Persian nation. Jundallah, a Pakistan-based Sunni terror group, “according to the U.S. government and published reports, is responsible for assassinating Iranian government officials and killing Iranian women and children.”
The revelations in Perry’s article were garnered from a series of C.I.A. memos, written in the final years of the Bush Administration. These memos show that U.S. intelligence officials were barred from “even the most incidental contact with Jundallah, …[though] the same was not true for Israel’s Mossad.” The U.S. intelligence community was described as “stunned by the brazenness of the Mossad’s efforts.”
These intelligence memos found their way to the highest levels of the Bush Administration, who became infuriated that their supposed ally was putting American lives at risk:
According to one retired CIA officer, information about the false-flag operation was reported up the U.S. intelligence chain of command. It reached CIA Director of Operations Stephen Kappes, his deputy Michael Sulick, and the head of the Counterintelligence Center. All three of these officials are now retired. The Counterintelligence Center, according to its website, is tasked with investigating “threats posed by foreign intelligence services.”
The report then made its way to the White House, according to the currently serving U.S. intelligence officer. The officer said that Bush “went absolutely ballistic” when briefed on its contents.
“The report sparked White House concerns that Israel’s program was putting Americans at risk,” the intelligence officer told me. “There’s no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we’re not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians.”
Israel’s relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel’s activities jeopardized the administration’s fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel.
“It’s easy to understand why Bush was so angry,” a former intelligence officer said. “After all, it’s hard to engage with a foreign government if they’re convinced you’re killing their people. Once you start doing that, they feel they can do the same.”
As furious as the Bush Administration and the Intelligence Community became with its largest foreign aid recipient, they feared political backlash by the Israel Lobby, and thus, did absolutely nothing:
A senior administration official vowed to “take the gloves off” with Israel, according to a U.S. intelligence officer. But the United States did nothing — a result that the officer attributed to “political and bureaucratic inertia.”
“In the end,” the officer noted, “it was just easier to do nothing than to, you know, rock the boat.”
Had they actually exposed the Israeli false-flag op, we wouldn’t have Iran — now on war-footing — blaming the C.I.A. for aiding and abetting terrorist bombings which continue to target their civilians.
An unnamed Senior Israeli government official, today, issued a statement to Ha’aretz, calling the U.S. intelligence report “absolute nonsense.” But in 2010, the Mossad was exposed for conducting similar false-flag operations against their European allies, when they assassinated a Hamas member in Dubai, while using forged passports from various European countries and Australia.
With all of this now out in the open, it should come as no surprise that a recent internal C.I.A. poll revealed U.S. intelligence officials consider Israeli spies to be the very worst U.S. allies — dead last on the list — among friendly spy services.
War Mongers Are Furious About Proposed War Surtax On Wealthiest 2%
Those on the right — the same ones who claimed to be ‘fiscal conservatives’ while they doubled our national debt with trillions in tax cuts for the wealthy, while simultaneously fighting two wars — are now up in arms that the richest two percent may be asked to pay a war surtax to help fund the wars they so eagerly mislead us into fighting.
It all began when two prominent democrats floated the idea to the press. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey told ABC News in an exclusive interview:
“There ain’t going to be no money for nothing if we pour it all into Afghanistan. If they ask for an increased troop commitment in Afghanistan, I am going to ask them to pay for it.”
Obey, a Democrat from Wisconsin, made it clear that he is absolutely opposed to sending any more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and says if Obama decides to do that, he’ll demand a new tax — what he calls a “war surtax” — to pay for it.
“On the merits, I think it is a mistake to deepen our involvement,” Obey said. “But if we are going to do that, then at least we ought to pay for it. Because if we don’t, if we don’t pay for it, the cost of the Afghan war will wipe out every initiative we have to rebuild our own economy.”
Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Bloomberg Television much the same:
Higher-income Americans should be taxed to pay for more troops sent to Afghanistan and NATO should provide half of the new soldiers.
An “additional income tax to the upper brackets, folks earning more than $200,000 or $250,000” a year, could fund more troops.
White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that each additional soldier in Afghanistan could cost $1 million, for a total that could reach $40 billion if 40,000 more troops are added.
That cost, Levin said, should be paid by wealthier taxpayers. “They have done incredibly well, and I think that it’s important that we pay for it if we possibly can” instead of increasing the federal debt load, the senator said.
Sounds reasonable to me. One of the chief reasons many in our country were so quick to buy into Bush’s call to invade Iraq was because only the troops and their families were being asked to make any sacrifice. If Bush had imposed a war surtax, Americans would have required some serious convincing that Iraq actually posed a threat to this country — of course it never did.
The unfortunate truth of the matter is most people are not altruistic by nature; most are narcissistic. They only care deeply about the things that impact their and their family’s lives directly. All the chicken-hawk, neo-cons gladly mislead our nation into invading and occupying Iraq, where other people’s children would lose their lives for some ulterior agenda — something we’ll probably never fully get to the bottom of.
If you want to prevent unnecessary wars; prevent open-ended commitments to wars based on Presidents’ political calculations; and prevent our nation from going bankrupt in the process, it is imperative to demand financial sacrifice from the citizens of this country. Only then will the country wake up, and start asking questions. Only then will our wars be conducted for reasons of absolute necessity. And only when that happens, will it be money well-spent.
Which is probably why Fox News, the Heritage Foundation, and other right-winged war mongers are up in arms about this proposal. The frenzy has just begun:
The Status Quo And How Washington Ensures It
A major impasse appears to exist these days between Democrats and Republicans on virtually every issue. On the surface, it would seem it’s all ideology-based. But upon closer inspection, their hostilities are, in large part, incited by media-manufactured outrage, where partisan vitriol and ideological demagoguery drowns out all thoughtful discourse.
Unfortunately, our country is in a mess, and on many fronts. And the proposed solutions (including the watered-down health care reform bill that passed the Senate Finance Committee yesterday) are more about symbolic change than meaningful change. Nothing gets done, nothing changes, because the biggest problems plaguing our country actually enrich powerful interest groups who are dead-set on keeping it that way.
Were the public (from both parties) to spend more time deconstructing the issues, and connecting the dots, they’d understand their anger is — more times than not — displaced. Yes, each side strongly believes the other’s ideological perspective is deeply flawed, but their inability to logically discuss issues in a meaningful way, or to pay close attention to lobbyist contributions to their own parties, ensures that they continue to miss the pink elephant in the room whom their elected representatives are tripping over to feed.
The two parties’ key ideological talking points revolve around the following:
The Republican Mantra — the government is everything that is wrong with society. It taxes hard-working citizens and gives it away to those who don’t work as hard. Big business can be trusted, and a laissez faire approach to the marketplace is essential to economic growth. Essentially, government is the problem, business is the solution.
The Democratic Mantra — the government is generally good. It was created by the people for the people. When market conditions are ripe, corporations will profit by exploiting labor and price gauging the public. They need to be reigned in to some degree by government. Essentially, business is the problem, government is the solution.
While there are some truths in each, NEITHER addresses how the realities inherent in both the American political system and its marketplace minimizes the significance of some of their most cherished beliefs.
A large part of the Republican mantra is a myth:
First and foremost, the government DOES exist to best serve the public interest. It WAS created by the people, for the people.
To embrace the Republican ideology, you must convince yourself not only that government is bad and incapable of doing anything, but that corporate interests are aligned with the public interest. In reality, NOTHING could be further from the truth. Corporations have a responsibility to no one, but their shareholders. They exist to maximize profits by any legal means.
If a corporation can save its shareholders millions of dollars by legally dumping toxic wastes into fresh water supplies, or by outsourcing all their jobs overseas, or by denying coverage to the uninsured, or by denying the claims of the insured, or by selling ‘snake oil’ as medicine, or by price gauging when competition doesn’t exist (like in the pharmaceutical marketplace, where patents ensure monopolies) then these corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders to exploit it to the fullest — to the detriment of the public they serve.
As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently put it: “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”
Take a look at George W. Bush’s laissez faire policies:
Bush drastically cut the funding of the FDA, thereby reducing government oversight over the food and drug industries. How did the food and drug industries fare when left to their own devices? We experienced more food recalls in those eight years than in my entire lifetime. Click into Bush’s report card of October 2006 by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. It outlines Bush’s significant FDA cuts, and the calamity that resulted.
Take a look at Sen. Lindsey Graham’s success in pushing Wall Street deregulation during both the Clinton and Bush years:
In one remarkable stretch from 1999 to 2001, [Graham] pushed laws and promoted policies that he says unshackled businesses from needless restraints but his critics charge significantly contributed to the financial crisis that has rattled the nation.
He led the effort to block measures curtailing deceptive or predatory lending, which was just beginning to result in a jump in home foreclosures that would undermine the financial markets. He advanced legislation that fractured oversight of Wall Street while knocking down Depression-era barriers that restricted the rise and reach of financial conglomerates.
And he pushed through a provision that ensured virtually no regulation of the complex financial instruments known as derivatives, including credit swaps, contracts that would encourage risky investment practices at Wall Street’s most venerable institutions and spread the risks, like a virus, around the world.
Warren Buffett, the world’s most astute and successful investor, warned us as far back as 2003 of the threat posed by these derivatives:
The derivatives market has exploded in recent years, with investment banks selling billions of dollars worth of these investments to clients as a way to off-load or manage market risk.
But Mr Buffett argues that such highly complex financial instruments are time bombs and “financial weapons of mass destruction” that could harm not only their buyers and sellers, but the whole economic system.
Had Bush regulators reeled back the financial industry’s exposure to these risky speculative securities, we could have prevented the collapse of insurance Goliath, AIG. But Bush, being the ever-hard-headed ideologue, rushed to enact even more deregulation initiatives right up to the final months of his Presidency in 2008 — at the same time we were experiencing the financial meltdown from his earlier deregulation. Since then, AIG has cost the American taxpayers $200 billion dollars, and the tally continues to grow. Its failure can be directly attributed to risky derivative speculation, and a lack of oversight:
State insurance regulators have said repeatedly that [AIG's] core insurance operations were sound — that the financial disaster was caused primarily by a small unit that dealt in exotic derivatives.
Anyone who believes that less government (and more freedom for big business) leads to economic stability and is in the public interest, is either delusional, or a Lobbyist.
The Democratic Mantra For Bigger Government Ignores the Fact That Politicians Are ‘On The Take’:
Yes, unlike corporations whose responsibility is only to their shareholders, the government does serve to promote the interests of the American public. But the truth of the matter is they are beholden to powerful money interests whose political contributions determine whether or not they remain in office. If politicians refuse to subjugate themselves to these powerful interest groups — on grounds of principle — they not only forfeit their political contributions, the interest groups aggressively bankroll their opposition (in their upcoming election).
The power of these entrenched interests and their hold over our politicians has recently come to the forefront in the ongoing Health Reform debates. Look at the Democratic Senators trying to kill the public option, and see how much money they are receiving from the health insurance industry. Keep in mind they are defying the public will.
Even President Obama, himself, who has stated many times in the past that he prefers a single payer system, banished single payer advocates from even getting a place at the table to engage in the discussion. His closest advisers (Rahm Emanuel and Kathleen Sebelius) have been doing everything in their power to undermine the passing of a robust public option, despite the fact that Americans support a government-run insurance option by a nearly two-to-one margin, 61%-34%. A public option would guarantee a reigning-in of our nation’s staggering medical costs, and ensure universal health coverage. So why won’t Obama firmly commit to it and use his bully pulpit to drive it home?
In addition, Obama quickly cut a deal with the Pharmaceutical Industry protecting them from Congressional efforts to use its bargaining power to lower runaway drug prices. As part of the deal, he also agreed to prohibit American citizens from importing cheaper medications from Canada. The Pharmaceutical Industry, in turn, agreed to reduce drug expenses by a mere $80 billion — a guaranteed ceiling — and a pittance for such a profitable industry. In addition, Big Pharma agreed to pay $150 million in advertising for the White House ‘health reform’ agenda.
As the ‘old’ John McCain said back in 1999 (when he still had integrity):
We will never achieve these reforms until we first reform the way we finance our political campaigns. As long as the influence of special interests dominates political campaigns, it will dominate legislation as well. Until we abolish soft money, Americans will never have a government that works as hard for them as it does for the special interests. That is a sad, but undeniable fact of contemporary politics.
A Change of Behavior From Both Parties is Required To Turn This Country Around:
Republicans – Your ideology is misguided, and the proof is all around you. Your inability to acknowledge this fact and to seek new ideas only serves as a distraction in our country’s attempts to solve its pressing problems. You must ween yourselves from chasing after shadows cast by the likes of Rush, Hannity, Beck and Fox News. Your real enemies are not the government, per say. They are the powerful interests who’ve corrupted our government, and the propagandists who distract you from seeing it. Enough with the dramatic knee-jerk outbursts over hot-button — but meaningless — sound bites, and focus on getting at the real truth (in other words: stop turning to compulsive liars in search of answers).
Democrats — Policies are to politics, what location is to real estate. Policies, policies, policies! Get over the fact Obama won. Stop making excuses for him each time he breaks another campaign promise, or he’ll never deliver substantive change. Obama is proving to be one who takes the path of least resistance . So when you follow like sheep and cheer him on even when he’s selling you out, then you’re ensuring that the path of least resistance for him is the one aligned with the powerful interests — those heavily invested in the status quo — those working against the change you voted for.
If we don’t get a robust public option, or our troops withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan; and if we don’t get more transparency in our government, or an investigation into Bush’s torture abuses and other illegalities, or meaningful global warming policies it WON’T be because of an uncooperative Republican minority. They’re largely redundant. The battle for real change is taking place within the Democratic Party.
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