BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 23 May 07 - 02:43 PM

Everyone deserves their own even-hundred post.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 May 07 - 07:22 PM

I would think it likely that those arrests are designed to put pressure on the US to release the Iranian officials who have been detained by the US authorities since January (against the wishes of the Iraq government).

Two wrongs don't make a right of course - and in any case I imagine that it's an ineffective way of exerting pressure, since it probably rather suits the US authorities to have Iran do this.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 24 May 07 - 03:25 PM

Iran: Atomic work near peak
POSTED: 2:16 p.m. EDT, May 24, 2007

Story Highlights• President Ahmadinejad says Iran's nuclear work almost at its "peak"
• IAEA: Iran at least three years from making a nuclear bomb if it so chooses
• U.S. President Bush calls for stronger round of U.N. sanctions against Iran

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iran's nuclear work is almost at its "peak", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday while the head of the U.N.'s atomic watchdog said Iran was probably at least three years from making a nuclear bomb if it so chooses.

Ahmadinejad dismissed Western pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear drive.

"With God's help the path to completely enjoying all nuclear capacity is near its end and we are close to the peak," Ahmadinejad said at a rally in the central town of Isfahan. (Watch how U.S. ships are putting pressure on Iran )

"The Iranian nation today has industrial nuclear technology and ... it will never retreat even one step from this path," he told the cheering crowd in a speech broadcast on television.

The Islamic Republic denies seeking nuclear weapons and says its program is aimed purely at generating electricity.

Underlining what he said was the growing risk of a major confrontation between the West and Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei appealed for the two sides to restart negotiations on a compromise as soon as possible.

"I tend, based on our analysis, to agree with people like John Negroponte and the new director of the CIA, who are saying that even if Iran wanted to go for a nuclear weapon, it would not be before the end of this decade or sometime in the middle of the next decade. In other words three to eight years from now," ElBaradei told a news conference in Luxembourg.

"Iran needs to suspend its enrichment activities as a confidence-building measure but the international community should do its utmost to engage Iran in comprehensive dialogue," ElBaradei told a conference on nuclear non-proliferation.

Big advances
The IAEA said in a report on Wednesday that Iran was making substantial advances in uranium enrichment. Several months ago, ElBaradei predicted Iran was four to eight years away from the capability to produce an atom bomb.

U.S. President George W. Bush said Washington would work with the European, Russian and Chinese leaders to impose a third, stronger round of U.N. sanctions against Iran.

"The first thing that these leaders have got to understand is that an Iran with a nuclear weapon would be incredibly destabilizing for the world. It's in their interests that we work collaboratively to continue to isolate that regime," he told a news conference.

Major powers last year offered Iran trade, technical and other incentives to suspend uranium enrichment. But negotiations proved fruitless and were called off before the U.N. Security Council imposed a first set of sanctions on Tehran.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told parliament in Berlin that offer was still on the table, but if Iran did not meet its international obligations "the Security Council of the United Nations will continue to act decisively".

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has been charged with assessing the scope for returning to negotiations. He is expected to meet chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani in Madrid late next week.

The IAEA report, like predecessors, said the agency had seen no evidence that Iran was trying to "weaponize" nuclear material or of undeclared nuclear facilities operating in the country.

But ElBaradei voiced concern Tehran was moving towards confrontation with the international community by accelerating its nuclear program, and said his top priority was to prevent Iran achieving industrial-scale production of enriched uranium.

Nine U.S. warships sailed into the Gulf on Wednesday for maneuvers to display impatience with Tehran, which Washington also accuses of backing insurgents in Iraq. Iran denies the charge.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 25 May 07 - 09:42 AM

North Korea tests short-range missiles

By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 12 minutes ago



SEOUL, South Korea -       North Korea fired several short-range guided missiles Friday into the sea that separates it from Japan in an apparent test launch, South Korean officials and media reports said.

Analysts and media reports said the North's test was in response to       South Korea's launch of its first destroyer equipped with high-tech Aegis radar technology on Friday. South Korea is now one of only five countries armed with the technology, which will make it easier to track and shoot down North Korean aircraft and missiles.

"This shows North Korea, whose navy is rather small, is extremely alarmed," said Toshimitsu Shigemura, an expert on North Korean issues at Japan's Waseda University.

South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed Friday's missile launches.

"The short-range missile launches are believed to be part of a routine exercise that North Korea has conducted annually on the east and the west coasts in the past," the statement said.

The missiles were fired from the communist country's east coast into the sea between Japan and the Korean peninsula, a Joint Chiefs official said on condition of anonymity, citing official protocol.

Japan's public broadcaster and other media, citing Japanese and U.S. sources, reported the missiles were surface-to-ship. Japan's Defense Ministry and Foreign Ministry could not immediately confirm the reports.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency cited an unidentified Unification Ministry official as saying the tests would not strain ties because they were apparently part of regular exercises. North and South Korea are planning Cabinet level talks on reconciliation efforts next week in Seoul.

In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called the tests "extremely regrettable" but said, "We do not consider (the missile firing) as a serious threat to Japan's national security."

Public broadcaster NHK said the missiles were shorter-range, and were not North Korea's existing Rodong or Taepodong I ballistic missiles.

Kyodo News agency said the missiles were launched from Hamgyong Namdo on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula and are considered modified silkworm or miniaturized Scuds, with a range of 60-125 miles.

Mobile missile carriers, communication equipment and personnel were seen in the area before the launch, but they left after the missiles were fired, Kyodo said.

Last month, North Korea displayed a newly developed ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. territory of Guam during a military parade, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported, citing an unidentified South Korean government official familiar with an analysis of U.S. satellite images.

North Korea's missile program has been a constant concern to the region, along with its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The hard-line regime test-fired a series of missiles in July last year, including its latest long-range model, known abroad as the Taepodong-2, which experts believe could reach parts of the United States.

The North rattled the world again in October by conducting its first-ever test of a nuclear device. However, experts believe it does not have a bomb design advanced enough to be placed on a missile.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Dickey
Date: 25 May 07 - 10:01 AM

Dianavan:

My post of 18 May 07 - 09:22 AM was to show that Ashura is not banned in Iran as claimed by Rex.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 25 May 07 - 06:58 PM

Do people not steal cars where you live? Do they not shoot heroin? Do they not drive drunk? What? They do? Huh. And, yet... all of these things are illegal, right? And they do them... Uh, what the fuck?! How are people managing to do these things... despite a BAN?! >:O

Idiot.

And, yes, you did imply that people whipping themselves was a human rights abuse by the government of Iran. Yanno, when you wrote to me: "Are you defending human rights abuses it Iran?" Followed by an excerpt of the Ashura article. What else could you have been referring to when you asked if I supported "human rights abuses it Iran?"

Again, idiot. Back down. You're not going to win.

---Lepus Rex

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Dickey
Date: 26 May 07 - 12:31 AM

Rex:

I was wrong about the blood letting part of Ashura. It is banned in Iran. The photo I posted was taken in Kerbala. I wrongly attributed it to Iran because it was on a web site about human rights abuses in Iran and I apologise.

I just learned about cross amputation in Iran. Know what that is? They cut off a right hand and a left foot. Nice eh?

25 February, 2006
Amnesty condemns Iran's executions

Amnesty International has expressed its outrage over an "alarming rate" of executions in Iran, particularly the use of the death penalty against children.

The human rights organisation has recorded 28 executions so far in 2006, following at least 94 in 2005 - although it states that "the true figure is likely to be much higher." The use of the death penalty is increasingly being used against political prisoners.

"According to the Minister of Justice, 45 people have been arrested in connection with the October explosions. On 14 February 2006, the Minister of Justice told the state news agency IRNA that seven of them had been convicted on charges including "enmity with God and corruption on earth (moharebeh and ifsad fil-arz, for which the penalty is execution, cross amputation, crucifixion or banishment), and murder" and that their sentences would be announced shortly. On 20 February 2006, the Prosecutor General reportedly said that "some of those convicted in this case have been sentenced to death, including the two main culprits, whose presence in the recent Ahvaz incidents was proved and their execution verdict is definite". On 21 February, in a statement to IRNA commenting on this report, the Minister of Justice stated that only two had been sentenced to death and these sentences were under review by the Supreme Court. He noted that "the seven convicts have not all committed crimes that call for the death penalty.""

http://www.ahwaz.org.uk/labels/death%20penalty.html

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Dickey
Date: 28 May 07 - 08:10 AM

"...Amputation is the elegant word to describe an unjust, cruel practice and without call which does not leave any possibility of rehabilitation to the delinquents.

A cut down man carries the mark of his delinquency and will not be able to find employment any more. Handicapped with life and without pension for his "justified" handicap, the man will not be able "to be free" and "to turn over to work to nourish his family" as mollahs explainexplain it.

The operations are done without anaesthesia and with a kind of "small guillotine" which was developed in Great Britain.

A first flight is punished by the amputation of the four fingers of the right hand or by the amputation of the very whole right hand. A repetition is punished by the "cross amputation": section of the right hand and the left leg under the knee.

This form of amputation is a death sentence in a country like the republic of mollahs where 55% of the young, valid and graduate men are without employment..."

More Here

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 28 May 07 - 11:56 PM

The invasion of Iraq is not about human rights. If the U.S. cared about human rights, they would invade China.

"During the past two years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of the death penalty in China. This growth in the number of death sentences and executions is partly due to anti-crime campaigns launched by the government. Defendants can be put to death for criminal offenses, including nonviolent property crimes such as theft, embezzlement and forgery. In 1993, 77% of all executions worldwide were carried out in China. On a single day, 9 January 1993, 356 death sentences were handed down by Chinese courts; 62 executions took place that day. During that year alone, 2,564 people were sentenced to death. At least 1,419 of them are known to have been executed."

http://www.christusrex.org/www1/sdc/hr_facts.html#DeathPenalty

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Teribus
Date: 29 May 07 - 03:40 AM

"The invasion of Iraq is not about human rights."

Read the terms and conditions stipulated in the UNSC Resolutions that Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Government of the day agreed to at Safwan in 1991.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: GUEST,beardedbruce.
Date: 29 May 07 - 04:32 AM

dianavan,

Be carefull: on a per capita basis, YOU just justified that the US SHOULD attack Iran, for THEIR use of capital punishment...

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Dickey
Date: 29 May 07 - 09:34 AM

"If the U.S. cared about human rights, they would invade China."

If Canada cared about human rights, they would invade China.

This thread is about Iran and Korea. Human rights suck in Iran and are almost non existant in North Korea.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 29 May 07 - 11:41 AM

Dickey - According to your posts, I thought you were justifying the invasion of Iran based on human rights abuses.

My post of 28 May 07 - 11:56 PM should have referred to Iran.

I do not believe that the invasion of Iraq or the possible invasion of Iran or Korea has anything to do with human rights. If the U.S. was worried about human rights, they wouldn't be engaged in torture or unlawful confinement.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 May 07 - 12:44 PM

If Canada was worried about human rights, they wouldn't be engaged in illegal exports of asbestos to south-east asia.

So, obviously by your logic Canada should not be claiming human rights as a reason for anything.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Dickey
Date: 30 May 07 - 01:22 AM

If what you say is true then Canada should invade the US and free all those detainees, after they free their own.

HUNGERSTRIKES AT CANADA'S "GUANTANAMO NORTH" UPDATE AND NEW CALL

Thanks to all of you who responded to this urgent appeal (below) about the hungerstrikes at Canada's "Guantanamo North" prison.

The Canadian government is continuing its closed door policy & misinformation campaign (see our six-point response to our public Safety Minister's lies at www.homesnotbombs.ca/daylies.htm). In the absence of response from the government, the men have expressed their intention to continue the hungerstrike. Today is day 76 of the hungerstrike for Mohammad Mahjoub, day 65 for Hassan Almrei and Mahmoud Jaballah. The prison is refusing to provide or permit daily medical monitoring - normally recommended after 10 days of hungerstrike - thus the situation could become critical at any moment.

We are therefore RENEWING OUR APPEAL to allies and friends internationally to PLEASE DO ALL YOU can to put pressure on Canada's appalling and racist treatment of Jaballah, Mahjoub and Almrei. This is not only about the lives and dignity of these men and their families; in Canada, the struggle of these migrants for dignity and justice has become a symbol of the struggle against Canada's support for a racist system of global apartheid in the name of "the war against terrorism" and "national security".

http://www.statewatch.org/news/2007/feb/04canada-hunger-strike.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 30 May 07 - 02:31 AM

Canada, like the U.S., has no right to invade another country on the basis of human rights violations.

Afghanistan and Iraq were not invaded because of human rights violations. Afghanistan was invaded in an attempt to find bin Laden and destroy al qaeda. Iraq was invaded to oust Saddam. Somehow they have morphed into a misguided war of moral and religious values. Neither Canada or the U.S. have any right to act with moral authority. At least Canada deals with it, judicially. How many are still being detained by the U.S. without access to legal assistance?

btw - "Charkaoui was released in 2005 and Harkat in 2006, but they remain subject to severe restrictions, including the continuous wearing of a GPS bracelet and house arrest. Jaballah and Mahjoub were released in 2007 after seven years incarceration, and likewise are still subject to house arrest. Almrei is the only one still imprisoned in Millhaven Penitentiary, a maximum security prison, in Kingston, Ontario. All five now face deportation to their countries of origin where, the government admits, they potentially face torture and death."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/cana-m12.shtml

Dickey - If you're going to give a source, its best to cite something a little more current. Don't be so lazy. When you find an article that supports your position, do a little follow-up.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 May 07 - 02:24 PM

Iran rejects key demand in nuclear talks

POSTED: 3:04 a.m. EDT, May 30, 2007

Story Highlights• 'We will not accept any preconditions' for talks, Iran's Larijani says

• Larijani to meet Solana Thursday in Madrid
• West believes Iran is trying to build atomic bombs
• Tehran denies the charge, says its program is aimed at generating electricity

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Iran will not suspend uranium enrichment, the key U.N. demand in a nuclear row with Tehran, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said the day before talks with the EU's Javier Solana.

"Suspension is not a solution to Iran's nuclear issue ... Iran cannot accept suspension," Larijani told reporters at a Tehran airport before his departure.

"We have no conditions, and we are ready for constructive talks, but we will not accept any preconditions. We are ready to remove concerns over Iran's atomic issue."

Larijani meets Solana, the EU foreign policy chief leading discussions on behalf of world powers, on Thursday in Madrid.

Previous meetings have failed to persuade Tehran to obey U.N. resolutions demanding that it halt enrichment, a process which the West believes Iran is seeking to master so that it can build atomic bombs. Tehran denies the charge.

The U.N. Security Council has imposed two sets of sanctions on Iran since December for its failure to heed U.N. demands. The United States, which has led efforts to isolate Iran, has threatened further steps.

Iran insists its program is aimed at generating electricity. Iran's first nuclear power plant is still being built.

Iran temporarily suspended enrichment under a previous deal with the European Union but that pact collapsed in 2005 and Tehran resumed the work.

Solana is empowered by the world's major powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany as well as the EU -- to explore the scope for formal negotiations on a package of economic, technological and political initiatives if Iran suspends enrichment.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: GUEST,dianavan
Date: 30 May 07 - 08:00 PM

This is news?

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 30 May 07 - 08:01 PM

sorry if a current news report does not meet your expectations.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 09:09 PM

from the Washington Post:

Iran Hostage Crisis, Part 2

Tehran should immediately release the American citizens it has detained.
Friday, June 1, 2007; Page A14


PARANOID that a network of U.S. scholars and thinkers is fomenting a velvet revolution, Iran charged three U.S.-Iranian citizens with espionage this week. If convicted, they face execution.

The accused are Haleh Esfandiari, the 67-year-old director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Kian Tajbakhsh, 45, a respected social scientist at the New School in New York who has consulted for George Soros's Open Society Institute and the World Bank; and Radio Farda journalist Parnaz Azima, 59. The government and various state news agencies have accused these Iranian Americans and their organizations of endangering state security on the basis of their supposedly treacherous attempts to foster dialogue and exchange.

The charges are ludicrous. Ms. Esfandiari, who has invited scholars and statesmen from Iran to U.S. conferences and events, has been criticized by some in the Iranian American community as being too soft on the current regime. And not only has Mr. Tajbakhsh consulted directly for the Iranian government, but the supposedly "Zionist" and "soft overthrow"-obsessed organization he works for, the Open Society Institute, has run all its humanitarian and health outreach programs in Iran with the full cooperation of the Iranian government, sometimes even at the government's initiative. Iran's government approached the institute in 2003, for example, to provide relief after the Bam earthquake. The idea that any of these people were in Iran to concoct a U.S.-funded insurgent network is especially absurd, given that all three were there on private visits, with both Ms. Esfandiari and Ms. Azima visiting their ailing mothers.

The list of foreign hostages doesn't stop there. U.S.-Iranian businessman Ali Shakeri, who is on the board of the University of California at Irvine's Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, was arrested on May 8 on his way back to the United States (also after visiting his ill mother, who died during his stay). A fifth U.S.-Iranian citizen is also imprisoned, although his name has not been released. Ex-FBI agent Robert Levinson disappeared in Iran in March and may be imprisoned, though Iran has denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. And an Iranian French national, journalism student Mehrnoushe Solouki, has been forbidden to leave the country, according to Reporters Without Borders.

These individuals are pawns. Those in Iran who care about the world's respect should press for their release.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Dickey
Date: 01 Jun 07 - 11:26 PM

Paramilitary Secret Police Kidnap, Detain, Torture Bilderberg Investigators.

Interrogators threatened to "cut off arms" during 6 hour marathon of hell.

Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 29 2006

Three Canadian citizens who visited the Brookestreet Hotel in Ottawa to observe members of the Bilderberg Group earlier this month were kidnapped, detained without charge and suffered the ordeal of a marathon interrogation session and psychological torture - including threats to "cut off the arms" of one of the victims.
   The nightmare began on June 9th, the second day of the Bilderberg conference. After being warned to leave the previous day, Joe Burd's party of three left the site of the Brookestreet Hotel at 2pm where he and Crystal Slack headed for a local bar, while Burd's friend electrician Don McCormick rested in their rented vehicle which was parked on a downtown street.
   What happened next should chill the core of anyone who thinks that westerners still live in a free society.
   "A military-grade task force involving local police, RCMP and members of the "Integrated National Security Enforcement Team" descended around the rental vehicle with weapons pointed at Mr. McCormick. He was abruptly and forcibly taken into custody from his vehicle, thrown to the ground and kicked in head."
   After approaching the vehicle, Burd and his friend Crystal Slack were also grabbed and kidnapped, taken to a RCMP holding facility, detained without charges, harassed and interrogated for hours about their connections to the "insurgent" and "threat to national security" Alex Jones, who himself had been detained and interrogated for 15 hours at the hands of Canadian immigration the previous day.
   McCormick was taken to a secret high security facility where he was brutally interrogated without charge and mentally tortured for six hours. He was accused of wanting to blow up the Brookestreet Hotel, as the interrogators threatened to "cut off his arms" warning him that they also "had his friends" in custody. This is the very definition of psychological torture, the threat of physical harm and dismemberment.
   One of the dictionary definitions of torture is, "dismemberment, taking apart - the removal of limbs; being cut to pieces." The threat of extreme physical pain is a method used on suspected terrorists and was also inflicted upon innocent prisoners at Abu Ghraib.McCormick's anguish at the hands of the Canadian Gestapo didn't end there.
   Interrogators told McCormick that he "would never be alone again" and to "watch his back" - as he began to fear he would become the latest victim of the worldwide rendition policy, and be taken to an Eastern European gulag for further torture.
   McCormick was so stricken by the horror of his nightmare that many of the details of what happened remained bottled up, partly from threatened fear of reprisals if he told anyone what had occurred.
   Finally being released and returning home the next day, McCormick became delirious and had to be rushed to hospital after he collapsed. He was diagnosed with severe dehydration and mental fatigue due to his experiences in Ottawa. McCormick had to be sedated to help him sleep as he babbled about having his arms cut off and interrogators threatening to harm his friends.
   From the experiences of Alex Jones during his 15 hour ordeal with Canadian immigration officials, it was learned that the order to impede Jones' party came directly from the Bilderberg Group itself. With this knowledge in hand, it is by no means a stretch to assume that the hellish treatment of Burd, McCormick and Slack was also a mandate of the Bilderberg elitists.
   These are the pleasures of the global elite and their security thug enforcers - repression of free speech, intimidation, kidnapping, grabbing people off the streets and treating them as terrorists, and psychological torture - all carried out under the wilful arrogance that they are protecting the nation from harm.
   The real terrorists are the perverted bullies that kidnapped three peaceful citizens and subjected them to a marathon of hell - and they represent a threat to the freedom and way of life of all Canadians.

http://www.prisonplanet.tv/articles/december2004/021204martiallaw.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 08 Jun 07 - 11:27 AM

G-8 approves aid for Africa, warns Iran

By CHRISTINE OLLIVIER, Associated Press Writer
17 minutes ago



HEILIGENDAMM, Germany - Leaders of the Group of Eight agreed Friday on a $60 billion package to fight       AIDS, TB and malaria in Africa and warned       Iran over its disputed nuclear program, on the final day of the summit of the world's richer nations.

The G-8 pledged to "adopt further measures" if Iran refuses to halt its uranium enrichment program — a sign of support for       U.N. Security Council moves to discuss a third set of sanctions. Uranium enrichment is a process that can produce fuel for civilian energy — or fissile material for a bomb.

Meanwhile, G-8 diplomats ran in to obstacles in discussions on the future of the Serbian province of       Kosovo.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the meeting's host, said there were still "different opinions" on a proposal to put off a U.N. Security Council vote on Kosovo's independence for six months, and that diplomats would meet again next week.

Wary of delays, Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said from his provincial capital, "We cannot wait forever. Give us clarity, give us freedom and let us go."

The United States and the       European Union back a U.N. resolution to give the predominantly ethnic Albanian province supervised independence. But Russia is backing ally Serbia in its resistance to ceding the province seen as its historic heartland.

G-8 leaders held their final sessions at the Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm without an ailing       President Bush, who stayed in his room to recuperate after meeting privately with French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Bush soon was feeling better and rejoined the summit after missing a session with African leaders and another with heads of state from developing nations China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

In his absence, the other seven leaders met with the presidents of Egypt, Algeria, Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria to back the aid plan for Africa. About half of the $60 billion was pledged earlier by the U.S., and other nations will contribute the rest, Germany's development minister said.

"It was a very candid and open discussion," Merkel said. "We said that on behalf of the countries of the G-8, that we are aware of our obligations and we would like to fulfill the promises that we entered into and we are going to do that."

But the anti-poverty group Oxfam noted that only a fraction of the promised US$60 billion represented new aid since the figure was spread over an unspecified number of years and includes money already pledged.

The new money is important, the group said in a statement, but "should be seen for what it is: a small step when we need giant leaps."

The leaders also discussed a proposal, put forth by Sarkozy, on the independence-seeking Serbian province of Kosovo that would provide six-months for further talks between Belgrade and the Kosovo Albanians.

If they reach no agreement, the U.N. plan would then take effect, giving the predominantly ethnic Albanian province supervised independence.

Kosovo has been under U.N. supervision since a       NATO-led air war in 1999 to halt a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

"At the moment, we have not achieved the necessary progress," Sarkozy said Friday. "The key question that I posed was recognizing the need for Kosovo to achieve independence within a certain timeframe."

In Pristina, Kosovo's prime minister urged the West not to betray Kosovo.

"We have committed to the U.N. path and we have been very patient," Agim Ceku told The Associated Press on Friday. "I urge you; do not betray this trust."

On Thursday, G-8 leaders reached an agreement on climate change, adopting a statement that says they should "seriously consider" proposals to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases by 50 percent by 2050. The nonbinding language is a compromise between the European Union, which wants mandatory cuts, and the United States, which opposes them.

The G-8 is Germany, the United States, Russia, Britain, Italy, France, Canada and Japan.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 15 Jun 07 - 05:07 PM

NKorea lashes out amid nuclear standoff

By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 52 minutes ago



SEOUL, South Korea -       North Korea warned Friday it might increase its "self-defense deterrent," a term the communist nation usually uses to describe its nuclear program, even as its key condition for nuclear disarmament was being met.

North Korea's warning, in a statement criticizing U.S. missile defense plans, raised concerns the recalcitrant regime might be trying to find another reason to postpone disarming. As the statement was released, millions of dollars in frozen funds were headed to North Korean accounts, apparently resolving a banking dispute the country had used as a reason to delay.

"The U.S. is claiming that it is building a global missile defense system to protect against missile attacks from our nation and       Iran. This is a childish pretext," the North's Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. "We cannot but further strengthen our self-defense deterrent if the arms race intensifies because of the U.S. maneuvers."

North Korea has refused to act on its February pledge to shut down its nuclear reactor until it gets access to $25 million once frozen in a U.S.-blacklisted Macau bank.

Claiming the money freeze was a sign of Washington's hostility, North Korea boycotted international nuclear talks for more than a year, during which it conducted its first-ever atomic bomb test in October.

On Thursday, Macau's chief finance official said the money had been transferred from the bank, but it remained unclear if the entire amount has moved or whether it reached its destination. Officials knowledgeable about the transfer have said more than $23 million was involved but that the transaction was not complete.

A South Korean government official said Friday the money has "reached Moscow at its central bank" and was awaiting deposit in North Korean accounts in Russia. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the issue's sensitivity.

If the money goes into North Korea's accounts, it means the financial dispute is fully resolved, the official said. But he did not say when the deposit could take place.

In Washington, the State Department said Friday it was looking into North Korea's latest warning.

"At this point, not having seen the statement, I wouldn't attribute any particular significance to it. But we'll take a look at it," said Sean McCormack, a department spokesman.

The North Korean funds had been frozen at Macau's Banco Delta Asia since 2005, when the U.S. blacklisted the bank for allegedly helping North Korea's government pass fake $100 bills and launder money from weapons sales.

In an attempt to win North Korea's promise to start dismantling its nuclear program, the U.S. agreed earlier this year to give its blessing for the money to be freed.

The U.S., Japan, China, Russia and the two Koreas took part in the arms negotiations that prompted a pledge from the North in February to stop making nuclear weapons in exchange for aid and political concessions.

"If and when transfer does take place, we expect the North Koreans to live up to the provisions of the Feb. 13 agreement," White House spokesman Tony Snow said in Washington.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said said the international community would have to consider more serious actions if North Korea continued to stall.

       President Bush "and I have expressed that our patience is not limitless, and I hope North Korea takes this seriously," Abe said.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Nickhere
Date: 19 Jun 07 - 08:19 PM

"Paramilitary Secret Police Kidnap, Detain, Torture Bilderberg Investigators.

Interrogators threatened to "cut off arms" during 6 hour marathon of hell"

Come on now, Canadians, stop trying to keep up with the Jonses! ;-))

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 Jun 07 - 04:08 PM

Now, what was being said about how Iran didn't want to make a bomb???


Nuclear scientists from Pakistan admit helping Iran with bomb-making
By Massoud Ansari in Karachi
Last Updated: 12:22am GMT 25/01/2004



Scientists and officials working on Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme have admitted for the first time that they gave Iran crucial technical information on building an atomic bomb.

Interrogators who have questioned the eight people detained last weekend over allegations that nuclear secrets were sold abroad have confirmed that at least three confessed to helping pass secret nuclear know-how to their opposite numbers in Iran.

The two scientists and one official work for Khan Research Laboratory (KRL), the headquarters of the country's nuclear weapons programme, and include close associates of Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, a national hero in Pakistan as the "Father of the Bomb". One is said to be a senior manager at KRL and an expert in centrifuge technology.

advertisementAll three deny supplying equipment directly to Iran, a senior official told the Telegraph. He said, however, that one scientist admitted: "We confided in them about the items needed to construct a nuclear bomb, as well as the makes of equipment, the names of companies, the countries from which they could be procured and how they could be procured."

Scientists are also said to have revealed the names of retired senior army officials and nuclear experts who played key roles in deals which helped Iran to launch its nuclear weapons programme. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, ordered an investigation of his country's nuclear scientists late last year, after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned of possible nuclear links between Pakistan and Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Iran pledged last year to halt uranium enrichment activity, but Western diplomats believe that the country is still acquiring advanced centrifuge equipment needed to make a nuclear weapon. Inspections carried out by IAEA inspectors or Iranian nuclear facilities revealed links with Pakistan, including blueprints for a type of centrifuge similar to those used by Pakistan.

The latest information from Pakistan's scientists poses a dilemma for President Musharraf, who promised last week to prosecute anyone who sold nuclear secrets.

He said on Friday that scientists appeared to have sold nuclear designs to other nations "for personal financial gain", but insisted that no state or government officials were involved. He must decide whether to widen the investigation to include senior military figures who have been identified by scientists.

"This is highly sensitive," said an official. "Some of those identified by the scientists are 'big names', and it would not be easy for the government to lay its hands on them."

Last weekend's arrests bring the number of KRL scientists and officials arrested by Pakistani authorities over the past two months to more than 20, including key members of the team responsible for Pakistan's 1998 nuclear test. Most have since been released, but at least nine are still under interrogation. Dr Khan has also been questioned, although he was not detained and he denied any involvement in passing information abroad.

However, after these latest disclosures, officials said, that Pakistani authorities are investigating the wealth accumulated by nuclear scientists and KRL officials, many of whom enjoy luxurious homes in opulent neighbourhoods beyond the reach of someone living on a government salary.

One senior government official said: "Some of the top scientists and people associated with the country's nuclear programme appear to be living beyond their means. We do not know whether they have accumulated this wealth by illegally siphoning off funds from the KRL budget, or by obtaining money in exchange for transferring nuclear expertise."

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: GUEST,beardedbruce
Date: 22 Jun 07 - 10:36 AM

Iran said to enrich 100 kg uranium before new talks

By Fredrik Dahl
1 hour, 49 minutes ago



TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has stored 100 kg of enriched uranium material, its interior minister was quoted on Friday as saying, in comments that may worry Western powers who suspect the Islamic Republic of seeking to build nuclear bombs.

But a senior Iranian nuclear official cast doubt on the information. "The figures are not correct," the official, who declined to be named, told Reuters.

Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi made his comment ahead of sensitive talks on Iran's nuclear program between Iran's top negotiator and the U.N. atomic watchdog director and the European Union's foreign policy chief.

Iran's Ali Larijani will meet International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei on Friday and the EU's Javier Solana on Saturday in what may be a last chance to end the impasse before world powers begin drafting broader sanctions against Iran.

Iran has refused U.N. demands to halt enrichment, a process that yields fuel for nuclear power plants but can also provide material for weapons if the uranium is refined to a much higher degree. Tehran says its goal is purely peaceful electricity.

The IAEA is also concerned about Iranian cutbacks in the access given to agency inspectors.

ISNA news agency quoted Pourmohammadi as saying: "More than 100 kg of enriched uranium materials have been delivered to storages."

Pourmohammadi, speaking in southwestern Iran late on Thursday, also said "more than 150 tonnes of initial materials of uranium gas are ready and have been stored." Uranium gas is fed into centrifuges for refinement into fuel.

Diplomats and nuclear analysts say roughly 500 kg of low-enriched uranium would be needed as material for one bomb but it would have to be re-introduced into centrifuge machines reconfigured to refine uranium to weapons-grade.

They say such a step would be difficult to hide from U.N. inspectors assigned to the Natanz enrichment plant, where Iran has been expanding a hitherto research-level centrifuge operation in a bid for "industrial-scale" fuel production.

Iran has repeatedly said it has no intention of trying to produce highly-enriched uranium suitable for weapons in violation of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

POINT OF NO RETURN

The last Larijani-Solana meeting in Madrid in May brought no breakthrough on the core enrichment dispute and the latest exploratory talks were unlikely to make much headway.

Iran has said it wants to clear up IAEA questions about the nature of its program but not unless the U.N. Security Council returns authority over its file to the Vienna-based agency, ending sanctions pressure -- a nonstarter for Western powers.

Instead of freezing all enrichment-related activity, as the Security Council has demanded, Iran has accelerated the program and says it has passed the point of no return.

"When the world saw that the (Iranian) nation is pursuing this goal with unity, the world surrendered, " Pourmohammadi said. "We have passed the dangerous moment."

The Security Council has already imposed two rounds of limited sanctions on Iran over its refusal to shelve enrichment.

The United States said on Tuesday it and five other world powers -- Britain, Russia, France, Germany and China -- had begun discussing a third round of penalties against Iran.

Iran, OPEC's second-largest crude exporter, says it is enriching uranium only as an alternative energy source so that it can export more of its valuable oil and gas.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 04:28 PM

Iranians still planning attacks in Iraq: U.S.

By Alister Bull
1 hour, 25 minutes ago



BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iranian operatives are training fighters in Iraq and helping to plan attacks there despite diplomatic pressure on Tehran to halt such interference, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

The latest accusation leveled against Iran by the U.S. military followed rare diplomatic talks in Baghdad last month between the two old adversaries to discuss Washington's concerns in Iraq.

"There absolutely is evidence of Iranian operatives holding weapons, training fighters, providing resources, helping plan operations, resourcing secret cells that is destabilizing Iraq," said military spokesman Brigadier-General Kevin Bergner.

"We would like very much to see some action on their part to reduce the level of effort and to help contribute to Iraq's security. We have not seen it yet," he told a news conference, he said, referring to the Iranian government.

In fresh violence across Iraq, car bombs and other violence killed nearly 50 people, police said.

The United States, already seeking wider sanctions against Tehran over the Islamic republic's nuclear program, blames Iranians for supplying a type of roadside bomb which cuts through armor and has killed many U.S. soldiers.

Tehran said last week it would study a request from Iraq for a new U.S.-Iran meeting, but warned a decision may take time.

Daniel Speckhard, the number two U.S. diplomat in Iraq, said there was still no word back from Iran.

Tensions between the two long-time foes are especially high after U.S. troops seized five Iranians in January in northern Iraq, accusing them of helping insurgents.

Iran, which says the five are diplomats, is holding three U.S.-Iranian citizens on security-related charges.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said his country backed the Iraqi government and accused the United States of seeking to undermine Tehran's ties with Baghdad, the Iranian student news agency ISNA reported on Wednesday.

Diplomatic sparring between the two nations is further complicated by Western demands for Iran to open up its nuclear program to international scrutiny. Tehran says it is peaceful, but the West fears that it will produce nuclear bombs.

TURKISH AL QAEDA MILITANTS KILLED

Among the attacks in Iraq on Wednesday, police said a car bomb killed seven people and wounded 14 in the Shi'ite district of Kadhimiya in Baghdad.

In Samarra, 100 km (62 miles) north of Baghdad, police said seven people including five police commandos were killed by a roadside bomb.

Police also found the bodies of 21 people in Baghdad on Wednesday. Most had been shot.

Thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops are targeting Sunni Islamist and al Qaeda militants blamed for most of the car bombs in the city in operations around Baghdad's beltways.

Bergner said U.S. commanders were pleased with their progress, but warned that "change will not come overnight."

U.S. soldiers killed two senior Turkish al Qaeda operatives in northern Iraq, the military also said.

It said Mehmet Yilmaz and Mehmet Resit Isik were killed on June 23 in a firefight with U.S. forces near the town of Hawija, which lies to the south of the city of Kirkuk.

Military officials say foreign militants, mainly from Arab countries, are the brains behind al Qaeda in Iraq.

The statement said Yilmaz, also known as Khalid al-Turki, was a senior leader in al-Qaeda who operated a cell that brought foreign fighters into Iraq. Isik was a close associate of Yilmaz and other senior al Qaeda leaders, the statement said.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 02:16 PM

U.N. nuke inspectors go to N. Korea reactor

POSTED: 1:37 a.m. EDT, June 28, 2007

Story Highlights• Trip to Yongbyon is first by IAEA monitors since being expelled in late 2002
• Visit coincides with N. Korea's testing of three short-range missiles
• Japanese prime minister calls for "harsh" world response to missile tests
• U.S. "is deeply troubled that North Korea has decided to launch these missiles"

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- U.N. inspectors headed to North Korea's key nuclear reactor Thursday to discuss a long-delayed shutdown of the plutonium-producing facility, as the country came under increasing criticism for launching missile tests this week.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe slammed North Korea's communist government over the short-range missile launches, calling them a provocation that could destabilize the region and a defiance of the United Nations.

"We need to seek a harsh response from the international community," Abe said in Tokyo.

North Korea boosted the urgency in the international stand-off over its nuclear program in October when it mounted its first atomic test explosion. The U.N. Security Council condemned the move and passed a resolution saying North Korea must, among other things, abide by a missile-test moratorium.

"I do not think this will directly affect our security," Abe said of this week's missile testing. "But in any case it is a violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution."

U.S. officials made similar comments in Washington.

"We expect North Korea to refrain from conducting further provocative ballistic missile launches, activity that is destabilizing to the security of northeast Asia," said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council.

Meanwhile, a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency made its way from the North Korean capital to the Yongbyon reactor, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the northeast.

The 5-megawatt reactor, believed capable of churning out enough plutonium for one atomic bomb per year, is at the center of the international efforts to halt North Korea's nuclear program.

The team was invited by North Korea to discuss details of shutting down the reactor, as it pledged under an international accord in February. It is the first IAEA trip to the facility since its monitors were expelled from the country in late 2002. (Watch one analyst describe the team's arrival in N. Korea as only an 'initial step' )

"We go to see the facilities and continue our discussions in more details," Olli Heinonen, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in footage shot by APTN at his Pyongyang hotel before he departed for the Yongbyon complex.

Heinonen, whose team arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday, declined to provide details of his discussions with North Korean officials so far and emphasized that the visit to Yongbyon, expected to last into Friday, was not a formal inspection.

"We are here to talk about the verification and monitoring arrangement," Heinonen said.

Asked if the North might begin to shut down the reactor during his visit there, Heinonen told reporters that he and his team will see "what we have on the table" Friday evening.

A formal inspection of the facility would require a formal agreement outlining how it would be conducted, subject to approval by the Vienna-based IAEA board of governors, Heinonen said Wednesday.

The North agreed to close the Yongbyon reactor in February in exchange for economic aid and political concessions, under an accord reached in six-party talks also including the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea.

But the communist nation ignored an April deadline to do so because of a banking dispute with the United States.

That dispute was settled this week after months of delay, and North Korea announced Monday that it would move forward with the disarmament deal.

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported that North Korea tested a short-range missile on Wednesday.

Two officials at the U.S. Defense Department confirmed the report, but said there were three launches and that they took place Tuesday. The discrepancies could not immediately be reconciled, and South Korea's Defense Ministry declined to comment.

The missiles were fired within the North's territorial waters, the U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Such missile tests have the potential for spiking tensions in the standoff over North Korea's nuclear program. However, the country's military is not believed to have the ability to mount a nuclear weapon on a missile.

It was the third time in a month that the North test-fired a short-range missile, following launches May 25 and June 7.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 29 Jun 07 - 09:00 AM

U.N. monitors satisfied with visit

POSTED: 3:58 a.m. EDT, June 29, 2007

Story Highlights• Facilities remain operational, Heinonen says
• Heinonen has not indicated a timeline for the reactor's closure
• IAEA's trip was to discuss shutdown and verification procedures with North Korea

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) -- U.N. monitors expressed strong satisfaction Friday with a rare visit to North Korea's main nuclear reactor, praising the communist regime for its cooperation in an indication Pyongyang is serious about meeting its promise to close the facility.

The team from the International Atomic Energy Agency returned Friday to the North Korean capital from a two-day trip to the Yongbyon nuclear complex, broadcaster APTN reported. It was the first IAEA visit to the facility since U.N. monitors were expelled from the country in 2002.

Pyongyang pledged to close Yongbyon in exchange for economic aid and political concessions in an agreement with the U.S., China, Japan, Russia and South Korea. The purpose of the IAEA trip is to discuss shutdown and verification procedures with North Korea.

"We visited all the places which we are planning to visit and cooperation was excellent," IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen said in footage shot by APTN.

Heinonen, who added that the facilities remain operational, said more discussions were planned Friday with North Korean officials.

The 5-megawatt reactor, believed capable of churning out enough plutonium for one atomic bomb a year, is at the center of international efforts to halt North Korea's nuclear program. North Korea mounted its first atomic test explosion last October.

Heinonen, whose team arrived in North Korea on Tuesday from Beijing, did not indicate a timeline for its closure.

"It's not yet the point of shutdown so that is still to come," he said. Asked by a reporter, however, how many facilities at the complex would likely be closed, he answered, "I think five."

Other facilities his team saw at Yongbyon included an unfinished 50-megawatt reactor, the fuel fabrication plant and reprocessing plant, Heinonen said.

Heinonen said Thursday that the two-day trip to Yongbyon could give a better indication of when North Korea would close the reactor.

"We are here to negotiate the arrangements, so let's see now when we get to Friday evening what we have on the table," Heinonen said in footage broadcast by APTN in Pyongyang before he departed for the reactor.

In Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she hoped for a swift shutdown.

"We hope for now rapid progress given the beginning, we believe, of the North Korean efforts to meet their initial action obligations," Rice said, before meeting South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon.

Song told reporters after the meeting that six-party nuclear talks with North Korea can resume even before the North's reactor closure is completed, as long as Pyongyang starts the shutdown, Yonhap news agency reported.

The Foreign Ministry in Seoul could not immediately confirm the comments.

Though North Korea pledged to close Yongbyon, it ignored an April deadline to do so because of a dispute with Washington over North Korean funds frozen in a Macau bank because U.S. allegations of money laundering and other wrongdoing.

That was finally settled this week after months of delays, and North Korea said Monday it would move forward with the disarmament deal.

The February agreement's initial phase calls for North Korea to shut the Yongbyon reactor and receive 50,000 tons heavy fuel oil assistance.

The six parties to the agreement are China, Japan, the two Koreas, Russia and the United States.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Jul 07 - 04:05 PM

U.S. implicates Iran in January attack

By LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writer
37 minutes ago



BAGHDAD - The U.S. military accused Iran on Monday of a direct role in a sophisticated militant attack that killed five American troops in Iraq, portraying Tehran as waging a proxy war through Shiite extremists.

The claims over the January attack marked a sharp escalation in U.S. accusations that Iran has been arming and financing Iraqi militants, and for the first time linked the Iranian effort to its ally, Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia. The allegations could endanger Iraqi efforts to hold a new round of talks between the U.S. and Iran.

U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner said the Quds Force, part of Iran's elite Republican Guards, was seeking to build an Iraqi version of Hezbollah to fight U.S. and Iraqi forces — and had brought in Hezbollah operatives to help train and organize militants.

"Our intelligence reveals that the senior leadership in Iran is aware of this activity," Bergner told a Baghdad news conference. He said it would be "hard to imagine" that Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei did not know about the activity.

Iran has denied past claims that it was backing Iraqi militants — including accusations that it was providing them with a particularly deadly type of roadside bomb, the explosively formed penetrator. Its ally Hezbollah has denied having any role in Iraq, saying it operates only in Lebanon.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini rejected the allegations Monday, saying "American leaders have gotten into the habit of issuing ridiculous and false statements without providing evidence, with political and psychological aims."

But Bergner said an extensive Quds Force program was revealed through interrogations of an alleged Lebanese Hezbollah operative, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, and an Iraqi militant, Qais al-Khazaali, along with documents seized with them. Both men were captured in March in the southern city of Basra.

The Quds Force is providing up to $3 million a month to Iraqi militants and bringing them to three training camps outside Tehran to learn how to carry out bombings, raids and kidnappings, Bergner said. Most of those who trained in Iran were extremists who broke away from Iraqi Shiite militias, including the Mahdi Army loyal to anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, he said.

Dakdouk, a 24-year veteran of Hezbollah, was sent to Iraq "as a surrogate for the Iranian Quds Force" to finance and arm militant cells known as "special groups," the general said.

The goal was to organize militants "in ways that mirrored how Hezbollah was organized in Lebanon." Hezbollah is one of the region's most disciplined and powerful militant groups, able to fight Israel's military to a near standstill in a war last summer.

Dakdouk told his interrogators that the militants behind the Jan. 20 surprise attack in the southern city of Karbala "could not have conducted this complex operation without the support and direction of the Quds Force," Bergner said.

The Karbala attack was one of the most sophisticated against U.S. forces in the 4-year-old Iraqi war.

Carrying false IDs, up to a dozen fighters disguised themselves as an American security team. They got past checkpoints to reach a provincial government building, where they opened fire with machine guns and explosives. One U.S. soldier was killed in the initial attack, and four others were abducted and found shot to death soon after.

Al-Khazaali was in charge of special groups around Iraq and confessed to ordering the Karbala attack, Bergner said. A 22-page document seized with him detailed the operation, showing that the Quds Force had developed detailed information on U.S. soldiers' "shift changes and defenses" at the government building, "and this information was shared with the attackers," Bergner said.

A total of 18 "higher-level operatives" from the Iranian-backed special groups have been arrested and three others killed since February, Bergner said.

The Shiite-led Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is backed by the U.S. but is also closely tied to Iran, and it has hoped that talks between the two rivals could ease the tensions between them and reduce Iraq's violence.

An initial Baghdad session in February between ambassadors from the two countries, however, made little progress, overshadowed by accusations by each side that the other was fueling Iraq's turmoil. Iraq is trying to organize a second meeting, but no date has been set.

Sami al-Askari, al-Maliki adviser, said, "We don't rule out that there is Iranian interference by financing armed groups, whether Shiite or Sunni, or even that there might be some Hezbollah elements training the groups."

But he insisted the U.S. accusations "will not affect the Iranian-American meeting."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack echoed Bergner's charges, saying they were "another data point in what is a troubling picture of Iranian negative involvement in Iraq."

"We have found that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has essentially subcontracted out to some elements of Hezbollah, using them as a pass through for material, technology and other material assistance," McCormack said. "It is of deep concern to us."

Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the allegations about Hezbollah were not surprising.

"Iran has always worked through Hezbollah, and it makes sense because Hezbollah is well-versed in this kind of terrain ... in this kind of ambiguous situation where there is sectarian violence and an outside occupation," said Takeyh.

An American soldier was killed Monday by an explosion in Salahuddin province, a center for Sunni insurgents northwest of Baghdad. The U.S. military also reported the deaths of five U.S. service members killed in fighting a day earlier, in attacks in Baghdad and western Anbar province.

But violence appeared sharply down in Baghdad and other parts of the country, amid an intensified U.S. security sweep aimed at uprooting Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in the capital and areas to the northeast and south.

Iraqi police reported four civilians killed in separate attacks in Baghdad. And car bomb hit the Baghdad district of Binouk in the evening, killing seven people and wounding 33, hospital officials said.

U.S. warplanes struck buildings in the mostly Shiite city of Diwaniyah with 500-pound bombs early Monday, targeting sites suspected as the source of mortar fire, the U.S. Air Force said. Iraqi police in the city said the raid killed 10 civilians, including women and children, wounded 25 others and damaged six homes. The police spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

AP Television News footage from the area showed houses with large holes, as residents dug through rubble, pulling out at least one person on a stretcher. Following the raid, residents protested in the streets, and Iraqi police fired in the air to disperse them, killing one person. Some protesters fired back, wounding two policemen, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 16 Jul 07 - 08:01 AM

U.N. confirms N. Korea has shut down its nuclear reactor

Story Highlights
NEW: U.N. inspectors verify North Korea has shut down its nuclear reactor

NEW: S. Korea sent more oil to the North on Monday to reward its compliance

Shutdown is North's first step in five years toward de-nuclearization

U.S. welcomes Pyongyang's announcement of reactor shutdown

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- United Nations inspectors have verified that North Korea has shut down its sole functioning nuclear reactor, the chief of the watchdog agency said Monday, confirming the isolated country had taken its first step in nearly five years to halt production of atomic weapons.

South Korea sent more oil to the North on Monday to reward its compliance with an international disarmament agreement.

"Our inspectors are there. They verified the shutting down of the reactor yesterday," said Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency,

"The process has been going quite well and we have had good cooperation from North Korea. It's a good step in the right direction," ElBaradei said, speaking in Bangkok ahead of an event sponsored by Thailand's Ministry of Science.

A North Korean diplomat said Sunday that North Korea was ready to start dismantling its nuclear programs following the shutdown of its reactor, as long as the United States lifts all sanctions against the communist nation.

Kim Myong Gil, minister at the North's mission to the United Nations in New York, confirmed the reactor was shut down Saturday after receipt of a South Korean oil shipment.

"Immediately after the arrival of the first heavy fuel oil, the facilities were shut down," Kim told The Associated Press by telephone.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry said any future progress in disarmament would depend "on what practical measures the U.S. and Japan, in particular, will take to roll back their hostile policies toward" North Korea, according to the statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

IAEA inspectors were expelled from the North in late 2002 at the start of the nuclear crisis. A 10-member team arrived Saturday in North Korea to make sure the reactor at Yongbyon was switched off -- the first step by the North to scale back its weapons program since the standoff began.

Kim noted that the next steps included the North making a declaration of its nuclear program and disabling the facilities.

U.S. general: North Korea tested advanced missiles

But he said that would happen only if Washington takes actions "in parallel," including removing wider economic sanctions and striking the country from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

"After the shutdown, then we will discuss about the economic sanctions lifting and removing of the terrorism list. All those things should be discussed and resolved," Kim said.

The main U.S. envoy on the North Korea nuclear issue, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, has said he believes the North's nuclear facilities could be completely disabled by the end of the year and that he expected a complete declaration of its atomic programs within months.

Responding to the North's demand that sanctions be lifted, Hill said Sunday in Seoul: "They want some things, we want some things, and we have to sit down and figure out how everything's going to be sequenced."

Japan said it was ready to discuss outstanding issues with North Korea, but said the country had already delayed implementing an agreement reached at the arms talks in February.

"The North is already running late on the agreement, and we urge them to carry through with the steps immediately," said Nori Shikata, assistant press secretary for Japan's Foreign Ministry.

Hill said earlier in Tokyo that it could take the IAEA at least a day to verify the shutdown because there were five sites within the North's nuclear complex to inspect, including the reactor.

Despite the lack of verification, the U.S. diplomat said he was confident the shutdown had begun.

"I think we have every reason to believe they have started the shutdown," he said, adding that the complete process would take a few days to allow equipment to cool before IAEA seals could be applied.

Hill was touring the region ahead of resumed six-nation nuclear talks with North Korea starting Wednesday in Beijing. That session will focus on setting up a "work plan and a timeframe" for how disarmament would proceed, Hill said in Seoul, adding he planned to meet his North Korean counterpart Tuesday ahead of the formal start of talks.

Hill also said he hoped working groups set up under the talks process -- to discuss details of the North's disarmament and on normalizing its relations with the U.S. and Japan -- could resume meeting by the end of August.

"If we don't take these steps a little more quickly than we've taken that first step, then we're going to fall way behind again," Hill said.

South Korea's nuclear envoy Chun Yung-woo called the North's shutdown a "milestone" and told the AP the resumed nuclear negotiations would be held "in a better atmosphere than ever before." The talks last met in March.

Still, Chun stressed "the next phase will be more difficult than the reactor shutdown."

The oil that the North received Saturday via a South Korean ship was an initial 6,200 tons of a total 50,000 tons as a reward for the reactor shutdown. Under a February agreement at the arms talks, North Korea will receive a total equivalent of 1 million tons of oil for dismantling its nuclear programs.

North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted its reactor in early 2003, after Washington accused it of a secret uranium enrichment program in violation of an earlier disarmament deal and halted oil deliveries.

International negotiations on the issue have snagged on a variety of issues, including the North's anger over comments by U.S. officials about its government and financial restrictions placed on a bank where North Korea held accounts.

Moves to resolve the standoff gained momentum in the wake of North Korea's underground test nuclear explosion in October, after which the U.S. took steps to reverse its previous hard-line policy and accommodate North Korean demands.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Teribus
Date: 16 Jul 07 - 10:36 AM

By the bye, did any of you prophets of doom ever get onto that Russian who swore blind that the US were going to attack Iran on the 6th April? Oh! yes I forgot, he didn't say which 6th of April.

But I take it that North Korea is now off the list.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 17 Jul 07 - 11:34 AM

A Reactor Shut Down

Diplomacy with North Korea finally takes a step forward.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007; Page A18


INTERNATIONAL inspectors yesterday confirmed that North Korea had shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor -- and that nearly four years of multilateral diplomacy by the Bush administration had achieved a tangible result. Though some Western experts believe that the aging facility was already inoperative or close to it, the shutdown and readmission of inspectors is still significant: It will provide some assurance that North Korea's stock of nuclear bombs and plutonium will not grow. But as the administration itself has acknowledged, the first real test of whether North Korea can be disarmed by diplomacy still lies ahead.

The test will be whether the regime of Kim Jong Il follows through on its commitment to fully disclose all of its nuclear programs and materials -- something it has never been willing to do, even when it was bound by the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The CIA believed North Korea had assembled one or two crude nuclear weapons by the early 1990s; since 2002, when it evicted inspectors and withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it may have produced enough plutonium for another 10 to 12 bombs. It also purchased uranium-enrichment equipment from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan but has never publicly admitted it. Full disclosure would reveal just how large North Korea's nuclear arsenal is and would set the stage for its possible dismantlement. Disclosure would also indicate that one of the world's most isolated and criminal regimes might be prepared to initiate an entirely new relationship with its neighbors and the United States.

It's hard to believe that a dictatorship that tolerated the death by famine of millions of its own people, that brutally imprisons thousands of others in camps, and that depends on drug trafficking, cigarette smuggling and counterfeiting for much of its income is interested in or capable of such a momentous change. In the past, Pyongyang has used negotiations over its weapons merely as a means to extort food, fuel and money, and it has proved skillful in doing so. But the State Department is optimistic; the lead negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, predicted recently that "we are going to be able to achieve our full objectives" and that North Korea's promised disclosure could be made within months.

What isn't yet known is what North Korea will demand in exchange for further steps. The deal it struck with the United States, South Korea, China, Japan and Russia in February calls for it to receive 950,000 tons of fuel oil, in addition to the 50,000 tons now being delivered. But before shutting down Yongbyon, North Korea delayed for three months and extracted several financial and political concessions from a Bush administration eager to show progress. Mr. Kim is likely to demand much bigger favors, which is why it's not surprising to hear about planning at State for negotiations on a possible peace treaty. The danger is that North Korea will take advantage of an outgoing administration's zeal to record a legacy achievement, without changing its longstanding and fundamental commitment to nuclear weapons. That's why U.S. negotiators should insist that a full and credible nuclear disclosure by North Korea precede any further concessions by the United States or its partners.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 09:32 AM

Detained Americans appear to 'confess' on Iranian state television

Story Highlights
Two Iranian-Americans appear and make statements on Iranian state TV

Program was heavily promoted and heavily edited

U.S. objects to detainees' being "paraded" on TV, demands their release

One is a think-tank scholar, the other an urban planning consultant


TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iranian television Wednesday aired lengthy excerpts of what it called confessions by two jailed Iranian-Americans accused of plotting to undermine the Islamic republic, a development the U.S. State Department condemned.

The heavily promoted, heavily edited broadcast on Iran's IRIB television network featured scholar Haleh Esfandiari and urban planning consultant Kian Tajbakhsh, both of whom were arrested by Iranian authorities over the past few months.

In it, they appear to admit being part of a U.S.-led covert effort to undermine Iran's theocratic government.

"I was consulting with Iranian experts in Washington, D.C., and asking them for names," said Esfandiari, a 67-year-old scholar at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars. "Every once in a while, I would go to Iran when I had a name. I would contact this person and set up a meeting."

The Iranian program cut between their statements and scenes of revolutions in Ukraine, Kyrgystan and the former Soviet republic of Georgia as commentators tried to link their efforts to U.S. efforts to promote change in Iran.

Esfandiari's husband, Shaul Bakhash, said his wife's statement "mirrors the language that the Ministry of Intelligence has used over these last few weeks to describe the case."

He added, "I don't think she looked very well at all. She's lost a great deal of weight. She looked very pale to me."

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Though their surroundings appeared comfortable, both Esfandiari and Tajbakhsh were being held at Evin prison outside Tehran, Iran. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Iranians have refused U.S. requests for consular visits from Swiss diplomats.

"We're appalled by the fact that these innocent people were paraded on Iranian state television," McCormack said. He said none of those held pose any threat to the Iranian regime or people, and should be allowed to return home "as soon as possible."

Washington and Tehran have not had diplomatic relations since 1979.

The United States has repeatedly accused /topics/iran" class="cnnInlineTopic">Iran of meddling in the U.S.-led war in Iraq by supplying weapons and training to Shiite Muslim militias, and is currently holding five Iranians it accuses of aiding those efforts. Iran says the men are diplomats and that the United States raided a consulate it established in the predominantly Kurdish city of Irbil in Iraq. But the United States says the men were taken at a liaison office that lacks diplomatic status.

Esfandiari is the head of the Middle Eastern studies program at the Wilson Center. She went to Iran in late 2006 to visit her 93-year-old mother, and was prevented from leaving for months during repeated rounds of questioning by Iranian authorities before her arrest in May.

Former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, the center's director, told CNN in May that Esfandiari may have been captured because the Iranians mistakenly linked her to a $75 million U.S. campaign to promote democratic liberalization within Iran. Hamilton said Esfandiari received no money from that effort, but said the U.S. government should be more open about the fund's goals.

"If the policy of the United States government is to overthrow the government, then the Democracy Fund obviously would be viewed with a great deal of suspicion and hostility by the target government," he said.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 Jul 07 - 09:45 AM

My Mother's Interrogators

In an Iranian Propaganda Broadcast, the Real Guilty Party Is Clear

By Haleh Bakhash
Thursday, July 19, 2007; Page A19

Yesterday marked 6 1/2 months since masked agents of Iran's Intelligence Ministry robbed my mother, Haleh Esfandiari, of her belongings and passports at knife-point. It had been more than 70 days since her incarceration in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison before I finally saw her this week -- not as a free woman, but in footage of a KGB-style television "confession" broadcast by Iran's state-run television.

The program broadcast nationwide yesterday -- announced with much fanfare by the Intelligence Ministry on Monday and expected to be continued today -- was supposed to show Iran and ostensibly the world my mother's complicity in a plan to undermine the Islamic Republic using, of all things, female activists and academics. But the footage turned out to be a typical secret police job of deception, vicious in intent yet clumsily contrived.

The broadcast began with a lie. My mother was shown sitting on a sofa in what looked like the living room of a house or a pleasant office, a plant next to the couch, a bottle of water on the table in front of her. In reality my mother, head of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and a 67-year-old grandmother of two, has spent the past 10 weeks in a cramped cell that past prisoners have said lacks a cot or even a mat. For being an American Iranian scholar, she has been forced to sleep on the floor. She has been subjected to hundreds of hours of harsh and intimidating interrogations, often while blindfolded, totally cut off from the outside world and without access to her family or lawyer, despite our repeated requests to see her.

The broadcast showed my mother "conversing" with someone off camera in what was meant to appear to be a relaxed setting. Her voice was strong. But I was shocked at her appearance. She has aged several years in just months. She looked gaunt -- she has lost a considerable amount of weight -- and pale.

The bulk of the program was made up of footage of years-old revolutions in Eastern Europe. Also shown was another jailed dual citizen, Kian Tajbakhsh, an urban planner arrested in May. My mother is seen saying that her job was "to identify speakers" and "to organize conferences." These and other statements she made about her work at the Wilson Center were cut off in mid-sentence and spliced with seemingly endless footage of civil unrest in Eastern European countries, as if organizing conferences and talks amounts to revolutionary activity. So it went from one sorry frame to another.

It was obvious from the words she used that much of what my mother said was scripted. Some of the phrases that she and two other prisoners -- Tajbakhsh and a man arrested last year who has since been released -- are shown saying echo statements that Iran's Intelligence Ministry has issued to describe their cases. Her statements, to me, sounded wooden -- unnatural and coerced. But did she say anything incriminating? Certainly not.

What Iran's security authorities, in their infinite wisdom, are presenting to the world and to their domestic audience is a doctored "interview" in which dishonest cutting and splicing unconvincingly attempt to make the most ordinary statement appear to be part of a great "conspiracy," a harbinger of massive subversion.

As I watched my mother, I thought of our family's trauma over the past several months and of the suffering of other families whose parents, children, brothers and sisters have been unlawfully imprisoned in Iran and who cannot be heard.

But I also thought about the fact that our ordeal has been nothing compared with my mother's: nearly seven months of interrogations; more than 10 weeks in solitary confinement; threats of trial and long years of imprisonment; being alone in the hands of brutal men going about their brutal business.

When the television program ended, I felt contempt for my mother's jailers and interrogators. But I was filled with admiration for my mother. In hugely difficult circumstances, she preserved her dignity, held her head high and did not lie. She did not falsely implicate others. It is her jailers, I thought, who have to work in the dark, behind the closed doors of prison interrogation rooms. It is they who hide their faces, who try to manipulate public opinion by controlling the media, smearing reputations and dishonestly splicing film.

My mother has nothing to be ashamed of. They do.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 10 Aug 07 - 09:25 AM

From the Washington Post:


Bankrolling Iran
The World Bank's Largess Is Undermining the U.N. and the West

By Mark Kirk
Friday, August 10, 2007; Page A13


Both the U.N. Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency have found Iran in breach of its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The IAEA reports that Iran ignored the Security Council's February deadline to stop enriching uranium and has even expanded its nuclear program.

As Iran's Atomic Energy Organization moves toward its announced goal of operating 50,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges in Natanz, the World Bank is funding nine government projects in Iran totaling $1.35 billion -- one of which operates in Isfahan, where Iran's nuclear program is headquartered.

While the World Bank is part of the U.N. family, the bank's board is disconnected from the policies of key U.N. agencies -- especially the Security Council and the IAEA. The United States remains the top investor in the World Bank, contributing $950 million in 2006 and $940 million this year. In June the House of Representatives approved another $950 million. Meanwhile, the bank will disburse $220 million to Iran this year, with more than $870 million in the pipeline for 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all certified that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. The Treasury Department's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence spends considerable effort locating Iranian assets to freeze.

Yet published World Bank documents reflect a worldview toward Iran that is backward, uneducated and outdated. All current projects in Iran are based on a 2001 Interim Assistance Strategy, in which the bank wrote:

"There is a relatively animated and active political competition in Iran through which people express their views, choice of society, economic aspirations and political representation. . . . Since the 1979 Revolution, Iran has given strong and special emphasis to human development, social protection, and 'social justice,' with significant progress to date."

Freedom House, the global leader in assessing personal and political freedoms, had a different perspective in its 2006 Freedom in the World report:

"Iranians cannot change their government democratically. . . . Corruption is pervasive. . . . Freedom of expression is limited. . . . Religious freedom is limited. . . . Academic freedom in Iran is limited. . . . Although the constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention, these practices are very common and increasingly routine."

The 2001 bank document notes that Iran has begun "an era of détente and greater openness to the outside world." The Security Council and the IAEA appear to disagree with that assessment.

One has to wonder why a country that exports 2.6 million barrels of oil a day needs World Bank development assistance. Iran's oil export revenue nearly doubled between 2003 and 2005, from $23.7 billion to $46.6 billion. That number grew to $50 billion last year. Iran's real gross domestic product grew 4.8 percent in 2004 and 5.6 percent in 2005. Why does Iran need World Bank aid?

Furthermore, the bank's investment in Iran stands in stark contrast to its work in Iraq. Iraq was a founding member of the World Bank in 1945, yet it took the bank 2 1/2 years after the fall of Saddam Hussein to approve one development project. To date, the board has approved only four projects, totaling $399 million, for the new Iraqi government -- and little of that money has been spent.

The World Bank's board is not only disconnected from the Security Council's policies but is also at odds with the Iran policies of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

As the Treasury acts to dry up funding for Tehran, the World Bank is providing support to the Iranian government through 2010. As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pledges the destruction of Israel, funds Hezbollah and Hamas, and defies Security Council resolutions, the bank's board will approve further Iran disbursements. U.S. law requires the American executive director at the bank to vote against any project for the Iranian government. However, since the United States has no veto power on the bank's board, this policy is largely symbolic. We need to do better.

This summer the bank has gotten a president who works well with allies -- former deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick. It would be prudent for Zoellick to realign the bank's policies with Security Council resolutions on Iran. As long as the Security Council condemns the actions of Ahmadinejad, the World Bank should suspend funding for his government.

Multilateral organizations represent the best and greatest potential for U.S. and allied diplomacy. The success of this diplomacy will be enhanced if the United Nations and World Bank work together, particularly on Iran.

The writer, a Republican representative from Illinois, is a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on state-foreign operations. He previously served on the staff of the World Bank's International Finance Corp.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Aug 07 - 02:29 PM

Washington Post:

Tougher on Iran
The Revolutionary Guard is at war with the United States. Why not fight back?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007; Page A14


IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARY Guard Corps is a sprawling organization involved in myriad activities, including guarding borders, pumping oil, operating ports, smuggling, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, building Iran's nuclear program -- and supplying the weapons that are killing a growing number of American soldiers in Iraq. According to the Pentagon, one-third of the U.S. troops who died in Iraq last month -- 23 soldiers -- were killed by "explosively formed penetrators," sophisticated bombs supplied by Tehran. Iran also delivers rockets and other weapons to Shiite militias; on Sunday, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said that about 50 members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps were operating in the area south of Baghdad, where they are "facilitating training of Shiite extremists."

In effect, the Revolutionary Guard, a radical state within Iran's Islamic state, is waging war against the United States and trying to kill as many American soldiers as possible. In response, the Bush administration is considering categorizing the Guard as a "specially designated global terrorist" organization under a post-Sept. 11 executive order aimed at blocking terrorists' access to their assets. The measure is reportedly part of a package the administration is considering to increase pressure on Iran at a time when it is defying U.N. orders to freeze its nuclear program and is showing no hint of flexibility in talks with the United States and the European Union.

This seems to be the least the United States should be doing, given the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq. What's puzzling are the murmurs of disapproval from European diplomats and others who say they favor using diplomacy and economic pressure, rather than military action, to rein in Iran. So far, the diplomacy and sanctions haven't been working: Iran has been unresponsive to extensive European deal-making efforts and hasn't taken up a year-old U.S. offer of across-the-board negotiations in exchange for stopping its uranium enrichment. The sanctions have been too weak to cause the regime serious discomfort, and tougher measures are being blocked in the U.N. Security Council by China and Russia.

Increased economic pressure could be the main byproduct of designating the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. The designation could cause banks and exporters in Europe and Asia that do business with Guard affiliates to pull back. So what's the objection? Some European diplomats say they fear that an escalating confrontation between the United States and Iran will end in war. But sanctions are the alternative to war -- Iran already rejected initiatives aimed at ending its nuclear program by offering economic concessions and other carrots.

Others suggest that the administration's labeling of a principal arm of the Iranian regime as a terrorist group would contradict its recent embrace of bilateral talks with Tehran about Iraq. Yet that contradiction, if it exists, seems puny compared with that of a regime that participates in those discussions while escalating its surrogate war against American troops. If Iran chooses to fight as well as talk, the United States should not shrink from fighting back with all the economic weapons it can muster.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 21 Sep 07 - 11:04 PM

Washington Post:

Middle East Volcano

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 21, 2007; Page A19

On Sept. 6, something important happened in northern Syria. Problem is, no one knows exactly what. Except for those few who were involved, and they're not saying.

We do know that Israel carried out an airstrike. How do we know it was important? Because in Israel, where leaking is an art form, even the best-informed don't have a clue. They tell me they have never seen a better-kept secret.

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Which suggests that whatever happened near Dayr az Zawr was no accidental intrusion into Syrian airspace, no dry run for an attack on Iran, no strike on some conventional target such as an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base or a weapons shipment on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Circumstantial evidence points to this being an attack on some nuclear facility provided by North Korea.

Three days earlier, a freighter flying the North Korean flag docked in the Syrian port city of Tartus with a shipment of "cement." Long way to go for cement. Within days, a top State Department official warned that "there may have been contact between Syria and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment." Three days later, the six-party meeting on dismantling North Korea's nuclear facilities scheduled for Sept. 19 was suddenly postponed, officially by China, almost certainly at the behest of North Korea.

Apart from the usual suspects -- Syria, Iran, Libya and Russia -- only two countries registered strong protests to the Israeli strike: Turkey and North Korea. Turkey we can understand. Its military may have permitted Israel an overflight corridor without ever having told the Islamist civilian government. But North Korea? What business is this of North Korea's? Unless it was a North Korean facility being hit.

Which raises alarms for many reasons. First, it would undermine the whole North Korean disarmament process. Pyongyang might be selling its stuff to other rogue states or perhaps just temporarily hiding it abroad while permitting ostentatious inspections back home.

Second, there are ominous implications for the Middle East. Syria has long had chemical weapons -- on Monday, Jane's Defence Weekly reported on an accident that killed dozens of Syrians and Iranians loading a nerve-gas warhead onto a Syrian missile -- but Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Syria.

Tensions are already extremely high because of Iran's headlong rush to go nuclear. In fending off sanctions and possible military action, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has chosen a radically aggressive campaign to assemble, deploy, flaunt and partially activate Iran's proxies in the Arab Middle East:

(1) Hamas launching rockets into Israeli towns and villages across the border from the Gaza Strip. Its intention is to invite an Israeli reaction, preferably a bloody and telegenic ground assault.

(2) Hezbollah heavily rearmed with Iranian rockets transshipped through Syria and preparing for the next round of fighting with Israel. The third Lebanon war, now inevitable, awaits only Tehran's order.

(3) Syria, Iran's only Arab client state, building up forces across the Golan Heights frontier with Israel. And on Wednesday, yet another anti-Syrian member of Lebanon's parliament was killed in a massive car bombing.

(4) The al-Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard training and equipping Shiite extremist militias in the use of the deadliest IEDs and rocketry against American and Iraqi troops. Iran is similarly helping the Taliban attack NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Why is Iran doing this? Because it has its eye on a single prize: the bomb. It needs a bit more time, knowing that once it goes nuclear, it becomes the regional superpower and Persian Gulf hegemon.

Iran's assets in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq are poised and ready. Ahmadinejad's message is this: If anyone dares attack our nuclear facilities, we will fully activate our proxies, unleashing unrestrained destruction on Israel, moderate Arabs, Iraq and U.S. interests -- in addition to the usual, such as mining the Strait of Hormuz and causing an acute oil crisis and worldwide recession.

This is an extremely high-stakes game. The time window is narrow. In probably less than two years, Ahmadinejad will have the bomb.

The world is not quite ready to acquiesce. The new president of France has declared a nuclear Iran " unacceptable." The French foreign minister warned that "it is necessary to prepare for the worst" -- and "the worst, it's war, sir."

Which makes it all the more urgent that powerful sanctions be slapped on the Iranian regime. Sanctions will not stop Ahmadinejad. But there are others in the Iranian elite who might stop him and the nuclear program before the volcano explodes. These rival elites may be radical, but they are not suicidal. And they believe, with reason, that whatever damage Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic folly may inflict upon the region and the world, on Crusader and Jew, on infidel and believer, the one certain result of such an eruption is Iran's Islamic republic buried under the ash.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Peace
Date: 21 Sep 07 - 11:27 PM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,2170766,00.html

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 Sep 07 - 02:07 PM

Hmmm.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 28 Sep 07 - 04:07 PM

France Flips While Congress Shifts

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, September 28, 2007; Page A19

Ahmadinejad at Columbia provided the entertainment, but Sarkozy at the United Nations provided the substance. On the largest possible stage -- the U.N. General Assembly -- President Nicolas Sarkozy put Iran on notice. His predecessor, Jacques Chirac, had said that France could live with an Iranian nuclear bomb. Sarkozy said that France cannot. He declared Iran's nuclear ambitions "an unacceptable risk to stability in the region and in the world."

His foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, had said earlier that the world faces two choices -- successful diplomacy to stop Iran's nuclear program or war. And Sarkozy himself has no great hopes for the Security Council, where China and Russia are blocking any effective action against Iran. He does hope to get the European Union to join the United States in imposing serious sanctions.

"Weakness and renunciation do not lead to peace," he warned. "They lead to war." This warning about appeasement was intended particularly for Germany, which for commercial reasons has been resisting U.S. pressure to support effective sanctions.

Sarkozy is no American lapdog. Like every Fifth Republic president, he begins with the notion of French exceptionalism. But whereas traditional Gaullism tended to define French grandeur as establishing a counterweight to American power, Sarkozy is not averse to seeing French assertiveness exercised in conjunction with the United States. As Kouchner put it, "permanent anti-Americanism" is "a tradition we are working to overcome."

This French about-face creates a crucial shift in the balance of forces within Europe. The East Europeans are naturally pro-American for reasons of history (fresh memories of America's role in defeating their Soviet occupiers) and geography (physical proximity to a newly revived and aggressive Russia). Western Europe is intrinsically wary of American power and culturally anti-American by reflex. France's change from Chirac to Sarkozy, from foreign minister Dominique de Villepin (who actively lobbied Third World countries to oppose America on Iraq) to Kouchner (who supported the U.S. invasion on humanitarian grounds) represents an enormous shift in Old Europe's relationship to the United States.


Britain is a natural ally. Germany, given its history, is more follower than leader. France can define European policy, and Sarkozy intends to.

The French flip is only one part of the changing landscape that has given new life to Bush's Iran and Iraq policies in the waning months of his administration. The mood in Congress also has significantly shifted.

Just this week, the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for very strong sanctions on Iran and urging the administration to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist entity. A similar measure passed the Senate on Wednesday, 76 to 22, declaring that it is "a critical national interest of the United States" to prevent Iran from using Shiite militias inside Iraq to subvert the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.

A few months ago, the question was: Will the Democratic Congress force a withdrawal from Iraq? Today the question in Congress is: What can be done to achieve success in Iraq -- most specifically, by countering Iran, which is intent on seeing us fail?

This change in mood and subject is entirely the result of changes on the ground. It takes time for reality to seep into a Washington debate. But after the Petraeus-Crocker testimony, the reality of the relative success of our new counterinsurgency strategy -- and the renewed possibility of ultimate success in Iraq -- became no longer deniable.

And that reality is reflected even in the rhetoric of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the most politically sophisticated of the Democratic presidential candidates. She does vote against war funding in order to alter the president's policy (and to appease the left), but that is as a senator. When asked what she would do as president, she carefully hedges. She says that it would depend on the situation at the time, for example, whether our alliance with the Sunni tribes will have succeeded in defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq. But when asked by ABC News if she would bring U.S. troops home by January 2013, she refused to "get into hypotheticals and make pledges."

Bush's presidency -- and foreign policy -- were pronounced dead on the morning after the 2006 election. Not so. France is going to join us in a last-ditch effort to find a nonmilitary solution to the Iranian issue. And on Iraq, the relative success of the surge has won President Bush the leeway to continue the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy to the end of his term. Congress, and realistic Democrats, are finally beginning to think seriously about making that strategy succeed and planning for what comes after.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 02:32 PM

Washington Post:

Sanctions Won't Stop Tehran

By Selig S. Harrison
Tuesday, October 2, 2007; Page A19

Suppose that the Bush administration abandons its campaign for economic sanctions, tones down talk of war and opens direct negotiations with Iran about its nuclear program. Suppose also that it drops its insistence on the suspension of uranium enrichment as a precondition for dialogue.

Would Iran accept the terms for denuclearization accepted by North Korea in the direct negotiations that led to the Feb. 13 agreement with Pyongyang and that are now being implemented in fits and starts: a no-attack pledge, normalized economic and diplomatic relations, economic aid, and removal from the U.S. list of terrorist states?

Based on a week of high-level discussions in Tehran recently and on previous visits during earlier stages of the nuclear program, my assessment is that Iran would demand much tougher terms, including a freeze of Israel's Dimona reactor and a ban on the U.S. use of nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf.

Both supporters and opponents of Iran's clerical regime favor developing a civilian nuclear program, not only for electricity generation but also because it can be upgraded to produce nuclear weapons. But Tehran is not in a hurry to invoke its nuclear option, I was told, and is prepared for a verifiable ceiling on its uranium program that would bar weapons-grade enrichment in return for U.S. security concessions.

Such concessions, several officials suggested, would have to go beyond pledges not to attack or to seek "regime change" through covert operations. Alireza Akbari, an adviser to Iran's National Security Council and a former deputy defense minister, was one of those who proposed a freeze of Israel's Dimona reactor and some form of bilateral or multilateral U.S. commitment not to use or deploy nuclear weapons in the Persian Gulf. "How do we know that your four aircraft carriers stationed off our coasts are not equipped with tactical nuclear weapons?" he asked.

Significantly, no one I met demanded the elimination of the approximately 200 nuclear weapons that Israel is believed to have already produced at Dimona or called for a U.S. pledge not to use or deploy nuclear weapons that would extend beyond the Gulf and would nullify the U.S. security commitment to Israel.


There are three major reasons why preventing an Iranian nuclear weapons capability would be much more difficult than getting North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.

First, Iran has petroleum riches. Unlike Pyongyang, it doesn't need a deal for economic reasons.

Second, the Iran-Iraq war, in which an estimated 200,000 Iranians were killed, is still a searing memory in Tehran. "If we had possessed nuclear weapons then, Saddam would not have dared to attack us," says Amir Mohabian, editor of the influential conservative daily Reselaat.

Third, Iran has a strong sense of historically based national identity and wants nuclear weapons primarily to assert major-power status. Kim Jong Il presides over an insecure regime struggling for short-term survival. He has developed nuclear weapons to deter U.S. military and financial pressures that threaten his immediate power and perquisites. The two Koreas would have to confederate and later reunify before Korea could achieve major-power status.

The drive for recognition as a major power has motivated Iran's nuclear ambitions from the start. The late Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi initiated the weapons program 34 years ago, with the help of U.S. and European companies, as part of an effort to establish himself as a nationalist modernizer who would restore the regional preeminence Tehran had intermittently enjoyed in earlier centuries.

To be sure, concern about what was then a nascent Israeli nuclear weapons program and the desire for civilian nuclear energy to supplement petroleum made the acquisition of nuclear technology attractive. But the shah wanted visible progress in nuclear development primarily to enhance his domestic political stature, I was told by Jafar Nadim, then undersecretary of foreign affairs, during a 1978 visit to Tehran. It would be a symbol of Persian technological superiority over Arabs, Nadim said, and would "help us to get the respect we feel we deserve from you people. You should understand, we Persians have a very ancient, very advanced culture, yet we have been a victim of so many insults and invasions, and now we have to stand up."

After winning the presidency in 2005, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recognized that nuclear weapons could be used as an emotive symbol of sovereignty. He has systematically exploited nationalist resentment of U.S. pressure on the nuclear issue to strengthen his position in dealing with the United States and to counter domestic political rivals.

The drive for sanctions will only strengthen Ahmadinejad. In place of economic and military pressure, the United States should seek to defuse the Iranian nuclear danger through bilateral and multilateral dialogue that addresses Iranian and U.S. security concerns from Dimona to the Strait of Hormuz and, eventually, includes all of Iran's key regional neighbors, including Israel.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 02:37 PM

Oh piffle.

Sanctions won't stop the USA either. The USA is the one that is planning to start another war. You're lookin' at the world through a telescope backwards, BB. Note how it makes everything that is real look very, very tiny.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 02:42 PM

"The USA is the one that is planning to start another war"


And it was France and Britain that started WWII- The Germans just took over what they wanted: It was the Allies that made it a war by fighting back.


If you feel that Iran has the right to violate it's treaty obligations to the UN, and to develop nuclear weapons that are a threat to others, then I suppose you can claim that the US might start a war- It would be ok for the Iranians to wipe out Israel, of course, since that would be a peaceful effort...

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: DougR
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 03:47 PM

And the North Korean agreement to get out of the nuclear business was negotiated by what administration? Clinton? I don't think so. Yep, the Bush administration.

(Do I hear muted applause?)

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 03:56 PM

Since N. Korea has agreed several times, and has yet to comply, I don't think we can give Bush credit yet- though there was all sorts of credit given to Clinton for his unsuccessful efforts...

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Teribus
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 04:33 PM

Where the Bush Administration really deserves credit with regard to North Korea is for holding tough to the line that bi-lateral talks amongst parties would not be held all six had to come to a common understanding and agreement - that ended the game that North Korea had been playing for decades.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 04:50 PM

The USA is the one playing the role of pre-WWII Germany at the present time, BB. It's a great power making up patently phony excuses to launch first strikes on minor powers, just as Germany did. It's accusing others of its own devious intentions and its own crimes, just like Germany did. That's why I say you're looking through the telescope backwards.

But if I'd said that about Germany to any loyal German back in '39, of course, they'd have almost certainly thought I was nuts or just plain mistaken or wrongheaded...that's how political loyalty usually works. You just happen to be a loyal American who believes the official line of government and media propaganda. I understand that, and there's nothing I expect to ever be able to do about it...and it doesn't make me regard you badly as a human being, because your intentions are honorable, as are mine.

C'est la vie.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 06:16 PM

I'll respectfully disagree with your assesment, LH.

Whose propaganda is it that I SHOULD believe? I try to read all points of view, and determine what the actual facts are.

Everyone agrees that Iran has violated its obligations, and refuses to stop working on a nuclear device.

Can you show me any POV that does NOT have Iran threatening the present Israeli government and people?

Does, or does not, the US have treaty obligations if Israel is attacked?

If an attack is made on a treaty ally of the US ( such as Canada, NATO members, or Israel) with WMD ( of any kind- chimcal, biological, or nuclear), isn't it the stated policy of ALL US administrations ( as put forward by Truman on) that we will react with force up to and including nuclear weapons?

Is it not the responsibility of the US ( in its own interest) to prevent, when possible, the situation where the US is forced into a nuclear war?


And did not the European powers state ( several years ago) that the US should not act because they would resolve the problem and stop Iran's development of nuclear weapons? Are you claiming that they have been successful?


IF Iran demonstrates that it has a working nuclear weapon, I suspect that the amount of oil coming out of the middle east to ANY country over the next few decades ( it will take that long to put out the fires) will be minimal. Thus China will be drawn in, making it a global thermonuclear war.


And all because we don't want to have the UN hold Iran to the treaty obligations it agreed to when the UN gave it the civilian nuclear technology that Iran claims is all it is trying to develope.

Subject: RE: BS: Who's Next? Iran or Korea?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 07 - 06:39 PM

Of course the USA has treaty obligations to protect Israel if Israel is attacked. I have no argument with that. I think it's Iran and Syria that are in danger of being attacked here, far more than Israel.

(As for covert actions, various forms of unofficial attack and sabotage, terrorist attacks, or attacks by proxy, those have been carried out anyway on all parties by all parties over the last few years, if not decades, so no one has the moral high ground when it comes to that. When I speak of an attack, I'm speaking of a direct attack BY the armed forces of a nation.)

I have no doubt that Iran is enriching uranium...but I have no proof that they are not doing it in order to produce nuclear power, as they claim. If they are doing it indeed to build nuclear weapons, I don't regard the mere building of weapons as a crime. I regard the USE of weapons as a crime.

If you are opposed to nuclear proliferation, and I can well understand why you would be, then you must in all justice be opposed to Israel building and deploying nuclear weapons too, I would think. But you're not. You know as well as I do that they already have done so, everyone knows it. It's just not official. It's an unspoken, unadmitted reality that everyone is aware of.

If you think it's okay for Israel to illegally and clandestinely commit nuclear proliferation and get away with it...but it's not okay for Iran, North Korea, or Syria or anyone else to do it...then what you are saying basically is something like this: Israelis are very good human beings who can do whatever they want to, because I like them. Syrians, Iranians, and North Koreans are evil subhumans who should be massacred if they dare to do what Israelis have already done. They cannot EVER be allowed equality with Israelis or with Americans because they are countries under regimes which are inherently evil, and we will destroy them if they ever dare to do what Israel has already done.

If that's what you're saying, it speaks for itself. I won't say what it is. You wouldn't like it.

Iranians, Syrians, and North Koreans don't like it. No surprise to me. They are the ones under the Amerian-Israeli bombsight, and they know that they are human beings like the rest of us, and due the same degree of human dignity.