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Japanese Tanker Damaged In Straits Of Hormuz; Outside Attack Considered
Some unpleasant possibilities to consider in the aftermath of what appears to have been an attack on a Japanese VLCC. And, of course, if this is another Cheonan in the making, why pick a Japanese false flag scenario? With two US aircraft carriers in the vicinity, one would imagine we should have a pretty good picture of what really happened. Something tells us the official explanation of an "earthquake" as responsible for the boat damage just won't fly.
From Reuters:
A Japanese oil tanker damaged in an explosion in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's most important shipping lanes, was being diverted to a port in the UAE on Wednesday.
One of the 31 crew aboard was injured but no oil leaked from the M Star very large crude carrier (VLCC), according to the Japanese transport ministry.
It said an explosion occurred onboard at around 00:30 a.m. local time (2030 GMT Tuesday), but the cause was unclear.
"A crew member saw light on the horizon just before the explosion, so (ship owner Mitsui O.S.K.) believes there is a possibility it was caused by an outside attack," Japan's ministry said in a statement.
Oman's coastguard said there was no evidence of any attack on the tanker and instead cited an earthquake.
"The boat was hit by a tremor ...we have no information of an attack," an Omani coastguard official told Reuters.
The Strait of Hormuz remained open and it was "business as usual," an official from the Omani ministry of transport said.
Al Qaeda has threatened to attack shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, a route used by some 40 percent of the world's seaborne oil.
The ship was sailing under its own power toward Fujairah port in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to check the damage, a Mitsui O.S.K. Lines spokesman said.
The tanker bound for Chiba, near Tokyo, was carrying around 2.3 million barrels of Qatar Land and Abu Dhabi Lower Zakum crudes, industry sources said.
It carried 16 Filipino and 15 Indian crew members.
Any impact on the Asian spot crude market would be negligible and the tanker would have taken three weeks to arrive in Japan, traders said.
"This (event) won't stop the flow of crude, so there will be no impact on what is able to be bought," a Tokyo-based crude trader said.
Around 17 million barrels per day of oil flow via the Strait of Hormuz, and Middle East crude accounts for 90 percent of Japan's total imports.
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all the crimes we have done overseas for the past 40 yrs are going to come home to roost...
Guess that pastor dude never heard that as ye sow so shall ye reap.
I know its pre Beige book, but AAPL (260.9) is heading for a reversal day with close below 260.3
A crew member was walking in the dark smoking a cigarette. He forgot where he was on the ship and smashed his head against a steel object: like a giant hook attached to an overhead cable. As he felt his teeth fall down his throat, there was this brilliant flash of light as the front to his skull slammed his brain into the back of his skull. He dropped his cigarette down a vent hole causing a small explosion.
The Jews don't want to fight... they have been at war since? .........
So, why not Arm Japan... They want to fight, they like to fight... the only culture that matches our own Blood Lust!
The fucking towel heads think they have it bad now? Japan makes us look like fucking liberals... we had to nuke those lil fuckers, Camel Jockies beware... Japan already hates you! Japan has loyalties and one better believes in having Loyalty, on the individual level.
Dog and pony show rolls on... in the good old days it was abortion rallies, now we have interantional shipping incidents... or have we always had both and how many other colorful ways to keep people dumbed down and worried?
Dickheadness off.
Fuckin'-A. Let's send Ichiro Suzuki to Kamino instead of Jango Fett.
I have been to Japan. Very little people over there have an aggressive bone in their body. Wonderful place to visit. They are all nice to you!
They are polite to you but deep in their hearts they still dislike anyone that is not Japanese.
Dislike? Not most. They just think you are inferior as far as intellect and work ethic. They feel fate dumped them on a tiny island with no resources and limited arable land. The loss of Manchura and subsequent rise of China and Korea has killed all hope of finding the room they needed to grow as a dominant group. They are basically screwed and will need to aligned themselves with China to survive the future.
Today's Chinese have been successfully brainwashed by Chicom and firmly believed their past sufferings were chiefly caused by the rise of Japan. So there is deep distrust between China and Japan. The Japanese people are perhaps one of the most brilliant people in the world; but, IMHO their ruling elite have been full of poor judgement and miscalculations.
Parts of Korea, Vietnam and China will never recovery from the vast looting of resources by Japan. North Korea alone lost millions of trees which destroyed vast tracts of land forever. These resources are lost forever. You can also add in millions of dead, slavery and the loss of development time. The loss of development time has cost all these countries dearly.
Read the letters from Teddy Roosevelt to his son Kermit. These letters detail the aid the US gave to Japan in it's defeat of Russia and the invasion and occupation of Korea and Manchuria. The US bears some responsibility for the deaths of millions by the Japanese prior to WWII. Nice little hidden history fact you will never be taught in a US school.
It was not America. It was the American multinationals and money elite.
Interestingly, though, Korea was a part of Japan at the time. In theory, the Japanese could have done anything to its environment, just like the Chinks do to theirs today.
Yeah, America wouldn't do things like that. Just ask any Indian.
You're arguing that the same TR whom the Japs compelled to grant concessions after Tsushima is the same TR who financed Tsushima? Japs developed China and Korea and the Philippines, unlike Americans who restricted its colonies to raw materials production. Americans killed far more Filipinos than Japs ever did.
The Japs developed Manchuria big time. At the end of the WWII, Manchuria's industrial power was bigger than that of homeland Japan. When I traveled to Manchuria for the first time in 1980, I could witness many factories that were built by the Japs were still in production.
The Japanese promised the Filipinos freedom from colonialism and the white devils. They lied and many Filipinos resented them for that.
The US killed 500,000 Filipinos before WWII and 50,000 after WWII. Seems the rich landowners returned after the war and used the US military to remove squatters off their land and get back payments from both squatters and sharecroppers who worked on their land. The squatters and sharecroppers wanted democracy and land reform. They were not allowed to own land or have democracy. The resulting revolt cost the lives of 50,000 Filipinos.
Another piece of history that is never taught in US schools.
a forgotten but very important slice of recent Amerikan history. interesting now that filipinos make up a nice chunk of the military population (esp. in SoCal). warriors they still are, even after they were beaten into submission (there's a parallel to rome somewhere i'm sure).
yet, the rice terraces still survive after 2,000 years...
That is because anyone that is not Japanese has a bigger penis. So who can blame them?
Dislike...you are wrong. very wrong.
Distrust.....and you might be on to something.
Did you mean to say "very few" or are you talking about a Napoleon complex?
Ninjas ftw.
War bitchez!!! Buy and die for Israel!
Look! Documentary from Germany about American bigotes and zionism! 100M evangelicals fighting for Israel. That's You. A divided country without identity. And you will force the stupid Europeans in a new war, maybe the last, the Total War!
http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/videoblogschneider136.html
Try forming a complete, coherent sentence first.
Etwa 100 Millionen Evangelikale leben in den USA - und viele von ihnen bezeichnen sich als "christliche Zionisten"
the World gets stranger and crazier every day
from the Congressional Budget Office: FEDERAL DEBT AND THE RISK OF A FISCAL CRISIS
JULY 27, 2010
Economic and Budget Issue Brief
ENTIRE DOCUMENT:
pdf
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL:
blog post
SUMMARY
Over the past few years, U.S. government debt held by the public has grown rapidly—to the point that, compared with the total output of the economy, it is now higher than it has ever been except during the period around World War II. The recent increase in debt has been the result of three sets of factors: an imbalance between federal revenues and spending that predates the recession and the recent turmoil in financial markets, sharply lower revenues and elevated spending that derive directly from those economic conditions, and the costs of various federal policies implemented in response to the conditions.
Further increases in federal debt relative to the nation’s output (gross domestic product, or GDP) almost certainly lie ahead if current policies remain in place. The aging of the population and rising costs for health care will push federal spending, measured as a percentage of GDP, well above the levels experienced in recent decades. Unless policymakers restrain the growth of spending, increase revenues significantly as a share of GDP, or adopt some combination of those two approaches, growing budget deficits will cause debt to rise to unsupportable levels.
Although deficits during or shortly after a recession generally hasten economic recovery, persistent deficits and continually mounting debt would have several negative economic consequences for the United States. Some of those consequences would arise gradually: A growing portion of people’s savings would go to purchase government debt rather than toward investments in productive capital goods such as factories and computers; that “crowding out” of investment would lead to lower output and incomes than would otherwise occur. In addition, if the payment of interest on the extra debt was financed by imposing higher marginal tax rates, those rates would discourage work and saving and further reduce output. Rising interest costs might also force reductions in spending on important government programs. Moreover, rising debt would increasingly restrict the ability of policymakers to use fiscal policy to respond to unexpected challenges, such as economic downturns or international crises.
Beyond those gradual consequences, a growing level of federal debt would also increase the probability of a sudden fiscal crisis, during which investors would lose confidence in the government’s ability to manage its budget, and the government would thereby lose its ability to borrow at affordable rates. It is possible that interest rates would rise gradually as investors’ confidence declined, giving legislators advance warning of the worsening situation and sufficient time to make policy choices that could avert a crisis. But as other countries’ experiences show, it is also possible that investors would lose confidence abruptly and interest rates on government debt would rise sharply. The exact point at which such a crisis might occur for the United States is unknown, in part because the ratio of federal debt to GDP is climbing into unfamiliar territory and in part because the risk of a crisis is influenced by a number of other factors, including the government’s long-term budget outlook, its near-term borrowing needs, and the health of the economy. When fiscal crises do occur, they often happen during an economic downturn, which amplifies the difficulties of adjusting fiscal policy in response.
If the United States encountered a fiscal crisis, the abrupt rise in interest rates would reflect investors’ fears that the government would renege on the terms of its existing debt or that it would increase the supply of money to finance its activities or pay creditors and thereby boost inflation. To restore investors’ confidence, policymakers would probably need to enact spending cuts or tax increases more drastic and painful than those that would have been necessary had the adjustments come sooner.
Thanks arnoldsimage,
For those who would like some bed time reading.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/116xx/doc11659/07-27_Debt_FiscalCrisis_Brief.pdf
Thanks for the Summary, Arnold.
Will our .gov do anything about it? No.
I think it was the Sharktopus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK2bBfuepKk
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38443382/ns/world_news-mideastn_africa
HAARP..??
Just conjecture, of course..
"The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in
extending our commercial relations to have as little political
connection as possible... Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of
any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of
European ambition, rivalships, interest, humor, or caprice?... It is our
true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of
the foreign world."George Washington.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex." Eisenhower
We did not listen,and here we are a bankrupt superpower on the verge of collapse because we wanted to be "globcop" for no reason. While our southern border is wide open with paramilitary drug cartels out numbering and outgunning our sheriffs in the southwest.
Porta potty in Warshington D.C. really "STINKS", outside contaminents suspected!
What, ? no crappy link? Evidence and paper trail?
A blast wave from a tac nuke on Iranian coast, maybe ... that would cause a "tremor" which could light up the sky and injure crew 15-20 miles away.
Tomorrow could be a interesting day.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI0Mibbi6iM
Acts Of War In Iran By Jundullah, a US Terrorist Proxy
The Sunni terrorist organization known as Jundullah, which operates in Baluchistan on both sides of the Pakistan-Iran border, is notoriously a creature of Anglo-American intelligence, as Brian Ross of ABC News documented in 2007.19 Earlier this year, the Iranians, acting with the help of Pakistan, succeeded in capturing the Jundullah leader Rigi, whom they then executed this month. Rigi, according to Wayne Madsen, had been on his way to a meeting with US regional Ambassador Richard Holbrooke at the US air base in Kyrgyzstan.20 Retaliation from Jundullah soon followed in the form of a murderous attack on Iranian territory which killed 21 persons, including members of the Pasdaran Revolutionary Guard. Iranian leaders were quick to denounce this action as the latest in a long series of acts of war against Iran by the United States using terrorist proxies. Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani condemned this attack, which occurred in Zahedan, while explicitly blaming the United States: ‘“The Americans should know that they have started a game that will not end well for them,” he said in Tehran. Larijani asserted that Iran has ample evidence that the Jundullah terrorist group has links to the United States. The terrorist group Jundullah, which Iranian officials say enjoys U.S. support, has claimed responsibility for the attacks. In a statement posted on its web site, Jundullah described the attacks as retaliation for Iran’s June 21 execution of the group’s former ringleader, Abdolmalek Rigi. Larijani said that the United States cannot invent an excuse for the bombings. “They may get away with other issues, but not with this one,” he added.’ 21
Medvedev Policy Shift Increases Moscow-Tehran FrictionOne of the main policy goals of the Brzezinski faction in the United States has always been to maneuver Russia into a position of hostility against Iran. The hope has always been to foment conflicts between these two Caspian powers. Unfortunately, the policy of attempting to placate the United States on certain issues pursued by President Medvedev has now created a Moscow-Tehran relationship in which elements of acrimony coexist with gestures of cooperation.
On July 12, Medvedev made an important verbal concession to the emerging US-neocon theory of Iranian nuclear weapons. A RIA-Novosti dispatch read: ‘Iran is about to acquire the capability to make nuclear weapons, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned on Monday. He urged Russian ambassadors and permanent representatives to move away from “simplistic approaches” toward Iran’s nuclear problem.’ 22
On June 20, Medvedev had expressed concern about ‘U.S. secret intelligence data that Iran has enough enriched uranium for construction of two nuclear bombs. “As for this information, it needs to be verified but in any case such information always worries. Today the international society does not acknowledge the Iranian nuclear program as transparent. If the information from the American secret services is confirmed it would make the situation more tense and I do not exclude that this issue would require extra consideration,” Medvedev said at a news conference after the G8 and G20 summits in Canada.’ 23 US intelligence regarding Iran is notoriously unreliable, and distorted by political agendas inside the US intelligence community. It is even possible that some of the material which Medvedev was shown during his time in North America came from the alleged defector Shahram Amiri, whose credibility is gravely in question.
In response to Medvedev’s allegations about an Iranian nuclear weapons program, leaders in Teheran responded with vigorous denials. On July 13, RIA Novosti reported that ‘Iranian officials on Tuesday angrily dismissed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s remarks that Tehran was on the verge of acquiring military nuclear capability, the Fars News Agency reported. “These remarks are at odds with reality,” Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said during a press conference at the Iranian embassy in Madrid, stressing that Tehran has always sought only peaceful uses for nuclear technology.’ 24 During the preparation of the Iraq war, Russia was very skeptical of the explanations offered by the Bush regime, including at the UN Security Council. This time around, it would appear that parts at least of the Russian government are lending credibility to the US charges.
In response to these Iranian objections, Medvedev returned to the issue on July 15, reiterating that ‘Russia possesses information indicating that Iran is continuing to develop its nuclear technology …”The information that is being received comes both from open sources and from special services that deliver relevant reports and shows that these [nuclear] programs are being developed,” Medvedev said during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Russian Urals city of Yekaterinburg.’ 25
The Russian government has issued sharply conflicting statements about whether the sale of modern Russian S-300 surface-to-air missiles would be blocked by the new round of UN sanctions. It is generally thought that, if Iran can finally take delivery of these missiles, any design for air attacks against Iran would have to reckon with extravagant losses among the attacking aircraft. On June 11, RIA Novosti reported that ‘a Kremlin source said on Friday the sale of S-300 air defense systems fall under the new UN Security Council’s sanctions against Tehran, but the Russian foreign minister said it was up to the president to make the final decision.’ 26 Ironically, this reading of the sanctions was less favorable to Iran then what the US State Department was saying on the same day. On June 11, the State Department opined that ‘the delivery of Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Iran is not against the recently imposed UN sanctions.’ 27
In the face of criticism, the Kremlin characterized its position as evenhanded. On May 26, RIA Novosti reported that presidential aide Sergei Prikhodko had argued that ‘Russia’s position on Tehran’s nuclear program is neither pro-American, nor pro-Iranian. The statement comes after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a televised interview earlier in the day that Russia’s support for UN sanctions against Tehran was “not acceptable to the Iranian nation.”’ 28
Russia also expressed no enthusiasm for an expansion of the so-called five plus one group (composed of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) which had been negotiating the nuclear issue with Iran. The arbitrary nature of this five plus one grouping had been pointed out by many countries, and inevitably arose after the initially successful mediation of the Iranian nuclear fuel enrichment issue by Turkey and Brazil. Why not have Turkey and Brazil joined the five plus one? The addition of these two states would obviously make the negotiating group less hostile to Iran. But the Russian Foreign Ministry was not interested. On July 19, RIA Novosti reported that ‘Turkey and Brazil are not joining talks led by the Iran Six group of international mediators on Tehran’s nuclear program, the Russian foreign minister said Wednesday. “There have been no discussions on the issue,” Sergei Lavrov said. Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Tuesday that the Islamic Republic wanted Turkey and Brazil to participate in the talks.’ 29
Criticism of Iran keeps coming from numerous Russian diplomats. On July 14, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said there was “still cause for concern about Iran’s nuclear program as signals from the Islamic Republic have been far from encouraging… “The signals I have heard from Iran are not encouraging,” he said. “Iran continues to set out terms, make excuses and say that it will persist in enriching uranium to 20%.”’ 30
At the same time, Russia continued to assist Iran in the construction of the Bushehr nuclear power reactor, which should come on line and start generating electricity within a few months. The Iranians also operate research reactors. On July 12, Iran announced that ‘nuclear fuel for the Tehran research reactor will be ready in September 2011…. “God willing, we will deliver the fuel to the Tehran reactor next September,” Ali Akbar Salehi of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) was quoted by Fars News Agency (FNA) as saying. “At present we have produced about 20 kg of 20%-enriched uranium and we are now producing fuel plates,” he said.’ 31 The Anglo-Americans have tried to make this 20% enrichment a virtual casus belli, despite the fact that weaponization requires far higher percentages, well above 90%.
Russia appeared inclined to defy the US on some issues. There were indications that Russia was willing to help Iran frustrate the UN Security Council ban on other nations’ selling refined gasoline to Iran, which is one of the centerpieces of the latest US-backed sanctions offensive. Iran produces abundant oil, but lacks refineries to make that oil into gasoline and other products. Here was an ideal way to get around this gasoline embargo. According to RIA Novosti, ‘Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said … that Russian companies are ready to supply oil products to Iran despite U.S. sanctions punishing companies that sell motor fuel to Iran or help it rebuild its refining capabilities, which have been degraded by years of international isolation.’ (‘Iran hopes to become largest gasoline exporter in 2-3 years’, RIA Novosti, July 15, 2010,http://en.rian.ru/world/20100715/159829016.html)
According to Vernochet of the Réseau Voltaire, the Russian policy ‘appears to reflect a certain schizophrenia at the highest level of the state, or an openly diverging policy with two heads, with a presidency a priori more pro-Western than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.’ 32 McDermott agrees about this latent conflict, noting: ‘There is also the thorny issue that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has a group of foreign policy aides managed by Yuriy Ushakov functioning as a “little” foreign ministry: which represents the single greatest barrier to adopting such policy concepts (Ezhednevny Zhurnal, May 14).’ The net result of these developments is that the aggressive forces inside the United States think they have a much freer hand with Iran than they did during the time of the Putin presidency.
Brzezinski Group Weaker, Neocon-Petraeus Faction StrongerAs already noted, the Brzezinski-Nye-Trilateral faction is losing ground to the neocons, who have been mightily strengthened by the ascendancy of their chosen factional figurehead and presidential candidate for 2012, General David Petraeus. The planned color revolution in Iran has not materialized, and therefore the neocon recipes for aggression are winning by default, especially given the systemic hysteria induced by the financial breakdown crisis. The Brzezinski-Nye-Trilateral group had been early supporters of Obama, and growing public awareness of Obama’s weakness, fecklessness, dithering, and treachery are also weakening his backers.
Petraeus, The Savior Of The SaviorObama’s appointment of Petraeus as the new commander in Afghanistan, succeeding McChrystal, is an act of supreme political folly. By appointing Petraeus, Obama has focused new adulation by the political class on his most formidable opponent for the presidency in 2012, as seen in Petraeus’ 99-0 confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate. It should be evident that Petraeus is not likely to have accepted this new command without having extracted certain binding policy commitments from Obama in advance, and one of these is likely to have been a more truculent US stance against Iran, to say nothing of Pakistan and other states. Obama had been the savior, but Petraeus now assumes the role of the savior of the savior, and it is the neocon faction and its strident war program which is the beneficiary.33
geopol
I was hoping and praying you would show up and set us straight. Thanks for the dissertation.
Always with you, and your fine work here....CD
Let me add for you and CB the following:
A New National Intelligence Estimate By And For WarmongersDuring the declining years of the Bush regime, one of the most important signals of a general ruling class consensus that the US attack on Iran should be taken off the table was the national intelligence estimate issued in December 2007, which concluded that Iran no longer had a functioning nuclear weapons program. This simply meant in practice that the neocons, for the moment, were out of power. This finding was opposed tooth and nail by the neocons, and was directly contradicted by the claims of Israeli intelligence.
The way in which this new NIE is being rigged, with the facts and intelligence being fixed around the desired war policy, is reflected in a recent rare interview by CIA Director Leon Panetta. The new phony NIE is now guaranteed to repudiate the previous finding, and to accuse Iran of actively seeking nuclear bombs. This was in fact Panetta’s first network news interview since taking over the CIA in early 2009. According to one published account, ‘in an ABC News interview Sunday, CIA Director Leon Panetta alluded to a fact that was reported by Newsweekmonths ago: U.S. intelligence agencies have revised their widely disputed 2007 conclusion that Iran had given up its efforts to design or build a nuclear bomb. That shift is expected to be reflected in an update of the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which was supposed to have been completed months ago, but according to three counter-proliferation officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, the formal update still is not finished and may be delayed for months to come. Even when it’s done, officials have said, the Obama administration is expected to keep the revised report’s contents officially secret….’ 34 Panetta, a political hack, has claimed that Iran is working on weaponization of fissile material, which has been a central issue in the dispute within the US intelligence community. With this, Panetta clearly joins the warmonger camp.
State Department: Iran Wants Nukes, Iran Has Always Wanted NukesOn June 8, David E. Sanger of the New York Times reported that US diplomats at the United Nations were already beginning to prepare the other members of the UN Security Council for a complete volte-face on the question of Iranian nukes compared to the December 2007 NIE. In December 2007 there were no nukes, but now there are some again, the US in effect argued. One imagines that UN Ambassador Susan Rice took special satisfaction in an Orwellian reversal of this type. Sanger wrote: ‘The American briefings, according to foreign diplomats and some American officials, amount to a tacit admission by the United States that it is gradually backing away from a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. It is using new evidence to revise and in some cases reverse conclusions from that estimate, which came to the much disputed conclusion that while Iran had stepped up its production of nuclear fuel, its leadership had suspended its work on the devices and warhead designs needed to actually build a weapon.’ 35
The neocons are already mobilized to skew the new NIE in the direction they want. An example of their effort is the op-ed by Gabriel Schoenfeld of the arch-reactionary Hudson Institute appearing in the Wall Street Journal on July 19. Schoenfeld’s first goal is to perform the Orwellian exercise of expunging the December 2007 NIE: ‘In December 2007, our intelligence agencies put out a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which in its opening sentence baldly declared that “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” In a stroke, this authoritative pronouncement eliminated any possibility that President Bush, then entering his final year in office, would order a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Perhaps even more significantly, it undercut White House and international efforts to tighten sanctions on Iran. After all, if the Iranian nuclear program had been halted in 2003, what would be the point?….Behind the scenes, the intelligence services of Germany, Great Britain, France and Israel all took issue with the NIE. It became the subject of fierce criticism in Congress and the press. It is now clear that while the U.S. dithered, Tehran forged ahead…. Evidence has surfaced that the flawed 2007 NIE was the result of political cookery…. Since late last year, U.S. intelligence has been preparing a new estimate of Iran’s nuclear program. The critical question is whether the forces that led to politicization in 2007 have been eradicated. Will the drafters of the new Iran NIE call the shots as they are, or will they once again use intelligence as a political lever?’ 36
Neocons Want a Team B For IranNotice that, for this neocon doublethinker, ‘politicization’ is anything which delays or avoids war, while objectivity is identified exclusively with the warmonger position. Schoenfeld is obsessed with counting how many months remain before Iran stages their first nuclear detonation. Israel says there may be as few as twelve months left! How to focus public attention on this issue? Schoenfeld has an answer ready: ‘That is why a neutral outside panel should be brought in to scrutinize the discredited 2007 NIE and the entire estimating process in this sensitive arena.’ This sounds very much like an old neocon trick – Team B, the panel of apocalyptic dissident ideologues created by Bush the elder in 1975-76 to prepare an alarmist estimate of Soviet intentions in contradiction to the findings of the official CIA.37 In such a contest, neocon Strangeloves proclaiming dramatic doomsday messages have an easy time marginalizing colorless bureaucrats with their plodding prose. It is the neocons who are the iron chefs of cooking intelligence. As Sir Richard Dearlove, the boss of MI-6, informed Tony Blair and his ministers in July 2002, ‘the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’ by Washington in the runup to the Bush-Cheney aggression against Iraq.38
Leverett: There Is No Iranian Nuclear Weapons ProgramOne leading US expert on Iranian affairs is Flynt Leverett, who worked on Iran during his time in the G. W. Bush National Security Council. In a July 18 radio interview transcribed on Leverett’s website, Race for Iran, which is also by run by Hillary Mann Leverett, an important Iran expert in her own right. the former official stated that ‘to the best of my knowledge…there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.…I haven’t been working in a classified environment for a number of years now and I certainly wouldn’t claim to know everything that the U.S. intelligence community might have, [but]…my very strong impression is that we know that the Iranians have been working on…a dedicated fuel cycle program focused on uranium enrichment for a long time. Could they have at some point…looked into other kinds of technical or engineering problems that you would need to solve if you were actually at some point going to build a nuclear weapon? Yeah, that’s possible, but I’ve never seen what I would consider clear and convincing evidence of it.’ 39
The mendacious process by which National Intelligence Estimates are manufactured on sensitive issues like Iran is much illuminated by the case of the Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri. Amiri, it will be recalled, issued a Youtube video in which he alleged that he had been kidnapped by the United States while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, and was being held in Arizona. Later, he issued another videotape, this one better produced, in which he reassured the public that he was fine, studying physics in Arizona of his own free will. A third tape went back to asserting that he had been kidnapped. Amiri at length appealed to the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani Embassy in Washington, DC, and soon returned to Iran.
Amiri, The CIA’s New Iranian Curveball?So what is the truth about Amiri? We need to recall the examples of the anonymous “source Curveball” and of Achmed Chalabi, two Iraqi adventurers assiduously courted by the neocons and plied with large sums of US taxpayer money in order to make fantastic allegations about the allegedly threatening programs of weapons of mass destruction being pursued by Saddam Hussein. If the CIA had really brought Amiri to the United States and offered him $5 million, it is a pretty good guess that he was being paid to provide the lurid details of an Iranian nuclear weapons program which many qualified experts, as we have just seen, conclude to be nonexistent, just as the US government officially stated in December 2007.
The Leveretts stress that Amiri was never a top official of the Iranian science establishment, and it is therefore very likely that his opinions about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program are worthless. As the Leveretts wrote on July 15, ‘We warned, in April that Amiri could not possibly be the highly valuable intelligence source that some Western officials and the National Council for Resistance in Iran (an affiliate of the MEK, which the U.S. government has designated as a foreign terrorist organization) claimed him to be — a source who “had worked on sensitive nuclear programs for at least a decade” and was now revealing the inside story on Iran’s alleged clandestine nuclear weapons program. We were appalled that the Washington Post was reporting these claims without the most minimal, common-sense follow-up questioning. Now we learn that the CIA apparently tried to pay Amiri $5 million. Along with trying to figure out the details of Amiri’s trajectory over the last year, journalists ought to be focusing on what the Agency’s willingness to pay $5 million to a hyped-up source signals about the U.S. Intelligence Community’s desperation to make a prosecutor’s case against the Islamic Republic. Indeed, the CIA and the rest of the Intelligence Community seem sufficiently desperate to make their case that they will pay taxpayer dollars to gotten-up defectors who might be prepared to say—for the right price—what Washington elites want to hear. As we noted in our April piece, if the CIA and its partners in the Intelligence Community are unable to make a case against Iran, “how could Washington argue for intensified sanctions against the Islamic Republic—much less keep the military option ‘on the table?’”’
Press comments on Panetta’s ABC News interview suggest precisely this: Amiri was brought in to provide fodder for a campaign of mass brainwashing designed to show that Iran is on track to build nuclear bombs. On the ABC website we read: ‘Panetta did not directly confirm that the controversial 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iranian nukes was under revision. But other officials have confirmed to Declassified that an update has been in the works since late last year. They say its completion has been postponed several times while agencies evaluate new intelligence reporting which has surfaced over the last few months. At least some of that fresh input is believed to have come from one or more Iranian nuclear insiders, including Shahram Amiri, an Iranian nuclear scientist who disappeared about a year ago while on a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia. Earlier this year, ABC News reported that Amiri had defected to the United States. Although government sources have acknowledged …that they are aware of Amiri’s defection and of information that he might have provided, they do not confirm that he defected to the U.S.’ 40
Now that Amiri has fled back to Iran, another possibility opens up for the US mindbenders: they might now argue that the December 2007 NIE which concluded there was no Iranian nuclear weapons program had been based on falsified information procured by Amiri and others like him, who had been recruited to espionage by the US, but who later proved unreliable – as shown by Amiri’s flight back to Iran to rejoin his family there. All of these points represent good reasons not to believe the contents of the new NIE when its contents are reported in the press in the very near future. It is guaranteed to be a tissue of lies.
Amiri’s Last Word: No Iranian Nuclear Weapons ProgramThe last word from Amiri seems to be a statement that there is no Iranian nuclear weapons program after all. This has been established by CIA veteran Philip Giraldi based on leaks from his networks inside the agency. As Gareth Porter of IPS reported, ‘Contrary to a news media narrative that Iranian scientist Shahram Amiri has provided intelligence on covert Iranian nuclear weapons work, CIA sources familiar with the Amiri case say he told his CIA handlers that there is no such Iranian nuclear weapons programme, according to a former CIA officer. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism official, told IPS that his sources are CIA officials with direct knowledge of the entire Amiri operation.’ 41But mere facts have never prevented the neocon mythographs from pressing for aggression. Maybe they will now re-create the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which was responsible for a series of whoppers in 2002-2003.
Obama Regime Beats The Propaganda Drum For WarIn the wake of the new round of sanctions in June, top officials of the Obama regime have begun to suggest that sanctions will be inadequate to stop the nuclear weapons development which they will soon claim is going on, leaving the obvious conclusion that direct military attack is the only option. ‘”Will [sanctions] deter them [Iran] from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability?” CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News on June 27. “Probably not.”’ 42
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is taking special pains to argue against the idea that Iran could be held in check by traditional nuclear deterrence of the time-honored Cold War type, even if Tehran were to procure nuclear weapons. This is an argument which has been endorsed by some leading US military officers, who are obviously not eager to go into the Iranian meatgrinder. According to Fox News, ‘Gates is sounding more belligerent these days. “I don’t think we’re prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran,” he told Fox News on June 20. “We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons.” He added: “I don’t think we’re prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. I think we’re — we — our view still is we do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons. And our policies and our efforts are all aimed at preventing that from happening.” … “Actually, what we’ve seen is a change in the nature of the regime in Tehran over the past 18 months or so. You have — you have a much narrower based government in Tehran now. Many of the religious figures are being set aside. As Secretary Clinton has said, they appear to be moving more in the direction of a military dictatorship. Khamenei is leaning on a smaller and smaller group of advisors.”’ 43 Gates had been skeptical in public about the Iran attack, in conformity with his Brzezinski pedigree; his joining the extreme war party thus means the bureaucratic situation is deteriorating.
The US argument against the Iranian regime used to be that Iran was bad because it was a theocratic dictatorship of the mullahs, who were the bearers of Islamic fundamentalism. Gates and Clinton now argue that Iran is bad precisely because it is no longer a theocratic dictatorship of mullahs, but an authoritarian military dictatorship. The only constant is the desire for war and confrontation.
Geo..
Hey Geo, its not polite to lead people to belive this is your own writing ...unless you really are Tarpley. For some reason I doubt you are. I know you didn't sign your name to it, but by not citing the author, you allow folks to think this is your property. Don't mean to sound like a square but plagerism is morally wrong.
panelvan76,,
I appreciate your moral grounding.. but as you are a youngster here of 1 week 5 days it would be advisable to understand for yourself, the modus operandi of ZH.. FC..and my history of contributions here.
P.S. Congratulations on your first post..
Best Regards,,
The Russians have been trying to force the Iranians to agree to Russia's demands for regional Hegemony over all oil and gas exports. Iran will not let Russia dictate to it who it sells oil and gas to and the route of pipelines. Iran knows China and India have insatiable demands for what they have and they can continue to ignore Russia's demands.
Russia knows that keeping Iranian oil and gas off the market only makes them richer. Russia can make more in a month from an increase in the price of oil than any military or nuclear products they can sell to Iran over five years. Medvedev is damaging many of Russia's other industries that desperately need money and want to sell to Iran. Medvedev is playing a losing game since China and India will "save" Iran from Russia's blackmail attempt.
As much as i like your stuff man, i figure many people would give Petraus the benefit of doubt in regards to being a "formidable opponent"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCvVdfeH05Y
I particularly like this very comment:
MuammarAlGathafi
"Petraus is a weakling and a fake. As shown here. Turn up volume to hear his noises. "ummpff humppmfpff" , followed by the aides "OMG" hahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa losers? get out of the middle east and take the zionist scum with you".You write interesting stuff geopol.
Keep up the good work!
DCRB,,,
Thanx,, I try...This is all about info sharing.. defeat the NWO
as if BP didn't have enough problems already...
NEWS update:
Japanese Tanker Damaged In Straits Of Hormuz; Outside Attack Considered"A Japanese tanker was severely damaged by what is now being described as a rogue wave. Several eyewitnesses claim to have seen the recently deposed CEO of British Petroleum, Tony Hayward, buzzing by too closely to the tanker while gunning his yacht. The wake from the craft proved to be too much for the tanker to handle.
Hayward's only comment to reporters was that he just wants his life back."
Film at 11
Having just recently been involved in the return of a bare boat chartered ship from mitsui on behalf of APL I will say this, likely incompetence. Oh yes and there are no 'rouge waves' in the gulf of oman. Also it is very easy to sink a VLCC, even tiny Iran has the people that know how to do it. So to wit, idiot crew with little or no training(not uncommon on tankers) did something stupid and almost killed themselves. Sorry but nothing to see here. Just another gator ship fuck up.
Tyler, I understand Reuters have hired an attack dog to go after fora and blogs etc. that are posting their clips. Not sure whether you have heard about this, but worth checking out, and keeping below the 80% Fair Use doctrine. The company is going straight to the jugular, not the fluffy "take down" stuff.
Just sayin'
Any Project Mayhem volunteers to assist with discovery? That is to follow the lawyers of the plaintiffs, especially the managing partner, for months on end, taking photos of them cheating on their spouses to post on the internet. Or better, just to take photos of them and alter them to look like they are cheating on their spouses. Don't fuck with crazy people. ZH is full of crazy people. Just ask around.
No harm done. A little something happened to a very big ship that will take weeks to deliver some fluids that needs to be processed and transported to the people at a price per gallon.
Compared to the raging fire, sinking and the subsquent smear in the GoM of oil, it's nothing at all.
Let em check the damage, fix it and move on. The least they can do is figure out how much cargo was spilled, bill it to OSD (Overage, shorts and damage) and get it covered.
I read the Yomiuri this morning.
Even us Japs, the most naive creature on the face of the earth weren't eating the earthquake excuse.