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WAR OF IDEAS
Has the U.S. Reached Peak Car?
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KILLER APPS
Cyberspies Are Using PRISM for Spearphishing
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PASSPORT
Remembering Michael Hastings
Posted By Stephen M. Walt
Friday, October 14, 2011 - 12:44 PM
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I had planned to write about something else this morning, but the simmering confrontation with Iran keeps intruding. For starters, President Obama is standing firmly behind the administration's allegations, but without offering any new evidence to support them. This approach isn't going to wash, however, especially if journalists do their job, start asking a lot of probing questions, and don't allow themselves to get spun by "anonymous" sources and inside leaks.
Add to the mix a New York Times story -- clearly based on briefings from U.S. officials -- that "militants trained and financed by Iran's Quds Force attacked United States forces in Iraq on Wednesday." As Time magazine's Tony Karon notes on his own blog, "Washington certainly seems to be scooping up everything it can find on alleged Iranian malfeasance to throw into the p.r. battle. U.S. and Saudi intelligence officials told the Washington Post that they believe that Iran was behind the May 16 killing of a Saudi diplomat in the Pakistani city of Karachi."
Put it all together, and it looks like the Administration is making a concerted campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran. Countries like Britain, Saudi Arabia and France are going along with that program, and no doubt Israel is happy to see this development too. But so far other countries appear to be at best agnostic about the whole business, which is still the only sensible response in light of the paltry public evidence offered to date. And as I said yesterday, if Obama & co. can't produce some smoking gun support for their assertions, the backlash could be formidable.
More to the point: what's the endgame here? What is the positive purpose to be gained from this new campaign? If there really is hard and reliable evidence of a serious Iranian plot to bomb buildings in the United States and to kill foreign emissaries on our soil, then that's one thing. But if this turns out to be a much more ambiguous business -- either a rogue Iranian operation, a false flag scheme, or a case of FBI entrapment -- then what are we trying to accomplish by rolling out a seemingly well-orchestrated round of new accusations, especially when there's little chance of getting the sort of "crippling sanctions" that might actually alter Iran's behavior? Are we just trying to divert attention from other issues (the economy, the "Arab Spring," the failed diplomacy on Israel-Palestine, etc.), or is this somehow linked to the 2012 campaign?
Last point: as one would expect, Obama is already facing pressure from the right to do more. He's resisted their calls to attack Iran before, and if I had to bet I'd say he'll do so again. But the overall pattern of his presidency has been to accommodate hardline pressure on a variety of fronts, without necessarily adopting their entire agenda. And if you believe half of what Ron Suskind and Bob Woodward have written about Obama, he is a president who is prone to being played by his advisors, especially on national security matters. He escalated in Afghanistan, extended the deadline for withdrawal from Iraq, ramped up the drone war, ratcheted up sanctions on Iran, kept Gitmo up and running, and went spineless on Israel-Palestine after a promising start. There was an obvious domestic payoff to this approach: by tilting so heavily to the rightwing status quo, he's pretty much taken foreign policy off the table in the 2012 campaign. The GOP candidates can carp in various ways, but there's so little daylight between their views and his policies that he's not really vulnerable there.
But all that still leaves the more important question: where is this one headed? Like the alleged assassination plot itself, I'm still scratching my head on that one.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
EXPLORE:FLASH POINTS, MIDDLE EAST, DIPLOMACY, DISASTERS, INTELLIGENCE, IRAN, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, SAUDI ARABIA 
Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss
Am I having deja vu a lot recently or what? Why does this remind me of the Bush Administration: Weapons of Mass Destruction chapter? Funny how so many people are surprised by the similarities between supposedly "opposite" administrations. A brief history lesson can explain why: http://bit.ly/oLCdam
Say hello to the darker, more talkative W
And Nobel winning too!
Reasonableviews -- Would Obama have been allowed to win the election if he had not promised to pack his administration with ardent friends and admirers of Israel? I very much doubt it.
"Would Obama have been allowed to win the election if he had not promised to pack his administration with ardent friends and admirers of Israel? I very much doubt it."
And that's exactly why you see Obama waffling on his election committments - he owes his 'friends' - the Zionist Lobby - for financial backing throughout his political career. And what they want now - at any cost - is the destruction of Iran(basically).
How did this happen in America?
JGARBUZ - you forgot to mention mbile phones, PC
JGARBUZ
3:58 PM ET
October 16, 2011
Haym Salomon helped finance Washington's army at
Valley Forge! How did it happen that Washington needed a Jew who had come from Poland to raise the money to feed and clothe his army at Valley Forge?
How is it that American needed Jewish scientists to be first to get the atomic bomb? And later the H-bomb?
How is it that it took Jewish-American Admiral Hyman RIckover to develop the first nuclear submarine?
And so what if there are pro-Israel Jews who want the government to back Israel's existence? What is wrong with that? Did ISrael ever ask the US to send marines to help it fight the Arabs? Did any US GIs ever fight in ISrael to defend that country, as we sent to South Korea and South Vietnam and Kuwait?
JGARBUZ - you forgot to mention mbile phones, P
>> How did it happen that Washington needed a Jew who had come from Poland to raise the money to feed and clothe his army at Valley Forge?
They didn't need Solomon because he was a Jew, they needed him because he was a wealthy banker. Any welathy banker would have sufficed.
>>How is it that American needed Jewish scientists to be first to get the atomic bomb? And later the H-bomb?
They didn't need Jewish scientists, they needed scientists and some of them happened to be Jewish. Did the Societs need Jewish scientists to build their bomb?
>> How is it that it took Jewish-American Admiral Hyman RIckover to develop the first nuclear submarine?
It didn't take a Jewish-American Admiral to develop the first nuclear submarine, it took a very large team one of whom happened to be a Jewish-American Admiral named Hyman RIckover. id the Societs need Jewish scientists to build their nuclear submarine?
>> And so what if there are pro-Israel Jews wh want the government to back Israel's existence? What is wrong with that?
Starting a war based on lies does not serve Israel's existence. A war with Iran is likely to be hdangerous for Israel.
>> Did ISrael ever ask the US to send marines to help it fight the Arabs?
No they didn't becasue they didn't need he US to send marines.
>> Did any US GIs ever fight in ISrael to defend that country, as we sent to South Korea and South Vietnam and Kuwait?
No becasue Israel never needed US GIs and Israel was not defending itself. Stealing land is not self defense.
You talk and think like ADOLPH. Jews and israel UBER ALLES.
There is good and there is also CRAP in every nation, especialy the OCCYPYING ones ....
Just remember what happened to the ones who thought this way some 70 years ago......
Do not join them......
The need to assert superiority is the most convincing evidence of self-loathing.
It's all explained here
The Wandering Who?: A study of Jewish identity politics
http://www.amazon.com/Wandering-Who-Gilad-Atzmon/dp/1846948754
and here
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/the-wandering-who-by-gilad-atzmon.html
A favorite quote:
“A nation is a group of people united by a common mistake regarding its origin and a collective hostility towards its neighbours.” -- Tel Aviv University historian, Professor Shlomo Sand.
Yup, Obama got a Nobel prize for piece. Yeah, right!
lpn programs
medical assistant
cna certification programs
There is very little Obama will do from now on that is not designed to boost his campaign. He is not alone in this. Just about all of our so-called leaders are consumed by November 2012. They could care less about the current state of affairs.
"Innocent until proven guilty say the lawyers – and as a matter of law that is true of those accused in Iran’s alleged assassination plot on the Saudi ambassador to the US. The story is still fresh and without all the facts, but whether the ball ends in foul or fair territory, US-Iranian relations are in a new and ugly state. From the FT:
'The plot was part of a $1.5m “international murder-for-hire scheme” directly linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military force, said Eric Holder, attorney-general…
Hilary Clinton, US secretary of state, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that the plot “crosses a line that Iran needs to be held account for”. She said that she and President Barack Obama wanted to enlist more countries to work against what she called a “clearer and clearer threat” from Iran.
US officials say the administration will lobby for new international sanctions as well as for individual nations to expand their own penalties against Iran'.
Many in the press aren’t swallowing the story whole – call it post-Saddam WMD skepticism. But the growing regional opposition to Iran has united Turkey, the Saudis and the United States in a tightening anti-Iranian entente. As if to make matters worse, Tehran has taken to threatening Turkey over the NATO early-warning radar system and appears to be cozying up with the PKK terrorists that have long been a thorn in Turkey’s side.
While some are skeptical, and Secretary Powell and company’s performance in the run up to the Iraq war has made many of us more hesitant to take the word of even a respected Secretary of State on faith, it seems unlikely that the Holder Justice Department would make this up out of whole cloth. The plot allegations have received unusually heavy public backing from top US officials; it seems unlikely that the White House, Attorney General Holder and Secretary of State Clinton would nail their colors so firmly to the mast unless they were very confident that these charges have substance behind them.
I have written in the past that many people in the US and abroad underestimate the determination that President Obama is capable of bringing to bear against Iran. President Obama came into office planning to open a dialog with Iran; he got nowhere, and Iran’s nuclear program is a direct threat to the president’s cherished goal of moving the world away from the creation and potential use of nuclear weapons. Iran’s encouragement of Palestinian rejectionism is a direct threat to the President’s hopes for regional peace. President Obama has good reason to be fed up with Iran, and it appears that he is. The release of the assassination plot charges represents a very public turn of the screw: the US and its allies are doing what they can to push Tehran onto the defensive and to bounce it out of the Arab world.
The stakes are high, the situation is fluid; fasten your seat belts, friends. We have entered an area of turbulent air."
Well all I can say about Walter Russell Meade is "bulls**t"!
Has he read the Palestinian papers? Does he know what Palestinian negotiators were prepared to give the Israelis? And still Israel said "No". Tell us what Israel is prepared to give to the Palestinians after having taken most of their land. What are they rejecting? That Israel takes all of their land? Oh how evil are those Palestinians!
Now let me list the high level US officials that were so convinced about WMD in Iraq: Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, Feith, Cheney - need I go on? All hidden under the conveniently dismissive "Post Saddam WMD-skepticism".
At the time WRM said:
"Each year of containment is a new Gulf War", and
"The existence of al Qaeda, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are part of the price the United States has paid to contain Saddam Hussein."
He was wrong then - why should anyone continue to believe him now?
Some of us had "pre-Saddam scepticism". And I find this latest story even less believable than that one.
What a surprise - yet again we see that all of the senior members of the US Administration seem to be saying the same thing so we must believe them! You don't think they might have actually talked to each other do you?
Why should Obama be fed up with Iran? What has that country done recently he could object to? No rather he's doing the bidding of his Zionist masters intent on retaining Israeli hegemony in the Middle East. Conveniently this was timed to coincide with the Shalit deal.
As to Iran's nuclear ambitions - it has signed the NPT. It has regular inspections by IAEA. It has recently offered to cease enrichment if given access to 20% enriched uranium.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/julian-borger-global-security-blog/2011/oct/10/ahmadinejad-nuclear-offer-obama
Now let's talk about Israel's nuclear program.
Was Obama's effort to engage Iran sabotaged?
Wigwag - - Obama clearly lacked the experience and wisdom, and confidence, to put through his programme to engage with Iran and achieve an improvement in relations between the two countries. I think his inention was genuine, and that it was sabotaged from within the administration.
Israel has never accepted the Pals. Israel has never offered to leave the Jordan River Valley. Many zionists here deny the Pals are even existant. The Hamas charter refuses to recognize Israel, UNTIL Israel recognizes the Palestinians. So, you have it exctly wrong. Did the Native Americans need to recognize the USA? Absurdity, the USA, like Israel is an incontrovertible force. Ironically, Israeli refusal to recognize Palestinians delegitimizes Israel as a democratic state, marking her as an Apartheid State.
"Obama clearly lacked the experience and wisdom, and confidence, to put through his programme..."
===
Yes, he lacks experience, wisdom and understanding alright. He's a shill for the war party who play him like a fiddle.
"I think his inention was genuine, and that it was sabotaged from within the administration."
===
Obama lacks courage and he lacks conviction. But he is a master politician who gladly, perhaps eagerly, embraces war to further his own perceived political interests. He is as guilty of war crimes as is Cheney-Bush. Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lybia, Uganda - and Iran. This president is having a hell of a good time.
"If I were an Arab
leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have
taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that
interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti - Semitism, the
Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault ? They see but one thing:
we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?"
David Ben Gurion - quoted by Nahum Goldmann in Le Paraddoxe Juif.
The "Palestinians" are waiting for no one
>> just as in the past they waited for Rommel in 1941
The Palestinians fought on the side of the allies in 1941.
>> then for the Arab armies in 1948
Seeing asthe British had disarmed them by 1937 and Israel began expelling them in December 1947, what choice did they have?
Israel attacked Nasser in 1967 and the minutes fo the the meetings of Israeli military and political leaders revealed that Nasser was in no position to attack.
Menachem Begin and Yitzak Rabin admitted as much.
>> They keep waiting for some brutal dictator to fight the Jews for them
No, they keep waiting for some less brutal Israeli leader to respect human rights and international law and end the occupation.
>> instead of getting real and seriously negotiating a friendly outcome which would result in two states for TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLES.
With whom? Netenyahu has rejected two states for TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLES as has every Israeli government since the 2ss was conceived.
The emand to be recognized as the Jewish State was made for the first time when Bibbi took office in 2009. The PLO recognized Israel in 1988 and it achieved nothing.
Arabs were no occupiers of Jewish soil JGARBUZ
The sol ceased to be Jewish when the Israeli civlization came to an end.
Just like the soil ceased to be Canaanite when the Hebrews invaded and occupied it.
>> THere are dozens of native "Indian" nations living on American soil, but I don't see the Lakota Sioux getting a state.
That's becasue the damage was done prior to the world passing laws that stealing land and takng it by force is illegal.
That's why the world went to war against Hitler.
>> The Arabs have 22 states, including one in eastern "Palestine" called Jordan.
No, there are 22 states that happen to be Arab. Warren Buffet had 40 billion in his bank account. That doesn't make it OK for me to steal 2 billion of it.
>> There was ancient Edom and Moab, but no ancient "JOrdan."
Ancient meanign it no longer exists. There was an ancient Palestine and an ancient Canaan too.
>> Jordan is majority Palestinians now. It is in eastern Palestine. It is the Palestinian state.
False. Jordan was NEVER the Palestinian state. It's an Arab state.
Not even the State Department recognizes Israel as a Jewish State.
Ben Gurion also said that if he were an Arab Leader
he "would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army. Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out".
quid pro quo....
work with us on putting Iran on the forefront of international news so the world forgets about our settlement land grabbing spree and Abbas' bid at the UN, and we will make sure that funds will flow into your election coffers... and if you give us the green light to bomb Iran (or even better, if you do it yourself), you know those bunker bombs you gave us a couple of years ago, then elections may be a walk in the park for you....
This might be worse than a crime
it could be a very bad mistake, on Obama's part. This very strange story looks like it could spin out of control. At the best it looks like a poorly put together false flag operation. Holder and his DEA may have been bamboozled. Is there any evidence that the FBI was involved in the investigation? Sounds more like it was a DEA operation backed by top officials in the DOJ. These guys do not have the expertise to handle something like this.
Unfortunately, at this point even if it was a mistake, the administration may now be committed to the story and to save face inadvertently lead us into war.
As to a false flag operation the leading suspects would be the MEK or some rogue operation inside the DEA (i.e. a deflection from that Fast and Furious fiasco). I can't imagine any self respecting governmental spy operation botching things this much.
If it was a false flag operation, it could have gone exactly as planned. No civilian deaths and a lot of press coverage. In the eyes of the general public, Iran is now a threat. The "anti-Semites" are left scrambling to explain the situation in ways that sound a lot like conspiracy theories to most people. It is now especially advantageous for presidential candidates to take even more extreme anti-Iranian positions. I'd say it worked pretty well (if true).
In my view, Obama is trying to offer up tougher sanctions on Iran in lieu of the military action that both the neocons and Israel are pressuring for -- i.e., he thinks he's meeting them halfway.
But you just wait and see. At the moment that his rhetoric reaches a fevered pitch, Israel will spring on the world a colossal excuse to attack Iran, and Obama -- having trapped himself in high rhetoric and promises to unconditionally defend Israel's security -- will have no choice but to follow suit.
Stephen writes: "Put it all together, and it looks like the Administration is making a concerted campaign to ratchet up the pressure on Tehran. Countries like Britain, Saudi Arabia and France are going along with that program, and no doubt Israel is happy to see this development too. But so far other countries appear to be at best agnostic about the whole business, which is still the only sensible response in light of the paltry public evidence offered to date."
Cross out "Britain" and you've got 2003 all over again. Altho Condie tried to pedal it that "everyone in the international community" believed that Iraq had WMD, that was of course BS, but no lesser a figure than Wolf Blitzer let her get away with saying it in two different interviews. The "international community" went from "agnostic" to "utterly unconvinced" when Blix & Co. made their second report. Every time some network program runs that footage of Powell at the UNSC and the camera pans to the audience, I get another opportunity to study the skeptical faces of the international community.
In short, I think Americans are in for another war. And my theocon prime minister Harper will be right behind you: "Sure beats another stimulus."
RE: "More to the point: what's the endgame here?" ~ Walt
MY COMMENT: It should do wonders for Obama and the Democrats with certain big-time, deep-pocketed bundlers like...
FROM WIKIPEDIA:
(excerpts)...[Haim] Saban, in a 2004 New York Times interview,[3] ascribed his interest in politics to his concern for Israel: "I'm a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel."[3] In pursuit of his concerns, Saban was described in 2004 as "throwing his weight and money around Washington and, increasingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli."[3]...
Q - You meet frequently and quite intimately with Israeli and American decision-makers. What do you tell than about
the situation regarding Iran?
A - "The Iranians are serious. They mean business. [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is not a madman. [....] When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler. They speak the same language. His motivation is also clear: the return of the Mahdi is a supreme goal. And for a religious person of deep self-persuasion, that supreme goal is worth the liquidation of five and a half million Jews. We cannot allow ourselves that. Nuclear weapons in the hands of a religious leadership that is convinced that the annihilation of Israel will bring about the emergence of a new Muslim caliphate? Israel cannot allow that. This is no game. It's truly an existential danger."[2]...
...Saban has been a generous and consistent donor to the United States Democratic Party according to his mandatory Federal Election Commission filings...
SOURCE - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haim_Saban
Israel is not the home of Christianity
In fact, Christians are leacing Israel becasue they are sick and tired fo being treated with such rascist contempt.
The only group that associate Israel with Christianity are the Evangelical nut jobs that actually want Jesus to return and destroy Jews unless they convert to Christianity.
Nice friends you have there.
To war on Iran naturally.
And whether Obama will or not isn 't really the question is it?
It's whether Israel having sufficently cowed Obama will attack Iran and draw in the US...which they will....they are not smart people.
If we take the long view and ignore the carnage and destruction, a war with Iran might finally get rid of Israel and the Israel firsters hold on our government.
Everyone knows it would a war in behalf of the Jews and Israel.
I do believe that would be the very last straw for Americans...and that would be good..
Would tank our economy
Wow, Evangelical lunatic alert!!
JGARBUZ is Pat Robertson wanne be.
So the reason the US economy is in free fall is becasue Obama tried to appease the Muslims and castigate Israel.
Exccept for one small problem.
The US economy crashed in 2008, and Bush (the most pro Israeli president in US history) was in power.
>> By contrast, Israel's economy has never been stronger!
Israel's economy in entirely dependent on the US. When then US goes under, so will Israel.
>> But the US today still sells the Arabs three times as much arms as it gives to ISrael.
Correction. The US today still sells the Arabs old technology and hs given Israel more in arms that it has sold to the Arabs.
>> Obama made a $60 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, but all SA has to do is cut back on oil production and the price rise at the gas pumps quickly makes up for any money they spend on US arms.
You have it backwads. The Saudi deal is not for the benefit of the Saudi's, it's a favor to the US arms companies.
>> Obama's castigating Israel and trying to suck up to the Muslims had not made the American economy one whit stronger.
Nor did Bush's suck up to the Israelis and castigating Muslims.
I read yesterday how a Guardian journalist easily debunked one of Obama's & Clintons's pieces of 'key evidence' which was the supposed transfer of money from an Iranian bank account to a US bank. As the journalist said, that's impossible because given the sanctions that have been in place for years it's just not possible to transfer money from an Iranian bank to a US bank as it would be blocked.
So whoops, Obama & Clinton caught out lying again lol!
Which brings up the question, if there was such a transaction, from which countries bank did it really come from?
And like with the 'smoking gun' "yellow cake from Niger & Aluminium tubes" the 'key evidence' is/was so simple to debunk.
They treat us all as fools which really shows the opinion they have of the people they're supposed to represent....
George W. Bush has been outdone
This president has crossed a startling line with ease -- assassinating an American citizen without a formal charge, a trial or any official act such as stripping his citizenship. So this little drama is comparatively speaking -- a detail.
Poor George, to be outdone by this upstart so easily in the Imperial role!
This comical "plot" plays well to an American public which unfortunately reads millimeters deep on anything not related to Nancy Grace's bosom malfunction.
Pubic opinion is stirred up against Iran ever more. And Obama can demand that other nations increase sanctions on Iran, and the inevitable rebuff will only serve to paint America as an embattled freedom advocate, like Israel.
Eiher our vaunted Justice Department and FBI are part of the Big Lie, or they are blazingly incompetent. Personally I favor the lie explanation. AsW demonstrated, a squeezed scrotum produced false CIA intelligence, so why wouldn't these guys bend also?
. . he has the technology to murder people at long range.
of course, we get the bleating about all the innocent people who would have been killed if the dreaded Beavis and Butthead plot had succeeded.
No worries...if we can't start a war with Iran we can always find one in Africa....
You talkin' to me? You want some freakin' evidence? We don' need no stinkin' evidence. All we need is an enemy who doesn't speak fluent English. Even if we had some evidence, it would be classified, so I couldn't share it with you if I did.
Now, stop bothering me. My new war's just about to start up in Uganda...
Let's hope journalists in fact do their job
Bravo. And let us hope journalists do their job. Washington Post story about a cousin of the so-called Iranian plotter, from Kermanshah, was most-vewed story on the WaPo site. It's angle: Iranian "support" for Iraqis fighting US forces in Iraq.
American Voters want to REEL IN THE MILITARY BUDGET
DID OBAMA APPROVE THE MILITARY WARTIME CONTRACTING?
$60 BILLION IN FRAUD out of $204 billion paid for Contracting.
$360 MILLION paid to sub contractors of the TALIBAN.
Iraq & Afghanistan Hearing on Wartime Contracting Report:
Watch the Video: GO TO C-SPAN.ORG
$31 billion to $60 billion has been lost to waste in contracts for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a special commission's final report on the subject. The Commission on Wartime Contracting (CWC) says that is a conservative estimate and the result of “mismanaged” military contracts.
In its final report to Congress, the Commission said that much of the fraud and waste could have been avoided, and identified lessons learned from the past two years of hearings and recommendations to improve future dealings with private contractors.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the report offers additional proof that stronger management of contracts is key to successful government agendas and business endeavors. "That is a lesson that must be applied not only to wartime contracting but to contracting across all federal agencies as we seek to improve government performance, especially in a struggling economy," Lieberman said.
Sen. Lieberman's committee interpreted the CWC's report and provided suggestions for turning the findings into legislation. One round of witnesses included several CWC commissioners.
American Voters want to REEL IN THE MILITARY BUDGET now before this goes too far.
AMERICA should not be known as THE War Monger Nation.
Why has the military been so adverse to audit & investigate this issue on economic and security management?
American Voters want to limit military use for our Allies and the USA only.
Obama is abusing his power and is out of control.
Can we put up with 4 more years of this?
CRUISER4NEWS GO TO C-SPAN.ORG
"officials told the Washington Post that they believe that Iran was behind the May 16 killing of a Saudi diplomat in the Pakistani city of Karachi."
I "believe" that humans can levitate but am keepigt the proof secret!
It is a shade naïve to complain that none of this is rational because if it were rational it wouldn’t work and nothing would never get done. Reason, Truth, Law and all that stuff are the last things you want screwing up your orchestration of public emotion, perish the thought.
By the way, I liked the Russian UN envoy's somewhat disdainful put down vetoing the US Syrian resolution, that it represented a 'philosophy of confrontation'. Nice one?
Of what importance is a Saudi Ambassador?
They are errand boys for the royal family.
The hunch that this is a concerted p.r. effort by the White House to prepare the country for war on Iran is strengthened by reports that, in mid-November, the IAEA will come out with what it claims are data in support of the US and Israeli conclusion that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The IAEA will be abandoning its long-standing agnosticism on the issue. Given the political cycle -- elections in 2012 in France, Russia, and the US -- we may be hearing "Bombs Away!" sooner rather than later.
The whole thing is just silly -- I think when all is said and done this will turn out to be a drug deal gone bad, run by the Persian Walter Mitty
Obama played by advisers on national security matters?
Obama's blunder in Afghanistan was to reject advice from Joe Biden and others, not to increase the US military presence in Afghanistan by a substantial degree. Instead, Obama followed very poor advice of Petraeus, Clinton and Gates.
Gates and Clinton have little ability to think strategically. And very little sense of history.
The Iranian foreign minister said today that the so-called "plot" was "lies cooked up to deceive the world community and inflate political ballyhoo."
Salehi clearly is correct. Yet we see a number of stooges of the Israel lobby in the US Congress calling for stern measures against Iran as punishment for a scheme apprarently created by the US itself.
Even if Obama decides to scale down on the pressure (finds something else to gain political capital with), or just let this story wither and die, there will not be any serious political backlash. They will just dismiss Iran with "they had it coming", "they are trying to get an atomic bomb anyway", and "they have no respect for human rights". The media will play along just fine and no electoral rival will risk being called an Iran-sympathizer by bringing up Obama's injustice during the campaign.
which I believe may be correct, and expresses the most probable explanation to this story.
In my opinion, the "plot" has a distinct Mossad flavour. Add to this the fact that the Obama administration has been very quick to take the whole thing at face value; not a shred of hesitation has appeared in the different statements from the President, and others.
Why? Why did the U.S. buy the Ababsiar case, so quick, and wholesale?
The answer may be hidden in an article on English Aljazeera, "Does Obama understand what's been unleashed?", Oct 19, by Reza Marashi, Director of Research at the National Iranian American Council and a former Iran desk officer at the US Department of State.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/10/20111019113515106121.html
Reading Mr Marashi's article, I suspect that the Ababsiar plot may be a joint venture between Mossad and CIA. Which means that U.S. is seriously preparing for war against Iran some time soon, in collaboration with Israel -- remember the "unbreakable bond".
So, this plot may have been designed to get foiled. In order to create a casus belli, the very idea was that it had to be detected. The "fumbling" was part av the scheme.
Cf David ignatius' column today in the Washington Post, "Stopping terror plots will require more than luck" http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/stopping-terror-plots-will-require-more-than-luck/2011/10/18/gIQAg4BlyL_story.html
So, probably Mr Ignatius needs not be concerned regarding the CIA or the FBI. They are doing their job OK.
Why no response to Iran's nuclear offer?
Is it not a bit strange that Iran offered to cease production of 20% U, and instead to buy needed supplies from the US, but no response obtains from the Obama administration? Recently, the US was arguing that Iranian production of 20% U indicated a drive towrad building nukes.
Ralph Schoenman of so-called plot: "fabrication"
Ralph Schoenman of Berkeley has interesting comments regarding apparent fabrication of the plot.
http://www.presstv.com/detail/205493.html
Even after the unbelievable costs of the Iraq war have been tallied and include thousands of dead and wounded Americans, a bankrupt America and the inability of Americans to prosecute criminal operatives in the financial services industry linked to the government. If they can't pause at the death parenting guide and destruction at home, I wouldn't expect them to pause at the death of 1 000 000 + Iraqis or the destruction of one of the oldest oldest civilizations on earth, or the destruction of some of the oldest historical artifacts in Earth's history.
Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.
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May/June 2013
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