Iran

[Rascal]

and as this international conflict looms some no mark EU patsy, from a country that pays just 0.5% of its GDP into NATO, is set up to bad mouth the UK, the principal European contributor.

That's pretty desperate stuff Georgie

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

As fuel prices rise in the wake of yesterday's oilfield attacks the Donald is tweeting the US are "Locked & Loaded" for imminent conflict. Their principal regional allies, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the UAE, are even more belligerent. Capitalism is in need of a boost and a war is the usual prescription. So is it time to fill up our tanks again?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/19/us-war-iran-looms-justified-iraq

https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...abia-oil-attack-pearl-harbor-donald-trump-spt

Bearing in mind that the Americans are currently taking a thumping from a bunch of Afghan hill farmers armed only with small arms and home made explosives .... probably not recommended.

 

[Fred_Quimby]

So it's ok for the US to be 'locked and loaded' and for world crude prices to go up as they have 3 months supply stashed underground. So that's OK then.

 

[feedmpenzaandhewillscore]

So it's ok for the US to be 'locked and loaded' and for world crude prices to go up as they have 3 months supply stashed underground. So that's OK then.

If we need a centre half in January it’s ok for City as well.

 

[George Hannah]

That's pretty desperate stuff Georgie

You a fan of Luxurious Luxembourg and their noble EU chums then? Or maybe think Jezza's pals in Iran are the real victims of terrorism, or just believe NATO is a pointless waste of money, or the USA is the enemy of everything you hold dear. Probably a case of all the above eh?
Desperate indeed.

 

[FCBarca]

and as this international conflict looms some no mark EU patsy, from a country that pays just 0.5% of its GDP into NATO, is set up to bad mouth the UK, the principal European contributor.

It’s pointless to refer to it as an International conflict, it’s the US and it’s subordinate (UK) who are preoccupied with warring and usurping foreign resources vs a weak opponent. Moreover, that proportion of GDP on warring only underscores where their priorities are rather than where it should be

Figures the ones most obsessed with warring on behalf of Europe/NATO involve the two countries who have rejected Europe

 

[aguerrrroooooooooooo]

You a fan of Luxurious Luxembourg and their noble EU chums then? Or maybe think Jezza's pals in Iran are the real victims of terrorism, or just believe NATO is a pointless waste of money, or the USA is the enemy of everything you hold dear. Probably a case of all the above eh?
Desperate indeed.

You write for the Daily Mail and I claim my £10 sir

 

[Ifwecouldjust.......]

You a fan of Luxurious Luxembourg and their noble EU chums then? Or maybe think Jezza's pals in Iran are the real victims of terrorism, or just believe NATO is a pointless waste of money, or the USA is the enemy of everything you hold dear. Probably a case of all the above eh?
Desperate indeed.

 

[m7mcfc]

This has been a long time coming

From 2007:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re...q-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

Who are you? Where do you work? ITK?

 

[Mike D]

Wish it was right up his street.
Let him see the realities of war.

He never would like any PM does but they all like a war some more than others look at Thatcher she loved going to war over the Falklands and many say it was her making. Blair had it not been for that dodgy dosier loved bombing Iraq and socking it to Sadam.

 

[George Hannah]

It’s pointless to refer to it as an International conflict, it’s the US and it’s subordinate (UK) who are preoccupied with warring and usurping foreign resources vs a weak opponent. Moreover, that proportion of GDP on warring only underscores where their priorities are rather than where it should be Figures the ones most obsessed with warring on behalf of Europe/NATO involve the two countries who have rejected Europe

You don't think Saudi Arabia counts as a country then? May I also point out that rejecting the EU isn't rejecting Europe (of which you do not appear to notice we are a part.) It is also a matter of fact not opinion that NATO - and not the EU - has kept the continent secure for the last 80 years. Nevertheless, when it comes to the spoils of international conflict I think you'll find our noble European friends at the head of the queue fighting for a share of the pickings.

 

[aguerrrroooooooooooo]

This has been a long time coming

From 2007:

https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re...q-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”

So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”

Think I've read that before, it still doesn't surprise me.

Many US Think-tanks have been desperate to go to war with Iran for a long time, they're constantly desperate to go to war when it 'suits their best interests'


That being said I'm not a fan of the editorialised title

 

[Ban-jani]

He never would like any PM does but they all like a war some more than others look at Thatcher she loved going to war over the Falklands and many say it was her making. Blair had it not been for that dodgy dosier loved bombing Iraq and socking it to Sadam.

To be fair to Thatcher she was absolutely correct to go to war.

You cannot just invade another nations territory, with its citizens living there and expect to get away with it.

 

[Mike D]

To be fair to Thatcher she was absolutely correct to go to war.

You cannot just invade another nations territory, with its citizens living there and expect to get away with it.

I think that we will agree to disagree on that one she didn't have to go to war but they did her a massive favour and like Churchill it defined her and helped gloss over some of the nasty shit she did to the people in this country.

 

[AlexWilliamsGloves]

Think I've read that before, it still doesn't surprise me.

Many US Think-tanks have been desperate to go to war with Iran for a long time, they're constantly desperate to go to war when it 'suits their best interests'


That being said I'm not a fan of the editorialised title

They love an auld false flag

https://www.newstatesman.com/node/192545


They needed 9/11 to galvanise the people, Trump knows a war is good for him...from 2002:



The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world’s resources, it said, was “some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor”.

The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the “new Pearl Harbor”, described as “the opportunity of ages”. The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and “think-tanks” were established to avenge the American “defeat” in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a “peace dividend” following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.

One of George W Bush’s “thinkers” is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about “total war”, I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America’s “war on terror”. “No stages,” he said. “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq . . . this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war . . . our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan’s education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism.

The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America’s Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.

As for Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction”, these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,” it says, “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.

On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

Time and again, 11 September is described as an "opportunity". In last April's New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush's most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalise on these opportunities'", which she compared with those of "1945 to 1947": the start of the cold war.

Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states “if necessary”. Under cover of propaganda about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception". According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists".

In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign - complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans - as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution.

You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: “the prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our position”.

“Our position” is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the vacuities in Tony Blair’s “Iraq dossier” and Jack Straw’s inept lie that Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rushed to “explain”). But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black propaganda.

This corruption makes journalists and broadcasters mere ventriloquists’ dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.

The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern imperial domination, but how “bad” Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqis condemned to wait on America’s international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover, the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them.

 

[aguerrrroooooooooooo]

They love an auld false flag

https://www.newstatesman.com/node/192545


They needed 9/11 to galvanise the people, Trump knows a war is good for him...from 2002:



The threat posed by US terrorism to the security of nations and individuals was outlined in prophetic detail in a document written more than two years ago and disclosed only recently. What was needed for America to dominate much of humanity and the world’s resources, it said, was “some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor”.

The attacks of 11 September 2001 provided the “new Pearl Harbor”, described as “the opportunity of ages”. The extremists who have since exploited 11 September come from the era of Ronald Reagan, when far-right groups and “think-tanks” were established to avenge the American “defeat” in Vietnam. In the 1990s, there was an added agenda: to justify the denial of a “peace dividend” following the cold war. The Project for the New American Century was formed, along with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute and others that have since merged the ambitions of the Reagan administration with those of the current Bush regime.

One of George W Bush’s “thinkers” is Richard Perle. I interviewed Perle when he was advising Reagan; and when he spoke about “total war”, I mistakenly dismissed him as mad. He recently used the term again in describing America’s “war on terror”. “No stages,” he said. “This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq . . . this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war . . . our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Perle is one of the founders of the Project for the New American Century, the PNAC. Other founders include Dick Cheney, now vice-president, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defence secretary, I Lewis Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, William J Bennett, Reagan’s education secretary, and Zalmay Khalilzad, Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan. These are the modern chartists of American terrorism.

The PNAC's seminal report, Rebuilding America’s Defences: strategy, forces and resources for a new century, was a blueprint of American aims in all but name. Two years ago it recommended an increase in arms-spending by $48bn so that Washington could "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars". This has happened. It said the United States should develop "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and make "star wars" a national priority. This is happening. It said that, in the event of Bush taking power, Iraq should be a target. And so it is.

As for Iraq’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction”, these were dismissed, in so many words, as a convenient excuse, which it is. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,” it says, “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

How has this grand strategy been implemented? A series of articles in the Washington Post, co-authored by Bob Woodward of Watergate fame and based on long interviews with senior members of the Bush administration, reveals how 11 September was manipulated.

On the morning of 12 September 2001, without any evidence of who the hijackers were, Rumsfeld demanded that the US attack Iraq. According to Woodward, Rumsfeld told a cabinet meeting that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism". Iraq was temporarily spared only because Colin Powell, the secretary of state, persuaded Bush that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible". Afghanistan was chosen as the softer option. If Jonathan Steele's estimate in the Guardian is correct, some 20,000 people in Afghanistan paid the price of this debate with their lives.

Time and again, 11 September is described as an "opportunity". In last April's New Yorker, the investigative reporter Nicholas Lemann wrote that Bush's most senior adviser, Condoleezza Rice, told him she had called together senior members of the National Security Council and asked them "to think about 'how do you capitalise on these opportunities'", which she compared with those of "1945 to 1947": the start of the cold war.

Since 11 September, America has established bases at the gateways to all the major sources of fossil fuels, especially central Asia. The Unocal oil company is to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. Bush has scrapped the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, the war crimes provisions of the International Criminal Court and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. He has said he will use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states “if necessary”. Under cover of propaganda about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Bush regime is developing new weapons of mass destruction that undermine international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.

In the Los Angeles Times, the military analyst William Arkin describes a secret army set up by Donald Rumsfeld, similar to those run by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and which Congress outlawed. This "super-intelligence support activity" will bring together the "CIA and military covert action, information warfare, and deception". According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld, the new organisation, known by its Orwellian moniker as the Proactive Pre-emptive Operations Group, or P2OG, will provoke terrorist attacks which would then require "counter-attack" by the United States on countries "harbouring the terrorists".

In other words, innocent people will be killed by the United States. This is reminiscent of Operation Northwoods, the plan put to President Kennedy by his military chiefs for a phoney terrorist campaign - complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead Americans - as justification for an invasion of Cuba. Kennedy rejected it. He was assassinated a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but with resources undreamt of in 1963 and with no global rival to invite caution.

You have to keep reminding yourself this is not fantasy: that truly dangerous men, such as Perle and Rumsfeld and Cheney, have power. The thread running through their ruminations is the importance of the media: “the prioritised task of bringing on board journalists of repute to accept our position”.

“Our position” is code for lying. Certainly, as a journalist, I have never known official lying to be more pervasive than today. We may laugh at the vacuities in Tony Blair’s “Iraq dossier” and Jack Straw’s inept lie that Iraq has developed a nuclear bomb (which his minions rushed to “explain”). But the more insidious lies, justifying an unprovoked attack on Iraq and linking it to would-be terrorists who are said to lurk in every Tube station, are routinely channelled as news. They are not news; they are black propaganda.

This corruption makes journalists and broadcasters mere ventriloquists’ dummies. An attack on a nation of 22 million suffering people is discussed by liberal commentators as if it were a subject at an academic seminar, at which pieces can be pushed around a map, as the old imperialists used to do.

The issue for these humanitarians is not primarily the brutality of modern imperial domination, but how “bad” Saddam Hussein is. There is no admission that their decision to join the war party further seals the fate of perhaps thousands of innocent Iraqis condemned to wait on America’s international death row. Their doublethink will not work. You cannot support murderous piracy in the name of humanitarianism. Moreover, the extremes of American fundamentalism that we now face have been staring at us for too long for those of good heart and sense not to recognise them.

I have read the document you're referring to, to say it is concerning is an understatement.

 

[Ban-jani]

I think that we will agree to disagree on that one she didn't have to go to war but they did her a massive favour and like Churchill it defined her and helped gloss over some of the nasty shit she did to the people in this country.

Neither her nor Churchill had a choice and both were vindicated in those actions.

British territory is British territory, would you not go to war if somebody invaded Scotland?

 

[Mike D]

Neither her nor Churchill had a choice and both were vindicated in those actions.

British territory is British territory, would you not go to war if somebody invaded Scotland?

Different kettle of fish the Falklands are 8k miles away on the Atlantic we are joined to Scotland by land.

Churchill had not option I agree but Thatcher did. The matter could have been resolved diplomatically like does the Falklands want to remain a British colony, but that never happened. But funny how there is now talk of oil fields never mentioned at the time.

 

[Ban-jani]

Different kettle of fish the Falklands are 8k miles away on the Atlantic we are joined to Scotland by land.

Churchill had not option I agree but Thatcher did. The matter could have been resolved diplomatically like does the Falklands want to remain a British colony, but that never happened. But funny how there is now talk of oil fields never mentioned at the time.

Another nation put land troops on our territory. It doesn’t matter if it’s Skegness or Gibraltar.

Where do you draw the line at other countries invading us?

That did happen, it was over 99% in favour of remaining a British colony. They had their own referendum.

 

[mancity2012_eamo]

To be fair to Thatcher she was absolutely correct to go to war.

You cannot just invade another nations territory, with its citizens living there and expect to get away with it.

The Ulster plantations, anyone?
Just saying.