*IRAN* War already started: Scott Ritter

[DB008]

Experts Say Iran Attack Is Irrational, Yet Hawks Are Winning the Debate


by Peter Beinart Feb 21, 2012 4:45 AM EST

The debate over whether Israel should attack Iran rests on three basic questions.

First, if Iran’s leaders got the bomb, would they use it or give it to people who might?
Second, would a strike substantially retard Iran’s nuclear program?
Third, if Israel attacks, what will Iran do in response?

The vast majority of people opining on these questions—myself very much included—lack the expertise to answer. We’ve never directed a bombing campaign; we have no secret sources in Tehran; we don’t spend our days studying the Iranian regime. So essentially, we decide which experts to trust.

As it happens, both the American and Israeli governments boast military and intelligence agencies charged with answering exactly these sorts of questions. And with striking consistency, the people who run, or ran, those agencies are warning—loudly—against an attack.

Start with the first question: whether Iran would be suicidal enough to use or transfer a nuke. In 2007, the U.S. intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iran argued that the Iranian regime—loathsome as it is—is “guided by a cost-benefit approach.” In 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress that “we continue to judge Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach.” Last week, Gen. Ron Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or provoke a conflict.” Last weekend, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor.”

More on link above...

 

[Nutmeg]

Re: *IRAN* War already started: Scott Ritter.

I seriously do not know how the USA is able to get away with unjustified and blatant attacks on other countries with only the justification that it is a 'war on terror'.

The issue here is the power of the Israel Lobby in Washington. Ultimately, the US does not have an independent Middle East foreign policy. It only has the policy that Israel pressures it to have. The US Congress is wholly owned by that Lobby. If you want proof, count the number of standing ovations that Netanyahu received when he addressed Congress last year. It was unprecedented. It was like watching the Politburo in Soviet Russia being addressed by Stalin. It was an embarrassment.

 

[DB008]

Thought that l'd post another one on Iran and also a Bloomberg clip on POO (Price of Oil), up 11% in Feb alone.



Oil
Oil Price Will Rise Till Economy `Breaks'



Iran

Iran ‘Dismissed’ IAEA, Tripled Uranium Production


Iran dismissed United Nations atomic inspectors’ concerns over possible nuclear-weapon work and the Persian Gulf nation tripled its quarterly rate of producing 20 percent-enriched uranium.

Iran increased its supply of 20 percent-enriched uranium to 109 kilograms from 73.7 kilograms reported in November, the IAEA said. Iran has produced 5,451 kilograms of uranium enriched to less than 5 percent compared with 4,922 kilograms in the last IAEA report.

 

[DB008]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-iran-20120303,0,5906341.story

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a mullah-missile, just to take out the old godbothering farts, and leave the gentle people of Persia, the men, women and children of a great civilisation, safe and well to get on with their lives.

gg

 

[Glen48]

Dream on GG they would some another replacement and USA would look for another country to beat up on.
The yanks are just as brained washed as the Koran Quoters.
Some thing we will never get rid of sadly.
We got a few Exclusive Brethren moving in around OZ
The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..

 

[DB008]

The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..

(Wiki...Iran#27)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html

http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/world-jewish-population.htm

The top twelve Jewish populations in the world are:

1. USA 6,500,000
2. Israel 4,950,000
3. France 600,000 (750,000)
4. Canada 364,000
5. Britain 275,000
6. Russia 275,000 (650,000)
7. Argentina197,000 (250,000)
8. Ukraine 112,000
9. Germany98,000 (115,000)
10. Brazil 97,500
11. South Africa88,000 (65,000)
12. Hungary 55,000 (100,000)

 

[bellenuit]

The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..

Even if that were true, which it isn't as the previous post has shown, having as many rights as the locals in Iran is really having few rights at all.

 

[Macquack]

Re: *IRAN* War already started: Scott Ritter.

The issue here is the power of the Israel Lobby in Washington. Ultimately, the US does not have an independent Middle East foreign policy. It only has the policy that Israel pressures it to have. The US Congress is wholly owned by that Lobby. If you want proof, count the number of standing ovations that Netanyahu received when he addressed Congress last year. It was unprecedented. It was like watching the Politburo in Soviet Russia being addressed by Stalin. It was an embarrassment.

This is a perfect summary of the situation.

How can a country with less than 8 million people dictate policy to the United States?

Considering most Americans would not know where Israel is on a map of the world, why does Israel get so much support?

Nutmeg has answered all these questions.

Obama should tell Netanyahu that if Israel makes a pre-emptive strike on Iran, then you are on your own buddy.

 

[orr]

And who can forget the words of the Israeli journalist Amira Haas – Haaretz's reporter in the occupied West Bank, whom I often quote. She told me in Jerusalem that the foreign correspondent's job was not to be "the first witness to history" (my own pitiful definition), but to "monitor the centres of power", especially when they are going to war, and especially when they intend to do so on a bedrock of lies.

An extract from Robert Fisk's
http://www.zcommunications.org/the-...ortable-truth-of-war-reporting-by-robert-fisk

Interesting in itself, all the more so when read with this voice from the Jewish diaspora

http://www.zcommunications.org/what-are-iran-s-intentions-by-noam-chomsky

 

[Glen48]

Guess I was led to, Israel is seen by the thumpers in USA as the home of christian's every where and must be protected at all costs.

AP: Israel Won't Warn US Before Iran Strike
Monday, 27 Feb 2012 09:53 PM
Israeli officials say they won't warn the United States if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, according to one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the discussions.

The pronouncement, delivered in a series of private, top-level conversations, sets a tense tone ahead of meetings in the coming days at the White House and Capitol Hill.

Israeli officials said that if they eventually decide a strike is necessary, they would keep the Americans in the dark to decrease the likelihood that the United States would be held responsible for failing to stop Israel's potential attack. The United States has been working with the Israelis for months to persuade them that an attack would be only a temporary setback to Iran's nuclear program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak delivered the message to a series of top-level U.S. visitors to the country, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the White House national security adviser and the director of national intelligence, and top U.S. lawmakers, all trying to close the trust gap between Israel and the United States over how to deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Netanyahu delivered the same message to all the Americans who have traveled to Israel for talks, the U.S. official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive strategic negotiations.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment, and the Pentagon and Office of Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, as did the Israeli Embassy.

Iran claims its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, but the International Atomic Energy Agency has raised alarms that its uranium enrichment program might be a precursor to building nuclear weapons. The United States has said it does not know whether the government has decided to weaponize its nuclear material and put it on a missile or other delivery device.

The secret warning is likely to worry U.S. officials and begin the high-level meetings with Israel and the United States far apart on how to handle Iran.

But the apparent decision to keep the United States in the dark also stems from Israel's frustration with the White House. After a visit by National Security Adviser Tom Donilon in particular, they became convinced the Americans would neither take military action, nor go along with unilateral action by Israel against Iran.

The Israelis concluded they would have to conduct a strike unilaterally ”” a point they are likely to hammer home in a series of meetings over the next two weeks in Washington, the official said.

Barak will meet with top administration and congressional officials during his visit. Netanyahu arrives in Washington for meetings with President Barack Obama next week.

The behind-the-scenes warning belies the publicly united front the two sides have attempted to craft with the shuttle diplomacy to each other's capitals.

"It's unprecedented outreach to Israel to make sure we are working together to develop the plan to deter Iran from developing a nuclear weapon," and to keep them from exporting terrorism, said Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

He traveled there with the intelligence committee chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., to meet Israel's prime minister and defense minister, along with other officials.

"We talked about the fact that sanctions are working and they are going to get a lot more aggressive," Ruppersberger added.

They also discussed talked about presenting a unified front to Iran, to counter the media reports that the two countries are at odds over how and when to attack Iran.

"We have to learn from North Korea. All those [peace] talks and stalling and they developed a nuclear weapon," he said. "We are going to send a message, enough is enough, the stalling is over. . . . All options are on the table."

"I got the sense that Israel is incredibly serious about a strike on their nuclear weapons program," Rogers told CNN on Monday. "It's their calculus that the administration ... is not serious about a real military consequence to Iran moving forward.

"They believe they're going to have to make a decision on their own, given the current posture of the United States," he added.

U.S. intelligence and special operations officials have tried to keep a dialogue going with Israel, despite the high-level impasse, sharing with them options such as allowing Israel to use U.S. bases in the region from which to launch such a strike, as a way to make sure the Israelis give the Americans a heads-up, according to the U.S. official, and a former U.S. official with knowledge of the communications

Cooperation has improved on sharing of intelligence in the region, according to one current and one former U.S. official. Israel is providing key information on Syria for instance, now that the United States has closed its embassy and pulled out both its diplomats and intelligence officials stationed there, the U.S. official said.



Newsmax.com:

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Wouldn't it be nice to have a mullah-missile, just to take out the old godbothering farts, and leave the gentle people of Persia, the men, women and children of a great civilisation, safe and well to get on with their lives.

gg

Dream on GG they would some another replacement and USA would look for another country to beat up on.
The yanks are just as brained washed as the Koran Quoters.
Some thing we will never get rid of sadly.
We got a few Exclusive Brethren moving in around OZ
The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..

Glen48, I would agree that the USA has it's fair share of godbothering nuts, however they do not control thought, acts and the freedom that is every human's birthright, as occurs in Persia.

The Iranian mullahs would be hard pressed if they were living in Queensland to get a job as a yardman at the Nidigully pub, so bereft of brains and humanity that they are.

gg

 

[Glen48]

GG sadly its some thing that been going on for thousands of years and will continue to do so as you know, some how the DNA, Junk genes and RNA got confused and went of on a different tangent.
There more Jew love'sr in USA than any where else in the world who vote for your old mate Pistasa Newt or some other walk on water worshiper and there your problem right there.

 

[DB008]

Israel upping the pressure

Stuxnet MkII

Flame virus attacked Iran oil industry

IRAN'S key oil industry was briefly affected by the powerful computer virus known as "Flame" that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users, a senior Iranian military official said Wednesday.

The comment is the first direct link between the emergence of the new malware and an attack inside a highly sensitive computer system in Iran, which counts on oil revenue for 80 per cent of its income.

The full extent of last month's disruptions has not been given, but Iran was forced to cut Internet links to the country's main oil export terminal presumably to try to contain the virus.

It would be the latest high-profile virus to penetrate Iran's computer defenses in the past two years, boosting speculation that Israeli programmers could have struck again.

Experts see technological links between Flame and the highly focused Stuxnet virus, which was tailored to disrupt Iran's nuclear centrifuges in 2010. Many suspect Stuxnet was the work of Israeli intelligence.

Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of fighting sabotage, claimed that Iranian experts had detected and defeated the "Flame" virus.

He told state radio that the oil industry was the only governmental body seriously affected and that all data that had been lost were retrieved.

Iran has acknowledged that Stuxnet affected a limited number of its centrifuges - a key component in the production of nuclear fuel - at its main uranium enrichment facility in the central city of Natanz. But Tehran has said its scientists discovered and neutralized the malware before it could cause serious damage.

Iran says is has previously discovered one more espionage virus, Duqu, but that the malware did no harm Iran's nuclear or industrial sites. Jalali said Flame is the third.

Iran says Stuxnet and other computer virus attacks are part of a concerted campaign by Israel, the U.S. and their allies to undermine its nuclear program and economy.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/flame-virus-attacked-iran-oil-industry/story-e6frgakx-1226375774141

 

[DB008]

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

Very interesting article from ARS Technica on Stuxnet Worm/Virus...

Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it

Stuxnet was never meant to propagate in the wild.

In 2011, the US government rolled out its "International Strategy for Cyberspace," which reminded us that "interconnected networks link nations more closely, so an attack on one nation’s networks may have impact far beyond its borders." An in-depth report today from the New York Times confirms the truth of that statement as it finally lays bare the history and development of the Stuxnet virus””and how it accidentally escaped from the Iranian nuclear facility that was its target.

The article is adapted from journalist David Sanger's forthcoming book, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, and it confirms that both the US and Israeli governments developed and deployed Stuxnet. The goal of the worm was to break Iranian nuclear centrifuge equipment by issuing specific commands to the industrial control hardware responsible for their spin rate. By doing so, both governments hoped to set back the Iranian research program””and the US hoped to keep Israel from launching a pre-emptive military attack.

The code was only supposed to work within Iran's Natanz refining facility, which was air-gapped from outside networks and thus difficult to penetrate. But computers and memory cards could be carried between the public Internet and the private Natanz network, and a preliminary bit of "beacon" code was used to map out all the network connections within the plant and report them back to the NSA.

That program, first authorized by George W. Bush, worked well enough to provide a digital map of Natanz and its industrial control hardware. Soon, US national labs were testing different bits of the plan to sabotage Natanz (apparently without knowing what the work was for) using similar centrifuges that had come from Libya's Qadaffi regime. When the coders found the right sets of commands to literally shake the centrifuges apart, they knew that Stuxnet could work.

When ready, Stuxnet was introduced to Natanz, perhaps by a double agent.

Ars Technica Article here

 

[Glen48]

Israel attacked the un armed USS Cole during the Gulf war it was in international waters and Israel knew it was there.
The ship was sent to listen in on World communications, Israel sent in 3 unmarked planes which bombed and torpedoed the ship and then sent in patrol boats to finish off any survivors,the hope by Israel was the US would think Egypt was attacking the ship. The USA sent atomic bomb laden planes to bomb Egypt but lucky for all they were called back. The Cole was patch up and sent back to USA were the damage was so great it was sold for scrap, the crew were given medals in private and told not to tell any one what went on and the incident is still under the secrets act to day.
So Israel rules the world. USA has not won a war since 1945 including the war on plants yet every president since 45 has been in a war .
Wars are funded by big banks they fund both sides including Russia to keep the myth going and help bleed money out of suckers and support the arms industry.

 

[DB008]

Israel attacked the un armed USS Cole during the Gulf war it was in international waters and Israel knew it was there.
The ship was sent to listen in on World communications, Israel sent in 3 unmarked planes which bombed and torpedoed the ship and then sent in patrol boats to finish off any survivors,the hope by Israel was the US would think Egypt was attacking the ship. The USA sent atomic bomb laden planes to bomb Egypt but lucky for all they were called back. The Cole was patch up and sent back to USA were the damage was so great it was sold for scrap, the crew were given medals in private and told not to tell any one what went on and the incident is still under the secrets act to day.
So Israel rules the world. USA has not won a war since 1945 including the war on plants yet every president since 45 has been in a war .
Wars are funded by big banks they fund both sides including Russia to keep the myth going and help bleed money out of suckers and support the arms industry.

Umm, link please....

 

[CanOz]

Israel attacked the un armed USS Cole during the Gulf war it was in international waters and Israel knew it was there.
The ship was sent to listen in on World communications, Israel sent in 3 unmarked planes which bombed and torpedoed the ship and then sent in patrol boats to finish off any survivors,the hope by Israel was the US would think Egypt was attacking the ship. The USA sent atomic bomb laden planes to bomb Egypt but lucky for all they were called back. The Cole was patch up and sent back to USA were the damage was so great it was sold for scrap, the crew were given medals in private and told not to tell any one what went on and the incident is still under the secrets act to day.
So Israel rules the world. USA has not won a war since 1945 including the war on plants yet every president since 45 has been in a war .
Wars are funded by big banks they fund both sides including Russia to keep the myth going and help bleed money out of suckers and support the arms industry.

Glen, this is the most outlandish pile of BS I've read since the claims that the moon landings were a hoax. Now if you cannot provide a factual link, it will be removed.

CanOz

 

[McLovin]

Glen, this is the most outlandish pile of BS I've read since the claims that the moon landings were a hoax. Now if you cannot provide a factual link, it will be removed.

CanOz

If nothing else, it would be the first destroyer in the history of the world that was "unarmed".

 

[Glen48]

yes you are correct it was the USS Liberty

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/uss-liberty-dead-in-the-water/