German FM warns against military measures against Iran

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"Military adventures are no contribution to a solution," Steimeier told a meeting of his Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Hamburg, German news agency DPA reported.

"The daily ranting about it only makes a solution more difficult," he said.
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Iran seen to need 3-8 yrs to produce bomb

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Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told France's Le Monde newspaper there was plenty of time for diplomacy, sanctions, dialogue and incentives to bear fruit.

Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday the world would not stand by and let Iran develop a nuclear weapon, and Washington has not ruled out an attack. Iran says its nuclear plans are peaceful and denies it wants to make an atomic bomb.

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The Secret History of the Impending War with Iran That the White House Doesn't Want You to Know

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The diplomatic effort in the United Nations will fail when it becomes clear that Russia's and China's geopolitical ambitions will not accommodate the inconvenience of energy sanctions against Iran. Without any meaningful incentive from the U.S. to be friendly, Iran will keep meddling in Iraq and installing nuclear centrifuges. This will trigger a response from the hard-liners in the White House, who feel that it is their moral duty to deal with Iran before the Democrats take over American foreign policy. "If you get all those elements coming together, say in the first half of '08," says Leverett, "what is this president going to do? I think there is a serious risk he would decide to order an attack on the Iranian nuclear installations and probably a wider target zone."

This would result in a dramatic increase in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, attacks by proxy forces like Hezbollah, and an unknown reaction from the wobbly states of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where millions admire Iran's resistance to the Great Satan. "As disastrous as Iraq has been," says Mann, "an attack on Iran could engulf America in a war with the entire Muslim world."

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Why Did Cheney Target Plame?

1. Plame worked for a CIA unit tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction and the A.Q. Khan network, which sold nuclear secrets and materials to "rogue" nations.

2. Cheney knew all about Khan in 1989 and did nothing to stop him.

3. Cheney's company, Haliburton, received a hefty fine in 1995 for selling dual-use nuclear equipment to Libya, then considered the most roguish of rogue nations. This scam would have brought Haliburton into close contact with the Khan network.

4. A Khan associate named B.S.A. Tahir, based in Dubai, was helping to supply centrifuge equipment to Libya. (Dubai front companies are used to ship American goods to "forbidden" countries.) Tahir works for a business concern called the Scomi Group. Scomi links up with Haliburton via a German concern called Cognis. The exact nature of these linkages are complex. (If you really must know all the details, go here and re-read the middle section until your eyes explode.)

The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States

Romney and Iran: do as I say, not as I do

Israeli Death Mongers want US neokkkons to wipe Iran off the map. Settlements in Tehran?

Separated at Birth

"In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

Iran closes all border crossings with Iraqi Kurdistan region

"Iran closed all its five outlets on the borders with the Kurdistan region," Jamal Abdullah told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
A presidential statement on Saturday read that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani sent a message of "discontent" to U.S. Ambassador in Baghdad Ryan Crocker and the Multi-National Forces (MNF) commander in Baghdad General David Petraeus, in which he indicated that Iran threatened to close the borders with Kurdistan if the arrested Iranian citizen was not released.

Iranian leader tells off CBS reporter: 'You don't represent 300 million people'

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"Well, I wouldn't say that what American government says is is the prerequisite here. Something happened there which led to other events. Many innocent people were killed there. Some of those people were American citizens obviously. We obviously are very much against any terrorist action and any killing. And also we are very much against any plots to sow the seeds of discord among nations," Ahmadinejad replies. "Usually you go to these sites to pay your respects. And also to perhaps to air your views about the root causes of such incidents. I think that when I do that, I will be paying, as I said earlier, my respect to the American nation."

"But the American people, sir, believe that your country is a terrorist nation, exporting terrorism in the world," Pelley says. "You must have known that visiting the World Trade Center site would infuriate many Americans."

"Well, I'm amazed. How can you speak for the whole of the American nation?" Ahmadinejad says. "You are representing a media and you're a reporter. The American nation is made up of 300 million people. There are different points of view over there."

Iran warns West against attack

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"Our message to the enemies is: Do not do it," the head of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said, speaking to reporters less than a week after France's foreign minister publicly raised the prospect of war.

"They will regret it, as they are regretting it in Iraq," the commander added, speaking on the sidelines of an annual military parade just outside the capital.

The Islamic Republic put on show medium-range missiles it has said could reach Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf at the parade marking the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

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Iran directly confronts US backed rogue terrorist state Israel on alleged nuclear arms

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Soltanieh also criticized the "continuous silence of the U.S. ... vis a vis the atrocities, aggression, bloodshed and violations of over 30 resolutions of the United Nations."

That, he said, is "shameful and (a) dark point in the history of the United Nations, and the IAEA and the modern century at large."

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Bush Setting Up America for War With Iran

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Pentagon planners have developed a list of up to 2,000 bombing targets in Iran, amid growing fears among serving officers that diplomatic efforts to slow Iran's nuclear weapons programme are doomed to fail.

Pentagon and CIA officers say they believe that the White House has begun a carefully calibrated programme of escalation that could lead to a military showdown with Iran.

Now it has emerged that Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, who has been pushing for a diplomatic solution, is prepared to settle her differences with Vice-President Dick Cheney and sanction military action.

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examples of previously right wing inability to think complexly

The Pentagon is preparing to build a military base near the Iraq-Iran border to try to curtail the flow of advanced Iranian weaponry to Shiite militants across Iraq, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday in its online edition.
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U.S. officials accuse Iran of fomenting violence to destabilize Iraq and of seeking to build nuclear weapons under cover of civilian nuclear program, charges Iran denies.
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Bush Wants $50 Billion More for Iraq War

President Bush plans to ask Congress next month for up to $50 billion in additional funding for the war in Iraq, a White House official said yesterday, a move that appears to reflect increasing administration confidence that it can fend off congressional calls for a rapid drawdown of U.S. forces.

The request -- which would come on top of about $460 billion in the fiscal 2008 defense budget and $147 billion in a pending supplemental bill to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq -- is expected to be announced after congressional hearings scheduled for mid-September featuring the two top U.S. officials in Iraq. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker will assess the state of the war and the effect of the new strategy the U.S. military has pursued this year.

U.S. soldiers arrested members of an Iranian government delegation Tuesday at a hotel in Baghdad

The Iranians, who work for Tehran's power ministry, were in the capital at the invitation of Iraqi government officials to sign an electricity supply contract, the news agency said.

The U.S. military said it detained some "Iranian citizens with Iranian passports" and their Iraqi escorts, who carried Iraqi Department of Energy badges, at a checkpoint in the Abu Nuwas market in eastern Baghdad's Rusafa district.

The Iranians and Iraqis were detained when "a group of individuals in several vehicles" stopped at the checkpoint, and "several occupants were observed to have weapons," the military said.

Soldiers searched the vehicles and confiscated the weapons because the Iraqis did not have government-issued cards permitting them to carry weapons, the U.S. military statement said.

When asked about the discrepancy regarding the location of the incident, the military said it had no clarification.

Murderous Thug GW Bush Prepares Massive attack on IRAN

Iran Plans Retaliation Should it be Attacked by Imperial Western Powers

Chimpy McFlightsuit says we are not giving enough tax payer money to our plas in the "defense" Industry

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Ships packed with 17,000 sailors and Marines moved into the Persian Gulf on Wednesday as the U.S. Navy staged another show of force off Iran's coast just days before U.S.-Iran talks in Baghdad.

The carrier strike groups led by the USS John C. Stennis and USS Nimitz were joined by the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard and its own strike group, which includes two landing ships carrying 2,100 members of the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Aircraft aboard the two carriers and the Bonhomme Richard were to conduct air training while the ships ran submarine, mine and other exercises.

The war games -- which culminate in an amphibious landing exercise in Kuwait, just a few miles from Iran -- appear to be a clear warning to Tehran, coming just ahead of the Baghdad talks and as the United Nations contemplates tightening sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

"There's a link to both events," said Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center. "The Americans are sending a message to Iran that they are not coming to the negotiating table weak, but with their military at Tehran's doorstep."
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