Iran: The hawks are itching

Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of 'stampeding' to war with Iran

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski likened U.S. officials' saber rattling about Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions to similar bellicose statements made before the start of the Iraq war.

"I think the administration, the president and the vice president particularly, are trying to hype the atmosphere, and that is reminiscent of what preceded the war in Iraq," Brzezinski told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on Sunday.

In October 2002, five months before Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was toppled for what the United States said was his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush said, "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

No evidence was found that Iraq was then pursuing such weapons.

Earlier this month during a televised speech about Iraq, the president said, "Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region."

However, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes" that "insecurity in Iraq is detrimental to our interests."

Brzezinski also disapproved of Bush's statement.

"When the president flatly asserts they are seeking nuclear weapons, he's overstating the facts," he said. "We are suspicious, we have strong suspicions, but we don't have facts that they are."

Brzezinski, who served under President Jimmy Carter, said he is not sure how to interpret Iran's intentions. Iran has insisted its nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes.

"I think it's quite possible that they are seeking weapons or positioning themselves to have them, but we have very scant evidence to support that," he said. "And the president of the United States, especially after Iraq, should be very careful about the veracity of his public assertions."

But Henry Kissinger, the former national security adviser and secretary of state under President Nixon, appeared not to doubt Iran's alleged ambitions.

"I believe they are building a capability to build a nuclear bomb," Kissinger told CNN. "I don't think they're yet in a position to build a nuclear bomb, but they may be two or three years away from it."

Brzezinski urged American officials to be patient, whatever Tehran's intentions may be. "If we escalate the tensions, if we succumb to hysteria, if we start making threats, we are likely to stampede ourselves into a war, which most reasonable people agree would be a disaster for us," he said.

"And just think what it would do for the United States, because it would be the United States which would be at war. We will be at war simultaneously in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And we would be stuck for the next 20 years."

Kissinger said the international community should enlist support from countries opposed to Iran becoming a nuclear power.

"The current objective has to be to unite the countries that will suffer directly from Iranian nuclear weapons, the members of the Security Council and other countries in a program of diplomacy," he said.

Kissinger and Brzezinski also disagreed over whether Columbia University in New York should have offered to present a lecture by Ahmadinejad, scheduled for Monday....

http://weazlsrevenge.blogspot.com/2007/09/lifelong-warmonger-and-global-elistist.html

Cheney considered pushing Israel to strike Iran?

"...Citing two unnamed sources the magazine called knowledgeable, the magazine quoted David Wurmser, until last month Cheney's Middle East advisor, as having told a small group of people that "Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz - and perhaps other sites - in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out."

According to the report, "The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran."
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Newsweek said that it had corroborated Wurmser's remarks, which it said were first published by Washington foreign-policy blogger Steven Clemons..."

 

http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/09/report-cheney-may-have-mulled-pushing.html

Anniversary of Majestic 12, Purported Secret Government UFO Board

1947: If the secret committee known as the Majestic 12 ever really existed, this is the day that the group was allegedly created by a memorandum from President Harry Truman.

If real, this shadowy coven of scientists, military brass and government officials came together in response to the Army's recovery of an alien spacecraft that crashed on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. Their purpose: to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Roswell incident and to maintain vigilance against further alien incursions...

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/09/dayintech_0924

The reason this war is happening

Is because it is making some people very rich.

"...The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity, according to the American Friends Service Committee, which displayed those statistics on large banners in cities nationwide Thursday and Friday.

    The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.

    The estimates made by the group, which opposes the conflict, include not only the immediate costs of war but also ongoing factors such as long-term health care for veterans, interest on debt and replacement of military hardware.

    "The wounded are coming home, and many of them have severe brain and spinal injuries, which will require round-the-clock care for the rest of their lives," said Michael McConnell, Great Lakes regional director of the AFSC, a peace group affiliated with the Quaker church.

    The $720 million figure breaks down into $280 million a day from Iraq war supplementary funding bills passed by Congress, plus $440 million daily in incurred, but unpaid, long-term costs..."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092207E.shtml

The War Prayer, by Mark Twain

 "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle—be Thou near them! With them—in spirit—we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it—for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

 

 http://www.historyisaweapon.org/defcon1/twain.html

What may be the largest high-level international meeting ever on climate change

"...More than 80 heads of state or government are expected among the representatives of better than 150 countries attending the UN session. Then on Thursday, President Bush will convene at the White House a gathering of leaders from the world's top emitters of greenhouse gases.

In addition, the Clinton Global Initiative will host a forum in New York Wednesday, drawing business and international political leaders to promote grass-roots responses to global warming.

Over the past weekend, at a UN conference in Montreal, the governments of about 200 countries agreed to accelerate a treaty to phase out hydrochlorofluorocarbons.

Together, the meetings put climate change at the center of the global stage this week – and they will make it harder for leaders to drop the issue in the future, experts say. That may be especially true of Mr. Bush: He may be known internationally as the foot-dragging leader of a top emitter of fossil-fuel pollutants, but by endorsing Mr. Ban's meeting and then calling for his own at the White House, he will be seen as committing to a path of no return on climate-change action.

The Monday UN meeting "is looking to be quite an extraordinary event in what is turning out to be a remarkable year in the international response to climate change," says Richard Kinley, deputy executive director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change..."

"...Other factors this year, he says, include what many experts describe as a "conclusive" report from an international group of scientists and officials finding evidence of global warming to be "unequivocal." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with what it termed near certainty that the warming taking place is the result of human activities..."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0924/p01s01-wogi.html

Voodoo economics assailed

"...And yet the Republican right keeps coming back, and back, and back. Their fortunes rise and then dip, but each peak is higher than the last peak, and each dip is higher than the last dip. Consider the present situation. Things have gone about as badly as they could have in George W. Bush's second term. A Republican administration started and lost a major war in Iraq; presided over an economy that has failed to deliver higher wages for most Americans; contributed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the near-wipeout of a major American city; launched a failed assault on Social Security, the most popular social program in the history of the United States; and saw its members suffer an almost unprecedented string of sexual and financial scandals. Still, Democrats find themselves holding only the slimmest of majorities in the House and Senate. Even if they hold their majorities in Congress and win the White House in 2008, the structural forces in Washington will make it nearly impossible to roll back any significant chunks of the Bush tax cuts, let alone take on crises like global warming or the forty-five million Americans lacking health insurance..."

 

http://weazlsrevenge.blogspot.com/2007/09/new-york-times-prints-portion-of-book.html

Providing Information May Be Hazardous to Your Job

Is there an attempt "to flush out would-be whistle-blowers" at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, which "focuses on how pollution and other toxins in the environment contribute to disease"? Managers at the North Carolina institute recently "distributed 'record of congressional inquiry' forms to employees," asking "for details of each telephone call from the offices of members of the House or Senate, including on the information sought," reports the Associated Press. "Their distribution came in the midst of multiple and ongoing investigations by Congress," including by Sen. Charles Grassley's (R-Iowa) staff. Grassley wrote to National Institutes of Health director Dr. Elias Zerhouni about the "curious" timing of the forms. NIH whistle-blowers have informed Grassley's staff of previous management communications that "left them with the impression that there would be retaliation if it was discovered they had provided information to among others, congressional investigations," the Senator's letter states.

 

http://www.prwatch.org/node/6373