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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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 Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Both McCain and Obama are ill-suited to give the U.S. what it needs. I'm not even sure which will be the lesser disaster. |
That's just a little too cryptic for me to understand. I feel like I walked into a conversation that started long before I got there. |
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agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:35 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| agentX wrote: |
After he helped run the economy into the ground, yes. A moron, certainly. |
What was the US GDP when he started and what is it now.
Yep the economy is really in the ground.
Liberals like Jimmy Carter really knew how to manage the US.  |
So, by that reasoning, 4 dollars a gallon for gas, subprime mortgage and credit crisis, and the dollar tanking are all signs of a vibrant economy??
Conservatives like George W. and his butt buddies like Greenspan sure know how to manage a first world economy  |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 7:48 am Post subject: |
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| agentX wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| agentX wrote: |
After he helped run the economy into the ground, yes. A moron, certainly. |
What was the US GDP when he started and what is it now.
Yep the economy is really in the ground.
Liberals like Jimmy Carter really knew how to manage the US. |
So, by that reasoning, 4 dollars a gallon for gas, subprime mortgage and credit crisis, and the dollar tanking are all signs of a vibrant economy??
Conservatives like George W. and his butt buddies like Greenspan sure know how to manage a first world economy |
The US is certainly better off then when Jimmy Carter was president.
Ah Jimmy Carter.
Couldn't manage the economy or fight the cold war.
What was the US GDP when Greenspan started?
What was the stock market?
and it is interesting that you mention 4$ a gallon gas. The US is infact less vunerable to high oil prices than when Jimmy Carter was president.
Even Clinton and Bill Bradley were calling him a genius and maesto in 2000 no joke.
Well agent x you are to the left of your own party. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2008 8:15 am Post subject: |
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| agentX wrote: |
| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
No this is the history.
Iran and Al Qaeda is not just something that changed.
It seems to have been going on for a while.
9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and Iran
| Quote: |
| Senior U.S. officials have told TIME that the 9/11 Commission's report will cite evidence suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers had previously passed through Iran |
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html
| Quote: |
Is there a link between Mugniyah and al-Qaeda?
Mugniyah met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s, according to the court testimony of Ali Abdelsoud Mohammed, a naturalized U.S. citizen and former U.S. army sergeant who later became a senior aide to bin Laden. After his arrest in 1998 in connection with the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Mohammed testified that he arranged several meetings between bin Laden and Mugniyah in Sudan. Bin Laden reportedly admired Mugniyah's tactics, particularly his use of truck bombs, which precipitated the United States' withdrawal from Lebanon. According to Mohammed, bin Laden and Mugniyah agreed Hezbollah would provide training, military expertise, and explosives in exchange for money and man power. It is not known, however, whether this agreement was carried out. The relationship between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda is not entirely friendly, as explained in this Backgrounder. |
http://www.cfr.org/publication/11317/#8
| Quote: |
By Noah Pollak
It is long past time that one important piece of fantastical rubbish be finally sent on its way: this is the idea that Islamists maintain some kind of fastidious ethnic and theological separatism when it comes to who they're willing to work with on killing people. The co-option of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (Sunni Arab) by Iran (Shia Persian) is one piece of reality that intrudes on this comforting notion; so is the Iran-Syria alliance, along with the reality of Iranian support for both Shia and Sunni insurgents in Iraq.
A final nail in the coffin comes today from Eli Lake, the New York Sun's talented national security reporter (and good friend). Eli's scoop is about the National Intelligence Estimate, an unclassified summary of which will be released today, but whose classified final working draft concludes that:
One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.
Iranian hospitality toward Al Qaeda is not a new story -- but what is new is the apparent fact that one of two Qaeda leadership councils meets in Iran, and with the complicity of the regime. As Eli notes:
An intelligence official sympathetic to the view that it is a matter of Iranian policy to cooperate with Al Qaeda disputed the CIA and State Department view that the Quds Force is operating as a rogue force. "It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "It's a bit like saying the directorate of operations for the CIA is not really carrying out U.S. policy."
Stories like these reinforce another very basic idea: terrorism has a return address. |
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001492.html
| Quote: |
| On al-Qaeda, the picture is more murky. Iran and Osama bin Laden's movement are hardly natural allies � Tehran almost went to war with al-Qaeda's Taliban hosts in Afghanistan in 1998, following Taliban massacres of Afghan Shiites. The extremist theology that inspires both the Taliban and al-Qaeda sees Shiites as infidels, although bin Laden is on record advocating unity for purposes of anti-American jihad. The reformist elected leadership in Tehran has sought to repair its relationships with the West and rehabilitate Iran diplomatically, but the hard-liners may have hedged their bets. It remains unlikely that the government of President Mohammed Khatami has made common cause with al-Qaeda operatives, although it has long been alleged that hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guard have [b]unofficially provided some with shelter in Iran. Al-Qaeda may also have set up shop in the predominantly Sunni border region of eastern Iran, where central government authority is more limited and the authorities have lost thousands of men in battles with smugglers[/b]. |
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,455276,00.html
Those who made the video ought to be honest about their mistake.
Well they just don't have the class to. |
All speculation and no physical evidence. Try again, Vice President Cheney. |
Well now Obama thinks that Iran's Revolutionary Guards is a terror group.
So what do you have to say now Agent x? |
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agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 3:22 am Post subject: |
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Just this; You've been a dupe.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/40080.html
| Quote: |
Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?
WASHINGTON � Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.
The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.
According to the Senate report, the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar."
The counterintelligence unit said, however, that Ledeen's association with Ghorbanifar "was widely known, and therefore it should be presumed other foreign intelligence services, including those of Iran, would know."
Stephen Cambone, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, shut down the counterintelligence investigation after only a month, the Senate report said.
The Senate report said that Pentagon officials never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a comprehensive analysis of whether Ghorbanifar or his associates tried "to directly or indirectly influence or access U.S. government officials."
The counterintelligence investigators recommended that U.S. officials attempt "to map Ghorbanifar's relationship within Iranian elite social networks and, if possible, his contacts with other governments and/or intelligence organizations," but that effort was never undertaken.
The Senate committee also found that Pentagon officials concealed the contacts with Ghorbanifar from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Pentagon officials also provided Senate investigators with an inaccurate account of events and, with support from two unnamed officials in Cheney's office, continued meeting with Ghorbanifar after contact with him was officially ordered to stop.
The first meetings with Ghorbanifar, which were disclosed in August 2003 by the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday, took place in Rome in December 2001. They were attended by two Pentagon Iran experts, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin; by an Italian military intelligence official, and by Ledeen.
On the Iranian side were Ghorbanifar, an unidentified Iranian exile from Morocco and an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps defector.
Among other things, the Iranians told the Americans about:
* Iranian "hit teams" they said were targeting U.S. personnel and facilities in Afghanistan.
* What they claimed was Shiite Muslim Iran's longstanding relationship with the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.
* "Tunnel complexes in Iran for weapons storage or exfiltration of regime leaders," and about the alleged growth of anti-regime sentiment in Iran.
Franklin, who, in an unrelated matter, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison in 2006 for providing classified information on Iran policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, passed the information about the alleged Iranian hit squads to a U.S. Special Forces commander in Afghanistan. Although a DIA analyst told the Senate committee that he couldn't speculate on whether the information had been "truly useful," Ledeen and Pentagon officials claimed it saved American lives, the committee said.
During the Rome meetings, Ghorbanifar also laid out a scheme to overthrow the Iranian regime on a napkin during a late night meeting in a bar. "The plan," said the Senate committee, "involved the simultaneous disruption of traffic at key intersections leading to Tehran that would create anxiety, work stoppages and other disruptive measures" in a capital city famous for its traffic congestion.
Ghorbanifar asked for $5 million in seed money, Franklin told the committee, and indicated that if the traffic jam plan succeeded, he'd need additional money.
"The proposed funding for, and foreign involvement in, Mr. Ghorbanifar's plan for regime change were never fully understood," the Senate committee said.
Nevertheless, Ghorbanifar's proposals grew more ambitious � and expensive. A February 2002 memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman referred to an unnamed foreign government's support for a Ghorbanifar plan that would cost millions of dollars. A later summary referred to contracts "that would assure oil and gas sales in the event of regime change". The U.S. ambassador to Italy said that DOD officials "were talking about 25 million for some kind of Iran program."
After Franklin and Rhode returned from the Rome meetings, the Senate report said, two series of events began to unfold in Washington that were typical of the gamesmanship that plagued the Bush administration's national security team.
"First," the report said, "State Department and CIA officials attempted to determine what Mr. Ledeen and the DOD representatives had done in Rome, and second, DOD officials debated the next course of action."
When the CIA and the State Department discovered that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were involved, they opposed any further contact with the two. Ledeen's contacts, the Defense Human Intelligence Service concluded, were "nefarious and unreliable," the Senate committee reported.
According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran � Saddam Hussein's archenemy. This time, the report said, Ledeen solicited support from former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and from three then-GOP senators, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Rhode and Ghorbanifar met again in Paris in June 2003 with at least the tacit approval of an official in Cheney's office, the Senate report said.
He reported back to officials in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, but "there is no indication that the information collected during the Paris meeting was shared with the Intelligence Community for a determination of potential intelligence value," the report said. |
http://www.alternet.org/audits/86280/
| Quote: |
Just Where Are Those Iranian Weapons That the Bushies Say Are Flooding Iraq?
The U.S. military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shiites opposing the U.S. occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.
When Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner was asked that question at a briefing May 8, he did not answer it directly. Instead Bergner reverted to a standard U.S. military line that these groups "could not do what they're doing without the support of foreign support [sic]." Then he defined "foreign support" to include training and funding as well as weapons, implicitly conceding that he did not have much of a case based on weapons alone.
Bergner's refusal to address that question reflects a fundamental problem with the U.S. claims about Iranian weapons in Iraq: if there are indeed any Iranian rockets and mortars, and RPGs in the Mahdi Army's arsenal of stand-off weapons, they represent an insignificant part of it.
Reports by the U.S. command in Iraq over the past 15 months cited only a handful of Iranian weapons out of hundreds counted in caches found in Shiite areas. Nearly 700 mortars and rockets were reported by specific caliber size, along with a handful of RPGs, in nearly two dozen caches. Of that total, only four rockets were reported as being of Iranian origin, and another 15 were listed as possibly being Iranian.
Although those reports do not represent all the Mahdi Army caches found, they provide further evidence of the relative importance of Iranian rockets, mortars and RPGs in the Mahdi Army arsenal. That is because U.S. military officials are so eager to publicise any discovery of an Iranian-made weapon system that they would exploit any opportunity available to do so.
The U.S. command has gone so far as to claim that it had found "four Iranian hand grenades" -- but they were in a cache of weapons found in an al Qaeda area.
Based on weapons caches discovered over the past 15 months, the Mahdi Army has relied overwhelmingly on four types of heavy weapons: 60mm and 120mm mortars, 107mm rocket, and 57mm anti-tank missile.
Those are essentially the same mortars and rockets that have turned up in al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent weapons caches, suggesting that both groups have obtained their heavier weapons from the international arms market. In fact, 60mm and 120mm mortars were used by Sunni guerrillas in the very early months of the war against U.S. occupation troops.
A U.S. explosives expert, Maj. Marty Weber, confirmed in April 2007 that most 107mm rockets found in Iraq were Chinese-made. He claimed that Iran had repainted Chinese 60mm and 107mm rockets them and sold them on the "open market". |
I'm not buying Bush Co.'s arguments and neither are the American people.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/87251/
| Quote: |
| Only 7% of Americans Support Invading Iran |
It's funny that you bring up Jimmy Carter, a president from 1979 who had to deal with deficits from Vietnam as well as the Cold war. Whereas president Bush can't even manage the low-intensity War on Terror or the War on/in/over Iraq and took the budget surplus and ran it into a deficit and Greenspan didn't have the fortitude to nip the subprime mortgage crisis in the bud before banks started begging for handouts. But hey, Clinton called him a genius, in 2000, but obviously not where the rubber meets the road.
And you can have your party of in-closet homosexuals, child molesters, and cronies. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 5:31 am Post subject: |
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|
| agentX wrote: |
Just this; You've been a dupe.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/40080.html
| Quote: |
Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?
WASHINGTON � Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.
A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.
The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.
Iran, which was a mortal enemy of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and fought a bloody eight-year war with Iraq during his reign, has been the primary beneficiary of U.S. policy in Iraq, where Iranian-backed groups now run much of the government and the security forces.
The aborted counterintelligence investigation probed some Pentagon officials' contacts with Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA had labeled a "fabricator" in 1984. Those contacts were brokered by an American civilian, Michael Ledeen, a former Pentagon and National Security Council consultant and a leading advocate of invading Iraq and overthrowing Iran's Islamic regime.
According to the Senate report, the Pentagon's Counterintelligence Field Activity unit concluded in 2003 that Ledeen "was likely unwitting of any counterintelligence issues related to his relationship with Mr. Ghorbanifar."
The counterintelligence unit said, however, that Ledeen's association with Ghorbanifar "was widely known, and therefore it should be presumed other foreign intelligence services, including those of Iran, would know."
Stephen Cambone, then the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, shut down the counterintelligence investigation after only a month, the Senate report said.
The Senate report said that Pentagon officials never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a comprehensive analysis of whether Ghorbanifar or his associates tried "to directly or indirectly influence or access U.S. government officials."
The counterintelligence investigators recommended that U.S. officials attempt "to map Ghorbanifar's relationship within Iranian elite social networks and, if possible, his contacts with other governments and/or intelligence organizations," but that effort was never undertaken.
The Senate committee also found that Pentagon officials concealed the contacts with Ghorbanifar from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Pentagon officials also provided Senate investigators with an inaccurate account of events and, with support from two unnamed officials in Cheney's office, continued meeting with Ghorbanifar after contact with him was officially ordered to stop.
The first meetings with Ghorbanifar, which were disclosed in August 2003 by the Long Island, N.Y., newspaper Newsday, took place in Rome in December 2001. They were attended by two Pentagon Iran experts, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin; by an Italian military intelligence official, and by Ledeen.
On the Iranian side were Ghorbanifar, an unidentified Iranian exile from Morocco and an alleged Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps defector.
Among other things, the Iranians told the Americans about:
* Iranian "hit teams" they said were targeting U.S. personnel and facilities in Afghanistan.
* What they claimed was Shiite Muslim Iran's longstanding relationship with the secular Palestine Liberation Organization.
* "Tunnel complexes in Iran for weapons storage or exfiltration of regime leaders," and about the alleged growth of anti-regime sentiment in Iran.
Franklin, who, in an unrelated matter, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to prison in 2006 for providing classified information on Iran policy to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, passed the information about the alleged Iranian hit squads to a U.S. Special Forces commander in Afghanistan. Although a DIA analyst told the Senate committee that he couldn't speculate on whether the information had been "truly useful," Ledeen and Pentagon officials claimed it saved American lives, the committee said.
During the Rome meetings, Ghorbanifar also laid out a scheme to overthrow the Iranian regime on a napkin during a late night meeting in a bar. "The plan," said the Senate committee, "involved the simultaneous disruption of traffic at key intersections leading to Tehran that would create anxiety, work stoppages and other disruptive measures" in a capital city famous for its traffic congestion.
Ghorbanifar asked for $5 million in seed money, Franklin told the committee, and indicated that if the traffic jam plan succeeded, he'd need additional money.
"The proposed funding for, and foreign involvement in, Mr. Ghorbanifar's plan for regime change were never fully understood," the Senate committee said.
Nevertheless, Ghorbanifar's proposals grew more ambitious � and expensive. A February 2002 memo from Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodman referred to an unnamed foreign government's support for a Ghorbanifar plan that would cost millions of dollars. A later summary referred to contracts "that would assure oil and gas sales in the event of regime change". The U.S. ambassador to Italy said that DOD officials "were talking about 25 million for some kind of Iran program."
After Franklin and Rhode returned from the Rome meetings, the Senate report said, two series of events began to unfold in Washington that were typical of the gamesmanship that plagued the Bush administration's national security team.
"First," the report said, "State Department and CIA officials attempted to determine what Mr. Ledeen and the DOD representatives had done in Rome, and second, DOD officials debated the next course of action."
When the CIA and the State Department discovered that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were involved, they opposed any further contact with the two. Ledeen's contacts, the Defense Human Intelligence Service concluded, were "nefarious and unreliable," the Senate committee reported.
According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran � Saddam Hussein's archenemy. This time, the report said, Ledeen solicited support from former speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich and from three then-GOP senators, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.
Rhode and Ghorbanifar met again in Paris in June 2003 with at least the tacit approval of an official in Cheney's office, the Senate report said.
He reported back to officials in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, but "there is no indication that the information collected during the Paris meeting was shared with the Intelligence Community for a determination of potential intelligence value," the report said. |
http://www.alternet.org/audits/86280/
| Quote: |
Just Where Are Those Iranian Weapons That the Bushies Say Are Flooding Iraq?
The U.S. military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shiites opposing the U.S. occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).
But U.S. officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed U.S. military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shiite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.
When Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner was asked that question at a briefing May 8, he did not answer it directly. Instead Bergner reverted to a standard U.S. military line that these groups "could not do what they're doing without the support of foreign support [sic]." Then he defined "foreign support" to include training and funding as well as weapons, implicitly conceding that he did not have much of a case based on weapons alone.
Bergner's refusal to address that question reflects a fundamental problem with the U.S. claims about Iranian weapons in Iraq: if there are indeed any Iranian rockets and mortars, and RPGs in the Mahdi Army's arsenal of stand-off weapons, they represent an insignificant part of it.
Reports by the U.S. command in Iraq over the past 15 months cited only a handful of Iranian weapons out of hundreds counted in caches found in Shiite areas. Nearly 700 mortars and rockets were reported by specific caliber size, along with a handful of RPGs, in nearly two dozen caches. Of that total, only four rockets were reported as being of Iranian origin, and another 15 were listed as possibly being Iranian.
Although those reports do not represent all the Mahdi Army caches found, they provide further evidence of the relative importance of Iranian rockets, mortars and RPGs in the Mahdi Army arsenal. That is because U.S. military officials are so eager to publicise any discovery of an Iranian-made weapon system that they would exploit any opportunity available to do so.
The U.S. command has gone so far as to claim that it had found "four Iranian hand grenades" -- but they were in a cache of weapons found in an al Qaeda area.
Based on weapons caches discovered over the past 15 months, the Mahdi Army has relied overwhelmingly on four types of heavy weapons: 60mm and 120mm mortars, 107mm rocket, and 57mm anti-tank missile.
Those are essentially the same mortars and rockets that have turned up in al Qaeda and Sunni insurgent weapons caches, suggesting that both groups have obtained their heavier weapons from the international arms market. In fact, 60mm and 120mm mortars were used by Sunni guerrillas in the very early months of the war against U.S. occupation troops.
A U.S. explosives expert, Maj. Marty Weber, confirmed in April 2007 that most 107mm rockets found in Iraq were Chinese-made. He claimed that Iran had repainted Chinese 60mm and 107mm rockets them and sold them on the "open market". |
I'm not buying Bush Co.'s arguments and neither are the American people.
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/87251/
| Quote: |
| Only 7% of Americans Support Invading Iran |
It's funny that you bring up Jimmy Carter, a president from 1979 who had to deal with deficits from Vietnam as well as the Cold war. Whereas president Bush can't even manage the low-intensity War on Terror or the War on/in/over Iraq and took the budget surplus and ran it into a deficit and Greenspan didn't have the fortitude to nip the subprime mortgage crisis in the bud before banks started begging for handouts. But hey, Clinton called him a genius, in 2000, but obviously not where the rubber meets the road.
And you can have your party of in-closet homosexuals, child molesters, and cronies. |
I see from 2003
So AgentX trusts the Iranian government even thought to council of foreign relations says Iran , Hezbaollah and Al Qaeada have cooperated.
| Quote: |
| Only 7% of Americans support invading Iran |
If the US went to war with Iran why woudl the US invade Iran?
See too that agentx while he questions Bush he trusts the peaceful intentions of the Khomeni following bigots who run Iran.
Jimmy Carter failed in his job and allowed the Ayatollah to come to power.
And as I said mortage crisis or not what is the US GDP now and what is the stockmarket.
By the way the Republicans do have their share of weirdos but then you in the anti war movement has their share of jew hating bigots so it is kind of even.
Anyway AgentX deal with this. Much of this you can't blame on Bush in that most of of it happened before he was president.
Iran and Al Qaeda is not just something that changed.
It seems to have been going on for a while.
9/11 Commission Finds Ties Between al-Qaeda and Iran
| Quote: |
| Senior U.S. officials have told TIME that the 9/11 Commission's report will cite evidence suggesting that the 9/11 hijackers had previously passed through Iran |
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,664967,00.html
| Quote: |
Is there a link between Mugniyah and al-Qaeda?
Mugniyah met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the mid-1990s, according to the court testimony of Ali Abdelsoud Mohammed, a naturalized U.S. citizen and former U.S. army sergeant who later became a senior aide to bin Laden. After his arrest in 1998 in connection with the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Mohammed testified that he arranged several meetings between bin Laden and Mugniyah in Sudan. Bin Laden reportedly admired Mugniyah's tactics, particularly his use of truck bombs, which precipitated the United States' withdrawal from Lebanon. According to Mohammed, bin Laden and Mugniyah agreed Hezbollah would provide training, military expertise, and explosives in exchange for money and man power. It is not known, however, whether this agreement was carried out. The relationship between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda is not entirely friendly, as explained in this Backgrounder. |
http://www.cfr.org/publication/11317/#8
| Quote: |
By Noah Pollak
It is long past time that one important piece of fantastical rubbish be finally sent on its way: this is the idea that Islamists maintain some kind of fastidious ethnic and theological separatism when it comes to who they're willing to work with on killing people. The co-option of Hamas and Islamic Jihad (Sunni Arab) by Iran (Shia Persian) is one piece of reality that intrudes on this comforting notion; so is the Iran-Syria alliance, along with the reality of Iranian support for both Shia and Sunni insurgents in Iraq.
A final nail in the coffin comes today from Eli Lake, the New York Sun's talented national security reporter (and good friend). Eli's scoop is about the National Intelligence Estimate, an unclassified summary of which will be released today, but whose classified final working draft concludes that:
One of two known Al Qaeda leadership councils meets regularly in eastern Iran, where the American intelligence community believes dozens of senior Al Qaeda leaders have reconstituted a good part of the terror conglomerate's senior leadership structure.
Iranian hospitality toward Al Qaeda is not a new story -- but what is new is the apparent fact that one of two Qaeda leadership councils meets in Iran, and with the complicity of the regime. As Eli notes:
An intelligence official sympathetic to the view that it is a matter of Iranian policy to cooperate with Al Qaeda disputed the CIA and State Department view that the Quds Force is operating as a rogue force. "It is just impossible to believe that what the Quds Force does with Al Qaeda does not represent a decision of the government," the official, who asked not to be identified, said. "It's a bit like saying the directorate of operations for the CIA is not really carrying out U.S. policy."
Stories like these reinforce another very basic idea: terrorism has a return address. |
http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001492.html
| Quote: |
| On al-Qaeda, the picture is more murky. Iran and Osama bin Laden's movement are hardly natural allies � Tehran almost went to war with al-Qaeda's Taliban hosts in Afghanistan in 1998, following Taliban massacres of Afghan Shiites. The extremist theology that inspires both the Taliban and al-Qaeda sees Shiites as infidels, although bin Laden is on record advocating unity for purposes of anti-American jihad. The reformist elected leadership in Tehran has sought to repair its relationships with the West and rehabilitate Iran diplomatically, but the hard-liners may have hedged their bets. It remains unlikely that the government of President Mohammed Khatami has made common cause with al-Qaeda operatives, although it has long been alleged that hard-liners in the Revolutionary Guard have unofficially provided some with shelter in Iran. Al-Qaeda may also have set up shop in the predominantly Sunni border region of eastern Iran, where central government authority is more limited and the authorities have lost thousands of men in battles with smugglers. |
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,455276,00.html
| Quote: |
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Iran's Timeline of Terror
I followed the link at the end of the article to his essay published September 11, 2007 at The Claremont Institute.
"Iran's Proxy War Against America, (PDF)" covers the evidence of Iranian links to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups regardless of their Sunni, Shiite or Palestinian sympathies. ......
November 4, 1979
Fifty-two American citizens are taken hostage by �students� loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini. They are held for more than a year, until January 20, 1981. The kidnappings are part of the Iranian revolution, which serves as a model for Sunni terrorist groups like Ayman al-Zawahiri�s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
April 18, 1983
Iran�s master terrorist, Imad Mugniyah, orchestrates the first significant Islamist suicide attack against America: the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut. Establishing a modus operandi for terrorists in the years to come, the attacker utilizes a van packed with explosives.
October 23, 1983
Using massive truck bombs, Hezbollah�s suicide bombers simultaneously attack the U.S. Marine Barracks and a housing complex for French Paratroopers in Beirut, Lebanon. Al-Qaeda would later adopt simultaneous suicide bombings as its preferred method for committing attacks.
December 12, 1983
Iranian-backed terrorists bomb the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait. A close relative of Imad Mugniyah is convicted by a Kuwaiti court and sentenced to death for his role in the bombing. Other attackers,
also supported by Iran, are imprisoned. The terrorists come to be known as the �Kuwait 17� or �Dawa 17.� 75 iran�s proxy war against america
March 16, 1984
William Buckley, the CIA�s station chief in Beirut, is kidnapped and later tortured-to-death by Imad Mugniyah�s Hezbollah. Buckley�s kidnapping is one in a series of Hezbollah�s kidnappings from the early 1980s through the early 1990s. Dozens of Americans are kidnapped and Hezbollah frequently demands an exchange for the Kuwait 17. Hezbollah�s kidnappings lead to the biggest scandal of President Ronald Reagan�s tenure, the Iran-Contra affair, after the Reagan administration agrees to exchange arms for the hostages.
September 20, 1984
Hezbollah terrorists strike the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut with a truck bomb.
December 3, 1984
Mugniyah�s operatives hijack Kuwait Airways Flight 221. The hijackers attempt to barter for the release of the Kuwait 17.
June 14, 1985
Mugniyah�s terrorists hijack TWA Flight 847. Once again, the hijackers attempt to barter for the release of the Kuwait 17. When the hijackers� demands are denied, they beat and kill a U.S. Navy serviceman, Robert Dean Stethem, who happened to be on the flight. Incredibly, Germany granted parole to one of the hijackers in December 2005.
1990
According to Ali Mohamed, a top al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, Ayman al-Zawahiri�s Egyptian Islamic Jihad partners with Iran in a planned coup attempt in Egypt. Tehran trains EIJ terrorists for the coup attempt, which is ultimately aborted. Iran also pays al-Zawahiri $2 million for sensitive information concerning 76 national security studies the Egyptian Government�s plans to raid several islands in the Persian Gulf.
1991
Iran and Sudan, then the world�s only Islamist states, forge a strategic alliance. They begin to jointly export terrorism throughout the world.
April 1991
Hassan al-Turabi hosts the first Popular Arab Islamic Conference in Sudan. The conference provides a forum for disparate forces in the Middle East who oppose American presence in the region to come together. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Iraqi and Iranian representatives all attend the meeting.
February 26, 1993
Terrorists connected to al-Qaeda and the global terror network bomb the World Trade Center using a rental truck packed with explosives. The bombers� colleagues plot a follow-on attack against landmarks in the NYC area. There is no known evidence that Iran had a hand in these events. It is clear, however, that several of the plotters had ties to Hassan al-Turabi�s Sudan. Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of the two leading Egyptian terrorist groups (both of which will join al- Qaeda) and who was living in the New York metropolitan area, is later convicted for his involvement in the attacks. Reports surface that he and his organization received financial assistance from Iran.
1993
According to Ali Mohamed, Imad Mugniyah and Osama bin Laden meet in Sudan. Bin Laden expresses his desire to model al- Qaeda after Hezbollah. In particular, bin Laden expresses interest in Mugniyah�s bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 77 iran�s proxy war against america and similar attacks. They agree to work together against America and the West.
1993
According to Jamal al-Fadl, an al-Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, bin Laden meets a leading Iranian sheikh in Sudan. The purpose of the meeting is to put aside any differences between their competing brands of Islam in order to come together against their common enemy: the West. The meeting is just the first of several between bin Laden and Iran�s spiritual leaders.
1993
Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps train al- Qaeda�s terrorists in camps in Sudan, Lebanon and Iran. Among the terrorists trained are some of bin Laden�s most trusted lieutenants and al-Qaeda�s future leaders.
1993
Egypt and Algeria cut off diplomatic ties with Iran. Both nations accuse Iran and Sudan of supporting Sunni terrorism, including terrorist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda. Egypt will blame Iran for supporting both the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Group throughout the 1990�s.
November 13, 1995
Two bombs are detonated, nearly simultaneously, at the Saudi National Guard training facility in Riyadh, killing five Americans. The suspects are captured and confess to being inspired by Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden denies responsibility, but praises the attack. It is likely al-Qaeda�s first terrorist attack inside the Saudi Kingdom. 78 national security studies
November 19, 1995
An al-Qaeda suicide bomber destroys the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The CIA�s Bob Baer later learns that Mugniyah�s deputy assisted al-Qaeda in the attack and that one of bin Laden�s top terrorists remained in contact with Mugniyah�s offi ce months afterwards.
May 1996
Bin Laden is expelled from Sudan, but the 9/11 Commission reports that �intelligence indicates the persistance of contacts� between al-Qaeda and Iran even after al-Qaeda�s relocation to Afghanistan. Bin Laden and al-Qaeda maintain an ongoing presence in Sudan, despite not being �formally� welcome.
June 21 - 23, 1996
Tehran hosts a summit for the leading Sunni and Shiite terrorist groups. It is announced that the terrorists will continue to focus on U.S. interests thoughout the region. Mugniyah, bin Laden, and a leading member of the EIJ reportedly forge the �Committee of Three,� under the leadership of Iran�s intelligence chief, to focus their joint efforts against American targets.
June 25, 1996
Hezbollah terrorists, operating under the direction of senior Iranian officials, bomb the Khobar Towers apartment complex in Saudi Arabia. Contemporaneous reports by both the State Department and the CIA note that al-Qaeda is also suspected of playing a role. The 9/11 Commission would later find �indirect evidence� of al-Qaeda�s involvement. The evidence includes intelligence indicating that al-Qaeda was planning a similar operation in the months prior and that bin Laden was congratulated by other al-Qaeda operatives, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, shortly after the attack. 79 iran�s proxy war against america
July 1996
According to Bob Baer, the Egyptian Islamic Group�an ally of bin Laden�s al-Qaeda�is in contact with Mugniyah.
1996
According to Bob Baer, there is �incontrovertible evidence� of a meeting between bin Laden and a representative of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
August 7, 1998
Al-Qaeda�s suicide bombers simultaneously destroy the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. It is al-Qaeda�s most spectacular attack prior to 9/11. The attack is clearly modeled on Hezbollah�s attacks in the early 1980s. Indeed, the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible were trained by Hezbollah in the early 1990s. There is evidence that Iran also provided explosives used in the attack.
October - November 2000
Imad Mugniyah and his lieutenants personally escort several of the 9/11 muscle hijackers out of Saudi Arabia on flights to Beirut and Iran. In all, eight to ten of the hijackers travel through Iran on the way to 9/11.
December 2000
Ramzi Binalshibh, al-Qaeda�s key point man for the 9/11 plot, applies for visa at the Iranian Embassy in Berlin. His visa application is approved.
January 31, 2001
Ramzi Binalshibh arrives at Tehran International airport. He does not return to Germany until February 28, 2001. The purpose of his trip to Iran remains a mystery. The 9/11 Commission does not mention Binalshibh�s trip to Iran. 80 national security studies
Early September 2001
Binalshibh flees to Iran shortly before the 9/11 attacks.
September 11, 2001
Nineteen al-Qaeda hijackers execute al-Qaeda�s largest operation to date, killing nearly 3000 Americans. Many of the details surrounding the plot, including who financed the attack, remain a mystery.
October 2001
According to a high-level Taliban detainee at Gitmo, Iran offers the Taliban Government assistance in retreating from Afghanistan.
October 2001
Numerous press reports indicate that Iran aids the retreat of hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban members from Afghanistan. Some al-Qaeda operatives enjoy safehaven in Iran to this day. Among them is Said al-Adel, who is reportedly the third highest ranking member of al-Qaeda and was trained by Hezbollah during the early 1990s, and Saad bin Laden, Osama�s heir apparent.
April 11, 2002
Al-Qaeda carries out the first attack ordered by bin Laden since 9/11: a suicide bomber destroys a synagogue in Tunisia, killing nineteen people. According to NBC News, Saad bin Laden contacted the cell responsible for the attack from his safehaven in Iran. Suleiman Abu Ghaith, bin Laden�s spokesman, also claims al-Qaeda�s responsibility for the attack from his abode in Iran.
End of 2002 - Spring 2003
According to former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, senior al-Qaeda leaders discuss the acquisition of nuclear weapons from their safe haven in Iran. In fact, al-Qaeda�s �nuclear 81 iran�s proxy war against america chief,� Abdel al-Aziz al-Masri, is one of many senior terrorists living in Iran.
May 12, 2003
Under orders from Saif al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, who are operating from Iran, al-Qaeda�s terrorists simultaneously strike three separate housing complexes in Riyadh Saudi Arabia. Another al- Qaeda agent thought to be responsible for the attack flees to Iran before he can be captured.
May 16, 2003
One dozen al-Qaeda bombers attack several targets in Casablanca, Morocco. Saad bin Laden, living in Iran, is reportedly in contact with the cell shortly before the attack.
2004 � present
Iran supplies advanced IED technology to the insurgents in Iraq. There is growing evidence of Iranian support for both Sunni and Shiite insurgency groups in Iraq. Iran continues to harbor senior al-Qaeda leaders as the terrorist network reorganizes.
January 20, 2007
IRGC and Hezbollah terrorists kill five American soldiers in Karbala, Iraq
January 2007 � present
Numerous IRGC and Hezbollah terrorists, who are responsible for arming and training terrorist groups in Iraq, are captured by American and Iraqi forces. 82 national security studies. |
http://demediacraticnation.blogspot.com/2007/10/irans-timeline-of-terror.html
anyway there is a better way to deal with Iran then bombing them for now but Obama is against a key part of it. Too bad it would give him more credibiltiy on the issue. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 6:23 am Post subject: |
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AgentX
| Quote: |
Just Where Are Those Iranian Weapons That the Bushies Say Are Flooding Iraq?
By Gareth Porter, IPS News. Posted May 23, 2008. |
Oh Gareth Porter Iranian apologist. and anti US reporter who is also a left wing denier.
Before he was defending Iran he was defending North Vietnam and their land reform.
and worse than that he is a Kymer Rouge apologist who accepted the word of Pol Pot.
| Quote: |
North Vietnam/Viet Cong Apologists
-- Land Reform Apologists
Anita Lauve Nutt, On the Question of Communist Reprisals in Vietnam [PDF]
Refutes various arguments by left-wing deniers of North Vietnam뭩 land reform bloodbath.
* Gareth Porter, The Myth of the Bloodbath: North Vietnam뭩 Land Reform Reconsidered [PDF]
The key bloodbath denial document, relying on official communist propaganda sources.
Robert F. Turner, Expert Punctures 밡o Bloodbath?Myth: Gareth Porter Refuted [PDF]
Point-by-point refutation of Porter뭩 thesis. Porter could barely speak the language he accused others of
mistranslating! He never responded to Turner뭩 article.
Hoang Van Chi, Reply to Gareth Porter [PDF]
An early historian of the land reform rebuts the charge that he was a CIA propagandist. |
http://www.paulbogdanor.com/deniers.html
| Quote: |
| In 1976-77, continuing his challenge to the bloodbath argument, Gareth Porter rejected early accounts of the mass killings by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia. With George Hildebrand he wrote a book, Cambodia: Starvation and Revolution, which accepted the Pol Pot regime's rationale for the deportation of millions of people from Phnom Penh and other cities. Critics have argued that the book's sources included official statements by the Pol Pot regime.[5] Testifying before Congress in May 1977, Gareth Porter said that "the notion that the leadership of Democratic Kampuchea adopted a policy of physically eliminating whole classes of people" was "a myth fostered primarily by the authors of a Readers Digest book."[6] Senator Stephen J. Solarz was so shocked by this testimony that he compared Gareth Porter to those who deny the murder of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust. Gareth Porter rejected this comparison.[7] |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Porter
Now why ought we just take the word of Gareth Porter?
Your second article witness is disqualified.
Forgive me if I say your second article doesn't count. Cause now it doesn't.
So while you question Bush you accept the word of the Khomeni followers and Kymer Rouge apologists. |
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