Putin tells Tehran: "They're going to bomb you!"

[Nbadan]

Anyone remember when Reagan used the word Terra' to scare the baggebers out of everyone when his Iran-Contra scheme was exposed?

Managua—Terror Central?

"Reagan Reports New Latin Danger" was the headline of a front page New York Times article (1/25/85) in which the President defended his contra policy as "an act of self defense," citing a Sandinista terrorist link. Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald (3/3/85) further developed the theme of Nicaragua as a terrorist haven, while a USA Today (7/9/85) photo spread, with head shots of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, Castro, Qadaffi and the Ayatollah Khomeini, graphically promoted Reagan's warning about "terrorist states" threatening the U.S.

An October 1986 OPD report, "The Challenge to Democracy in Central America," conveniently cited news articles on Nicaraguan state-sponsored terrorism based partly on its own leaks. This ploy was necessary because the U.S. government could offer no solid evidence of a Sandinista terror connection.

One of the few reporters who seriously analyzed an OPD White Paper, Washington Post correspondent Joanne Omang (7/23/85), found the charges against Nicaragua were baseless. But the story persisted with Reagan's proclamations that Nicaragua sponsored terrorist groups in Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Official denials from each of these countries were ignored by Rushworth Kidder in a Christian Science Monitor article (5/14/86) which pegged Nicaragua as a "big offender" in a Soviet-backed world terrorist network. ....

Link

[Nbadan]

And who could forget the names Otto Reich and John Negroponte?

Bush nominee linked to Latin American terrorism
By Bill Vann - 24 November 2001

As the Bush administration exhorts governments throughout the world to line up behind its “war on terrorism,” it is pressuring the US Senate to push through confirmation of a nominee to a key foreign policy position whose own links to terror and an illegal CIA propaganda operation have raised concerns even among the usually docile Democratic leadership.

The name Otto Reich topped the list of 18 nominees submitted last month by Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is one of a group of veterans of the illegal covert wars fought by Washington in Central America under the Reagan administration in the 1980s who are now reassuming key posts in the US foreign policy establishment.

John Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras during that period, played a key role in supplying and supervising the CIA-backed “contra” mercenaries who were based in that country, and whose US-funded operations claimed 50,000 lives. During the same period, Honduran military death squads, operating with Washington support, assassinated hundreds of opponents of the US-backed regime.

Negroponte was quietly installed as US Ambassador to the United Nations just a week after the September 11 attack. The irony of appointing an individual so deeply implicated in savage acts of state-sponsored terror to serve as a principal spokesman for an international war on terrorism passed without notice in the US media.

Link

[Nbadan]

And Sec. of Defense Robert Gates links to South and Central American Terra...

Getting a Grip | Sandinista Redux
by Michael I. Niman

"The Bush administration just appointed Robert Gates, a man who helped orchestrate an illegal terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 1980s, as our new Secretary of Defense, replacing Donald Rumsfeld. The Nicaraguans, for their part, just returned the party and the president that our dirty little war ousted back to office. And they did this despite direct threats last month from the Bush administration, delivered by a convicted war criminal, who went to Nicaragua days before the election and told the Nicaraguan people that if such a victory occurred there’d be , literally, to pay. It’s not déjà vu—this is the story of a White House bent on world domination and a little democratic revolution that just won’t go away.

The last time I was in Nicaragua was 1989. Public transportation was crippled by an army of 15,000 US-backed terrorists with a penchant for blowing up or burning buses—sometimes full of passengers. Known as the Contras, they also crippled the nation’s electric system and regularly assassinated elected officials from the ruling democratic-socialist “Sandinista” party. ....

....

In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. Using what later proved to be false and fabricated intelligence reports—sound familiar?—Reagan argued that the impoverished Central American country represented a military threat, and hence set out to wage an undeclared war against Nicaragua. The Reagan administration, with the help of the former Argentinean military junta, armed, trained and funded the Contras, a mercenary army led by former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen loyal to the ousted dictatorship.

The Contras combined amorality and ruthlessness with a smart strategy: defeat the Sandinistas by turning their country into on earth. The problem, as political theorist Noam Chomsky put it in his book, The Managua Lectures, was that Nicaragua posed “the threat of a good example.” If Nicaragua could oust its oppressive, US-backed government and effectively address problems of hunger, health care, education and political oppression, then why couldn’t, say, neighboring Honduras do the same thing? This was the real domino effect Reagan feared in Latin America—the one we’re seeing now ...

..... Twenty years after Reagan launched the Contra war, classified do ents showing the roles of public figures such as the first President Bush were due to be released to the public. That all changed after September 11, 2001, when history itself was classified.

Then the ghosts from the Iran-Contra scandal started to reappear, haunting the new Bush White House. Elliot Abrams, pardoned by Bush Senior for his criminal activity in the Iran-Contra scandal, was appointed by Bush Junior as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council—the folks who wage covert wars.

Then there was John Negroponte, who, as ambassador to Honduras under Reagan, was the White House’s point man in the region, ultimately supervising the Contra terrorism in Nicaragua. George W. Bush appointed him as Director of National Intelligence, ostensibly managing our current dirty wars wherever they may be.

Link

[Nbadan]

and finally...

Iran/Contra Terrorists twenty years later
Iran-contra: 20 Years Later and What It Means
From The Nation - David Corn
Tuesday, November 28, 2006

"It's the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra scandal. Two decades ago, the public learned about the bizarre, Byzantine and (arguably) uncons utional actions of high officials in the post-Watergate years. But many Americans did not absorb the key lesson: the Iran-contra vets were not to be trusted. Consequently, most of those officials went on to prosperous careers, with some even becoming part of the squad that has landed the United States in the current ish mess in Iraq."

(Does this sound familiar?) "Conservatives for years--make that decades--have argued there was nothing really criminal about the Iran-contra affair and that it was merely a political dispute between the pro-contras Republicans in the White House and the Democrats controlling Congress...."

(Is there a parallel moment in an e-mail today?) "In a remarkable passage, Secretary of State George P. Shultz warns the president that White House adviser James Baker has said that "if we go out and try to get money from third countries, it is an impeachable offense." But Vice President George Bush argues the contrary: "How can anyone object to the US encouraging third parties to provide help to the anti-Sandinistas…?" "

(Iran has a lot of experience with American criminal politicos.) "The Iran arms-for-hostage-deal was also illegal--or so Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger thought. At a December 7, 1985 White House meeting, Weinberger argued the Iran missile deal was wrong and criminal, according to his notes of the session. Weinberger pointed out to Reagan that selling missiles to Iran would violate a U.S. embargo on arms sales to Iran and that even the president of the United States could not break this law. Nor, Weinberger added, would it be legal to use Israel as a cutout,..."

(Doing business with terrorists.) "On November 3, 1986, a Lebanese weekly revealed that the previous May National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane had secretly flown to Tehran. McFarlane's covert mission had been part of the arms-for-hostages deal--which now stood exposed."

(Here is the list of purps still doing the same old, same old.) "But history never ends. Twenty years later, Abrams is deputy national security adviser for global democracy in the George W. Bush administration. A fellow who admitted that he had not told Congress the truth and who had abetted a secret war ....

* Richard Cheney ... a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry of 1986, taking the position that Congress deserved major blame for asserting itself unjustifiably onto presidential turf....

* David Addington - now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff .....

* John Bolton - the controversial U.N. ambassador .... participated in meetings with Attorney General Edwin Meese on how to handle the burgeoning Iran-Contra political and legal scandal ....

* Robert M. Gates ... was forced to give up his bid to head the CIA in early 1987 because of su ions about his role ...

* Manuchehr Ghorbanifar .... has resurfaced as an important source for the Pentagon on current Iranian affairs, again over CIA objections.

* Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group ... attorney general ... criticized as a political exercise in protecting the president rather than a genuine inquiry by the nation's top law enforcement officer.

* John Negroponte ... ambassador to Honduras ... Negroponte's profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005.

"As for the current relevance of Iran-contra, one could argue that the affair taught Reaganites and neocons a lesson, the wrong lesson: you can get away with it....

Link

So remember kids, the real lie is this one: "We're spreading freedom and Democracy".

When they tell you that, run as fast as you can and get your community organized. Here's what they really want: CHAOS

These big boys don't want a world full of democratic nations. Democratic nations are autonomous and fully in charge of their resources. Autonomous nations can't be controlled or bought off as easily as warring factions or greedy Tyrants.

[ChumpDumper]

Whom do you think is the driving force in the WH to bomb Iran? Joe Lieberman?

But you said they already made the decision. No more driving necessary.

The way I see it now, unless Giuliani starts trumping his Republican compe ors soon, and I think you will soon see a consorted effort by the wing-nut echo chamber to boast Giuliani despite the obvious moral differences, you could see Cheney step aside for physical reasons (that will be the caveat) and either Giuliani or some other Neocon with political aspirations step in to finish his term........

I see a problem with Senate confirmation there.

[ChumpDumper]

And in the time it would take me to actually read those posts, we could have bombed Iran three times over.

[inconvertible]

When this doesn't happen are you going to own up to your silly posts?

[Nbadan]

The problem won't be the strategic bombing of Iran, our A.F. is too strong for that.....It's the aftermath....

Shifting realities....

Raw Story: Hersh: 'War with Iran will be about protecting the troops in Iraq'

"They've changed their rhetoric, really. The name of the game used to be nuclear threat," Hersh said on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, adding a moment later, "They've come to the realization that it's not selling, it isn't working. The American people aren't worried about Iran as a nuclear threat certainly as they were about Iraq. So they've switched, really."

...

The sites in Iran being targeted however, reflect the change in the White House selling of armed conflict with Iran.

"Instead of... hitting the various facilities we know that exist, instead they're going to hit the Iranians as payback for hitting us ," Hersh told Blitzer in the CNN interview.

Such targets, Hersh says, would include Iran's Revolutionary Guard headquarters and other sites of Iran's alleged support for the insurgency in Iraq.

Rawstory

[boutons_]

"nuclear threat"

"protecting dubya's Iraqi occupiers"

Sounds just like the justification-du-jour dubya and head trotted out before the Iraqi invasion and country-breaking. Those justifications were all bull , and these are, too.

[ChumpDumper]

Hersh will be interviewed on Fresh Air tomorrow if anyone wants to hear it.

[BradLohaus]

Neocons seek to justify action against Teheran

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...-mostviewedbox

American diplomats have been ordered to compile a dossier detailing Iran's violations of international law that some fear could be used to justify military strikes against the Islamic republic's nuclear programme.

Members of the US secretariat in the United Nations were asked earlier this month to begin "searching for things that Iran has done wrong", The Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

Some US diplomats believe the exercise — reminiscent of attempts by vice-president Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld to build the case against Saddam Hussein before the Iraq war — will boost calls for military action by neo-conservatives inside and outside the administration.

Opponents of military action were further alarmed last week when it emerged that Norman Podhoretz, one of the godfathers of neo-conservatism, used a 45-minute meeting with Mr Bush at the White House to lobby for the bombing of Iran's nuclear plants.

Mr Podhoretz disclosed that, when he said Mr Bush was just "giving futility its chance" by pursuing diplomacy, the president and his former aide Karl Rove had burst out laughing. "It struck me," Mr Podhoretz added, "that if they really believed that there was a chance for these negotiations and sanctions to work, they would not have laughed. They would have got their backs up and said, 'No, no, it's not futile, there's a very good chance'." He said he believed "Bush is going to hit" Iran before his presidency ends.

Mr Podhoretz is highly influential. His son-in-law is Elliott Abrams, Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, who is regarded by US officials as a key advocate of bombing Iran. He was found guilty of withholding evidence from Congress over the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

Bruce Reidel, a former CIA Middle East desk officer, said the neo-conservatives realised their influence would wane rapidly when Mr Bush left office in just over 15 months. "Whatever crazy idea they have to try to transform the Middle East, they have to push now. The real hardline neo-conservatives are getting desperate that the door of history is about to close on them with an epitaph of total failure."

[xrayzebra]

Hersh will be interviewed on Fresh Air tomorrow if anyone wants to hear it.

Fresh what, what station is that on? PBS?

[DarkReign]

Mr Podhoretz is highly influential. His son-in-law is Elliott Abrams, Mr Bush's deputy national security adviser, who is regarded by US officials as a key advocate of bombing Iran. He was found guilty of withholding evidence from Congress over the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.

At what point did I lose my sense of humor with this administration?

Revolt, people. Revolt while you still can.

[ChumpDumper]

Fresh what, what station is that on? PBS?

NPR. 89.1 in San Antonio 11AM and 10PM.

http://tpr.org/audio/listen.html

They archive the show online in case you miss it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundown...n.php?prgId=13

[Nbadan]

Looks like the Hersh report has made the WH back-track some..

The White House today is dismissing the report of a seasoned journalist that the Bush administration, intent on attacking Iran, has shifted its target from a developing nuclear program in Iran to the supply lines of Iranians reinforcing insurgent fighters inside Iraq.

Writer Seymour Hersh says so in The New Yorker, citing a number of confidential sources.

"Every two months or so, Sy Hersh writes an article in the New Yorker magazine and CNN gives him a forum to talk about his article and all the anonymous sources on it,'' Dana Perino, the White House press serectary, said today, insisting that President Bush still maintains that diplomacy is "the best solution'' for settling differences with Iran.

She declined to address, however, the basic contention that U.S. miltiary planners and intelligence gathers have turned their focus to a "shifting target'' in Iran.

"We don’t discuss such things,'' she said. "What we have said is that we are working toward a diplomatic solution in Iran… What we also have said is that the president, and any commander in chief would, not take any option off the table.

Link

Wasn't there an article last week that said the Iraq invasion plans were being implemented while Bush & Co were still out there saying "They have no plans" to invade Iraq???