“Change”: The Iron Fisted reach-around

…and you’ll just love it to death

.Joe Biden
Rahm Emanuel
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Madeleine Albright
Richard Holbrooke
Dennis Ross
Martin Indyk
Anthony Lake
Lee Hamilton
Susan Rice
John Brennan
Jami Miscik
John Kerry
Bill Richardson
Robert Gates
Ivo H. Daalder
Sarah Sewall
Michele Flournoy
Wendy Sherman
Tom Donilon
Denis McDonough
Mark Lippert

Acts of War

In Scott Ritter’s latest piece at Truthdig, he covers the ongoing covert operations inside Iran and the long partnership of the CIA and MEK and the potential coming coup, again.

The current situation concerning the MEK would be laughable if it were not for the violent reality of that organization’s activities. Upon its arrival in Iraq in 1986, the group was placed under the control of Saddam Hussein’s Mukhabarat, or intelligence service. The MEK was a heavily militarized organization and in 1988 participated in division-size military operations against Iran. The organization represents no state and can be found on the U.S. State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, yet since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the MEK has been under the protection of the U.S. military. Its fighters are even given “protected status” under the Geneva Conventions. The MEK says its members in Iraq are refugees, not terrorists. And yet one would be hard-pressed to find why the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees should confer refugee status on an active paramilitary organization that uses “refugee camps” inside Iraq as its bases.

The MEK is behind much of the intelligence being used by the International Atomic Energy Agency in building its case that Iran may be pursuing (or did in fact pursue in the past) a nuclear weapons program. The complexity of the MEK-CIA relationship was recently underscored by the agency’s acquisition of a laptop computer allegedly containing numerous secret documents pertaining to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Much has been made about this computer and its contents. The United States has led the charge against Iran within international diplomatic circles, citing the laptop information as the primary source proving Iran’s ongoing involvement in clandestine nuclear weapons activity. Of course, the information on the computer, being derived from questionable sources (i.e., the MEK and the CIA, both sworn enemies of Iran) is controversial and its veracity is questioned by many, including me.

read Scott’s complete article at Truthdig

Iraq Bases Pact a Ruse

from IPS: 6/12/08

Two key pledges made by the George W. Bush administration on military bases in its negotiations with the government of Iraq have now been revealed as carefully-worded ruses aimed at concealing U.S. negotiating aims from both U.S. citizens and Iraqis who would object to them if they were made clear.

Recent statements by Iraqis familiar with U.S. demands in negotiations on the U.S.-Iraq “strategic framework” agreement have highlighted the fact that administration promises that it would not seek “permanent bases” or the use of bases to attack Iran or any other neighbouring countries were deliberately misleading. The wording used by the Bush administration appears to have been chosen to obscure its intention to have both long-term access to Iraqi bases and complete freedom to use them to launch operations against Iran and Syria.

Suicide bombings at highest numbers in history since Iraq invasion

from Raw Story

Surge: 2007 saw double number of bombings of any year ever recorded

Suicide bombings have risen to their highest levels in recorded history since the invasion of Iraq, according to a new report buried on page A18 of Friday’s Washington Post.

Of the 1840 suicide bombings since 1983, the year a suicide bomber attacked the US Embassy in Lebanon, 920 — or 50 percent — of suicide bombings have occurred since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003.

More than 82% of the suicide bombings last year were in Iraq. The number of bombings last year, 658, was more than twice the number of attacks at any point in the last 25 years.

The unpublished research was compiled by US government experts and leaked on condition of anonymity.

Suicide bombers engaged in 658 strikes across the globe in 2007; 542 were in U.S.-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq.

Full Story and link to WaPo article here

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GAO: US vulnerable to al-Qaeda

from Press TV

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:24:34

The reports conducted by the Government Accountability Office also says the US can not prevent the Pakistan’s tribal region from being used for launching terrorist attacks on the United States.

President Bush and his senior lieutenants frequently claim that eradicating the threat that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network poses to US and its allies is their top national-security priority.

“No comprehensive strategy for meeting US national-security goals” in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has been developed even though the administration’s counter-terrorism policy, congressional legislation and the mission of the National Counter-Terrorism Center mandate such an approach, the report says.

Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas

GAO-08-622, April 17, 2008

Summary (HTML) Full Report (PDF, 32 pages)