U.S. conducting secret Iran missions -report

[Ace7]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been conducting secret reconnaissance missions inside Iran to help identify potential nuclear, chemical and missile targets, The New Yorker magazine reports.

The article, by award-winning reporter Seymour Hersh, said the secret missions have been going on at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected sites.

Hersh quotes one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon as saying, "The civilians in the Pentagon want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible."

One former high-level intelligence official told The New Yorker, "This is a war against terrorism, and Iraq is just one campaign. The Bush administration is looking at this as a huge war zone. Next, we're going to have the Iranian campaign."

The White House said Iran is a concern and a threat that needs to be taken seriously. But it disputed the report by Hersh, who last year exposed the extent of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"We obviously have a concern about Iran. The whole world has a concern about Iran," Dan Bartlett, a top aide to President George W. Bush, told CNN's "Late Edition."

Of The New Yorker report, he said: "I think it's riddled with inaccuracies, and I don't believe that some of the conclusions he's drawing are based on fact."

Bartlett said the administration "will continue to work through the diplomatic initiatives" to convince Iran -- which Bush once called part of an "axis of evil" -- not to pursue nuclear weapons.

"No president, at any juncture in history, has ever taken military options off the table," Bartlett added. "But what President Bush has shown is that he believes we can emphasize the diplomatic initiatives that are underway right now."

COMMANDO TASK FORCE

Bush has warned Iran in recent weeks against meddling in Iraqi elections.

The former intelligence official told Hersh that an American commando task force in South Asia is working closely with a group of Pakistani scientists who had dealt with their Iranian counterparts.

The New Yorker reports that this task force, aided by information from Pakistan, has been penetrating into eastern Iran in a hunt for underground nuclear-weapons installations.

In exchange for this cooperation, the official told Hersh, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has received assurances that his government will not have to turn over Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to face questioning about his role in selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Hersh reported that Bush has already "signed a series of top-secret findings and executive orders authorizing secret commando groups and other Special Forces units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia."

Defining these as military rather than intelligence operations, Hersh reported, will enable the Bush administration to evade legal restrictions imposed on the CIA's covert activities overseas.

[errand]

Hey Ace...what's up?...haven't heard from you in a while.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Is Al Qaeda Just a Bush Boogeyman?

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...8,print.column

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?

To even raise the question amid all the officially inspired hysteria is heretical, especially in the context of the U.S. media's supine acceptance of administration claims relating to national security. Yet a brilliant new BBC film produced by one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers systematically challenges this and many other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror.

"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear," a three-hour historical film by Adam Curtis recently aired by the British Broadcasting Corp., argues coherently that much of what we have been told about the threat of international terrorism "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicians. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

Stern stuff, indeed. But consider just a few of the many questions the program poses along the way:

• If Osama bin Laden does, in fact, head a vast international terrorist organization with trained operatives in more than 40 countries, as claimed by Bush, why, despite torture of prisoners, has this administration failed to produce hard evidence of it?

• How can it be that in Britain since 9/11, 664 people have been detained on suspicion of terrorism but only 17 have been found guilty, most of them with no connection to Islamist groups and none who were proven members of Al Qaeda?

• Why have we heard so much frightening talk about "dirty bombs" when experts say it is panic rather than radioactivity that would kill people?

• Why did Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claim on "Meet the Press" in 2001 that Al Qaeda controlled massive high-tech cave complexes in Afghanistan, when British and U.S. military forces later found no such thing?

Of course, the documentary does not doubt that an embittered, well-connected and wealthy Saudi man named Osama bin Laden helped finance various affinity groups of Islamist fanatics that have engaged in terror, including the 9/11 attacks. Nor does it challenge the notion that a terrifying version of fundamentalist Islam has led to gruesome spates of violence throughout the world. But the film, both more sober and more deeply provocative than Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," directly challenges the conventional wisdom by making a powerful case that the Bush administration, led by a tight-knit cabal of Machiavellian neoconservatives, has seized upon the false image of a unified international terrorist threat to replace the expired Soviet empire in order to push a political agenda.

Terrorism is deeply threatening, but it appears to be a much more fragmented and complex phenomenon than the octopus-network image of Al Qaeda, with Bin Laden as its head, would suggest.

While the BBC documentary acknowledges that the threat of terrorism is both real and growing, it disagrees that the threat is centralized:

"There are dangerous and fanatical individuals and groups around the world who have been inspired by extreme Islamist ideas and who will use the techniques of mass terror — the attacks on America and Madrid make this only too clear. But the nightmare vision of a uniquely powerful hidden organization waiting to strike our societies is an illusion. Wherever one looks for this Al Qaeda organization, from the mountains of Afghanistan to the 'sleeper cells' in America, the British and Americans are chasing a phantom enemy."

The fact is, despite the efforts of several government commissions and a vast army of investigators, we still do not have a credible narrative of a "war on terror" that is being fought in the shadows.

Consider, for example, that neither the 9/11 commission nor any court of law has been able to directly take evidence from the key post-9/11 terror detainees held by the United States. Everything we know comes from two sides that both have a great stake in exaggerating the threat posed by Al Qaeda: the terrorists themselves and the military and intelligence agencies that have a vested interest in maintaining the facade of an overwhelmingly dangerous enemy.

Such a state of national ignorance about an endless war is, as "The Power of Nightmares" makes clear, simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy.

[alkemical]

I guess this isn't so secret....

[errand]

so now al-Q didn't exist?

OK, so if that's true, then why all the fuss about Bush and the rest not reacting to that alleged memo that said al-Q was planning to use planes as missles and attack the US?

Amazing.....first the left cries that Bush didn't do enough to save us from Al-Q, and the 9/11 attacks...and now that we have them on the run and are wiping their leadership and financial networks out, all of a sudden, the left claims they never existed except in the mind of GW Bush.

God I love that you clowns have free speech....and aren't afraid to use it.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by errand

so now al-Q didn't exist?

I know reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, but damn!

Is it conceivable that Al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?

[alkemical]

I'll chime in on this here -

I've done my own research and i've found some holes.

the flight that was 'crashed' in PA - i just have one question, how to parts end up 8 miles from the impact?

WTC7 was claimed to have been destroyed by fire, but no steel skyscraper has been destroyed by fire before.
The 6.5 second plunge of wtc7 also reminded me of charges set off.

FEMA investigated the WTC events, but FEMA isn't an investigative entity.


Do i think Bush himself knew of the WTC events beforehand, not anymore. I had my doubts. But i think that his admin capitalized on pushing some very questionable laws through in teh wake of the event.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by amesj523

Do i think Bush himself knew of the WTC events beforehand, not anymore. I had my doubts. But i think that his admin capitalized on pushing some very questionable laws through in teh wake of the event.

Even if Dim Son wasn't aware of all the specifics in advance of the attacks, we're still left with the fact that he completely ignored all the warnings and didn't have any sort of counterterrorism policy in place prior to 9/11.

Smirk's willfull ignorance of so many warnings from so many different sources over time prior to the attacks defies logic.

Consider also the lies told by Rice, et al, e.g., "we could never have imagined anyone using aircraft as missles," etc.

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by amesj523

I'll chime in on this here -

I've done my own research and i've found some holes.

the flight that was 'crashed' in PA - i just have one question, how to parts end up 8 miles from the impact?

WTC7 was claimed to have been destroyed by fire, but no steel skyscraper has been destroyed by fire before.
The 6.5 second plunge of wtc7 also reminded me of charges set off.

FEMA investigated the WTC events, but FEMA isn't an investigative entity.


Do i think Bush himself knew of the WTC events beforehand, not anymore. I had my doubts. But i think that his admin capitalized on pushing some very questionable laws through in teh wake of the event.

I can't comment on the PA flight but from almost 30 years of industrial construction experience I can tell you that the implosion of the Towers was real. The steel columns and horizontal beams didn't actually melt but reached such a high temperature from the aircraft fuel and building contents burning that their integrity was compromised and the 1000s of tons of floors above the impact sites had no place to go but down.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

How about The Pentagon?

Many of Smirk's supporters even admit they can't explain it.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

I can't comment on the PA flight but from almost 30 years of industrial construction experience I can tell you that the implosion of the Towers was real. The steel columns and horizontal beams didn't actually melt but reached such a high temperature from the aircraft fuel and building contents burning that their integrity was compromised and the 1000s of tons of floors above the impact sites had no place to go but down.

for WTC7??

[alkemical]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

How about The Pentagon?

Many of Smirk's supporters even admit they can't explain it.

the pentagon is a different story....

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Why the hawks are circling over Iran

As George W Bush prepares for a second term, his administration is setting its sights on Iran. But a new foreign policy adventure could be disastrous



The warning signs are aligned, as the stars in the heavens portending a great event.

There are stirrings in Congress and intensified contacts with exile groups from the Middle Eastern country in question. Once more, President George W. Bush is warning that he has not ruled out the use of force to make sure that a regime linked to terrorism does not acquire weapons of mass destruction.

Most sensationally of all, a highly regarded magazine carries a detailed, only partially denied report that US special force units are already carrying out missions on the ground inside that country, pinpointing sites that could be hit by air-strikes or commando raids.

Back in mid 2002, all these things were happening as Washington prepared to demolish Saddam Hussein. This time however, the sights of the US are trained elsewhere.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...p?story=602275

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Bush and the Neocon Kool-aid

"Much more will be asked of you in the months and years ahead."
Bush told a crowd of U.S. service personnel last night at the
event that kicked off his inauguration.

Why do i get the feeling the Iranian invasion plans are almost
set?

The boy-king, like a petulant child, goes from unfinished business
to unfinished business, unable to keep his attention focused on one
thing for very long. We never finished looking for Osama, and now
he's bored with Iraq. Unfortunately for our troops, the Iranians
won't be the pushovers that the Iraq's were. Their military isn't
degraded by a decade of air strikes and embargoes.

But little georgie's not worried, after all, he won't be going.
And isn't this what the little people are bred for? Cannon-fodder
for the moneyed interests. His grandfather and father both got
rich off war, it's just his turn.

I have to assume the draft is only a pen-stroke away.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...h_inaugural_dc